War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

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War and Peace

BOOK ONE: 1805

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Chapter I

‘Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family

estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t
tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the
infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist - I
really believe he is Antichrist - I will have nothing more
to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you
do? I see I have frightened you - sit down and tell me all
the news.’
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-
known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and
favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these
words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high
rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days.
She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe
being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the
elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in
French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that
morning, ran as follows:

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‘If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince],

and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor
invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see
you tonight between 7 and 10- Annette Scherer.’
‘Heavens! what a virulent attack!’ replied the prince,
not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just
entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee
breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a
serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined
French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation
natural to a man of importance who had grown old in
society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed
her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining
head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
‘First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your
friend’s mind at rest,’ said he without altering his tone,
beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which
indifference and even irony could be discerned.
‘Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be
calm in times like these if one has any feeling?’ said Anna
Pavlovna. ‘You are staying the whole evening, I hope?’

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‘And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is

Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there,’ said the
prince. ‘My daughter is coming for me to take me there.’
‘I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all
these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.’
‘If they had known that you wished it, the
entertainment would have been put off,’ said the prince,
who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things
he did not even wish to be believed.
‘Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about
Novosiltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.’
‘What can one say about it?’ replied the prince in a
cold, listless tone. ‘What has been decided? They have
decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe
that we are ready to burn ours.’
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor
repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the
contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with
animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had
become her social vocation and, sometimes even when
she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order
not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her.
The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded
features, always played round her lips expressed, as in a

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spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming

defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor
considered it necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters
Anna Pavlovna burst out:
‘Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t
understand things, but Austria never has wished, and does
not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone must
save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high
vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have
faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous
and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his
vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has
become more terrible than ever in the person of this
murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of
the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?...
England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander’s loftiness of soul. She
has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and
still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What
answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not
understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of
our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only

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desires the good of mankind. And what have they

promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised
they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that
Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless
before him.... And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality
is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny
of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!’
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
‘I think,’ said the prince with a smile, ‘that if you had
been sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would
have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by assault.
You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?’
‘In a moment. A propos,’ she added, becoming calm
again, ‘I am expecting two very interesting men tonight,
le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected with the
Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best
French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the
good ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that
profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor.
Had you heard?’
‘I shall be delighted to meet them,’ said the prince.
‘But tell me,’ he added with studied carelessness as if it
had only just occurred to him, though the question he was

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about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, ‘is it true
that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be
appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all
accounts is a poor creature.’
Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but
others were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya
Fedorovna to secure it for the baron.
Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that
neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what
the Empress desired or was pleased with.
‘Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager
Empress by her sister,’ was all she said, in a dry and
mournful tone.
As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna’s face
suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere
devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this
occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to
show Baron Funke beaucoup d’estime, and again her face
clouded over with sadness.
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with
the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual
to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for
daring to speak he had done of a man recommended to the

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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

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expression), ‘he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you

were pitied...’
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him
significantly, awaiting a reply. He frowned.
‘What would you have me do?’ he said at last. ‘You
know I did all a father could for their education, and they
have both turned out fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet
fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only
difference between them.’ He said this smiling in a way
more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something
unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.
‘And why are children born to such men as you? If you
were not a father there would be nothing I could reproach
you with,’ said Anna Pavlovna, looking up pensively.
‘I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess
that my children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I
have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be
helped!’
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel
fate by a gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.
‘Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal
son Anatole?’ she asked. ‘They say old maids have a
mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that

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weakness in myself as yet,I know a little person who is

very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours,
Princess Mary Bolkonskaya.’
Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness
of memory and perception befitting a man of the world,
he indicated by a movement of the head that he was
considering this information.
‘Do you know,’ he said at last, evidently unable to
check the sad current of his thoughts, ‘that Anatole is
costing me forty thousand rubles a year? And,’ he went
on after a pause, ‘what will it be in five years, if he goes
on like this?’ Presently he added: ‘That’s what we fathers
have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?’
‘Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the
country. He is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had
to retire from the army under the late Emperor, and was
nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is very clever but
eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She
has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov’s and
will be here tonight.’
‘Listen, dear Annette,’ said the prince, suddenly taking
Anna Pavlovna’s hand and for some reason drawing it
downwards. ‘Arrange that affair for me and I shall always

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be your most devoted slave- slafe wigh an f, as a village

elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good
family and that’s all I want.’
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to
him, he raised the maid of honor’s hand to his lips, kissed
it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his armchair,
looking in another direction.
‘Attendez,’ said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, ‘I’ll speak
to Lise, young Bolkonski’s wife, this very evening, and
perhaps the thing can be arranged. It shall be on your
family’s behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as old
maid.’

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Chapter II

Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling.

The highest Petersburg society was assembled there:
people differing widely in age and character but alike in
the social circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasili’s
daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her father to
the ambassador’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de
Petersbourg,* was also there. She had been married
during the previous winter, and being pregnant did not go
to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions.
Prince Vasili’s son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others
had also come.
*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, ‘You have
not yet seen my aunt,’ or ‘You do not know my aunt?’
and very gravely conducted him or her to a little old lady,
wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come
sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began
to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to

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her aunt, Anna Pavlovna mentioned each one’s name and

then left them.
Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this
old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them
wanted to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna
Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful and
solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to
each of them in the same words, about their health and her
own, and the health of Her Majesty, ‘who, thank God,
was better today.’ And each visitor, though politeness
prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman
with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.
The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some
work in a gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little
upper lip, on which a delicate dark down was just
perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it lifted all the
more sweetly, and was especially charming when she
occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is
always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her
defect- the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open
mouth- seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of
beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty
young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life

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and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men

and dull dispirited young ones who looked at her, after
being in her company and talking to her a little while, felt
as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life and
health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her
bright smile and the constant gleam of her white teeth,
thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.
The little princess went round the table with quick,
short, swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily
spreading out her dress sat down on a sofa near the silver
samovar, as if all she was doing was a pleasure to herself
and to all around her. ‘I have brought my work,’ said she
in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.
‘Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked
trick on me,’ she added, turning to her hostess. ‘You
wrote that it was to be quite a small reception, and just see
how badly I am dressed.’ And she spread out her arms to
show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress,
girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
‘Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier
than anyone else,’ replied Anna Pavlovna.
‘You know,’ said the princess in the same tone of
voice and still in French, turning to a general, ‘my

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husband is deserting me? He is going to get himself

killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?’ she added,
addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an
answer she turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful
Helene.
‘What a delightful woman this little princess is!’ said
Prince Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built
young man with close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-
colored breeches fashionable at that time, a very high
ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was
an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine’s time who now lay dying in
Moscow. The young man had not yet entered either the
military or civil service, as he had only just returned from
abroad where he had been educated, and this was his first
appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her
drawing room. But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting,
a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of something too
large and unsuited to the place, came over her face when
she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather
bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety could
only have reference to the clever though shy, but

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observant and natural, expression which distinguished

him from everyone else in that drawing room.
‘It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and
visit a poor invalid,’ said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an
alarmed glance with her aunt as she conducted him to her.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and
continued to look round as if in search of something. On
his way to the aunt he bowed to the little princess with a
pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
Anna Pavlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned
away from the aunt without waiting to hear her speech
about Her Majesty’s health. Anna Pavlovna in dismay
detained him with the words: ‘Do you know the Abbe
Morio? He is a most interesting man.’
‘Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace,
and it is very interesting but hardly feasible.’
‘You think so?’ rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say
something and get away to attend to her duties as hostess.
But Pierre now committed a reverse act of impoliteness.
First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to
him, and now he continued to speak to another who
wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet
spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking
the abbe’s plan chimerical.

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‘We will talk of it later,’ said Anna Pavlovna with a

smile.
And having got rid of this young man who did not
know how to behave, she resumed her duties as hostess
and continued to listen and watch, ready to help at any
point where the conversation might happen to flag. As the
foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to
work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has
stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise than
it should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in
proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about her
drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy
group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular
motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about Pierre was
evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he
approached the group round Mortemart to listen to what
was being said there, and again when he passed to another
group whose center was the abbe.
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at
Anna Pavlovna’s was the first he had attended in Russia.
He knew that all the intellectual lights of Petersburg were
gathered there and, like a child in a toyshop, did not know
which way to look, afraid of missing any clever

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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.

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Chapter III

Anna Pavlovna’s reception was in full swing. The

spindles hummed steadily and ceaselessly on all sides.
With the exception of the aunt, beside whom sat only one
elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face was rather
out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had
formed round the abbe. Another, of young people, was
grouped round the beautiful Princess Helene, Prince
Vasili’s daughter, and the little Princess Bolkonskaya,
very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age.
The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.
The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft
features and polished manners, who evidently considered
himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed
himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found
himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as
a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d’hotel serves up
as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one
who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so
Anna Pavlovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte

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and then the abbe, as peculiarly choice morsels. The

group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the
murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the
Duc d’Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity,
and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte’s
hatred of him.
‘Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte,’ said Anna
Pavlovna, with a pleasant feeling that there was
something a la Louis XV in the sound of that sentence:
‘Contez nous cela, Vicomte.’
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of
his willingness to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a
group round him, inviting everyone to listen to his tale.
‘The vicomte knew the duc personally,’ whispered
Anna Pavlovna to of the guests. ‘The vicomte is a
wonderful raconteur,’ said she to another. ‘How evidently
he belongs to the best society,’ said she to a third; and the
vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest and
most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of
roast beef on a hot dish.
The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a
subtle smile.

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‘Come over here, Helene, dear,’ said Anna Pavlovna to

the beautiful young princess who was sitting some way
off, the center of another group.
The princess smiled. She rose with the same
unchanging smile with which she had first entered the
room- the smile of a perfectly beautiful woman. With a
slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss and
ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who
made way for her, not looking at any of them but smiling
on all, as if graciously allowing each the privilege of
admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders, back,
and bosom- which in the fashion of those days were very
much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna.
Helene was so lovely that not only did she not show any
trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even appeared
shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty.
She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish its
effect.
‘How lovely!’ said everyone who saw her; and the
vicomte lifted his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if
startled by something extraordinary when she took her

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seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her

unchanging smile.
‘Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience,’
said he, smilingly inclining his head.
The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table
and considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited.
All the time the story was being told she sat upright,
glancing now at her beautiful round arm, altered in shape
by its pressure on the table, now at her still more beautiful
bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace.
From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress,
and whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at
Anna Pavlovna, at once adopted just the expression she
saw on the maid of honor’s face, and again relapsed into
her radiant smile.
The little princess had also left the tea table and
followed Helene.
‘Wait a moment, I’ll get my work.... Now then, what
are you thinking of?’ she went on, turning to Prince
Hippolyte. ‘Fetch me my workbag.’
There was a general movement as the princess, smiling
and talking merrily to everyone at once, sat down and
gaily arranged herself in her seat.

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‘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.

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‘Because I hate ghost stories,’ said Prince Hippolyte in

a tone which showed that he only understood the meaning
of his words after he had uttered them.
He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers
could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or
very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green dress coat,
knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe effrayee,
as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an
anecdote, then current, to the effect that the Duc
d’Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to visit
Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress’ favors,
and that in his presence Napoleon happened to fall into
one of the fainting fits to which he was subject, and was
thus at the duc’s mercy. The latter spared him, and this
magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by death.
The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at
the point where the rivals suddenly recognized one
another; and the ladies looked agitated.
‘Charming!’ said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring
glance at the little princess.
‘Charming!’ whispered the little princess, sticking the
needle into her work as if to testify that the interest and

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fascination of the story prevented her from going on with

it.
The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling
gratefully prepared to continue, but just then Anna
Pavlovna, who had kept a watchful eye on the young man
who so alarmed her, noticed that he was talking too
loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation
with the abbe about the balance of power, and the latter,
evidently interested by the young man’s simple-minded
eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both were
talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which
was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.
‘The means are... the balance of power in Europe and
the rights of the people,’ the abbe was saying. ‘It is only
necessary for one powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as
she is said to be- to place herself disinterestedly at the
head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance
of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the
world!’
‘But how are you to get that balance?’ Pierre was
beginning.
At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking
severely at Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian

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climate. The Italian’s face instantly changed and assumed

an offensively affected, sugary expression, evidently
habitual to him when conversing with women.
‘I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and
culture of the society, more especially of the feminine
society, in which I have had the honor of being received,
that I have not yet had time to think of the climate,’ said
he.
Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna,
the more conveniently to keep them under observation,
brought them into the larger circle.

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Chapter IV

Just them another visitor entered the drawing room:

Prince Andrew Bolkonski, the little princess’ husband. He
was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with
firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his
weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step,
offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It
was evident that he not only knew everyone in the
drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that
it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all
these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore
him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away
from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face,
kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand, and screwing up his eyes
scanned the whole company.
‘You are off to the war, Prince?’ said Anna Pavlovna.
‘General Kutuzov,’ said Bolkonski, speaking French
and stressing the last syllable of the general’s name like a
Frenchman, ‘has been pleased to take me as an aide-de-
camp...’
‘And Lise, your wife?’
‘She will go to the country.’

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‘Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming

wife?’
‘Andre,’ said his wife, addressing her husband in the
same coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men,
‘the vicomte has been telling us such a tale about
Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!’
Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away.
Pierre, who from the moment Prince Andrew entered the
room had watched him with glad, affectionate eyes, now
came up and took his arm. Before he looked round Prince
Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with
whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre’s
beaming face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and
pleasant smile.
‘There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?’
said he to Pierre.
‘I knew you would be here,’ replied Pierre. ‘I will
come to supper with you. May I?’ he added in a low voice
so as not to disturb the vicomte who was continuing his
story.
‘No, impossible!’ said Prince Andrew, laughing and
pressing Pierre’s hand to show that there was no need to
ask the question. He wished to say something more, but at

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that moment Prince Vasili and his daughter got up to go

and the two young men rose to let them pass.
‘You must excuse me, dear Vicomte,’ said Prince
Vasili to the Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve
in a friendly way to prevent his rising. ‘This unfortunate
fete at the ambassador’s deprives me of a pleasure, and
obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave your
enchanting party,’ said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.
His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the
chairs, lightly holding up the folds of her dress, and the
smile shone still more radiantly on her beautiful face.
Pierre gazed at her with rapturous, almost frightened, eyes
as she passed him.
‘Very lovely,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Very,’ said Pierre.
In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre’s hand and said
to Anna Pavlovna: ‘Educate this bear for me! He has been
staying with me a whole month and this is the first time I
have seen him in society. Nothing is so necessary for a
young man as the society of clever women.’
Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in
hand. She knew his father to be a connection of Prince
Vasili’s. The elderly lady who had been sitting with the
old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasili in the

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anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed

had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now
expressed only anxiety and fear.
‘How about my son Boris, Prince?’ said she, hurrying
after him into the anteroom. ‘I can’t remain any longer in
Petersburg. Tell me what news I may take back to my
poor boy.’
Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not
very politely to the elderly lady, even betraying some
impatience, she gave him an ingratiating and appealing
smile, and took his hand that he might not go away.
‘What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor,
and then he would be transferred to the Guards at once?’
said she.
‘Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can,’
answered Prince Vasili, ‘but it is difficult for me to ask
the Emperor. I should advise you to appeal to
Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn. That would be the
best way.’
The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya,
belonging to one of the best families in Russia, but she
was poor, and having long been out of society had lost her
former influential connections. She had now come to
Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for

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her only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili

that she had obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna’s
reception and had sat listening to the vicomte’s story.
Prince Vasili’s words frightened her, an embittered look
clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment;
then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili’s arm
more tightly.
‘Listen to me, Prince,’ said she. ‘I have never yet asked
you for anything and I never will again, nor have I ever
reminded you of my father’s friendship for you; but now I
entreat you for God’s sake to do this for my son- and I
shall always regard you as a benefactor,’ she added
hurriedly. ‘No, don’t be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you
always were,’ she said, trying to smile though tears were
in her eyes.
‘Papa, we shall be late,’ said Princess Helene, turning
her beautiful head and looking over her classically
molded shoulder as she stood waiting by the door.
Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to
be economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and
having once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who
begged of him, he would soon be unable to ask for
himself, he became chary of using his influence. But in

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Princess Drubetskaya’s case he felt, after her second

appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had
reminded him of what was quite true; he had been
indebted to her father for the first steps in his career.
Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one
of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their
end, and are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day
after day and hour after hour, and even to make scenes.
This last consideration moved him.
‘My dear Anna Mikhaylovna,’ said he with his usual
familiarity and weariness of tone, ‘it is almost impossible
for me to do what you ask; but to prove my devotion to
you and how I respect your father’s memory, I will do the
impossible- your son shall be transferred to the Guards.
Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?’
‘My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from
you- I knew your kindness!’ He turned to go.
‘Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to
the Guards...’ she faltered. ‘You are on good terms with
Michael Ilarionovich Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him
as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and then..’
Prince Vasili smiled.

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‘No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how

Kutuzov is pestered since his appointment as Commander
in Chief. He told me himself that all the Moscow ladies
have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants.’
‘No, but do promise! I won’t let you go! My dear
benefactor..’
‘Papa,’ said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as
before, ‘we shall be late.’
‘Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?’
‘Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?’
‘Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don’t promise.’
‘Do promise, do promise, Vasili!’ cried Anna
Mikhaylovna as he went, with the smile of a coquettish
girl, which at one time probably came naturally to her, but
was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of
habit employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as
the prince had gone her face resumed its former cold,
artificial expression. She returned to the group where the
vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to listen,
while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was
accomplished.

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Chapter V

‘And what do you think of this latest comedy, the

coronation at Milan?’ asked Anna Pavlovna, ‘and of the
comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca laying their
petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur
Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one’s head
whirl! It is as if the whole world had gone crazy.’
Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the
face with a sarcastic smile.
‘‘Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!’* They say
he was very fine when he said that,’ he remarked,
repeating the words in Italian: ‘‘Dio mi l’ha dato. Guai a
chi la tocchi!’’
*God has given it to me, let him who touches it
beware!
‘I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the
glass run over,’ Anna Pavlovna continued. ‘The
sovereigns will not be able to endure this man who is a
menace to everything.’
‘The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,’ said the
vicomte, polite but hopeless: ‘The sovereigns, madame...

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What have they done for Louis XVII, for the Queen, or
for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!’ and he became more
animated. ‘And believe me, they are reaping the reward of
their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns!
Why, they are sending ambassadors to compliment the
usurper.’
And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his
position.
Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte
for some time through his lorgnette, suddenly turned
completely round toward the little princess, and having
asked for a needle began tracing the Conde coat of arms
on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity
as if she had asked him to do it.
‘Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d’ azur- maison
Conde,’ said he.
The princess listened, smiling.
‘If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year
longer,’ the vicomte continued, with the air of a man who,
in a matter with which he is better acquainted than anyone
else, does not listen to others but follows the current of his
own thoughts, ‘things will have gone too far. By intrigues,
violence, exile, and executions, French society- I mean

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good French society- will have been forever destroyed,

and then..’
He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
Pierre wished to make a remark, for the conversation
interested him, but Anna Pavlovna, who had him under
observation, interrupted:
‘The Emperor Alexander,’ said she, with the
melancholy which always accompanied any reference of
hers to the Imperial family, ‘has declared that he will
leave it to the French people themselves to choose their
own form of government; and I believe that once free
from the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw
itself into the arms of its rightful king,’ she concluded,
trying to be amiable to the royalist emigrant.
‘That is doubtful,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Monsieur le
Vicomte quite rightly supposes that matters have already
gone too far. I think it will be difficult to return to the old
regime.’
‘From what I have heard,’ said Pierre, blushing and
breaking into the conversation, ‘almost all the aristocracy
has already gone over to Bonaparte’s side.’
‘It is the Buonapartists who say that,’ replied the
vicomte without looking at Pierre. ‘At the present time it
is difficult to know the real state of French public opinion.

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‘Bonaparte has said so,’ remarked Prince Andrew with

a sarcastic smile.
It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was
aiming his remarks at him, though without looking at him.
‘‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not
follow it,’’ Prince Andrew continued after a short silence,
again quoting Napoleon’s words. ‘‘I opened my
antechambers and they crowded in.’ I do not know how
far he was justified in saying so.’
‘Not in the least,’ replied the vicomte. ‘After the
murder of the duc even the most partial ceased to regard
him as a hero. If to some people,’ he went on, turning to
Anna Pavlovna, ‘he ever was a hero, after the murder of
the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one
hero less on earth.’
Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile
their appreciation of the vicomte’s epigram, Pierre again
broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna
felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was
unable to stop him.
‘The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,’ declared
Monsieur Pierre, ‘was a political necessity, and it seems
to me that Napoleon showed greatness of soul by not

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fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of that

deed.’
‘Dieu! Mon Dieu!’ muttered Anna Pavlovna in a
terrified whisper.
‘What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that
assassination shows greatness of soul?’ said the little
princess, smiling and drawing her work nearer to her.
‘Oh! Oh!’ exclaimed several voices.
‘Capital!’ said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began
slapping his knee with the palm of his hand.
The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre
looked solemnly at his audience over his spectacles and
continued.
‘I say so,’ he continued desperately, ‘because the
Bourbons fled from the Revolution leaving the people to
anarchy, and Napoleon alone understood the Revolution
and quelled it, and so for the general good, he could not
stop short for the sake of one man’s life.’
‘Won’t you come over to the other table?’ suggested
Anna Pavlovna.
But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
‘No,’ cried he, becoming more and more eager,
‘Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the
Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was

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good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom of speech

and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power.’
‘Yes, if having obtained power, without availing
himself of it to commit murder he had restored it to the
rightful king, I should have called him a great man,’
remarked the vicomte.
‘He could not do that. The people only gave him power
that he might rid them of the Bourbons and because they
saw that he was a great man. The Revolution was a grand
thing!’ continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this
desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth
and his wish to express all that was in his mind.
‘What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well,
after that... But won’t you come to this other table?’
repeated Anna Pavlovna.
‘Rousseau’s Contrat social,’ said the vicomte with a
tolerant smile.
‘I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about
ideas.’
‘Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,’ again
interjected an ironical voice.
‘Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what
is most important. What is important are the rights of

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man, emancipation from prejudices, and equality of

citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained in
full force.’
‘Liberty and equality,’ said the vicomte
contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to
this youth how foolish his words were, ‘high-sounding
words which have long been discredited. Who does not
love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution
become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but
Buonaparte has destroyed it.’
Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile
from Pierre to the vicomte and from the vicomte to their
hostess. In the first moment of Pierre’s outburst Anna
Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-
struck. But when she saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words
had not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced
herself that it was impossible to stop him, she rallied her
forces and joined the vicomte in a vigorous attack on the
orator.
‘But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,’ said she, ‘how do you
explain the fact of a great man executing a duc- or even
an ordinary man who- is innocent and untried?’

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‘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.

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‘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.

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‘She said... Oh yes! She said, ‘Girl,’ to the maid, ‘put

on a livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me
while I make some calls.’’
Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out
laughing long before his audience, which produced an
effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several persons, among
them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however
smile.
‘She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl
lost her hat and her long hair came down....’ Here he
could contain himself no longer and went on, between
gasps of laughter: ‘And the whole world knew...’
And so the anecdote ended. Though it was
unintelligible why he had told it, or why it had to be told
in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna and the others appreciated
Prince Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably ending
Pierre’s unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant
small talk about the last and next balls, about theatricals,
and who would meet whom, and when and where.

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Chapter VI

Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming

soiree, the guests began to take their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height,
broad, with huge red hands; he did not know, as the
saying is, to enter a drawing room and still less how to
leave one; that is, how to say something particularly
agreeable before going away. Besides this he was absent-
minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his
own, the general’s three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling
at the plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All
his absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and
converse in it was, however, redeemed by his kindly,
simple, and modest expression. Anna Pavlovna turned
toward him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed
forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: ‘I hope
to see you again, but I also hope you will change your
opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.’
When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed,
but again everybody saw his smile, which said nothing,
unless perhaps, ‘Opinions are opinions, but you see what

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a capital, good-natured fellow I am.’ And everyone,

including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.
Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning
his shoulders to the footman who was helping him on
with his cloak, listened indifferently to his wife’s chatter
with Prince Hippolyte who had also come into the hall.
Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant
princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
‘Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold,’ said the little
princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. ‘It is settled,’
she added in a low voice.
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise
about the match she contemplated between Anatole and
the little princess’ sister-in-law.
‘I rely on you, my dear,’ said Anna Pavlovna, also in a
low tone. ‘Write to her and let me know how her father
looks at the matter. Au revoir!’- and she left the hall.
Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and,
bending his face close to her, began to whisper
something.
Two footmen, the princess’ and his own, stood holding
a shawl and a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish.
They listened to the French sentences which to them were
meaningless, with an air of understanding but not wishing

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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.

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‘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.’

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Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said,

‘And you were saying that the Russian ladies are not
equal to the French? One has to know how to deal with
them.’
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince
Andrew’s study like one quite at home, and from habit
immediately lay down on the sofa, took from the shelf the
first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s
Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it
in the middle.
‘What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be
quite ill now,’ said Prince Andrew, as he entered the
study, rubbing his small white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak.
He lifted his eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and
waved his hand.
‘That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the
thing in the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is
possible but- I do not know how to express it... not by a
balance of political power...’
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in
such abstract conversation.
‘One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher.
Well, have you at last decided on anything? Are you

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going to be a guardsman or a diplomatist?’ asked Prince

Andrew after a momentary silence.
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under
him.
‘Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or
the other.’
‘But you must decide on something! Your father
expects it.’
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an
abbe as tutor, and had remained away till he was twenty.
When he returned to Moscow his father dismissed the
abbe and said to the young man, ‘Now go to Petersburg,
look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is
money. Write to me all about it, and I will help you in
everything.’ Pierre had already been choosing a career for
three months, and had not decided on anything. It was
about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking. Pierre
rubbed his forehead.
‘But he must be a Freemason,’ said he, referring to the
abbe whom he had met that evening.
‘That is all nonsense.’ Prince Andrew again interrupted
him, ‘let us talk business. Have you been to the Horse
Guards?’

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‘No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking

and wanted to tell you. There is a war now against
Napoleon. If it were a war for freedom I could understand
it and should be the first to enter the army; but to help
England and Austria against the greatest man in the world
is not right.’
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s
childish words. He put on the air of one who finds it
impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would in fact
have been difficult to give any other answer than the one
Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.
‘If no one fought except on his own conviction, there
would be no wars,’ he said.
‘And that would be splendid,’ said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
‘Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never
come about..’
‘Well, why are you going to the war?’ asked Pierre.
‘What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am
going...’ He paused. ‘I am going because the life I am
leading here does not suit me!’

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Chapter VII

The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next

room. Prince Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and
his face assumed the look it had had in Anna Pavlovna’s
drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. The
princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house
dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew
rose and politely placed a chair for her.
‘How is it,’ she began, as usual in French, settling
down briskly and fussily in the easy chair, ‘how is it
Annette never got married? How stupid you men all are
not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you
have no sense about women. What an argumentative
fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!’
‘And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t
understand why he wants to go to the war,’ replied Pierre,
addressing the princess with none of the embarrassment
so commonly shown by young men in their intercourse
with young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched
her to the quick.

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‘Ah, that is just what I tell him!’ said she. ‘I don’t

understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men
can’t live without wars. How is it that we women don’t
want anything of the kind, don’t need it? Now you shall
judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is Uncle’s
aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well
known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day
at the Apraksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous
Prince Andrew?’ I did indeed.’ She laughed. ‘He is so
well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-
de-camp to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke to
him most graciously. Annette and I were speaking of how
to arrange it. What do you think?’
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not
like the conversation, gave no reply.
‘When are you starting?’ he asked.
‘Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it
spoken of,’ said the princess in the same petulantly
playful tone in which she had spoken to Hippolyte in the
drawing room and which was so plainly ill-suited to the
family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
‘Today when I remembered that all these delightful
associations must be broken off... and then you know,
Andre...’ (she looked significantly at her husband) ‘I’m

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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.

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‘No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how

you have..’
‘Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,’ said Prince
Andrew. ‘You had better go.’
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short
downy lip quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his
shoulders, and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise,
now at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too,
but changed his mind.
‘Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?’
exclaimed the little princess suddenly, her pretty face all
at once distorted by a tearful grimace. ‘I have long wanted
to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me?
What have I done to you? You are going to the war and
have no pity for me. Why is it?’
‘Lise!’ was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word
expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction
that she would herself regret her words. But she went on
hurriedly:
‘You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did
you behave like that six months ago?’
‘Lise, I beg you to desist,’ said Prince Andrew still
more emphatically.

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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.

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‘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.

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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

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will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at

me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything
from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that
for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing
room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court
lackey and an idiot!... But what’s the good?...’ and he
waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face
seem different and the good-natured expression still more
apparent, and gazed at his friend in amazement.
‘My wife,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘is an excellent
woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s
honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to
be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I
mention this, because I like you.’
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like
that Bolkonski who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna’s easy
chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French
phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face
was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in
which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now
flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more
lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more

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impassioned he became in these moments of almost

morbid irritation.
‘You don’t understand why I say this,’ he continued,
‘but it is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte
and his career,’ said he (though Pierre had not mentioned
Bonaparte), ‘but Bonaparte when he worked went step by
step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his
aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up
with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all
freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely
weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing
rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality- these are the
enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to
the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know
nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and
have a caustic wit,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘and at
Anna Pavlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid set
without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women...
If you only knew what those society women are, and
women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain,
stupid, trivial in everything- that’s what women are when
you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in
society it seems as if there were something in them, but

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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.

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Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations

of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as
grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.
‘My part is played out,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘What’s
the use of talking about me? Let us talk about you,’ he
added after a silence, smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
‘But what is there to say about me?’ said Pierre, his
face relaxing into a careless, merry smile. ‘What am I? An
illegitimate son!’ He suddenly blushed crimson, and it
was plain that he had made a great effort to say this.
‘Without a name and without means... And it really...’ But
he did not say what ‘it really’ was. ‘For the present I am
free and am all right. Only I haven’t the least
idea what I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously.’
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance-
friendly and affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of
his own superiority.
‘I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live
man among our whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose
what you will; it’s all the same. You’ll be all right
anywhere. But look here: give up visiting those Kuragins
and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly- all this
debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!’

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‘What would you have, my dear fellow?’ answered

Pierre, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Women, my dear fellow;
women!’
‘I don’t understand it,’ replied Prince Andrew.
‘Women who are comme il faut, that’s a different matter;
but the Kuragins’ set of women, ‘women and wine’ I
don’t understand!’
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin’s and
sharing the dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son
whom they were planning to reform by marrying him to
Prince Andrew’s sister.
‘Do you know?’ said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a
happy thought, ‘seriously, I have long been thinking of
it.... Leading such a life I can’t decide or think properly
about anything. One’s head aches, and one spends all
one’s money. He asked me for tonight, but I won’t go.’
‘You give me your word of honor not to go?’
‘On my honor!’

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Chapter IX

It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It

was a cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an
open cab intending to drive straight home. But the nearer
he drew to the house the more he felt the impossibility of
going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to see a
long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like
morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre
remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the
usual set for cards that evening, after which there was
generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind
Pierre was very fond of.
‘I should like to go to Kuragin’s,’ thought he.
But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince
Andrew not to go there. Then, as happens to people of
weak character, he desired so passionately once more to
enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to that he
decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him
that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account,
because before he gave it he had already promised Prince
Anatole to come to his gathering; ‘besides,’ thought he,
‘all such ‘words of honor’ are conventional things with no

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definite meaning, especially if one considers that by

tomorrow one may be dead, or something so
extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor
will be all the same!’ Pierre often indulged in reflections
of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He
went to Kuragin’s.
Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’
barracks, in which Anatole lived, Pierre entered the
lighted porch, ascended the stairs, and went in at the open
door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty bottles,
cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell
of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the
distance.
Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not
yet dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the
first room, in which were the remains of supper. A
footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on the
sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came
sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the
growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight
or nine young men were crowding anxiously round an
open window. Three others were romping with a young
bear, one pulling him by the chain and trying to set him at
the others.

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‘I bet a hundred on Stevens!’ shouted one.

‘Mind, no holding on!’ cried another.
‘I bet on Dolokhov!’ cried a third. ‘Kuragin, you part
our hands.’
‘There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.’
‘At one draught, or he loses!’ shouted a fourth.
‘Jacob, bring a bottle!’ shouted the host, a tall,
handsome fellow who stood in the midst of the group,
without a coat, and with his fine linen shirt unfastened in
front. ‘Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is Petya! Good
man!’ cried he, addressing Pierre.
Another voice, from a man of medium height with
clear blue eyes, particularly striking among all these
drunken voices by its sober ring, cried from the window:
‘Come here; part the bets!’ This was Dolokhov, an officer
of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler and
duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled,
looking about him merrily.
‘I don’t understand. What’s it all about?’
‘Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,’ said
Anatole, taking a glass from the table he went up to
Pierre.
‘First of all you must drink!’

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Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from

under his brows at the tipsy guests who were again
crowding round the window, and listening to their chatter.
Anatole kept on refilling Pierre’s glass while explaining
that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English naval
officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the
outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs
hanging out.
‘Go on, you must drink it all,’ said Anatole, giving
Pierre the last glass, ‘or I won’t let you go!’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and
he went up to the window.
Dolokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and
clearly and distinctly repeating the terms of the bet,
addressing himself particularly to Anatole and Pierre.
Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and
light-blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all
infantry officers he wore no mustache, so that his mouth,
the most striking feature of his face, was clearly seen. The
lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The
middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed
firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two
distinct smiles played continually round the two corners
of the mouth; this, together with the resolute, insolent

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intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it

impossible not to notice his face. Dolokhov was a man of
small means and no connections. Yet, though Anatole
spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with
him and had placed himself on such a footing that all who
knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him
more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov could play all
games and nearly always won. However much he drank,
he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and
Dolokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes
and scapegraces of Petersburg.
The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame
which prevented anyone from sitting on the outer sill was
being forced out by two footmen, who were evidently
flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of
the gentlemen around.
Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the
window. He wanted to smash something. Pushing away
the footmen he tugged at the frame, but could not move it.
He smashed a pane.
‘You have a try, Hercules,’ said he, turning to Pierre.
Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the
oak frame out with a crash.

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‘Take it right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,’ said

Dolokhov.
‘Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?’ said
Anatole.
‘First-rate,’ said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with
a bottle of rum in his hand was approaching the window,
from which the light of the sky, the dawn merging with
the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped
onto the window sill. ‘Listen!’ cried he, standing there
and addressing those in the room. All were silent.
‘I bet fifty imperials’- he spoke French that the
Englishman might understand him, but he did, not speak
it very well- ‘I bet fifty imperials... or do you wish to
make it a hundred?’ added he, addressing the Englishman.
‘No, fifty,’ replied the latter.
‘All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole
bottle of rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting
outside the window on this spot’ (he stooped and pointed
to the sloping ledge outside the window) ‘and without
holding on to anything. Is that right?’
‘Quite right,’ said the Englishman.
Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by
one of the buttons of his coat and looking down at him-

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the Englishman was short- began repeating the terms of

the wager to him in English.
‘Wait!’ cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on
the window sill to attract attention. ‘Wait a bit, Kuragin.
Listen! If anyone else does the same, I will pay him a
hundred imperials. Do you understand?’
The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication
whether he intended to accept this challenge or not.
Anatole did not release him, and though he kept nodding
to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating
Dolokhov’s words into English. A thin young lad, an
hussar of the Life Guards, who had been losing that
evening, climbed on the window sill, leaned over, and
looked down.
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ he muttered, looking down from the
window at the stones of the pavement.
‘Shut up!’ cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the
window. The lad jumped awkwardly back into the room,
tripping over his spurs.
Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could
reach it easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly
through the window and lowered his legs. Pressing
against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself on
his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and

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then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought

two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it
was already quite light. Dolokhov’s back in his white
shirt, and his curly head, were lit up from both sides.
Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in
front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older than
the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared
and angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov’s
shirt.
‘I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,’ said this more
sensible man.
Anatole stopped him.
‘Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he’ll be
killed. Eh?... What then?... Eh?’
Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with
both hands, arranged himself on his seat.
‘If anyone comes meddling again,’ said he, emitting
the words separately through his thin compressed lips, ‘I
will throw him down there. Now then!’
Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands,
took the bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his
head, and raised his free hand to balance himself. One of
the footmen who had stooped to pick up some broken
glass remained in that position without taking his eyes

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from the window and from Dolokhov’s back. Anatole

stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on
sideways, pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to
stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw
himself on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his
face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade though his
features now expressed horror and fear. All were still.
Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in
the same position, only his head was thrown further back
till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand
holding the bottle was lifted higher and higher and
trembled with the effort. The bottle was emptying
perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting yet
further back. ‘Why is it so long?’ thought Pierre. It
seemed to him that more than half an hour had elapsed.
Suddenly Dolokhov made a backward movement with his
spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this was sufficient
to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping
ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm
wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if
to clutch the window sill, but refrained from touching it.
Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he would never
never them again. Suddenly he was aware of a stir all

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around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on the

window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
‘It’s empty.’
He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it
neatly. Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of
rum.
‘Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!...
Devil take you!’ came from different sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and began counting
out the money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not
speak. Pierre jumped upon the window sill.
‘Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the
same thing!’ he suddenly cried. ‘Even without a bet,
there! Tell them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it.... Bring a
bottle!’
‘Let him do it, let him do it,’ said Dolokhov, smiling.
‘What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let
you!... Why, you go giddy even on a staircase,’ exclaimed
several voices.
‘I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!’ shouted
Pierre, banging the table with a determined and drunken
gesture and preparing to climb out of the window.
They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that
everyone who touched him was sent flying.

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‘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.

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Chapter X

Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess

Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only
son Boris on the evening of Anna Pavlovna’s soiree. The
matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception made,
and Boris transferred into the regiment of Semenov
Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no
appointment to Kutuzov’s staff despite all Anna
Mikhaylovna’s endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna
Pavlovna’s reception Anna Mikhaylovna returned to
Moscow and went straight to her rich relations, the
Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and
where and where her darling Bory, who had only just
entered a regiment of the line and was being at once
transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had been educated
from childhood and lived for years at a time. The Guards
had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, and
her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment,
was to join them on the march to Radzivilov.
It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the
Rostovs- the mother and the youngest daughter- both
named Nataly. Ever since the morning, carriages with six

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horses had been coming and going continually, bringing

visitors to the Countess Rostova’s big house on the
Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess
herself and her handsome eldest daughter were in the
drawing-room with the visitors who came to congratulate,
and who constantly succeeded one another in relays.
The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a
thin Oriental type of face, evidently worn out with
childbearing- she had had twelve. A languor of motion
and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a
distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the
household was also seated in the drawing room, helped to
receive and entertain the visitors. The young people were
in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to
take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the
guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.
‘I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher,’ or ‘ma
chere’- he called everyone without exception and without
the slightest variation in his tone, ‘my dear,’ whether they
were above or below him in rank- ‘I thank you for myself
and for our two dear ones whose name day we are
keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be
offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg

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you to come, mon cher!’ These words he repeated to

everyone without exception or variation, and with the
same expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face,
the same firm pressure of the hand and the same quick,
repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he
returned to one of those who were still in the drawing
room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily
spreading out his legs and putting his hands on his knees
with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how to
live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises
about the weather, or touched on questions of health,
sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but self-
confident French; then again, like a man weary but
unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some
visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his
bald patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his
way back from the anteroom he would pass through the
conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall,
where tables were being set out for eighty people; and
looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and
china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen,
he would call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family
and the manager of all his affairs, and while looking with
pleasure at the enormous table would say: ‘Well, Dmitri,

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you’ll see that things are all as they should be? That’s
right! The great thing is the serving, that’s it.’ And with a
complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.
‘Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!’
announced the countess’ gigantic footman in his bass
voice, entering the drawing room. The countess reflected
a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her
husband’s portrait on it.
‘I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see
her and no more. She is so affected. Ask her in,’ she said
to the footman in a sad voice, as if saying: ‘Very well,
finish me off.’
A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-
faced smiling daughter, entered the drawing room, their
dresses rustling.
‘Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up,
poor child... at the Razumovski’s ball... and Countess
Apraksina... I was so delighted...’ came the sounds of
animated feminine voices, interrupting one another and
mingling with the rustling of dresses and the scraping of
chairs. Then one of those conversations began which last
out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of
dresses and say, ‘I am so delighted... Mamma’s health...
and Countess Apraksina... and then, again rustling, pass

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into the anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive

away. The conversation was on the chief topic of the day:
the illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of
Catherine’s day, Count Bezukhov, and about his
illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so
improperly at Anna Pavlovna’s reception.
‘I am so sorry for the poor count,’ said the visitor. ‘He
is in such bad health, and now this vexation about his son
is enough to kill him!’
‘What is that?’ asked the countess as if she did not
know what the visitor alluded to, though she had already
heard about the cause of Count Bezukhov’s distress some
fifteen times.
‘That’s what comes of a modern education,’ exclaimed
the visitor. ‘It seems that while he was abroad this young
man was allowed to do as he liked, now in Petersburg I
hear he has been doing such terrible things that he has
been expelled by the police.’
‘You don’t say so!’ replied the countess.
‘He chose his friends badly,’ interposed Anna
Mikhaylovna. ‘Prince Vasili’s son, he, and a certain
Dolokhov have, it is said, been up to heaven only knows
what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dolokhov has
been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov’s son sent back

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to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin’s father managed somehow

to get his son’s affair hushed up, but even he was ordered
out of Petersburg.’
‘But what have they been up to?’ asked the countess.
‘They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov,’
replied the visitor. ‘He is a son of Marya Ivanovna
Dolokhova, such a worthy woman, but there, just fancy!
Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a
carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The
police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do?
They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put
the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear
swimming about with the policeman on his back!’
‘What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my
dear!’ shouted the count, dying with laughter.
‘Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?’
Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
‘It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,’
continued the visitor. ‘And to think it is Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov’s son who amuses himself in
this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well
educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education
has done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will
receive him, in spite of his money. They wanted to

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introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have my

daughters to consider.’
‘Why do you say this young man is so rich?’ asked the
countess, turning away from the girls, who at once
assumed an air of inattention. ‘His children are all
illegitimate. I think Pierre also is illegitimate.’
The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
‘I should think he has a score of them.’
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the
conversation, evidently wishing to show her connections
and knowledge of what went on in society.
‘The fact of the matter is,’ said she significantly, and
also in a half whisper, ‘everyone knows Count Cyril’s
reputation.... He has lost count of his children, but this
Pierre was his favorite.’
‘How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!’
remarked the countess. ‘I have never seen a handsomer
man.’
‘He is very much altered now,’ said Anna
Mikhaylovna. ‘Well, as I was saying, Prince Vasili is the
next heir through his wife, but the count is very fond of
Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to the
Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death- and
he is so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr.

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Lorrain has come from Petersburg- no one knows who

will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasili.
Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know it all
very well for Prince Vasili told me himself. Besides, Cyril
Vladimirovich is my mother’s second cousin. He’s also
my Bory’s godfather,’ she added, as if she attached no
importance at all to the fact.
‘Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he
has come on some inspection business,’ remarked the
visitor.
‘Yes, but between ourselves,’ said the princess, that is
a pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril
Vladimirovich, hearing how ill he is.’
‘But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,’
said the count; and seeing that the elder visitor was not
listening, he turned to the young ladies. ‘I can just
imagine what a funny figure that policeman cut!’
And as he waved his arms to impersonate the
policeman, his portly form again shook with a deep
ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats well and,
in particular, drinks well. ‘So do come and dine with us!’
he said.

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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!’

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‘Ma chere, there is a time for everything,’ said the

countess with feigned severity. ‘You spoil her, Ilya,’ she
added, turning to her husband.
‘How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy
returns of your name day,’ said the visitor. ‘What a
charming child,’ she added, addressing the mother.
This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full
of life- with childish bare shoulders which after her run
heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed
backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled
drawers, and feet in low slippers- was just at that
charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the
child is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father
she ran to hide her flushed face in the lace of her mother’s
mantilla- not paying the least attention to her severe
remark- and began to laugh. She laughed, and in
fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which
she produced from the folds of her frock.
‘Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...’ was all
Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed
funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such
a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor
could not help joining in.

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‘Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with

you,’ said the mother, pushing away her daughter with
pretended sternness, and turning to the visitor she added:
‘She is my youngest girl.’
Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her
mother’s mantilla, glanced up at her through tears of
laughter, and again hid her face.
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene,
thought it necessary to take some part in it.
‘Tell me, my dear,’ said she to Natasha, ‘is Mimi a
relation of yours? A daughter, I suppose?’
Natasha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension
to childish things. She did not reply, but looked at her
seriously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer,
Anna Mikhaylovna’s son; Nicholas, the undergraduate,
the count’s eldest son; Sonya, the count’s fifteen-year-old
niece, and little Petya, his youngest boy, had all settled
down in the drawing room and were obviously trying to
restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and
mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back
rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously,
the conversation had been more amusing than the
drawing-room talk of society scandals, the weather, and

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Countess Apraksina. Now and then they glanced at one

another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer,
friends from childhood, were of the same age and both
handsome fellows, though not alike. Boris was tall and
fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate
features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open
expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper
lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and
enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered the
drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to
say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found his
footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had
know that doll Mimi when she was still quite a young
lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged
during the five years he had known her, and how her head
had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he
glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and
glanced at her younger brother, who was screwing up his
eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable to
control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed
from the room as fast as her nimble little feet would carry
her. Boris did not laugh.

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‘You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma?

Do you want the carriage?’ he asked his mother with a
smile.
‘Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,’ she
answered, returning his smile.
Boris quietly left the room and went in search of
Natasha. The plump boy ran after them angrily, as if
vexed that their program had been disturbed.

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Chapter XII

The only young people remaining in the drawing room,

not counting the young lady visitor and the countess’
eldest daughter (who was four years older than her sister
and behaved already like a grown-up person), were
Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little
brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled
by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her
head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in
the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms
and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness
and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain
coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a
pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a
beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to
show an interest in the general conversation by smiling,
but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long
lashes watched her cousin who was going to join the
army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile
could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it
was clear that the kitten had settled down only to spring
up with more energy and again play with her cousin as

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soon as they too could, like Natasha and Boris, escape

from the drawing room.
‘Ah yes, my dear,’ said the count, addressing the
visitor and pointing to Nicholas, ‘his friend Boris has
become an officer, and so for friendship’s sake he is
leaving the university and me, his old father, and entering
the military service, my dear. And there was a place and
everything waiting for him in the Archives Department!
Isn’t that friendship?’ remarked the count in an inquiring
tone.
‘But they say that war has been declared,’ replied the
visitor.
‘They’ve been saying so a long while,’ said the count,
‘and they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the
end of it. My dear, there’s friendship for you,’ he
repeated. ‘He’s joining the hussars.’
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
‘It’s not at all from friendship,’ declared Nicholas,
flaring up and turning away as if from a shameful
aspersion. ‘It is not from friendship at all; I simply feel
that the army is my vocation.’
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor;
and they were both regarding him with a smile of
approbation.

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‘Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is

dining with us today. He has been here on leave and is
taking Nicholas back with him. It can’t be helped!’ said
the count, shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully
of a matter that evidently distressed him.
‘I have already told you, Papa,’ said his son, ‘that if
you don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no
use anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a
government clerk.- I don’t know how to hide what I feel.’
As he spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a
handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady visitor.
The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed
ready at any moment to start her gambols again and
display her kittenish nature.
‘All right, all right!’ said the old count. ‘He always
flares up! This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they
all think of how he rose from an ensign and became
Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,’ he added, not noticing
his visitor’s sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie
Karagina turned to young Rostov.
‘What a pity you weren’t at the Arkharovs’ on
Thursday. It was so dull without you,’ said she, giving
him a tender smile.

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The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with

a coquettish smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a
confidential conversation without at all noticing that his
involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of Sonya, who
blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk he
glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry
glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain
the artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the
room. All Nicholas’ animation vanished. He waited for
the first pause in the conversation, and then with a
distressed face left the room to find Sonya.
‘How plainly all these young people wear their hearts
on their sleeves!’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to
Nicholas as he went out. ‘Cousinage- dangereux
voisinage;"* she added.
*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
‘Yes,’ said the countess when the brightness these
young people had brought into the room had vanished;
and as if answering a question no one had put but which
was always in her mind, ‘and how much suffering, how
much anxiety one has had to go through that we might
rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater
now than the joy. One is always, always anxious!

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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

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Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to give her

lessons.’
‘Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the
voice to train it at that age.’
‘Oh no, not at all too young!’ replied the count. ‘Why,
our mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.’
‘And she’s in love with Boris already. Just fancy!’ said
the countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris’ and
went on, evidently concerned with a thought that always
occupied her: ‘Now you see if I were to be severe with
her and to forbid it... goodness knows what they might be
up to on the sly’ (she meant that they would be kissing),
‘but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come
running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell
me everything. Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems
the best plan. With her elder sister I was stricter.’
‘Yes, I was brought up quite differently,’ remarked the
handsome elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Vera’s beauty as smiles
generally do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and
therefore unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking,
not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up,
and had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and
appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone- the visitors and

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countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering why

she had said it, and they all felt awkward.
‘People are always too clever with their eldest children
and try to make something exceptional of them,’ said the
visitor.
‘What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear
countess was too clever with Vera,’ said the count. ‘Well,
what of that? She’s turned out splendidly all the same,’ he
added, winking at Vera.
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to
return to dinner.
‘What manners! I thought they would never go,’ said
the countess, when she had seen her guests out.

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Chapter XIII

When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only

went as far as the conservatory. There she paused and
stood listening to the conversation in the drawing room,
waiting for Boris to come out. She was already growing
impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not
coming at once, when she heard the young man’s discreet
steps approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this
Natasha dashed swiftly among the flower tubs and hid
there.
Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round,
brushed a little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and
going up to a mirror examined his handsome face.
Natasha, very still, peered out from her ambush, waiting
to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the
glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha
was about to call him but changed her mind. ‘Let him
look for me,’ thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than
Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering angrily, came in at
the other door. Natasha checked her first impulse to run
out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching- as
under an invisible cap- to see what went on in the world.

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She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya,

muttering to herself, kept looking round toward the
drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.
‘Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?’
said he, running up to her.
‘It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!’ sobbed Sonya.
‘Ah, I know what it is.’
‘Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go
back to her!’
‘So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and
yourself like that, for a mere fancy?’ said Nicholas taking
her hand.
Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying.
Natasha, not stirring and scarcely breathing, watched
from her ambush with sparkling eyes. ‘What will happen
now?’ thought she.
‘Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone
are everything!’ said Nicholas. ‘And I will prove it to
you.’
‘I don’t like you to talk like that.’
‘Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sonya!’ He drew
her to him and kissed her.

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‘Oh, how nice,’ thought Natasha; and when Sonya and

Nicholas had gone out of the conservatory she followed
and called Boris to her.
‘Boris, come here,’ said she with a sly and significant
look. ‘I have something to tell you. Here, here!’ and she
led him into the conservatory to the place among the tubs
where she had been hiding.
Boris followed her, smiling.
‘What is the something?’ asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll
she had thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
‘Kiss the doll,’ said she.
Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face,
but did not reply.
‘Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,’ said she,
and went further in among the plants and threw down the
doll. ‘Closer, closer!’ she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look
of solemnity and fear appeared on her flushed face.
‘And me? Would you like to kiss me?’ she whispered
almost inaudibly, glancing up at him from under her
brows, smiling, and almost crying from excitement.
Boris blushed.

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‘How funny you are!’ he said, bending down to her

and blushing still more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than
he, embraced him so that both her slender bare arms
clasped him above his neck, and, tossing back her hair,
kissed him full on the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the
other side of the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
‘Natasha,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you, but..’
‘You are in love with me?’ Natasha broke in.
‘Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In
another four years... then I will ask for your hand.’
Natasha considered.
‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,’ she counted on
her slender little fingers. ‘All right! Then it’s settled?’
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
‘Settled!’ replied Boris.
‘Forever?’ said the little girl. ‘Till death itself?’
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him
into the adjoining sitting room.

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Chapter XIV

After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired

that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was
told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came ‘to
congratulate.’ The countess wished to have a tete-a-tete
talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she
returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her
tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that
of the countess.
‘With you I will be quite frank,’ said Anna
Mikhaylovna. ‘There are not many left of us old friends!
That’s why I so value your friendship.’
Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The
countess pressed her friend’s hand.
‘Vera,’ she said to her eldest daughter who was
evidently not a favorite, ‘how is it you have so little tact?
Don’t you see you are not wanted here? Go to the other
girls, or..’
The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not
seem at all hurt.

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‘If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have

gone,’ she replied as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two
couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and
smiled scornfully. Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas
who was copying out some verses for her, the first he had
ever written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window
and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha
looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in
love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant
feeling in Vera.
‘How often have I asked you not to take my things?’
she said. ‘You have a room of your own,’ and she took
the inkstand from Nicholas.
‘In a minute, in a minute,’ he said, dipping his pen.
‘You always manage to do things at the wrong time,’
continued Vera. ‘You came rushing into the drawing
room so that everyone felt ashamed of you.’
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that
very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at
one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in
her hand.

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‘And at your age what secrets can there be between

Natasha and Boris, or between you two? It’s all
nonsense!’
‘Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?’ said Natasha
in defense, speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and
affectionate to everyone.
‘Very silly,’ said Vera. ‘I am ashamed of you. Secrets
indeed!’
‘All have secrets of their own,’ answered Natasha,
getting warmer. ‘We don’t interfere with you and Berg.’
‘I should think not,’ said Vera, ‘because there can
never be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell
Mamma how you are behaving with Boris.’
‘Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me,’ remarked
Boris. ‘I have nothing to complain of.’
‘Don’t, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really
tiresome,’ said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled
slightly. (She used the word ‘diplomat,’ which was just
then much in vogue among the children, in the special
sense they attached to it.) ‘Why does she bother me?’ And
she added, turning to Vera, ‘You’ll never understand it,
because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no heart!
You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more’ (this

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nickname, bestowed on Vera by Nicholas, was considered

very stinging), ‘and your greatest pleasure is to be
unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as
you please,’ she finished quickly.
‘I shall at any rate not run after a young man before
visitors..’
‘Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,’ put in
Nicholas- ‘said unpleasant things to everyone and upset
them. Let’s go to the nursery.’
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the
room.
‘The unpleasant things were said to me,’ remarked
Vera, ‘I said none to anyone.’
‘Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!’ shouted
laughing voices through the door.
The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating
and unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently
unmoved by what had been said to her, went to the
looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at
her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder
and calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going
on.

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‘Ah, my dear,’ said the countess, ‘my life is not all

roses either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living
our means won’t last long? It’s all the Club and his
easygoing nature. Even in the country do we get any rest?
Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what besides! But
don’t let’s talk about me; tell me how you managed
everything. I often wonder at you, Annette- how at your
age you can rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to
Petersburg, to those ministers and great people, and know
how to deal with them all! It’s quite astonishing. How did
you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly do it.’
‘Ah, my love,’ answered Anna Mikhaylovna, ‘God
grant you never know what it is to be left a widow
without means and with a son you love to distraction! One
learns many things then,’ she added with a certain pride.
‘That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of
those big people I write a note: ‘Princess So-and-So
desires an interview with So and-So,’ and then I take a
cab and go myself two, three, or four times- till I get what
I want. I don’t mind what they think of me.’
‘Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?’ asked
the countess. ‘You see yours is already an officer in the
Guards, while my Nicholas is going as a cadet. There’s no
one to interest himself for him. To whom did you apply?’

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‘To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed

to everything, and put the matter before the Emperor,’
said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite
forgetting all the humiliation she had endured to gain her
end.
‘Has Prince Vasili aged much?’ asked the countess. ‘I
have not seen him since we acted together at the
Rumyantsovs’ theatricals. I expect he has forgotten me.
He paid me attentions in those days,’ said the countess,
with a smile.
‘He is just the same as ever,’ replied Anna
Mikhaylovna, ‘overflowing with amiability. His position
has not turned his head at all. He said to me, ‘I am sorry I
can do so little for you, dear Princess. I am at your
command.’ Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very kind
relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I
would do anything for his happiness! And my affairs are
in such a bad way that my position is now a terrible one,’
continued Anna Mikhaylovna, sadly, dropping her voice.
‘My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no
progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a
penny and don’t know how to equip Boris.’ She took out
her handkerchief and began to cry. ‘I need five hundred
rubles, and have only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in

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such a state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril

Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist his godson-
you know he is Bory’s godfather- and allow him
something for his maintenance, all my trouble will have
been thrown away.... I shall not be able to equip him.’
The countess’ eyes filled with tears and she pondered
in silence.
‘I often think, though, perhaps it’s a sin,’ said the
princess, ‘that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich
Bezukhov so rich, all alone... that tremendous fortune...
and what is his life worth? It’s a burden to him, and
Bory’s life is only just beginning...’
‘Surely he will leave something to Boris,’ said the
countess.
‘Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are
so selfish. Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at
once, and I shall speak to him straight out. Let people
think what they will of me, it’s really all the same to me
when my son’s fate is at stake.’ The princess rose. ‘It’s
now two o’clock and you dine at four. There will just be
time.’
And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to
make the most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone
to call her son, and went into the anteroom with him.

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‘Good-by, my dear,’ said she to the countess who saw

her to the door, and added in a whisper so that her son
should not hear, ‘Wish me good luck.’
‘Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my
dear?’ said the count coming out from the dining hall into
the anteroom, and he added: ‘If he is better, ask Pierre to
dine with us. He has been to the house, you know, and
danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear.
We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He
says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will
be!’

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Chapter XV

‘My dear Boris,’ said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to

her son as Countess Rostova’s carriage in which they
were seated drove over the straw covered street and
turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov’s house. ‘My dear Boris,’ said
the mother, drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle
and laying it timidly and tenderly on her son’s arm, ‘be
affectionate and attentive to him. Count Cyril
Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future
depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to
him, as you so well know how to be.’
‘If only I knew that anything besides humiliation
would come of it...’ answered her son coldly. ‘But I have
promised and will do it for your sake.’
Although the hall porter saw someone’s carriage
standing at the entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and
son (who without asking to be announced had passed
straight through the glass porch between the rows of
statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady’s
old cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the
princesses, and, hearing that they wished to see the count,

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said his excellency was worse today, and that his

excellency was not receiving anyone.
‘We may as well go back,’ said the son in French.
‘My dear!’ exclaimed his mother imploringly, again
laying her hand on his arm as if that touch might soothe or
rouse him.
Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his
mother without taking off his cloak.
‘My friend,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones,
addressing the hall porter, I know Count Cyril
Vladimirovich is very ill... that’s why I have come... I am
a relation. I shall not disturb him, my friend... I only need
see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying here, is he not?
Please announce me.’
The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs,
and turned away.
‘Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili
Sergeevich,’ he called to a footman dressed in knee
breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, who ran
downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress
before a large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her
trodden-down shoes briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.

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‘My dear,’ she said to her son, once more stimulating

him by a touch, ‘you promised me!’
The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
They entered the large hall, from which one of the
doors led to the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.
Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle
of the hall, were about to ask their way of an elderly
footman who had sprung up as they entered, the bronze
handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasili came
out- wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast,
as was his custom when at home- taking leave of a good-
looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated
Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
‘Then it is certain?’ said the prince.
‘Prince, humanum est errare,* but...’ replied the
doctor, swallowing his r’s, and pronouncing the Latin
words with a French accent.
*To err is human.
‘Very well, very well..’
Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili
dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them
silently and with a look of inquiry. The son noticed that
an expression of profound sorrow suddenly clouded his
mother’s face, and he smiled slightly.

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‘Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again!

And how is our dear invalid?’ said she, as though
unaware of the cold offensive look fixed on her.
Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly
and perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili
without acknowledging the bow turned to Anna
Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a movement of the
head and lips indicating very little hope for the patient.
‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. ‘Oh,
how awful! It is terrible to think.... This is my son,’ she
added, indicating Boris. ‘He wanted to thank you
himself.’
Boris bowed again politely.
‘Believe me, Prince, a mother’s heart will never forget
what you have done for us.’
‘I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear
Anna Mikhaylovna,’ said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace
frill, and in tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna
Mikhaylovna whom he had placed under an obligation,
assuming an air of much greater importance than he had
done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer’s reception.
‘Try to serve well and show yourself worthy,’ added
he, addressing Boris with severity. ‘I am glad.... Are you

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here on leave?’ he went on in his usual tone of

indifference.
‘I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your
excellency,’ replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at
the prince’s brusque manner nor a desire to enter into
conversation, but speaking so quietly and respectfully that
the prince gave him a searching glance.
‘Are you living with your mother?’
‘I am living at Countess Rostova’s,’ replied Boris,
again adding, ‘your excellency.’
‘That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly
Shinshina,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna.
‘I know, I know,’ answered Prince Vasili in his
monotonous voice. ‘I never could understand how Nataly
made up her mind to marry that unlicked bear! A
perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too, I
am told.’
‘But a very kind man, Prince,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna
with a pathetic smile, as though she too knew that Count
Rostov deserved this censure, but asked him not to be too
hard on the poor old man. ‘What do the doctors say?’
asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
expressing deep sorrow.
‘They give little hope,’ replied the prince.

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‘And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his

kindness to me and Boris. He is his godson,’ she added,
her tone suggesting that this fact ought to give Prince
Vasili much satisfaction.
Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna
Mikhaylovna saw that he was afraid of finding in her a
rival for Count Bezukhov’s fortune, and hastened to
reassure him.
‘If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to
Uncle,’ said she, uttering the word with peculiar
assurance and unconcern, ‘I know his character: noble,
upright... but you see he has no one with him except the
young princesses.... They are still young....’ She bent her
head and continued in a whisper: ‘Has he performed his
final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments!
It can make things no worse, and it is absolutely
necessary to prepare him if he is so ill. We women,
Prince,’ and she smiled tenderly, ‘always know how to
say these things. I absolutely must see him, however
painful it may be for me. I am used to suffering.’
Evidently the prince understood her, and also
understood, as he had done at Anna Pavlovna’s, that it
would be difficult to get rid of Anna Mikhaylovna.

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‘Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear

Anna Mikhaylovna?’ said he. ‘Let us wait until evening.
The doctors are expecting a crisis.’
‘But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment!
Consider that the welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is
awful: the duties of a Christian..’
A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of
the princesses, the count’s niece, entered with a cold,
stern face. The length of her body was strikingly out of
proportion to her short legs. Prince Vasili turned to her.
‘Well, how is he?’
‘Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise...’
said the princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a
stranger.
‘Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you,’ said Anna
Mikhaylovna with a happy smile, ambling lightly up to
the count’s niece. ‘I have come, and am at your service to
help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have gone
through,’ and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.
The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but
left the room at Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves
and, occupying the position she had conquered, settled
down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili to take a seat
beside her.

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‘Boris,’ she said to her son with a smile, ‘I shall go in

to see the count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better
go to Pierre meanwhile and don’t forget to give him the
Rostovs’ invitation. They ask him to dinner. I suppose he
won’t go?’ she continued, turning to the prince.
‘On the contrary,’ replied the prince, who had plainly
become depressed, ‘I shall be only too glad if you relieve
me of that young man.... Here he is, and the count has not
once asked for him.’
He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris
down one flight of stairs and up another, to Pierre’s
rooms.

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Chapter XVI

Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for

himself in Petersburg, and had been expelled from there
for riotous conduct and sent to Moscow. The story told
about him at Count Rostov’s was true. Pierre had taken
part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been for
some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his
father’s house. Though he expected that the story of his
escapade would be already known in Moscow and that the
ladies about his father- who were never favorably
disposed toward him- would have used it to turn the count
against him, he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went
to his father’s part of the house. Entering the drawing
room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he
greeted the ladies, two of whom were sitting at
embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the
eldest who was reading- the one who had met Anna
Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering:
both were rosy and pretty and they differed only in that
one had a little mole on her lip which made her much
prettier. Pierre was received as if he were a corpse or a
leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading and

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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.

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Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then

he bowed and said: ‘Then I will go to my rooms. You will
let me know when I can see him.’
And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing
laughter of the sister with the mole.
Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the
count’s house. He sent for Pierre and said to him: ‘My
dear fellow, if you are going to behave here as you did in
Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is all I have to
say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must not
see him at all.’
Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent
the whole time in his rooms upstairs.
When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up
and down his room, stopping occasionally at a corner to
make menacing gestures at the wall, as if running a sword
through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely over his
spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering
indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and
gesticulating.
‘England is done for,’ said he, scowling and pointing
his finger at someone unseen. ‘Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the
nation and to the rights of man, is sentenced to...’ But
before Pierre- who at that moment imagined himself to be

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Napoleon in person and to have just effected the

dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured
London- could pronounce Pitt’s sentence, he saw a well-
built and handsome young officer entering his room.
Pierre paused. He had left Moscow when Boris was a boy
of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual
impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the hand with
a friendly smile.
‘Do you remember me?’ asked Boris quietly with a
pleasant smile. ‘I have come with my mother to see the
count, but it seems he is not well.’
‘Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing
him,’ answered Pierre, trying to remember who this
young man was.
Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not
consider it necessary to introduce himself, and without
experiencing the least embarrassment looked Pierre
straight in the face.
‘Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today,’ said
he, after a considerable pause which made Pierre feel
uncomfortable.
‘Ah, Count Rostov!’ exclaimed Pierre joyfully. ‘Then
you are his son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn’t know you at

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first. Do you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills

with Madame Jacquot?... It’s such an age..’
‘You are mistaken,’ said Boris deliberately, with a
bold and slightly sarcastic smile. ‘I am Boris, son of
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the
father, is Ilya, and his son is Nicholas. I never knew any
Madame Jacquot.’
Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by
mosquitoes or bees.
‘Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I’ve mixed
everything up. One has so many relatives in Moscow! So
you are Boris? Of course. Well, now we know where we
are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition?
The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon
gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite
feasible. If only Villeneuve doesn’t make a mess of
things!
Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he
did not read the papers and it was the first time he had
heard Villeneuve’s name.
‘We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner
parties and scandal than with politics,’ said he in his quiet
ironical tone. ‘I know nothing about it and have not
thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy with gossip,’ he

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continued. ‘Just now they are talking about you and your
father.’
Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for
his companion’s sake that the latter might say something
he would afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly,
clearly, and dryly, looking straight into Pierre’s eyes.
‘Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,’ Boris
went on. ‘Everybody is wondering to whom the count will
leave his fortune, though he may perhaps outlive us all, as
I sincerely hope he will..’
‘Yes, it is all very horrid,’ interrupted Pierre, ‘very
horrid.’
Pierre was still afraid that this officer might
inadvertently say something disconcerting to himself.
‘And it must seem to you,’ said Boris flushing slightly,
but not changing his tone or attitude, ‘it must seem to you
that everyone is trying to get something out of the rich
man?’
‘So it does,’ thought Pierre.
‘But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings,
that you are quite mistaken if you reckon me or my
mother among such people. We are very poor, but for my
own part at any rate, for the very reason that your father is
rich, I don’t regard myself as a relation of his, and neither

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I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from

him.’
For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when
he did, he jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under
the elbow in his quick, clumsy way, and, blushing far
more than Boris, began to speak with a feeling of mingled
shame and vexation.
‘Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could
think?... I know very well..’
But Boris again interrupted him.
‘I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not
like it? You must excuse me,’ said he, putting Pierre at
ease instead of being put at ease by him, ‘but I hope I
have not offended you. I always make it a rule to speak
out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to
dinner at the Rostovs’?’
And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an
onerous duty and extricated himself from an awkward
situation and placed another in it, became quite pleasant
again.
‘No, but I say,’ said Pierre, calming down, ‘you are a
wonderful fellow! What you have just said is good, very
good. Of course you don’t know me. We have not met for
such a long time... not since we were children. You might

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think that I... I understand, quite understand. I could not

have done it myself, I should not have had the courage,
but it’s splendid. I am very glad to have made your
acquaintance. It’s queer,’ he added after a pause, ‘that you
should have suspected me!’ He began to laugh. ‘Well,
what of it! I hope we’ll get better acquainted,’ and he
pressed Boris’ hand. ‘Do you know, I have not once been
in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I am sorry
for him as a man, but what can one do?’
‘And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an
army across?’ asked Boris with a smile.
Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and
being of the same mind he began explaining the
advantages and disadvantages of the Boulogne
expedition.
A footman came in to summon Boris- the princess was
going. Pierre, in order to make Boris’ better acquaintance,
promised to come to dinner, and warmly pressing his
hand looked affectionately over his spectacles into Boris’
eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and
down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an
imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at
the remembrance of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute
young man.

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As often happens in early youth, especially to one who

leads a lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for
this young man and made up his mind that they would be
friends.
Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a
handkerchief to her eyes and her face was tearful.
‘It is dreadful, dreadful!’ she was saying, ‘but cost me
what it may I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the
night. He must not be left like this. Every moment is
precious. I can’t think why his nieces put it off. Perhaps
God will help me to find a way to prepare him!... Adieu,
Prince! May God support you..’
‘Adieu, ma bonne,’ answered Prince Vasili turning
away from her.
‘Oh, he is in a dreadful state,’ said the mother to her
son when they were in the carriage. ‘He hardly recognizes
anybody.’
‘I don’t understand, Mamma- what is his attitude to
Pierre?’ asked the son.
‘The will will show that, my dear; our fate also
depends on it.’
‘But why do you expect that he will leave us
anything?’
‘Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!’

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‘Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..’

‘Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!’ exclaimed the mother.

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Chapter XVII

After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son

to visit Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess
Rostova sat for a long time all alone applying her
handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.
‘What is the matter with you, my dear?’ she said
crossly to the maid who kept her waiting some minutes.
‘Don’t you wish to serve me? Then I’ll find you another
place.’
The countess was upset by her friend’s sorrow and
humiliating poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state
of mind which with her always found expression in
calling her maid ‘my dear’ and speaking to her with
exaggerated politeness.
‘I am very sorry, ma’am,’ answered the maid.
‘Ask the count to come to me.’
The count came waddling in to see his wife with a
rather guilty look as usual.
‘Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere
we are to have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I
paid for Taras were not ill-spent. He is worth it!’

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He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and

his hands ruffling his gray hair.
‘What are your commands, little countess?’
‘You see, my dear... What’s that mess?’ she said,
pointing to his waistcoat. ‘It’s, the saute, most likely,’ she
added with a smile. ‘Well, you see, Count, I want some
money.’
Her face became sad.
‘Oh, little countess!’... and the count began bustling to
get out his pocketbook.
‘I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred
rubles,’ and taking out her cambric handkerchief she
began wiping her husband’s waistcoat.
‘Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who’s there?’
he called out in a tone only used by persons who are
certain that those they call will rush to obey the summons.
‘Send Dmitri to me!’
Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up
in the count’s house and now managed all his affairs,
stepped softly into the room.
‘This is what I want, my dear fellow,’ said the count to
the deferential young man who had entered. ‘Bring me...’
he reflected a moment, ‘yes, bring me seven hundred
rubles, yes! But mind, don’t bring me such tattered and

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dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones for the
countess.’
‘Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please,’ said the countess,
sighing deeply.
‘When would you like them, your excellency?’ asked
Dmitri. ‘Allow me to inform you... But, don’t be uneasy,’
he added, noticing that the count was beginning to breathe
heavily and quickly which was always a sign of
approaching anger. ‘I was forgetting... Do you wish it
brought at once?’
‘Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess.’
‘What a treasure that Dmitri is,’ added the count with a
smile when the young man had departed. ‘There is never
any ‘impossible’ with him. That’s a thing I hate!
Everything is possible.’
‘Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it
causes in the world,’ said the countess. ‘But I am in great
need of this sum.’
‘You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift,’
said the count, and having kissed his wife’s hand he went
back to his study.
When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count
Bezukhov’s the money, all in clean notes, was lying ready
under a handkerchief on the countess’ little table, and

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Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something was agitating

her.
‘Well, my dear?’ asked the countess.
‘Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know
him, he is so ill! I was only there a few moments and
hardly said a word..’
‘Annette, for heaven’s sake don’t refuse me,’ the
countess began, with a blush that looked very strange on
her thin, dignified, elderly face, and she took the money
from under the handkerchief.
Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and
stooped to be ready to embrace the countess at the
appropriate moment.
‘This is for Boris from me, for his outfit.’
Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and
weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they
were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and
because they- friends from childhood- had to think about
such a base thing as money, and because their youth was
over.... But those tears were pleasant to them both.

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Chapter XVIII

Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large

number of guests, was already seated in the drawing
room. The count took the gentlemen into his study and
showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From
time to time he went out to ask: ‘Hasn’t she come yet?’
They were expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova,
known in society as le terrible dragon, a lady
distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common
sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna
was known to the Imperial family as well as to all
Moscow and Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her,
laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told good stories
about her, while none the less all without exception
respected and feared her.
In the count’s room, which was full of tobacco smoke,
they talked of war that had been announced in a
manifesto, and about the recruiting. None of them had yet
seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared. The
count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but
bending his head first to one side and then to the other

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watched the smokers with evident pleasure and listened to

the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he egged on
against each other.
One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a
thin and wrinkled face, already growing old, though he
was dressed like a most fashionable young man. He sat
with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was
inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his
eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the
countess’, a man with ‘a sharp tongue’ as they said in
Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to his
companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards,
irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held his
pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently
inhaled the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome
mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in
the Semenov regiment with whom Boris was to travel to
join the army, and about whom Natasha had, teased her
elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her ‘intended.’ The
count sat between them and listened attentively. His
favorite occupation when not playing boston, a card game
he was very fond of, was that of listener, especially when

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he succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers at one

another.
‘Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse
Karlovich,’ said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing
the most ordinary Russian expressions with the choicest
French phrases- which was a peculiarity of his speech.
‘Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’etat;* you want
to make something out of your company?’
*You expect to make an income out of the
government.
‘No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the
cavalry the advantages are far less than in the infantry.
Just consider my own position now, Peter Nikolaevich..’
Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great
precision. His conversation always related entirely to
himself; he would remain calm and silent when the talk
related to any topic that had no direct bearing on himself.
He could remain silent for hours without being at all put
out of countenance himself or making others
uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned
himself he would begin to talk circumstantially and with
evident satisfaction.
‘Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in
the cavalry I should get not more than two hundred rubles

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every four months, even with the rank of lieutenant; but

as it is I receive two hundred and thirty,’ said he, looking
at Shinshin and the count with a joyful, pleasant smile, as
if it were obvious to him that his success must always be
the chief desire of everyone else.
‘Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into
the Guards I shall be in a more prominent position,’
continued Berg, ‘and vacancies occur much more
frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what can
be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even
manage to put a little aside and to send something to my
father,’ he went on, emitting a smoke ring.
‘La balance y est...* A German knows how to skin a
flint, as the proverb says,’ remarked Shinshin, moving his
pipe to the other side of his mouth and winking at the
count.
*So that squares matters.
The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing
that Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg,
oblivious of irony or indifference, continued to explain
how by exchanging into the Guards he had already gained
a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in
wartime the company commander might get killed and he,
as senior in the company, might easily succeed to the

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post; how popular he was with everyone in the regiment,

and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently
enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that
others, too, might have their own interests. But all he said
was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his youthful
egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.
‘Well, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you go- foot
or horse- that I’ll warrant,’ said Shinshin, patting him on
the shoulder and taking his feet off the sofa.
Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went
into the drawing room.
It was just the moment before a big dinner when the
assembled guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,*
avoid engaging in any long conversation but think it
necessary to move about and talk, in order to show that
they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at
one another, and the visitors try to guess from these
glances who, or what, they are waiting for- some
important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish that
is not yet ready.
*Hors d’oeuvres.
Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting
awkwardly in the middle of the drawing room on the first

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chair he had come across, blocking the way for everyone.

The countess tried to make him talk, but he went on
naively looking around through his spectacles as if in
search of somebody and answered all her questions in
monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one
who did not notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing
of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity at this
big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy,
modest fellow could have played such a prank on a
policeman.
‘You have only lately arrived?’ the countess asked
him.
‘Oui, madame,’ replied he, looking around him.
‘You have not yet seen my husband?’
‘Non, madame.’ He smiled quite inappropriately.
‘You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose
it’s very interesting.’
‘Very interesting.’
The countess exchanged glances with Anna
Mikhaylovna. The latter understood that she was being
asked to entertain this young man, and sitting down
beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in
monosyllables. The other guests were all conversing with

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one another. ‘The Razumovskis... It was charming... You

are very kind... Countess Apraksina...’ was heard on all
sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
‘Marya Dmitrievna?’ came her voice from there.
‘Herself,’ came the answer in a rough voice, and
Marya Dmitrievna entered the room.
All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones
except the very oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at
the door. Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-year-old
head with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests,
and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them
up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.
‘Health and happiness to her whose name day we are
keeping and to her children,’ she said, in her loud, full-
toned voice which drowned all others. ‘Well, you old
sinner,’ she went on, turning to the count who was kissing
her hand, ‘you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay?
Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done,
old man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up,’
and she pointed to the girls. ‘You must look for husbands
for them whether you like it or not...’
Well,’ said she, ‘how’s my Cossack?’ (Marya
Dmitrievna always called Natasha a Cossack) and she
stroked the child’s arm as she came up fearless and gay to

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kiss her hand. ‘I know she’s a scamp of a girl, but I like

her.’
She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her
huge reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha,
who beamed with the pleasure of her saint’s-day fete,
turned away at once and addressed herself to Pierre.
‘Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,’ said she, assuming a
soft high tone of voice. ‘Come here, my friend...’ and she
ominously tucked up her sleeves still higher. Pierre
approached, looking at her in a childlike way through his
spectacles.
‘Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the
only one to tell your father the truth when he was in favor,
and in your case it’s my evident duty.’ She paused. All
were silent, expectant of what was to follow, for this was
dearly only a prelude.
‘A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on
his deathbed and he amuses himself setting a policeman
astride a bear! For shame, sir, for shame! It would be
better if you went to the war.’
She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who
could hardly keep from laughing.
‘Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?’ said
Marya Dmitrievna.

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The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the

countess followed on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a
man of importance to them because Nicholas was to go
with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikhaylovna
with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling
Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other
couples followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of
all the children, tutors, and governesses followed singly.
The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the
band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down
in their places. Then the strains of the count’s household
band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the
voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At
one end of the table sat the countess with Marya
Dmitrievna on her right and Anna Mikhaylovna on her
left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At the other
end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and
Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway
down the long table on one side sat the grownup young
people: Vera beside Berg, and Pierre beside Boris; and on
the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From
behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases the count kept
glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its light-blue
ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors’ glasses, not

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neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting

her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from
behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald
head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual
with his gray hair. At the ladies’ end an even chatter of
voices was heard all the time, at the men’s end the voices
sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel
of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and
drank so much that the count held him up as a pattern to
the other guests. Berg with tender smiles was saying to
Vera that love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling.
Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the guests
were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was
sitting opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new
faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two soups he chose
turtle with savory patties and went on to the game without
omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These latter the
butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a napkin,
from behind the next man’s shoulders and whispered:
‘Dry Madeira"... ‘Hungarian"... or ‘Rhine wine’ as the
case might be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with
the count’s monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre
held out one at random and drank with enjoyment, gazing
with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.

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Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of

thirteen look at the boy they are in love with and have just
kissed for the first time. Sometimes that same look fell on
Pierre, and that funny lively little girl’s look made him
inclined to laugh without knowing why.
Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie
Karagina, to whom he was again talking with the same
involuntary smile. Sonya wore a company smile but was
evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned pale,
now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what
Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The
governess kept looking round uneasily as if preparing to
resent any slight that might be put upon the children. The
German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes,
wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full
description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he
felt greatly offended when the butler with a bottle
wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to
appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was
mortified because no one would understand that it was not
to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted it,
but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.

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Chapter XIX

At the men’s end of the table the talk grew more and
more animated. The colonel told them that the declaration
of war had already appeared in Petersburg and that a
copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been
forwarded by courier to the commander in chief.
‘And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?’
remarked Shinshin. ‘He has stopped Austria’s cackle and
I fear it will be our turn next.’
The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German,
evidently devoted to the service and patriotically Russian.
He resented Shinshin’s remark.
‘It is for the reasson, my goot sir,’ said he, speaking
with a German accent, ‘for the reasson zat ze Emperor
knows zat. He declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot
fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening Russia and zat
ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze sanctity of
its alliances...’ he spoke this last word with particular
emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
Then with the unerring official memory that
characterized him he repeated from the opening words of
the manifesto:

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... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor’s sole

and absolute aim- to establish peace in Europe on firm
foundations- has now decided him to despatch part of the
army abroad and to create a new condition for the
attainment of that purpose.
‘Zat, my dear sir, is vy...’ he concluded, drinking a
tumbler of wine with dignity and looking to the count for
approval.
‘Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* ‘Jerome, Jerome, do
not roam, but turn spindles at home!’?’ said Shinshin,
puckering his brows and smiling. ‘Cela nous convient a
merveille.*[2] Suvorov now- he knew what he was about;
yet they beat him a plate couture,*[3] and where are we to
find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,’*[4] said
he, continually changing from French to Russian.
*Do you know the proverb?
*[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

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to the count. ‘Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and

zere’s an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a
young hussar, how do you judge of it?’ he added,
addressing Nicholas, who when he heard that the war was
being discussed had turned from his partner with eyes and
ears intent on the colonel.
‘I am quite of your opinion,’ replied Nicholas, flaming
up, turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses
about with as much decision and desperation as though he
were at that moment facing some great danger. ‘I am
convinced that we Russians must die or conquer,’ he
concluded, conscious- as were others- after the words
were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and
emphatic for the occasion and were therefore awkward.
‘What you said just now was splendid!’ said his
partner Julie.
Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and
behind them and down to her neck and shoulders while
Nicholas was speaking.
Pierre listened to the colonel’s speech and nodded
approvingly.
‘That’s fine,’ said he.
‘The young man’s a real hussar!’ shouted the colonel,
again thumping the table.

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‘What are you making such a noise about over there?’

Marya Dmitrievna’s deep voice suddenly inquired from
the other end of the table. ‘What are you thumping the
table for?’ she demanded of the hussar, ‘and why are you
exciting yourself? Do you think the French are here?’
‘I am speaking ze truce,’ replied the hussar with a
smile.
‘It’s all about the war,’ the count shouted down the
table. ‘You know my son’s going, Marya Dmitrievna? My
son is going.’
‘I have four sons in the army but still I don’t fret. It is
all in God’s hands. You may die in your bed or God may
spare you in a battle,’ replied Marya Dmitrievna’s deep
voice, which easily carried the whole length of the table.
‘That’s true!’
Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies’
at the one end and the men’s at the other.
‘You won’t ask,’ Natasha’s little brother was saying; ‘I
know you won’t ask!’
‘I will,’ replied Natasha.
Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous
resolution. She half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who
sat opposite, to listen to what was coming, and turning to
her mother:

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‘Mamma!’ rang out the clear contralto notes of her

childish voice, audible the whole length of the table.
‘What is it?’ asked the countess, startled; but seeing by
her daughter’s face that it was only mischief, she shook a
finger at her sternly with a threatening and forbidding
movement of her head.
The conversation was hushed.
‘Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?’ and
Natasha’s voice sounded still more firm and resolute.
The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya
Dmitrievna shook her fat finger.
‘Cossack!’ she said threateningly.
Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally,
looked at the elders.
‘You had better take care!’ said the countess.
‘Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?’ Natasha
again cried boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her
prank would be taken in good part.
Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.
‘You see! I have asked,’ whispered Natasha to her
little brother and to Pierre, glancing at him again.
‘Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,’ said Marya
Dmitrievna.

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Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so

she braved even Marya Dmitrievna.
‘Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t
like ice cream.’
‘Carrot ices.’
‘No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?’ she
almost screamed; ‘I want to know!’
Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing,
and all the guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at
Marya Dmitrievna’s answer but at the incredible boldness
and smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat
Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.
Natasha only desisted when she had been told that
there would be pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne
was served round. The band again struck up, the count
and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving their seats,
went up to ‘congratulate’ the countess, and reached across
the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children,
and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about,
chairs scraped, and in the same order in which they had
entered but with redder faces, the guests returned to the
drawing room and to the count’s study.
CHAPTER XX

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The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for

boston, and the count’s visitors settled themselves, some
in the two drawing rooms, some in the sitting room, some
in the library.
The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself
with difficulty from dropping into his usual after-dinner
nap, and laughed at everything. The young people, at the
countess’ instigation, gathered round the clavichord and
harp. Julie by general request played first. After she had
played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined
the other young ladies in begging Natasha and Nicholas,
who were noted for their musical talent, to sing
something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were
grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
same time felt shy.
‘What shall we sing?’ she said.
‘‘The Brook,’’ suggested Nicholas.
‘Well, then,let’s be quick. Boris, come here,’ said
Natasha. ‘But where is Sonya?’
She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in
the room ran to look for her.
Running into Sonya’s room and not finding her there,
Natasha ran to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either.
Natasha concluded that she must be on the chest in the

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passage. The chest in the passage was the place of

mourning for the younger female generation in the Rostov
household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face
downward on Nurse’s dirty feather bed on the top of the
chest, crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her, hiding
her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing so
convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.
Natasha’s face, which had been so radiantly happy all that
saint’s day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and
then a shiver passed down her broad neck and the corners
of her mouth drooped.
‘Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo...
Oo...!’ And Natasha’s large mouth widened, making her
look quite ugly, and she began to wail like a baby without
knowing why, except that Sonya was crying. Sonya tried
to lift her head to answer but could not, and hid her face
still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue-
striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort
Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
‘Nicholas is going away in a week’s time, his...
papers... have come... he told me himself... but still I
should not cry,’ and she showed a paper she held in her
hand- with the verses Nicholas had written, ‘still, I should

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not cry, but you can’t... no one can understand... what a

soul he has!’
And she began to cry again because he had such a
noble soul.
‘It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love
you and Boris also,’ she went on, gaining a little strength;
‘he is nice... there are no difficulties in your way.... But
Nicholas is my cousin... one would have to... the
Metropolitan himself... and even then it can’t be done.
And besides, if she tells Mamma’ (Sonya looked upon the
countess as her mother and called her so) ‘that I am
spoiling Nicholas’ career and am heartless and ungrateful,
while truly... God is my witness,’ and she made the sign
of the cross, ‘I love her so much, and all of you, only
Vera... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so
grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice everything,
only I have nothing...’
Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her
hands and in the feather bed. Natasha began consoling
her, but her face showed that she understood all the
gravity of her friend’s trouble.
‘Sonya,’ she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed
the true reason of her friend’s sorrow, ‘I’m sure Vera has
said something to you since dinner? Hasn’t she?’

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‘Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied

some others, and she found them on my table and said
she’d show them to Mamma, and that I was ungrateful,
and that Mamma would never allow him to marry me, but
that he’ll marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her all
day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..’
And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before.
Natasha lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through
her tears, began comforting her.
‘Sonya, don’t believe her, darling! Don’t believe her!
Do you remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us,
talked in the sitting room after supper? Why, we settled
how everything was to be. I don’t quite remember how,
but don’t you remember that it could all be arranged and
how nice it all was? There’s Uncle Shinshin’s brother has
married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins,
you know. And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I
have told him all about it. And he is so clever and so
good!’ said Natasha. ‘Don’t you cry, Sonya, dear love,
darling Sonya!’ and she kissed her and laughed. ‘Vera’s
spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she
won’t say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her
himself, and he doesn’t care at all for Julie.’
Natasha kissed her on the hair.

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Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes

shone, and it seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on
its soft paws, and begin playing with the ball of worsted
as a kitten should.
‘Do you think so?... Really? Truly?’ she said, quickly
smoothing her frock and hair.
‘Really, truly!’ answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp
lock that had strayed from under her friend’s plaits.
Both laughed.
‘Well, let’s go and sing ‘The Brook.’’
‘Come along!’
‘Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is
so funny!’ said Natasha, stopping suddenly. ‘I feel so
happy!’
And she set off at a run along the passage.
Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and
tucking away the verses in the bosom of her dress close to
her bony little chest, ran after Natasha down the passage
into the sitting room with flushed face and light, joyous
steps. At the visitors’ request the young people sang the
quartette, ‘The Brook,’ with which everyone was
delighted. Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
At nighttime in the moon’s fair glow
How sweet, as fancies wander free,

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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 music 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 Shinshin
had engaged him, as a man recently returned from abroad,
in a political conversation in which several others joined
but which bored Pierre. When the music began Natasha
came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing
and blushing:
‘Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers.’
‘I am afraid of mixing the figures,’ Pierre replied; ‘but
if you will be my teacher...’ And lowering his big arm he
offered it to the slender little girl.
While the couples were arranging themselves and the
musicians tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little

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partner. Natasha was perfectly happy; she was dancing

with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was
sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a
grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the
ladies had given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a
society woman (heaven knows when and where she had
learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and
smiling over the fan.
‘Dear, dear! Just look at her!’ exclaimed the countess
as she crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.
Natasha blushed and laughed.
‘Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there
to be surprised at?’
In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of
chairs being pushed back in the sitting room where the
count and Marya Dmitrievna had been playing cards with
the majority of the more distinguished and older visitors.
They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and
replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the
ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,
both with merry countenances. The count, with playful
ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm
to Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of
debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last

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figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to

the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing
the first violin:
‘Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?’
This was the count’s favorite dance, which he had
danced in his youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper
was one figure of the anglaise.)
‘Look at Papa!’ shouted Natasha to the whole
company, and quite forgetting that she was dancing with a
grown-up partner she bent her curly head to her knees and
made the whole room ring with her laughter.
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile
of pleasure at the jovial old gentleman, who standing
beside his tall and stout partner, Marya Dmitrievna,
curved his arms, beat time, straightened his shoulders,
turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a
smile that broadened his round face more and more,
prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as
the provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat
resembling those of a merry peasant dance) began to
sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly
filled by the domestic serfs- the men on one side and the
women on the other- who with beaming faces had come
to see their master making merry.

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‘Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!’ loudly

remarked the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner
could not and did not want to dance well. Her enormous
figure stood erect, her powerful arms hanging down (she
had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her
stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What
was expressed by the whole of the count’s plump figure,
in Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more
and more beaming face and quivering nose. But if the
count, getting more and more into the swing of it,
charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of his
adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered
about on his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no
less impression by slight exertions- the least effort to
move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or
stamp her foot- which everyone appreciated in view of
her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and
livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment’s
attention to their own evolutions and did not even try to
do so. All were watching the count and Marya
Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or
dress, urging them to ‘look at Papa!’ though as it was they
never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the

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dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to

the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster;
lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the
count, flying round Marya Dmitrievna, now on his toes,
now on his heels; until, turning his partner round to her
seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft foot
backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and
making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of
applause and laughter led by Natasha. Both partners stood
still, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with their
cambric handkerchiefs.
‘That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chere,’
said the count.
‘That was a Daniel Cooper!’ exclaimed Marya
Dmitrievna, tucking up her sleeves and puffing heavily.

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Chapter XXI

While in the Rostovs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was

being danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians
blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks were
getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke.
The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a
mute confession, communion was administered to the
dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of
unction, and in his house there was the bustle and thrill of
suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house,
beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid
whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an
important order for an expensive funeral. The Military
Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending
aides-de-camp to inquire after the count’s health, came
himself that evening to bid a last farewell to the
celebrated grandee of Catherine’s court, Count Bezukhov.
The magnificent reception room was crowded.
Everyone stood up respectfully when the Military
Governor, having stayed about half an hour alone with the
dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their bows
and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed

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on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family.

Prince Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the
last few days, escorted him to the door, repeating
something to him several times in low tones.
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili
sat down all alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one
leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee and
covering his face with his hand. After sitting so for a
while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened
eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the long
corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of
the eldest princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke
in nervous whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or
came from the dying man’s room, grew silent and gazed
with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at his door,
which creaked slightly when opened.
‘The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be
o’erpassed,’ said an old priest to a lady who had taken a
seat beside him and was listening naively to his words.
‘I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?’
asked the lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as if she
had no opinion of her own on the subject.

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‘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.’

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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.

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Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the

princess’ room.
In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps
were burning before the icons and there was a pleasant
scent of flowers and burnt pastilles. The room was
crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots,
cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white
feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog
began to bark.
‘Ah, is it you, cousin?’
She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so
extremely smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece
with her head and covered with varnish.
‘Has anything happened?’ she asked. ‘I am so
terrified.’
‘No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk
about business, Catiche,’* muttered the prince, seating
himself wearily on the chair she had just vacated. ‘You
have made the place warm, I must say,’ he remarked.
‘Well, sit down: let’s have a talk.’
*Catherine.
‘I thought perhaps something had happened,’ she said
with her unchanging stonily severe expression; and,
sitting down opposite the prince, she prepared to listen.

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‘I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can’t.’

‘Well, my dear?’ said Prince Vasili, taking her hand
and bending it downwards as was his habit.
It was plain that this ‘well?’ referred to much that they
both understood without naming.
The princess, who had a straight, rigid body,
abnormally long for her legs, looked directly at Prince
Vasili with no sign of emotion in her prominent gray
eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons
with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression
of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of
resting before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an
expression of weariness.
‘And I?’ he said; ‘do you think it is easier for me? I am
as worn out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk
with you, Catiche, a very serious talk.’
Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to
twitch nervously, now on one side, now on the other,
giving his face an unpleasant expression which was never
to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes too seemed
strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at
the next glanced round in alarm.
The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her
thin bony hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili’s

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eyes evidently resolved not to be the first to break silence,

if she had to wait till morning.
‘Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine
Semenovna,’ continued Prince Vasili, returning to his
theme, apparently not without an inner struggle; ‘at such a
moment as this one must think of everything. One must
think of the future, of all of you... I love you all, like
children of my own, as you know.’
The princess continued to look at him without moving,
and with the same dull expression.
‘And then of course my family has also to be
considered,’ Prince Vasili went on, testily pushing away a
little table without looking at her. ‘You know, Catiche,
that we- you three sisters, Mamontov, and my wife- are
the count’s only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it
is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier
for me; but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must
be prepared for anything. Do you know I have sent for
Pierre? The count,’ pointing to his portrait, ‘definitely
demanded that he should be called.’
Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but
could not make out whether she was considering what he
had just said or whether she was simply looking at him.

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‘There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon

cousin,’ she replied, ‘and it is that He would be merciful
to him and would allow his noble soul peacefully to leave
this..’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ interrupted Prince Vasili
impatiently, rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling
back toward him the little table that he had pushed away.
‘But... in short, the fact is... you know yourself that last
winter the count made a will by which he left all his
property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre.’
‘He has made wills enough!’ quietly remarked the
princess. ‘But he cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre
is illegitimate.’
‘But, my dear,’ said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching
the little table and becoming more animated and talking
more rapidly: ‘what if a letter has been written to the
Emperor in which the count asks for Pierre’s
legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of
the count’s services, his request would be granted?..’
The princess smiled as people do who think they know
more about the subject under discussion than those they
are talking with.
‘I can tell you more,’ continued Prince Vasili, seizing
her hand, ‘that letter was written, though it was not sent,

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and the Emperor knew of it. The only question is, has it
been destroyed or not? If not, then as soon as all is over,’
and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate what he meant by the
words all is over, ‘and the count’s papers are opened, the
will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the
petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get
everything as the legitimate son.’
‘And our share?’ asked the princess smiling ironically,
as if anything might happen, only not that.
‘But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He
will then be the legal heir to everything and you won’t get
anything. You must know, my dear, whether the will and
letter were written, and whether they have been destroyed
or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you
ought to know where they are, and must find them,
because..’
‘What next?’ the princess interrupted, smiling
sardonically and not changing the expression of her eyes.
‘I am a woman, and you think we are all stupid; but I
know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit... un
batard!’* she added, as if supposing that this translation of
the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the
invalidity of his contention.
*A bastard.

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‘Well, really, Catiche! Can’t you understand! You are

so intelligent, how is it you don’t see that if the count has
written a letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize
Pierre as legitimate, it follows that Pierre will not be
Pierre but will become Count Bezukhov, and will then
inherit everything under the will? And if the will and
letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing but
the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui
s’ensuit!* That’s certain.’
*And all that follows therefrom.
‘I know the will was made, but I also know that it is
invalid; and you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a
perfect fool,’ said the princess with the expression women
assume when they suppose they are saying something
witty and stinging.
‘My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna,’ began
Prince Vasili impatiently, ‘I came here not to wrangle
with you, but to talk about your interests as with a
kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I tell you for
the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the will
in Pierre’s favor are among the count’s papers, then, my
dear girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you
don’t believe me, then believe an expert. I have just been

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talking to Dmitri Onufrich’ (the family solicitor) ‘and he

says the same.’
At this a sudden change evidently took place in the
princess’ ideas; her thin lips grew white, though her eyes
did not change, and her voice when she began to speak
passed through such transitions as she herself evidently
did not expect.
‘That would be a fine thing!’ said she. ‘I never wanted
anything and I don’t now.’
She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her
dress.
‘And this is gratitude- this is recognition for those who
have sacrificed everything for his sake!’ she cried. ‘It’s
splendid! Fine! I don’t want anything, Prince.’
‘Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your
sisters...’ replied Prince Vasili.
But the princess did not listen to him.
‘Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that
I could expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy,
intrigue, and ingratitude- the blackest ingratitude- in this
house..’
‘Do you or do you not know where that will is?’
insisted Prince Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than
ever.

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‘Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved

them, and sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile
succeed! I know who has been intriguing!’
The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by
the hand. She had the air of one who has suddenly lost
faith in the whole human race. She gave her companion
an angry glance.
‘There is still time, my dear. You must remember,
Catiche, that it was all done casually in a moment of
anger, of illness, and was afterwards forgotten. Our duty,
my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his last moments
by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let him
die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..’
‘Who sacrificed everything for him,’ chimed in the
princess, who would again have risen had not the prince
still held her fast, ‘though he never could appreciate it.
No, mon cousin,’ she added with a sigh, ‘I shall always
remember that in this world one must expect no reward,
that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this
world one has to be cunning and cruel.’
‘Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your
excellent heart.’
‘No, I have a wicked heart.’

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‘I know your heart,’ repeated the prince. ‘I value your

friendship and wish you to have as good an opinion of
me. Don’t upset yourself, and let us talk sensibly while
there is still time, be it a day or be it but an hour.... Tell
me all you know about the will, and above all where it is.
You must know. We will take it at once and show it to the
count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to
destroy it. You understand that my sole desire is
conscientiously to carry out his wishes; that is my only
reason for being here. I came simply to help him and
you.’
‘Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing- I
know!’ cried the princess.
‘That’s not the point, my dear.’
‘It’s that protege of yours, that sweet Princess
Drubetskaya, that Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not
take for a housemaid... the infamous, vile woman!’
‘Do not let us lose any time..’
‘Ah, don’t talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself
in here and told the count such vile, disgraceful things
about us, especially about Sophie- I can’t repeat them-
that it made the count quite ill and he would not see us for
a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this vile,
infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid.’

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‘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!’

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Chapter XXII

While these conversations were going on in the

reception room and the princess’ room, a carriage
containing Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna
Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him)
was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov’s house. As
the wheels rolled softly over the straw beneath the
windows, Anna Mikhaylovna, having turned with words
of comfort to her companion, realized that he was asleep
in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre
followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only
then began to think of the interview with his dying father
which awaited him. He noticed that they had not come to
the front entrance but to the back door. While he was
getting down from the carriage steps two men, who
looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance
and hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment,
Pierre noticed several other men of the same kind hiding
in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither
Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the coachman,
who could not help seeing these people, took any notice
of them. ‘It seems to be all right,’ Pierre concluded, and

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followed Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the

narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to Pierre, who
was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why
it was necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less
why he had to go by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna
Mikhaylovna’s air of assurance and haste, Pierre
concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway
up the stairs they were almost knocked over by some men
who, carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots
clattering. These men pressed close to the wall to let
Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass and did not evince the
least surprise at seeing them there.
‘Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?’ asked
Anna Mikhaylovna of one of them.
‘Yes,’ replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if
anything were now permissible; ‘the door to the left,
ma’am.’
‘Perhaps the count did not ask for me,’ said Pierre
when he reached the landing. ‘I’d better go to my own
room.’
Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come
up.

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‘Ah, my friend!’ she said, touching his arm as she had

done her son’s when speaking to him that afternoon,
‘believe me I suffer no less than you do, but be a man!’
‘But really, hadn’t I better go away?’ he asked, looking
kindly at her over his spectacles.
‘Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have
been done you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in
the agony of death.’ She sighed. ‘I have loved you like a
son from the first. Trust yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not
forget your interests.’
Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction
that all this had to be grew stronger, and he meekly
followed Anna Mikhaylovna who was already opening a
door.
This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a
servant of the princesses, sat in a corner knitting a
stocking. Pierre had never been in this part of the house
and did not even know of the existence of these rooms.
Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying
past with a decanter on a tray as ‘my dear’ and ‘my
sweet,’ asked about the princess’ health and then led
Pierre along a stone passage. The first door on the left led
into the princesses’ apartments. The maid with the
decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything

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in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre

and Anna Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced
into the room, where Prince Vasili and the eldest princess
were sitting close together talking. Seeing them pass,
Prince Vasili drew back with obvious impatience, while
the princess jumped up and with a gesture of desperation
slammed the door with all her might.
This action was so unlike her usual composure and the
fear depicted on Prince Vasili’s face so out of keeping
with his dignity that Pierre stopped and glanced
inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly
and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had
expected.
‘Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests,’
said she in reply to his look, and went still faster along the
passage.
Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and
still less what ‘watching over his interests’ meant, but he
decided that all these things had to be. From the passage
they went into a large, dimly lit room adjoining the
count’s reception room. It was one of those sumptuous
but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty

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bath, and water had been spilled on the carpet. They were
met by a deacon with a censer and by a servant who
passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They went
into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
windows opening into the conservatory, with its large
bust and full length portrait of Catherine the Great. The
same people were still sitting here in almost the same
positions as before, whispering to one another. All
became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn
Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout
figure of Pierre who, hanging his head, meekly followed
her.
Anna Mikhaylovna’s face expressed a consciousness
that the decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a
practical Petersburg lady she now, keeping Pierre close
beside her, entered the room even more boldly than that
afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person
the dying man wished to see, her own admission was
assured. Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room
and noticing the count’s confessor there, she glided up to
him with a sort of amble, not exactly bowing yet seeming
to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received the
blessing first of one and then of another priest.

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‘God be thanked that you are in time,’ said she to one

of the priests; ‘all we relatives have been in such anxiety.
This young man is the count’s son,’ she added more
softly. ‘What a terrible moment!’
Having said this she went up to the doctor.
‘Dear doctor,’ said she, ‘this young man is the count’s
son. Is there any hope?’
The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently
shrugged his shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the
same movement raised her shoulders and eyes, almost
closing the latter, sighed, and moved away from the
doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and
tenderly sad voice, she said:
‘Trust in His mercy!’ and pointing out a small sofa for
him to sit and wait for her, she went silently toward the
door that everyone was watching and it creaked very
slightly as she disappeared behind it.
Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress
implicitly, moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As
soon as Anna Mikhaylovna had disappeared he noticed
that the eyes of all in the room turned to him with
something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed
that they whispered to one another, casting significant
looks at him with a kind of awe and even servility. A

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deference such as he had never before received was

shown him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking
to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-
camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped;
the doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by,
and moved to make way for him. At first Pierre wished to
take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and also to
pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors
who were not even in his way; but all at once he felt that
this would not do, and that tonight he was a person
obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which
everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore
bound to accept their services. He took the glove in
silence from the aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady’s
chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically on his knees
in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and decided in
his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in order
not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act
on his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up
entirely to the will of those who were guiding him.
Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with
head erect majestically entered the room. He was wearing
his long coat with three stars on his breast. He seemed to
have grown thinner since the morning; his eyes seemed

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larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed

Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never
used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to
ascertain whether it was firmly fixed on.
‘Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see
you. That is well!’ and he turned to go.
But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: ‘How is...’ and
hesitated, not knowing whether it would be proper to call
the dying man ‘the count,’ yet ashamed to call him
‘father.’
‘He had another stroke about half an hour ago.
Courage, my friend..’
Pierre’s mind was in such a confused state that the
word ‘stroke’ suggested to him a blow from something.
He looked at Prince Vasili in perplexity, and only later
grasped that a stroke was an attack of illness. Prince
Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on
tiptoe and his whole body jerked at each step. The eldest
princess followed him, and the priests and deacons and
some servants also went in at the door. Through that door
was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at last
Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale

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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.

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Chapter XXIII

Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns

and an arch, its walls hung round with Persian carpets.
The part of the room behind the columns, with a high silk-
curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and on the
other an immense case containing icons, was brightly
illuminated with red light like a Russian church during
evening service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long
invalid chair, and in that chair on snowy-white smooth
pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre saw- covered to
the waist by a bright green quilt- the familiar, majestic
figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane
of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a
lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his
handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his
large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand,
which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been
thrust between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant,
bending over from behind the chair, held it in position. By
the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over their
magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in
their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service.

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A little behind them stood the two younger princesses

holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of
them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a vicious and
determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though
declaring to all that she could not answer for herself
should she glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a
meek, sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face,
stood by the door near the strange lady. Prince Vasili in
front of the door, near the invalid chair, a wax taper in his
left hand, was leaning his left arm on the carved back of a
velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and was
crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes
upward each time he touched his forehead. His face wore
a calm look of piety and resignation to the will of God. ‘If
you do not understand these sentiments,’ he seemed to be
saying, ‘so much the worse for you!’
Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and
the menservants; the men and women had separated as in
church. All were silently crossing themselves, and the
reading of the church service, the subdued chanting of
deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the
shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard.
Anna Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that
showed that she felt she quite knew what she was about,

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went across the room to where Pierre was standing and

gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing
those around him, began crossing himself with the hand
that held the taper.
Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess
with the mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in
her handkerchief, and remained with it hidden for awhile;
then looking up and seeing Pierre she again began to
laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him without
laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out
of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the
columns. In the midst of the service the voices of the
priests suddenly ceased, they whispered to one another,
and the old servant who was holding the count’s hand got
up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna
stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man,
beckoned to Lorrain from behind her back. The French
doctor held no taper; he was leaning against one of the
columns in a respectful attitude implying that he, a
foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, understood
the full importance of the rite now being performed and
even approved of it. He now approached the sick man
with the noiseless step of one in full vigor of life, with his
delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the hand

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that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and
reflected a moment. The sick man was given something to
drink, there was a stir around him, then the people
resumed their places and the service continued. During
this interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair
on which he had been leaning, and- with air which
intimated that he knew what he was about and if others
did not understand him it was so much the worse for
them- did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him,
joined the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side
of the room where stood the high bedstead with its silken
hangings. On leaving the bed both Prince Vasili and the
princess passed out by a back door, but returned to their
places one after the other before the service was
concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this
occurrence than to the rest of what went on, having made
up his mind once for all that what he saw happening
around him that evening was in some way essential.
The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the
priest was heard respectfully congratulating the dying
man on having received the sacrament. The dying man lay
as lifeless and immovable as before. Around him
everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers,
among which Anna Mikhaylovna’s was the most distinct.

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Pierre heard her say:

‘Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will
be impossible..’
The sick man was so surrounded by doctors,
princesses, and servants that Pierre could no longer see
the reddish-yellow face with its gray mane- which, though
he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight of for a
single moment during the whole service. He judged by the
cautious movements of those who crowded round the
invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were
moving him.
‘Catch hold of my arm or you’ll drop him!’ he heard
one of the servants say in a frightened whisper. ‘Catch
hold from underneath. Here!’ exclaimed different voices;
and the heavy breathing of the bearers and the shuffling of
their feet grew more hurried, as if the weight they were
carrying were too much for them.
As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna,
passed the young man he caught a momentary glimpse
between their heads and backs of the dying man’s high,
stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by
those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his
gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably
broad brow and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual

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mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was not

disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as
Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count
had sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was
swaying helplessly with the uneven movements of the
bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself upon
nothing.
After a few minutes’ bustle beside the high bedstead,
those who had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna
Mikhaylovna touched Pierre’s hand and said, ‘Come.’
Pierre went with her to the bed on which the sick man had
been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony
just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the
pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the
green silk quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came
up the count was gazing straight at him, but with a look
the significance of which could not be understood by
mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that as
long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it
meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do,
and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna
made a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick
man’s hand and moving her lips as if to send it a kiss.
Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to touch the

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quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the

large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single
muscle of the count’s face stirred. Once more Pierre
looked questioningly at Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he
was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna with her eyes
indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre
obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing
right. Anna Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again
Pierre fell into the naively symmetrical pose of an
Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that his stout and
clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost
to look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who
still gazed at the spot where Pierre’s face had been before
he sat down. Anna Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude
her consciousness of the pathetic importance of these last
moments of meeting between the father and son. This
lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an hour.
Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count’s face
began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome
mouth was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize
how near death his father was), and from that distorted
mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna
Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man’s eyes,
trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre,

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then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an

inquiring whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and
face of the sick man showed impatience. He made an
effort to look at the servant who stood constantly at the
head of the bed.
‘Wants to turn on the other side,’ whispered the
servant, and got up to turn the count’s heavy body toward
the wall.
Pierre rose to help him.
While the count was being turned over, one of his arms
fell back helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it
forward. Whether he noticed the look of terror with which
Pierre regarded that lifeless arm, or whether some other
thought flitted across his dying brain, at any rate he
glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre’s terror-stricken
face, and again at the arm, and on his face a feeble,
piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his
features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At
sight of this smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in
his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed his
eyes. The sick man was turned on to his side with his face
to the wall. He sighed.

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‘He is dozing,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that

one of the princesses was coming to take her turn at
watching. ‘Let us go.’
Pierre went out.

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Chapter XXIV

There was now no one in the reception room except

Prince Vasili and the eldest princess, who were sitting
under the portrait of Catherine the Great and talking
eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion
they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess
hide something as she whispered:
‘I can’t bear the sight of that woman.’
‘Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing
room,’ said Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. ‘Go and
take something, my poor Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will
not hold out.’
To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a
sympathetic squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with
Anna Mikhaylovna into the small drawing room.
‘There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night
as a cup of this delicious Russian tea,’ Lorrain was saying
with an air of restrained animation as he stood sipping tea
from a delicate Chinese handleless cup before a table on
which tea and a cold supper were laid in the small circular
room. Around the table all who were at Count
Bezukhov’s house that night had gathered to fortify

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themselves. Pierre well remembered this small circular

drawing room with its mirrors and little tables. During
balls given at the house Pierre, who did not know how to
dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies
who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with
diamonds and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at
themselves in the brilliantly lighted mirrors which
repeated their reflections several times. Now this same
room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one small
table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in
the middle of the night a motley throng of people sat
there, not merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and
betraying by every word and movement that they none of
them forgot what was happening and what was about to
happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though
he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly
at his monitress and saw that she was again going on
tiptoe to the reception room where they had left Prince
Vasili and the eldest princess. Pierre concluded that this
also was essential, and after a short interval followed her.
Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside the princess, and
they were both speaking in excited whispers.
‘Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and
what is not necessary,’ said the younger of the two

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speakers, evidently in the same state of excitement as

when she had slammed the door of her room.
‘But, my dear princess,’ answered Anna Mikhaylovna
blandly but impressively, blocking the way to the
bedroom and preventing the other from passing, ‘won’t
this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment when he
needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when
his soul is already prepared..’
Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar
attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His
cheeks, which were so flabby that they looked heavier
below, were twitching violently; but he wore the air of a
man little concerned in what the two ladies were saying.
‘Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as
she pleases. You know how fond the count is of her.’
‘I don’t even know what is in this paper,’ said the
younger of the two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and
pointing to an inlaid portfolio she held in her hand. ‘All I
know is that his real will is in his writing table, and this is
a paper he has forgotten...’
She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter
sprang so as to bar her path.
‘I know, my dear, kind princess,’ said Anna
Mikhaylovna, seizing the portfolio so firmly that it was

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plain she would not let go easily. ‘Dear princess, I beg

and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous en
conjure..’
The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle
for the portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was
evident that if the princess did speak, her words would not
be flattering to Anna Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held
on tenaciously, her voice lost none of its honeyed
firmness and softness.
‘Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out
of place in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?’
‘Why don’t you speak, cousin?’ suddenly shrieked the
princess so loud that those in the drawing room heard her
and were startled. ‘Why do you remain silent when
heaven knows who permits herself to interfere, making a
scene on the very threshold of a dying man’s room?
Intriguer!’ she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her
might at the portfolio.
But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to
keep her hold on the portfolio, and changed her grip.
Prince Vasili rose. ‘Oh!’ said he with reproach and
surprise, ‘this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you.’
The princess let go.
‘And you too!’

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But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.

‘Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I
myself will go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?’
‘But, Prince,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, ‘after such a
solemn sacrament, allow him a moment’s peace! Here,
Pierre, tell them your opinion,’ said she, turning to the
young man who, having come quite close, was gazing
with astonishment at the angry face of the princess which
had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince
Vasili.
‘Remember that you will answer for the
consequences,’ said Prince Vasili severely. ‘You don’t
know what you are doing.’
‘Vile woman!’ shouted the princess, darting
unexpectedly at Anna Mikhaylovna and snatching the
portfolio from her.
Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.
At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had
watched so long and which had always opened so quietly,
burst noisily open and banged against the wall, and the
second of the three sisters rushed out wringing her hands.
‘What are you doing!’ she cried vehemently. ‘He is
dying and you leave me alone with him!’

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Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna,

stooping, quickly caught up the object of contention and
ran into the bedroom. The eldest princess and Prince
Vasili, recovering themselves, followed her. A few
minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard
face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her
expression showed an irrepressible hatred.
‘Yes, now you may be glad!’ said she; ‘this is what
you have been waiting for.’ And bursting into tears she
hid her face in her handkerchief and rushed from the
room.
Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on
which Pierre was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his
face with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and
that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an ague.
‘Ah, my friend!’ said he, taking Pierre by the elbow;
and there was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre
had never observed in it before. ‘How often we sin, how
much we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear
friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is
awful...’ and he burst into tears.
Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached
Pierre with slow, quiet steps.
‘Pierre!’ she said.

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Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young

man on his forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then
after a pause she said:
‘He is no more...’
Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
‘Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives
such relief as tears.’
She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was
glad no one could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left
him, and when she returned he was fast asleep with his
head on his arm.
In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:
‘Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to
speak of you. But God will support you: you are young,
and are now, I hope, in command of an immense fortune.
The will has not yet been opened. I know you well
enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it
imposes duties on you, and you must be a man.’
Pierre was silent.
‘Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I
had not been there, God only knows what would have
happened! You know, Uncle promised me only the day
before yesterday not to forget Boris. But he had no time. I

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hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father’s

wish?’
Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly
looked in silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After
her talk with Pierre, Anna Mikhaylovna returned to the
Rostovs’ and went to bed. On waking in the morning she
told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of
Count Bezukhov’s death. She said the count had died as
she would herself wish to die, that his end was not only
touching but edifying. As to the last meeting between
father and son, it was so touching that she could not think
of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved
better during those awful moments- the father who so
remembered everything and everybody at last and last and
had spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre,
whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he with
grief, though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden
his dying father. ‘It is painful, but it does one good. It
uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count and his
worthy son,’ said she. Of the behavior of the eldest
princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but
in whispers and as a great secret.

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Chapter XXV

At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski’s

estate, the arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife
was daily expected, but this expectation did not upset the
regular routine of life in the old prince’s household.
General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich (nicknamed
in society, ‘the King of Prussia’) ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there
continuously with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her
companion, Mademoiselle Bourienne. Though in the new
reign he was free to return to the capitals, he still
continued to live in the country, remarking that anyone
who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles
from Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no
one and nothing. He used to say that there are only two
sources of human vice- idleness and superstition, and only
two virtues- activity and intelligence. He himself
undertook his daughter’s education, and to develop these
two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and
geometry till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that
her whole time was occupied. He was himself always
occupied: writing his memoirs, solving problems in

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higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe,

working in the garden, or superintending the building that
was always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime
condition facilitating activity, regularity in his household
was carried to the highest point of exactitude. He always
came to table under precisely the same conditions, and not
only at the same hour but at the same minute. With those
about him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was
sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being a
hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few
hardhearted men would have aroused. Although he was in
retirement and had now no influence in political affairs,
every high official appointed to the province in which the
prince’s estate lay considered it his duty to visit him and
waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the
architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince
appeared punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone
sitting in this antechamber experienced the same feeling
of respect and even fear when the enormously high study
door opened and showed the figure of a rather small old
man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and
bushy gray eyebrows which, when he frowned,
sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd, youthfully
glittering eyes.

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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

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tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a

few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the
pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch
attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table,
summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a
blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet
unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively,
said severely:
‘Quite well? All right then, sit down.’ He took the
exercise book containing lessons in geometry written by
himself and drew up a chair with his foot.
‘For tomorrow!’ said he, quickly finding the page and
making a scratch from one paragraph to another with his
hard nail.
The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
‘Wait a bit, here’s a letter for you,’ said the old man
suddenly, taking a letter addressed in a woman’s hand
from a bag hanging above the table, onto which he threw
it.
At the sight of the letter red patches showed
themselves on the princess’ face. She took it quickly and
bent her head over it.
‘From Heloise?’ asked the prince with a cold smile that
showed his still sound, yellowish teeth.

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‘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:

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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.’

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She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and

took an uncut book from the high desk.
‘Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your
Heloise has sent you. Religious! I don’t interfere with
anyone’s belief... I have looked at it. Take it. Well, now
go. Go.’
He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the
door after her.
Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad,
scared expression that rarely left her and which made her
plain, sickly face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing
table, on which stood miniature portraits and which was
littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy
as her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book
and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from her
most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie
Karagina who had been at the Rostovs’ name-day party.
Julie wrote in French:
Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a
thing is separation! Though I tell myself that half my life
and half my happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in
spite of the distance separating us our hearts are united by
indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against fate and in
spite of the pleasures and distractions around me I cannot

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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:

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All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two

brothers is already abroad, the other is with the Guards,
who are starting on their march to the frontier. Our dear
Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought intends to
expose his precious person to the chances of war. God
grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the
peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it
has pleased the Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as
sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this war has
deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I
mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his enthusiasm
could not bear to remain inactive and has left the
university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear
Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for
the army was a great grief to me. This young man, of
whom I spoke to you last summer, is so noble-minded and
full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds
nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly,
he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and
poetic that my relations with him, transient as they were,
have been one of the sweetest comforts to my poor heart,
which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell
you about our parting and all that was said then. That is
still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know

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these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for

the latter are generally the stronger! I know very well that
Count Nicholas is too young ever to be more to me than a
friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic and pure
intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this!
The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the
death of old Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy!
The three princesses have received very little, Prince
Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur Pierre who has
inherited all the property and has besides been recognized
as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and
possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that
Prince Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair
and that he returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.
I confess I understand very little about all these matters
of wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this
young man, whom we all used to know as plain Monsieur
Pierre, has become Count Bezukhov and the owner of one
of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to
watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas
burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young
ladies themselves, toward him, though, between you and
me, he always seemed to me a poor sort of fellow. As for
the past two years people have amused themselves by

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finding husbands for me (most of whom I don’t even

know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now
speak of me as the future Countess Bezukhova. But you
will understand that I have no desire for the post. A
propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that
universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the
seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is
neither more nor less than with Prince Vasili’s son
Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to
someone rich and distinguee, and it is on you that his
relations’ choice has fallen. I don’t know what you will
think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it.
He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace.
That is all I have been able to find out about him.
But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second
sheet of paper, and Mamma has sent for me to go and
dine at the Apraksins’. Read the mystical book I am
sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though
there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to
grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates
the soul. Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father
and my compliments to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I
embrace you as I love you.
JULIE

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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.

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The news of Count Bezukhov’s death reached us

before your letter and my father was much affected by it.
He says the count was the last representative but one of
the great century, and that it is his own turn now, but that
he will do all he can to let his turn come as late as
possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as
a child. He always seemed to me to have an excellent
heart, and that is the quality I value most in people. As to
his inheritance and the part played by Prince Vasili, it is
very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine
Saviour’s words, that it is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but
am still more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened
with such riches- to what temptations he will be exposed!
If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to
be poorer than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks,
dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and which
has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that
among some good things it contains others which our
weak human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me
rather useless to spend time in reading what is
unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never

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could understand the fondness some people have for

confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that
merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination,
giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to
Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles and
Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they
contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are,
know the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we
remain in this flesh which forms an impenetrable veil
between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine
ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our
divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let
us try to conform to them and follow them, and let us be
persuaded that the less we let our feeble human minds
roam, the better we shall please God, who rejects all
knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we
seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from
us, the sooner will He vouchsafe its revelation to us
through His divine Spirit.
My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has
only told me that he has received a letter and is expecting
a visit from Prince Vasili. In regard to this project of
marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet friend, that I
look on marriage as a divine institution to which we must

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conform. However painful it may be to me, should the

Almighty lay the duties of wife and wife and mother upon
me I shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can,
without disquieting myself by examining my feelings
toward him whom He may give me for husband.
I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his
speedy arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure
will be but a brief one, however, for he will leave, us
again to take part in this unhappy war into which we have
been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you
are- at the heart of affairs and of the world- is the talk all
of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature-
which townsfolk consider characteristic of the country-
rumors of war are heard and painfully felt. My father talks
of nothing but marches and countermarches, things of
which I understand nothing; and the day before yesterday
during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a
heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts
enrolled from our people and starting to join the army.
You should have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and
children of the men who were going and should have
heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten
the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and

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forgiveness of injuries- and that men attribute the greatest

merit to skill in killing one another.
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour
and His most Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-
powerful care!
MARY
‘Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have
already dispatched mine. I have written to my poor
mother,’ said the smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne
rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural
r’s. She brought into Princess Mary’s strenuous,
mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere,
careless, lighthearted, and self-satisfied.
‘Princess, I must warn you,’ she added, lowering her
voice and evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and
speaking with exaggerated grasseyement, ‘the prince has
been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in a very bad
humor, very morose. Be prepared.’
‘Ah, dear friend,’ replied Princess Mary, ‘I have asked
you never to warn me of the humor my father is in. I do
not allow myself to judge him and would not have others
do so.’
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she
was five minutes late in starting her practice on the

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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.

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Chapter XXVI

The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to

the snoring of the prince, who was in his large study.
From the far side of the house through the closed doors
came the sound of difficult passages- twenty times
repeated- of a sonata by Dussek.
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood
drove up to the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the
carriage, helped his little wife to alight, and let her pass
into the house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing a wig, put
his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in a
whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed
the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son’s arrival nor
any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the
appointed order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently
knew this as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if
to ascertain whether his father’s habits had changed since
he was at home last, and, having assured himself that they
had not, he turned to his wife.
‘He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to
Mary’s room,’ he said.

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The little princess had grown stouter during this time,

but her eyes and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when
she began to speak just as merrily and prettily as ever.
‘Why, this is a palace!’ she said to her husband,
looking around with the expression with which people
compliment their host at a ball. ‘Let’s come, quick,
quick!’ And with a glance round, she smiled at Tikhon, at
her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.
‘Is that Mary practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her
by surprise.’
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad
expression.
‘You’ve grown older, Tikhon,’ he said in passing to
the old man, who kissed his hand.
Before they reached the room from which the sounds
of the clavichord came, the pretty, fair haired
Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne, rushed out
apparently beside herself with delight.
‘Ah! what joy for the princess!’ exclaimed she: ‘At
last! I must let her know.’
‘No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle
Bourienne,’ said the little princess, kissing her. ‘I know
you already through my sister-in-law’s friendship for you.
She was not expecting us?’

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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.

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‘Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!’ they suddenly exclaimed,

and then laughed. ‘I dreamed last night...’- ‘You were not
expecting us?...’- ‘Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?...’
‘And you have grown stouter!..’
‘I knew the princess at once,’ put in Mademoiselle
Bourienne.
‘And I had no idea!...’ exclaimed Princess Mary. ‘Ah,
Andrew, I did not see you.’
Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one
another, and he told her she was still the same crybaby as
ever. Princess Mary had turned toward her brother, and
through her tears the loving, warm, gentle look of her
large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment, rested
on Prince Andrew’s face.
The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy
upper lip continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether
lip when necessary and drawing up again next moment
when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and
sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had had on
the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in
her condition, and immediately after that informed them
that she had left all her clothes in Petersburg and that
heaven knew what she would have to dress in here; and
that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty Odyntsova

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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.

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‘She needs rest,’ said Prince Andrew with a frown.

‘Don’t you, Lise? Take her to your room and I’ll go to
Father. How is he? Just the same?’
‘Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your
opinion will be,’ answered the princess joyfully.
‘And are the hours the same? And the walks in the
avenues? And the lathe?’ asked Prince Andrew with a
scarcely perceptible smile which showed that, in spite of
all his love and respect for his father, he was aware of his
weaknesses.
‘The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the
mathematics and my geometry lessons,’ said Princess
Mary gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry were among
the greatest delights of her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had
come for the old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the
young prince to his father. The old man made a departure
from his usual routine in honor of his son’s arrival: he
gave orders to admit him to his apartments while he
dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-
fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered
hair; and when Prince Andrew entered his father’s
dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and
manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated

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face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was

sitting on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a
powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tikhon.
‘Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish
Buonaparte?’ said the old man, shaking his powdered
head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was holding fast
to plait, would allow.
‘You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he
goes on like this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects!
How are you?’ And he held out his cheek.
The old man was in a good temper after his nap before
dinner. (He used to say that a nap ‘after dinner was silver-
before dinner, golden.’) He cast happy, sidelong glances
at his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince
Andrew went up and kissed his father on the spot
indicated to him. He made no reply on his father’s
favorite topic- making fun of the military men of the day,
and more particularly of Bonaparte.
‘Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my
wife who is pregnant,’ said Prince Andrew, following
every movement of his father’s face with an eager and
respectful look. ‘How is your health?’

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‘Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I
am busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of
course I am well.’
‘Thank God,’ said his son smiling.
‘God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,’ he
continued, returning to his hobby; ‘tell me how the
Germans have taught you to fight Bonaparte by this new
science you call ‘strategy.’’
Prince Andrew smiled.
‘Give me time to collect my wits, Father,’ said he, with
a smile that showed that his father’s foibles did not
prevent his son from loving and honoring him. ‘Why, I
have not yet had time to settle down!’
‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ cried the old man, shaking his
pigtail to see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping
his by the hand. ‘The house for your wife is ready.
Princess Mary will take her there and show her over, and
they’ll talk nineteen to the dozen. That’s their woman’s
way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About
Mikhelson’s army I understand- Tolstoy’s too... a
simultaneous expedition.... But what’s the southern army
to do? Prussia is neutral... I know that. What about
Austria?’ said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and
down the room followed by Tikhon, who ran after him,

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handing him different articles of clothing. ‘What of

Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?’
Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began-
at first reluctantly, but gradually with more and more
animation, and from habit changing unconsciously from
Russian to French as he went on- to explain the plan of
operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an
army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so
as to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the
war; how part of that army was to join some Swedish
forces at Stralsund; how two hundred and twenty
thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians,
were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty
thousand Russians and as many English were to land at
Naples, and how a total force of five hundred thousand
men was to attack the French from different sides. The
old prince did not evince the least interest during this
explanation, but as if he were not listening to it continued
to dress while walking about, and three times
unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting:
‘The white one, the white one!’
This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the
waistcoat he wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:

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‘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.’

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Chapter XXVII

At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and

shaven, entered the dining room where his daughter-in-
law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle Bourienne were
already awaiting him together with his architect, who by a
strange caprice of his employer’s was admitted to table
though the position of that insignificant individual was
such as could certainly not have caused him to expect that
honor. The prince, who generally kept very strictly to
social distinctions and rarely admitted even important
government officials to his table, had unexpectedly
selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a
corner to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to
illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and had more
than once impressed on his daughter that Michael
Ivanovich was ‘not a whit worse than you or I.’ At dinner
the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich
more often than to anyone else.
In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the
house was exceedingly lofty, the members of the
household and the footmen- one behind each chair- stood
waiting for the prince to enter. The head butler, napkin on

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arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making signs to

the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the
door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew
was looking at a large gilt frame, new to him, containing
the genealogical tree of the Princes Bolkonski, opposite
which hung another such frame with a badly painted
portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to
the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown- an alleged
descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis.
Prince Andrew, looking again at that genealogical tree,
shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at a
portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
‘How thoroughly like him that is!’ he said to Princess
Mary, who had come up to him.
Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She
did not understand what he was laughing at. Everything
her father did inspired her with reverence and was beyond
question.
‘Everyone has his Achilles’ heel,’ continued Prince
Andrew. ‘Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in
such nonsense!’
Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of
her brother’s criticism and was about to reply, when the
expected footsteps were heard coming from the study.

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The prince walked in quickly and jauntily as was his

wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his
manners with the strict formality of his house. At that
moment the great clock struck two and another with a
shrill tone joined in from the drawing room. The prince
stood still; his lively glittering eyes from under their thick,
bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested on
the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar
enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old
man inspired in all around him. He stroked her hair and
then patted her awkwardly on the back of her neck.
‘I’m glad, glad, to see you,’ he said, looking attentively
into her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat
down. ‘Sit down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!’
He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law.
A footman moved the chair for her.
‘Ho, ho!’ said the old man, casting his eyes on her
rounded figure. ‘You’ve been in a hurry. That’s bad!’
He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with
his lips only and not with his eyes.
‘You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as
possible,’ he said.
The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his
words. She was silent and seemed confused. The prince

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asked her about her father, and she began to smile and
talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances, and she
became still more animated and chattered away giving
him greetings from various people and retailing the town
gossip.
‘Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband
and she has cried her eyes out,’ she said, growing more
and more lively.
As she became animated the prince looked at her more
and more sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her
sufficiently and had formed a definite idea of her, he
turned away and addressed Michael Ivanovich.
‘Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be
having a bad time of it. Prince Andrew’ (he always spoke
thus of his son) ‘has been telling me what forces are being
collected against him! While you and I never thought
much of him.’
Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when ‘you and
I’ had said such things about Bonaparte, but
understanding that he was wanted as a peg on which to
hang the prince’s favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at
the young prince, wondering what would follow.
‘He is a great tactician!’ said the prince to his son,
pointing to the architect.

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And the conversation again turned on the war, on

Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The
old prince seemed convinced not only that all the men of
the day were mere babies who did not know the A B C of
war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant
little Frenchy, successful only because there were no
longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but
he was also convinced that there were no political
difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only a sort of
puppet show at which the men of the day were playing,
pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily
bore with his father’s ridicule of the new men, and drew
him on and listened to him with evident pleasure.
‘The past always seems good,’ said he, ‘but did not
Suvorov himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from
which he did not know how to escape?’
‘Who told you that? Who?’ cried the prince.
‘Suvorov!’ And he jerked away his plate, which Tikhon
briskly caught. ‘Suvorov!... Consider, Prince Andrew.
Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but
he had the Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands.
It would have puzzled the devil himself! When you get
there you’ll find out what those Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths

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are! Suvorov couldn’t manage them so what chance has

Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy,’ he continued, ‘you
and your generals won’t get on against Buonaparte; you’ll
have to call in the French, so that birds of a feather may
fight together. The German, Pahlen, has been sent to New
York in America, to fetch the Frenchman, Moreau,’ he
said, alluding to the invitation made that year to Moreau
to enter the Russian service.... ‘Wonderful!... Were the
Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad,
either you fellows have all lost your wits, or I have
outlived mine. May God help you, but we’ll see what will
happen. Buonaparte has become a great commander
among them! Hm!..’
‘I don’t at all say that all the plans are good,’ said
Prince Andrew, ‘I am only surprised at your opinion of
Bonaparte. You may laugh as much as you like, but all
the same Bonaparte is a great generall.’
‘Michael Ivanovich!’ cried the old prince to the
architect who, busy with his roast meat, hoped he had
been forgotten: ‘Didn’t I tell you Buonaparte was a great
tactician? Here, he says same thing.’
‘To be sure, your excellency.’ replied the architect.
The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.

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‘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.

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‘Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle

Bourienne, here’s another admirer of that powder-monkey
emperor of yours,’ he exclaimed in excellent French.
‘You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!’
‘Dieu sait quand reviendra"... hummed the prince out
of tune and, with a laugh still more so, he quitted the
table.
The little princess during the whole discussion and the
rest of the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened
look now at her father-in-law and now at Princess Mary.
When they left the table she took her sister-in-law’s arm
and drew her into another room.
‘What a clever man your father is,’ said she; ‘perhaps
that is why I am afraid of him.’
‘Oh, he is so kind!’ answered Princess Mary.

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Chapter XXVIII

Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old

prince, not altering his routine, retired as usual after
dinner. The little princess was in her sister-in-law’s room.
Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without epaulettes had
been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to him.
After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks
put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those
things he always kept with him remained in his room; a
small box, a large canteen fitted with silver plate, two
Turkish pistols and a saber- a present from his father who
had brought it from the siege of Ochakov. All these
traveling effects of Prince Andrew’s were in very good
order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with
tapes.
When starting on a journey or changing their mode of
life, men capable of reflection are generally in a serious
frame of mind. At such moments one reviews the past and
plans for the future. Prince Andrew’s face looked very
thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he
paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking
straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head.

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Did he fear going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his

wife?- perhaps both, but evidently he did not wish to be
seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he
hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if
tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his usual
tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy
tread of Princess Mary that he heard.
‘I hear you have given orders to harness,’ she cried,
panting (she had apparently been running), ‘and I did so
wish to have another talk with you alone! God knows how
long we may again be parted. You are not angry with me
for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,’ she added,
as if to explain such a question.
She smiled as she uttered his pet name, ‘Andrusha.’ It
was obviously strange to her to think that this stern
handsome man should be Andrusha- the slender
mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
childhood.
‘And where is Lise?’ he asked, answering her question
only by a smile.
‘She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa
in my room. Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you
have,’ said she, sitting down on the sofa, facing her

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brother. ‘She is quite a child: such a dear, merry child. I

have grown so fond of her.’
Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the
ironical and contemptuous look that showed itself on his
face.
‘One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is
free from them, Andrew? Don’t forget that she has grown
up and been educated in society, and so her position now
is not a rosy one. We should enter into everyone’s
situation. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.* Think
it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been
used to, to be parted from her husband and be left alone
the country, in her condition! It’s very hard.’
*To understand all is to forgive all.
Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we
smile at those we think we thoroughly understand.
‘You live in the country and don’t think the life
terrible,’ he replied.
‘I... that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want
any other life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think,
Andrew: for a young society woman to be buried in the
country during the best years of her life, all alone- for
Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what poor

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resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best

society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...’
‘I don’t like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all,’ said
Prince Andrew.
‘No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s
much to be pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the
truth, I don’t need her, and she’s even in my way. You
know I always was a savage, and now am even more so. I
like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and
Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is
always gentle and kind, because he has been a benefactor
to them both. As Sterne says: ‘We don’t love people so
much for the good they have done us, as for the good we
have done them.’ Father took her when she was homeless
after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and
my father likes her way of reading. She reads to him in
the evenings and reads splendidly.’
‘To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father’s character
sometimes makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?’
Prince Andrew asked suddenly.
Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at
this question.
‘For me? For me?... Trying for me!...’ said she.

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‘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.

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‘Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear
me. Andrew...’ she said timidly after a moment’s silence,
‘I have a great favor to ask of you.’
‘What is it, dear?’
‘No- promise that you will not refuse! It will give you
no trouble and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will
comfort me. Promise, Andrusha!...’ said she, putting her
hand in her reticule but not yet taking out what she was
holding inside it, as if what she held were the subject of
her request and must not be shown before the request was
granted.
She looked timidly at her brother.
‘Even if it were a great deal of trouble...’ answered
Prince Andrew, as if guessing what it was about.
‘Think what you please! I know you are just like
Father. Think as you please, but do this for my sake!
Please do! Father’s father, our grandfather, wore it in all
his wars.’ (She still did not take out what she was holding
in her reticule.) ‘So you promise?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must
promise me you will never take it off. Do you promise?’
‘If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won’t break
my neck... To please you...’ said Prince Andrew. But

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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

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harshly,’ she began. ‘She is so sweet, so good-natured,

and her position now is a very hard one.’
‘I do not think I have complained of my wife to you,
Masha, or blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?’
Red patches appeared on Princess Mary’s face and she
was silent as if she felt guilty.
‘I have said nothing to you, but you have already been
talked to. And I am sorry for that,’ he went on.
The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and
cheeks. She tried to say something but could not. Her
brother had guessed right: the little princess had been
crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings
about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had
complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her
husband. After crying she had fallen asleep. Prince
Andrew felt sorry for his sister.
‘Know this, Masha: I can’t reproach, have not
reproached, and never shall reproach my wife with
anything, and I cannot reproach myself with anything in
regard to her; and that always will be so in whatever
circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know
the truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No!
Is she happy? No! But why this is so I don’t know..’

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As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and,

stooping, kissed her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a
thoughtful, kindly, and unaccustomed brightness, but he
was looking not at his sister but over her head toward the
darkness of the open doorway.
‘Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or- go and wake
and I’ll come in a moment. Petrushka!’ he called to his
valet: ‘Come here, take these away. Put this on the seat
and this to the right.’
Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then
stopped and said: ‘Andrew, if you had faith you would
have turned to God and asked Him to give you the love
you do not feel, and your prayer would have been
answered.’
‘Well, may be!’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Go, Masha; I’ll
come immediately.’
On the way to his sister’s room, in the passage which
connected one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met
Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling sweetly. It was the third
time that day that, with an ecstatic and artless smile, she
had met him in secluded passages.
‘Oh! I thought you were in your room,’ she said, for
some reason blushing and dropping her eyes.

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Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression

of anger suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to
her but looked at her forehead and hair, without looking at
her eyes, with such contempt that the Frenchwoman
blushed and went away without a word. When he reached
his sister’s room his wife was already awake and her
merry voice, hurrying one word after another, came
through the open door. She was speaking as usual in
French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to
make up for lost time.
‘No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false
curls and her mouth full of false teeth, as if she were
trying to cheat old age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!’
This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this
same laugh Prince Andrew had already heard from his
wife in the presence of others some five times. He entered
the room softly. The little princess, plump and rosy, was
sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking
incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even
phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and
asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered
him and continued her chatter.
The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It
was an autumn night, so dark that the coachman could not

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see the carriage pole. Servants with lanterns were bustling

about in the porch. The immense house was brilliant with
lights shining through its lofty windows. The domestic
serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
the young prince. The members of the household were all
gathered in the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich,
Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary, and the little
princess. Prince Andrew had been called to his father’s
study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All
were waiting for them to come out.
When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in
his old-age spectacles and white dressing gown, in which
he received no one but his son, sat at the table writing. He
glanced round.
‘Going?’ And he went on writing.
‘I’ve come to say good-by.’
‘Kiss me here,’ and he touched his cheek: ‘Thanks,
thanks!’
‘What do you thank me for?’
‘For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman’s
apron strings. The Service before everything. Thanks,
thanks!’ And he went on writing, so that his quill
spluttered and squeaked. ‘If you have anything to say, say
it. These two things can be done together,’ he added.

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‘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.’

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He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers,

shook it, looked straight into his son’s face with keen eyes
which seemed to see through him, and again laughed his
frigid laugh.
The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had
understood him. The old man continued to fold and seal
his letter, snatching up and throwing down the wax, the
seal, and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.
‘What’s to be done? She’s pretty! I will do everything.
Make your mind easy,’ said he in abrupt sentences while
sealing his letter.
Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and
displeased that his father understood him. The old man
got up and gave the letter to his son.
‘Listen!’ said he; ‘don’t worry about your wife: what
can be done shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to
Michael Ilarionovich.* I have written that he should make
use of you in proper places and not keep you long as an
adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember and like
him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all
right- serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski’s son need not serve
under anyone if he is in disfavor. Now come here.’
*Kutuzov.

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He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his

words, but his son was accustomed to understand him. He
led him to the desk, raised the lid, drew out a drawer, and
took out an exercise book filled with his bold, tall, close
handwriting.
‘I shall probably die before you. So remember, these
are my memoirs; hand them to the Emperor after my
death. Now here is a Lombard bond and a letter; it is a
premium for the man who writes a history of Suvorov’s
wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for
you to read when I am gone. You will find them useful.’
Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt
live a long time yet. He felt that he must not say it.
‘I will do it all, Father,’ he said.
‘Well, now, good-by!’ He gave his son his hand to
kiss, and embraced him. ‘Remember this, Prince Andrew,
if they kill you it will hurt me, your old father...’ he
paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous voice
suddenly shrieked: ‘but if I hear that you have not
behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be
ashamed!’
‘You need not have said that to me, Father,’ said the
son with a smile.
The old man was silent.

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‘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.

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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.

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BOOK TWO: 1805

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Chapter I

In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the

villages and towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet
other regiments freshly arriving from Russia were settling
near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the inhabitants
on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.
On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments
that had just reached Braunau had halted half a mile from
the town, waiting to be inspected by the commander in
chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance of the locality
and surroundings- fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs,
and hills in the distance- and despite the fact that the
inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were
not Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any
Russian regiment preparing for an inspection anywhere in
the heart of Russia.
On the evening of the last day’s march an order had
been received that the commander in chief would inspect
the regiment on the march. Though the words of the order
were not clear to the regimental commander, and the
question arose whether the troops were to be in marching
order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the

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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.

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The commander of the regiment was an elderly,

choleric, stout, and thick-set general with grizzled
eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from chest to back
than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform
showing the creases where it had been folded and thick
gold epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie
down on his massive shoulders. He had the air of a man
happily performing one of the most solemn duties of his
life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step
pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain
that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it,
and that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut
seemed to indicate that, besides military matters, social
interests and the fair sex occupied no small part of his
thoughts.
‘Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?’ he said, addressing one of
the battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward
(it was plain that they both felt happy). ‘We had our hands
full last night. However, I think the regiment is not a bad
one, eh?’
The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony
and laughed.
‘It would not be turned off the field even on the
Tsaritsin Meadow.’

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‘What?’ asked the commander.

At that moment, on the road from the town on which
signalers had been posted, two men appeared on horse
back. They were an aide-decamp followed by a Cossack.
The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which
had not been clearly worded the day before, namely, that
the commander in chief wished to see the regiment just in
the state in which it had been on the march: in their
greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
whatever.
A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come
to Kutuzov the day before with proposals and demands
for him to join up with the army of the Archduke
Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering this
junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in
support of his view, to show the Austrian general the
wretched state in which the troops arrived from Russia.
With this object he intended to meet the regiment; so the
worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the
commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp
did not know these circumstances, he nevertheless
delivered the definite order that the men should be in their
greatcoats and in marching order, and that the commander
in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this

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the regimental commander hung his head, silently

shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a
choleric gesture.
‘A fine mess we’ve made of it!’ he remarked.
‘There now! Didn’t I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if
it was said ‘on the march’ it meant in greatcoats?’ said he
reproachfully to the battalion commander. ‘Oh, my God!’
he added, stepping resolutely forward. ‘Company
commanders!’ he shouted in a voice accustomed to
command. ‘Sergeants major!... How soon will he be
here?’ he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful
politeness evidently relating to the personage he was
referring to.
‘In an hour’s time, I should say.’
‘Shall we have time to change clothes?’
‘I don’t know, General...’
The regimental commander, going up to the line
himself, ordered the soldiers to change into their
greatcoats. The company commanders ran off to their
companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the
greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly
the squares that had up to then been in regular order and
silent began to sway and stretch and hum with voices. On
all sides soldiers were running to and fro, throwing up

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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

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captain up and down as he came up panting, slackening

his pace as he approached.
‘You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats!
What is this?’ shouted the regimental commander,
thrusting forward his jaw and pointing at a soldier in the
ranks of the third company in a greatcoat of bluish cloth,
which contrasted with the others. ‘What have you been
after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave
your place? Eh? I’ll teach you to dress the men in fancy
coats for a parade.... Eh...?’
The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed
on his superior, pressed two fingers more and more
rigidly to his cap, as if in this pressure lay his only hope
of salvation.
‘Well, why don’t you speak? Whom have you got
there dressed up as a Hungarian?’ said the commander
with an austere gibe.
‘Your excellency..’
‘Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But
what about your excellency?... nobody knows.’
‘Your excellency, it’s the officer Dolokhov, who has
been reduced to the ranks,’ said the captain softly.

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‘Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or

into a soldier? If a soldier, he should be dressed in
regulation uniform like the others.’
‘Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the
march.’
‘Gave him leave? Leave? That’s just like you young
men,’ said the regimental commander cooling down a
little. ‘Leave indeed.... One says a word to you and you...
What?’ he added with renewed irritation, ‘I beg you to
dress your men decently.’
And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant,
directed his jerky steps down the line. He was evidently
pleased at his own display of anger and walking up to the
regiment wished to find a further excuse for wrath.
Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at
another because his line was not straight, he reached the
third company.
‘H-o-o-w are you standing? Where’s your leg? Your
leg?’ shouted the commander with a tone of suffering in
his voice, while there were still five men between him and
Dolokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.
Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking
straight with his clear, insolent eyes in the general’s face.

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‘Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major!

Change his coat... the ras...’ he did not finish.
‘General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to
endure...’ Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.
‘No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!’
‘Not bound to endure insults,’ Dolokhov concluded in
loud, ringing tones.
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The
general became silent, angrily pulling down his tight
scarf.
‘I request you to have the goodness to change your
coat,’ he said as he turned away.

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Chapter II

‘He’s coming!’ shouted the signaler at that moment.

The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse,
seized the stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body
across the saddle, righted himself, drew his saber, and
with a happy and resolute countenance, opening his
mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered
like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.
‘Att-ention!’ shouted the regimental commander in a
soul-shaking voice which expressed joy for himself,
severity for the regiment, and welcome for the
approaching chief.
Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by
trees, came a high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly
creaking on its springs and drawn by six horses at a smart
trot. Behind the caleche galloped the suite and a convoy
of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general, in a
white uniform that looked strange among the Russian
black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment.
Kutuzov and the Austrian general were talking in low
voices and Kutuzov smiled slightly as treading heavily he
stepped down from the carriage just as if those two

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thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the

regimental commander did not exist.
The word of command rang out, and again the
regiment quivered, as with a jingling sound it presented
arms. Then amidst a dead silence the feeble voice of the
commander in chief was heard. The regiment roared,
‘Health to your ex... len... len... lency!’ and again all
became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the
regiment moved; then he and the general in white,
accompanied by the suite, walked between the ranks.
From the way the regimental commander saluted the
commander in chief and devoured him with his eyes,
drawing himself up obsequiously, and from the way he
walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending
forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements,
and from the way he darted forward at every word or
gesture of the commander in chief, it was evident that he
performed his duty as a subordinate with even greater zeal
than his duty as a commander. Thanks to the strictness
and assiduity of its commander the regiment, in
comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the
same time, was in splendid condition. There were only
217 sick and stragglers. Everything was in good order
except the boots.

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Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes

stopping to say a few friendly words to officers he had
known in the Turkish war, sometimes also to the soldiers.
Looking at their boots he several times shook his head
sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an
expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming
anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of
things it was. The regimental commander ran forward on
each such occasion, fearing to miss a single word of the
commander in chief’s regarding the regiment. Behind
Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken
word to be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite.
These gentlemen talked among themselves and sometimes
laughed. Nearest of all to the commander in chief walked
a handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkonski. Beside
him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer,
extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face
and moist eyes. Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter
provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked beside
him. This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or
a change in the expression of his fixed eyes, watched the
regimental commander’s back and mimicked his every
movement. Each time the commander started and bent
forward, the hussar started and bent forward in exactly the

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same manner. Nesvitski laughed and nudged the others to

make them look at the wag.
Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands
of eyes which were starting from their sockets to watch
their chief. On reaching the third company he suddenly
stopped. His suite, not having expected this, involuntarily
came closer to him.
‘Ah, Timokhin!’ said he, recognizing the red-nosed
captain who had been reprimanded on account of the blue
greatcoat.
One would have thought it impossible for a man to
stretch himself more than Timokhin had done when he
was reprimanded by the regimental commander, but now
that the commander in chief addressed him he drew
himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not
have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to
look at him, and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood
his case and wished him nothing but good, quickly turned
away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his scarred
and puffy face.
‘Another Ismail comrade,’ said he. ‘A brave officer!
Are you satisfied with him?’ he asked the regimental
commander.

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And the latter- unconscious that he was being reflected

in the hussar officer as in a looking glass- started, moved
forward, and answered: ‘Highly satisfied, your
excellency!’
‘We all have our weaknesses,’ said Kutuzov smiling
and walking away from him. ‘He used to have a
predilection for Bacchus.’
The regimental commander was afraid he might be
blamed for this and did not answer. The hussar at that
moment noticed the face of the red-nosed captain and his
drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help
laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently
had complete control of his face, and while Kutuzov was
turning managed to make a grimace and then assume a
most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.
The third company was the last, and Kutuzov
pondered, apparently trying to recollect something. Prince
Andrew stepped forward from among the suite and said in
French:
‘You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov,
reduced to the ranks in this regiment.’
‘Where is Dolokhov?’ asked Kutuzov.

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Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier’s

gray greatcoat, did not wait to be called. The shapely
figure of the fair-haired soldier, with his clear blue eyes,
stepped forward from the ranks, went up to the
commander in chief, and presented arms.
‘Have you a complaint to make?’ Kutuzov asked with
a slight frown.
‘This is Dolokhov,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Ah!’ said Kutuzov. ‘I hope this will be a lesson to
you. Do your duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan’t
forget you if you deserve well.’
The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief
just as boldly as they had looked at the regimental
commander, seeming by their expression to tear open the
veil of convention that separates a commander in chief so
widely from a private.
‘One thing I ask of your excellency,’ Dolokhov said in
his firm, ringing, deliberate voice. ‘I ask an opportunity to
atone for my fault and prove my devotion to His Majesty
the Emperor and to Russia!’
Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with
which he had turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted
over his face. He turned away with a grimace as if to say
that everything Dolokhov had said to him and everything

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he could say had long been known to him, that he was

weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned
away and went to the carriage.
The regiment broke up into companies, which went to
their appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped
to receive boots and clothes and to rest after their hard
marches.
‘You won’t bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?’ said
the regimental commander, overtaking the third company
on its way to its quarters and riding up to Captain
Timokhin who was walking in front. (The regimental
commander’s face now that the inspection was happily
over beamed with irrepressible delight.) ‘It’s in the
Emperor’s service... it can’t be helped... one is sometimes
a bit hasty on parade... I am the first to apologize, you
know me!... He was very pleased!’ And he held out his
hand to the captain.
‘Don’t mention it, General, as if I’d be so bold!’
replied the captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a
smile which showed where two front teeth were missing
that had been knocked out by the butt end of a gun at
Ismail.
‘And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won’t forget him- he
may be quite easy. And tell me, please- I’ve been

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meaning to ask- how is to ask- how is he behaving

himself, and in general..’
‘As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your
excellency; but his character...’ said Timokhin.
‘And what about his character?’ asked the regimental
commander.
‘It’s different on different days,’ answered the captain.
‘One day he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured,
and the next he’s a wild beast.... In Poland, if you please,
he nearly killed a Jew.’
‘Oh, well, well!’ remarked the regimental commander.
‘Still, one must have pity on a young man in misfortune.
You know he has important connections... Well, then, you
just..’
‘I will, your excellency,’ said Timokhin, showing by
his smile that he understood his commander’s wish.
‘Well, of course, of course!’
The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in
the ranks and, reining in his horse, said to him:
‘After the next affair... epaulettes.’
Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor
did the mocking smile on his lips change.
‘Well, that’s all right,’ continued the regimental
commander. ‘A cup of vodka for the men from me,’ he

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added so that the soldiers could hear. ‘I thank you all!

God be praised!’ and he rode past that company and
overtook the next one.
‘Well, he’s really a good fellow, one can serve under
him,’ said Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.
‘In a word, a hearty one...’ said the subaltern, laughing
(the regimental commander was nicknamed King of
Hearts).
The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection
infected the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The
soldiers’ voices could be heard on every side.
‘And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?’
‘And so he is! Quite blind!’
‘No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and
leg bands... he noticed everything..’
‘When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..’
‘And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as
if he were smeared with chalk- as white as flour! I
suppose they polish him up as they do the guns.’
‘I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to
begin? You were near him. Everybody said that
Buonaparte himself was at Braunau.’
‘Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he
doesn’t know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The

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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,

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brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kamenski.’ This song

had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now
being sung in Austria, the only change being that the
words ‘Father Kamenski’ were replaced by ‘Father
Kutuzov.’
Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and
waved his arms as if flinging something to the ground, the
drummer- a lean, handsome soldier of forty- looked
sternly at the singers and screwed up his eyes. Then
having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him,
he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible
but precious object above his head and, holding it there
for some seconds, suddenly flung it down and began:
‘Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!’
‘Oh, my bower new...!’ chimed in twenty voices, and
the castanet player, in spite of the burden of his
equipment, rushed out to the front and, walking
backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders and
flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The
soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time
spontaneously, marched with long steps. Behind the
company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs,
and the tramp of horses’ hoofs were heard. Kutuzov and
his suite were returning to the town. The commander in

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chief made a sign that the men should continue to march

at ease, and he and all his suite showed pleasure at the
sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing soldier
and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file
from the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the
company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted
notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace
and boldness in time to the song and looking at those
driving past as if he pitied all who were not at that
moment marching with the company. The hussar cornet
of Kutuzov’s suite who had mimicked the regimental
commander, fell back from the carriage and rode up to
Dolokhov.
Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg,
belonged to the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had
met Dolokhov abroad as a private and had not seen fit to
recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken to the
gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of
an old friend.
‘My dear fellow, how are you?’ said he through the
singing, making his horse keep pace with the company.
‘How am I?’ Dolokhov answered coldly. ‘I am as you
see.’

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The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free

and easy gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the
intentional coldness of Dolokhov’s reply.
‘And how do you get on with the officers?’ inquired
Zherkov.
‘All right. They are good fellows. And how have you
wriggled onto the staff?’
‘I was attached; I’m on duty.’
Both were silent.
‘She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right
sleeve,’ went the song, arousing an involuntary sensation
of courage and cheerfulness. Their conversation would
probably have been different but for the effect of that
song.
‘Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?’ asked
Dolokhov.
‘The devil only knows! They say so.’
‘I’m glad,’ answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as
the song demanded.
‘I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a
game of faro!’ said Zherkov.
‘Why, have you too much money?’
‘Do come.’

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‘I can’t. I’ve sworn not to. I won’t drink and won’t

play till I get reinstated.’
‘Well, that’s only till the first engagement.’
‘We shall see.’
They were again silent.
‘Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use
on the staff..’
Dolokhov smiled. ‘Don’t trouble. If I want anything, I
won’t beg- I’ll take it!’
‘Well, never mind; I only..’
‘And I only..’
‘Good-by.’
‘Good health..’
‘It’s a long, long way.
To my native land..’
Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced
excitedly from foot to foot uncertain with which to start,
then settled down, galloped past the company, and
overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the song.

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Chapter III

On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the

Austrian general into his private room and, calling his
adjutant, asked for some papers relating to the condition
of the troops on their arrival, and the letters that had come
from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of
the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into
the room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the
Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the
table on which a plan was spread out.
‘Ah!...’ said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by
this exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and
he went on with the conversation in French.
‘All I can say, General,’ said he with a pleasant
elegance of expression and intonation that obliged one to
listen to each deliberately spoken word. It was evident
that Kutuzov himself listened with pleasure to his own
voice. ‘All I can say, General, is that if the matter
depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty
the Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I
should long ago have joined the archduke. And believe
me on my honour that to me personally it would be a

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pleasure to hand over the supreme command of the army

into the hands of a better informed and more skillful
general- of whom Austria has so many- and to lay down
all this heavy responsibility. But circumstances are
sometimes too strong for us, General.’
And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, ‘You
are quite at liberty not to believe me and I don’t even care
whether you do or not, but you have no grounds for
telling me so. And that is the whole point.’
The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no
option but to reply in the same tone.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, in a querulous and angry
tone that contrasted with his flattering words, ‘on the
contrary, your excellency’s participation in the common
action is highly valued by His Majesty; but we think the
present delay is depriving the splendid Russian troops and
their commander of the laurels they have been
accustomed to win in their battles,’ he concluded his
evidently prearranged sentence.
Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.
‘But that is my conviction, and judging by the last
letter with which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand
has honored me, I imagine that the Austrian troops, under
the direction of so skillful a leader as General Mack, have

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by now already gained a decisive victory and no longer

need our aid,’ said Kutuzov.
The general frowned. Though there was no definite
news of an Austrian defeat, there were many
circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors that
were afloat, and so Kutuzov’s suggestion of an Austrian
victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on
blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed
to say that he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the
last letter he had received from Mack’s army informed
him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the
army was very favorable.
‘Give me that letter,’ said Kutuzov turning to Prince
Andrew. ‘Please have a look at it’- and Kutuzov with an
ironical smile about the corners of his mouth read to the
Austrian general the following passage, in German, from
the Archduke Ferdinand’s letter:
We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy
thousand men with which to attack and defeat the enemy
should he cross the Lech. Also, as we are masters of Ulm,
we cannot be deprived of the advantage of commanding
both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves
on his line of communications, recross the river lower

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down, and frustrate his intention should he try to direct

his whole force against our faithful ally. We shall
therefore confidently await the moment when the Imperial
Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in
conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the
enemy the fate he deserves.
Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and
looked at the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and
attentively.
‘But you know the wise maxim your excellency,
advising one to expect the worst,’ said the Austrian
general, evidently wishing to have done with jests and to
come to business. He involuntarily looked round at the
aide-de-camp.
‘Excuse me, General,’ interrupted Kutuzov, also
turning to Prince Andrew. ‘Look here, my dear fellow, get
from Kozlovski all the reports from our scouts. Here are
two letters from Count Nostitz and here is one from His
Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these,’ he
said, handing him several papers, ‘make a neat
memorandum in French out of all this, showing all the
news we have had of the movements of the Austrian
army, and then give it to his excellency.’

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Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having

understood from the first not only what had been said but
also what Kutuzov would have liked to tell him. He
gathered up the papers and with a bow to both, stepped
softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.
Though not much time had passed since Prince
Andrew had left Russia, he had changed greatly during
that period. In the expression of his face, in his
movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his
former affected languor and indolence. He now looked
like a man who has time to think of the impression he
makes on others, but is occupied with agreeable and
interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction
with himself and those around him, his smile and glance
were brighter and more attractive.
Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had
received him very kindly, promised not to forget him,
distinguished him above the other adjutants, and had
taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious
commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old
comrade, Prince Andrew’s father.
Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished
by his industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider
myself fortunate to have such a subordinate by me.

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On Kutuzov’s staff, among his fellow officers and in

the army generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in
Petersburg society, two quite opposite reputations. Some,
a minority, acknowledged him to be different from
themselves and from everyone else, expected great things
of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and
with them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant.
Others, the majority, disliked him and considered him
conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But among these people
Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that they
respected and even feared him.
Coming out of Kutuzov’s room into the waiting room
with the papers in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his
comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty, Kozlovski, who was
sitting at the window with a book.
‘Well, Prince?’ asked Kozlovski.
‘I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why
we are not advancing.’
‘And why is it?’
Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
‘Any news from Mack?’
‘No.’
‘If it were true that he has been beaten, news would
have come.’

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‘Probably,’ said Prince Andrew moving toward the

outer door.
But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat,
with the order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black
bandage round his head, who had evidently just arrived,
entered quickly, slamming the door. Prince Andrew
stopped short.
‘Commander in Chief Kutuzov?’ said the newly
arrived general speaking quickly with a harsh German
accent, looking to both sides and advancing straight
toward the inner door.
‘The commander in chief is engaged,’ said Kozlovski,
going hurriedly up to the unknown general and blocking
his way to the door. ‘Whom shall I announce?’
The unknown general looked disdainfully down at
Kozlovski, who was rather short, as if surprised that
anyone should not know him.
‘The commander in chief is engaged,’ repeated
Kozlovski calmly.
The general’s face clouded, his lips quivered and
trembled. He took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled
something in pencil, tore out the leaf, gave it to
Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw
himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if

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asking, ‘Why do they look at me?’ Then he lifted his

head, stretched his neck as if he intended to say
something, but immediately, with affected indifference,
began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound which
immediately broke off. The door of the private room
opened and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The
general with the bandaged head bent forward as though
running away from some danger, and, making long, quick
strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.
‘Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,’ he uttered in a
broken voice.
Kutuzov’s face as he stood in the open doorway
remained perfectly immobile for a few moments. Then
wrinkles ran over his face like a wave and his forehead
became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully,
closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before
him, and closed the door himself behind him.
The report which had been circulated that the
Austrians had been beaten and that the whole army had
surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct. Within half an
hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with
orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had
hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the
enemy.

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Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers

whose chief interest lay in the general progress of the war.
When he saw Mack and heard the details of his disaster
he understood that half the campaign was lost, understood
all the difficulties of the Russian army’s position, and
vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would
have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the
thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in
a week’s time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the
first Russian encounter with the French since Suvorov
met them. He feared that Bonaparte’s genius might
outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the
same time could not admit the idea of his hero being
disgraced.
Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew
went toward his room to write to his father, to whom he
wrote every day. In the corridor he met Nesvitski, with
whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkov; they were
as usual laughing.
‘Why are you so glum?’ asked Nesvitski noticing
Prince Andrew’s pale face and glittering eyes.
‘There’s nothing to be gay about,’ answered
Bolkonski.

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Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov,

there came toward them from the other end of the
corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on Kutuzov’s
staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army,
and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the
previous evening. There was room enough in the wide
corridor for the generals to pass the three officers quite
easily, but Zherkov, pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm,
said in a breathless voice,
‘They’re coming!... they’re coming!... Stand aside,
make way, please make way!’
The generals were passing by, looking as if they
wished to avoid embarrassing attentions. On the face of
the wag Zherkov there suddenly appeared a stupid smile
of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
‘Your excellency,’ said he in German, stepping
forward and addressing the Austrian general, ‘I have the
honor to congratulate you.’
He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and
then with the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing
lesson.
The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him
severely but, seeing the seriousness of his stupid smile,

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could not but give him a moment’s attention. He screwed

up his eyes showing that he was listening.
‘I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack
has arrived, quite well, only a little bruised just here,’ he
added, pointing with a beaming smile to his head.
The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
‘Gott, wie naiv!’* said he angrily, after he had gone a
few steps.
*"Good God, what simplicity!’
Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince
Andrew, but Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him
away with an angry look and turned to Zherkov. The
nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of Mack, the
news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov’s untimely
jest.
‘If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself,’ he
said sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, ‘I
can’t prevent your doing so; but I warn you that if you
dare to play the fool in my presence, I will teach you to
behave yourself.’
Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this
outburst that they gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-
open eyes.

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‘What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,’ said

Zherkov.
‘I am not jesting with you; please be silent!’ cried
Bolkonski, and taking Nesvitski’s arm he left Zherkov,
who did not know what to say.
‘Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?’ said Nesvitski
trying to soothe him.
‘What’s the matter?’ exclaimed Prince Andrew
standing still in his excitement. ‘Don’t you understand
that either we are officers serving our Tsar and our
country, rejoicing in the successes and grieving at the
misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely
lackeys who care nothing for their master’s business.
Quarante mille hommes massacres et l’armee de nos allies
detruite, et vous trouvez la le mot pour rire,’* he said, as
if strengthening his views by this French sentence. ‘C’ est
bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet individu dont vous
avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour vous.*[2]
Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way,’ he
added in Russian- but pronouncing the word with a
French accent- having noticed that Zherkov could still
hear him.
*"Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our
allies destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!’

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*[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.

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Chapter IV

The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from

Braunau. The squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served
as a cadet was quartered in the German village of
Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were assigned
to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander,
known throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska
Denisov. Cadet Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the
regiment in Poland, had lived with the squadron
commander.
On October 11, the day when all was astir at
headquarters over the news of Mack’s defeat, the camp
life of the officers of this squadron was proceeding as
usual. Denisov, who had been losing at cards all night,
had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early in
the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his
cadet uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the
porch, swung his leg over the saddle with a supple
youthful movement, stood for a moment in the stirrup as
if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang down
and called to his orderly.

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‘Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!’ said he to the hussar

who rushed up headlong to the horse. ‘Walk him up and
down, my dear fellow,’ he continued, with that gay
brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young people
show to everyone when they are happy.
‘Yes, your excellency,’ answered the Ukrainian gaily,
tossing his head.
‘Mind, walk him up and down well!’
Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but
Bondarenko had already thrown the reins of the snaffle
bridle over the horse’s head. It was evident that the cadet
was liberal with his tips and that it paid to serve him.
Rostov patted the horse’s neck and then his flank, and
lingered for a moment.
‘Splendid! What a horse he will be!’ he thought with a
smile, and holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran
up the steps of the porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat
and a pointed cap, pitchfork in hand, was clearing manure
from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face immediately
brightened on seeing Rostov. ‘Schon gut Morgen! Schon
gut Morgen!’* he said winking with a merry smile,
evidently pleased to greet the young man.
*"A very good morning! A very good morning!’

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‘Schon fleissig?’* said Rostov with the same gay

brotherly smile which did not leave his eager face. ‘Hoch
Oestreicher! Hoch Russen! Kaiser Alexander hoch!’*[2]
said he, quoting words often repeated by the German
landlord.
*"Busy already?’
*[2] ‘Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the
Russians! Hurrah for Emperor Alexander!’
The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled
off his cap, and waving it above his head cried:
‘Und die ganze Welt hoch!’*
*"And hurrah for the whole world!’
Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German
and ctied laughing, ‘Und vivat die ganze Welt!’ Though
neither the German cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back
with his platoon from foraging for hay had any reason for
rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight
and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their
mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German
returning to his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage
he occupied with Denisov.
‘What about your master?’ he asked Lavrushka,
Denisov’s orderly, whom all the regiment knew for a
rogue.

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‘Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been

losing,’ answered Lavrushka. ‘I know by now, if he wins
he comes back early to brag about it, but if he stays out
till morning it means he’s lost and will come back in a
rage. Will you have coffee?’
‘Yes, bring some.’
Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. ‘He’s
coming!’ said he. ‘Now for trouble!’ Rostov looked out of
the window and saw Denisov coming home. Denisov was
a small man with a red face, sparkling black eyes, and
black tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened
cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a
crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to
the porch gloomily, hanging his head.
‘Lavwuska!’ he shouted loudly and angrily, ‘take it
off, blockhead!’
‘Well, I am taking it off,’ replied Lavrushka’s voice.
‘Ah, you’re up already,’ said Denisov, entering the
room.
‘Long ago,’ answered Rostov, ‘I have already been for
the hay, and have seen Fraulein Mathilde.’
‘Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost
yesterday like a damned fool!’ cried Denisov, not

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pronouncing his r’s. ‘Such ill luck! Such ill luck. As soon
as you left, it began and went on. Hullo there! Tea!’
Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his
short strong teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both
hands to ruffle up his thick tangled black hair.
‘And what devil made me go to that wat?’ (an officer
nicknamed ‘the rat’) he said, rubbing his forehead and
whole face with both hands. ‘Just fancy, he didn’t let me
win a single cahd, not one cahd.’
He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him,
gripped it in his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the
sparks fly, while he continued to shout.
‘He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as
one doubles it; gives the singles and snatches the
doubles!’
He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe,
and threw it away. Then he remained silent for a while,
and all at once looked cheerfully with his glittering, black
eyes at Rostov.
‘If at least we had some women here; but there’s
nothing foh one to do but dwink. If we could only get to
fighting soon. Hullo, who’s there?’ he said, turning to the
door as he heard a tread of heavy boots and the clinking
of spurs that came to a stop, and a respectful cough.

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‘The squadron quartermaster!’ said Lavrushka.

Denisov’s face puckered still more.
‘Wetched!’ he muttered, throwing down a purse with
some gold in it. ‘Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much
there is left and shove the purse undah the pillow,’ he
said, and went out to the quartermaster.
Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging
the old and new coins in separate piles, began counting
them.
‘Ah! Telyanin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last
night,’ came Denisov’s voice from the next room.
‘Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,’ replied a
piping voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of
the same squadron, entered the room.
Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the
damp little hand which was offered him. Telyanin for
some reason had been transferred from the Guards just
before this campaign. He behaved very well in the
regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested
him and was unable to overcome or conceal his
groundless antipathy to the man.
‘Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?’
he asked. (Rook was a young horse Telyanin had sold to
Rostov.)

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The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking

to straight in the face; his eyes continually wandered from
one object to another.
‘I saw you riding this morning...’ he added.
‘Oh, he’s all right, a good horse,’ answered Rostov,
though the horse for which he had paid seven hundred
rubbles was not worth half that sum. ‘He’s begun to go a
little lame on the left foreleg,’ he added.
‘The hoof’s cracked! That’s nothing. I’ll teach you
what to do and show you what kind of rivet to use.’
‘Yes, please do,’ said Rostov.
‘I’ll show you, I’ll show you! It’s not a secret. And it’s
a horse you’ll thank me for.’
‘Then I’ll have it brought round,’ said Rostov wishing
to avoid Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.
In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on
the threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting
to him. On seeing Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face
and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to the room
where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned and gave a
shudder of disgust.
‘Ugh! I don’t like that fellow‘‘ he said, regardless of
the quartermaster’s presence.

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Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: ‘Nor

do I, but what’s one to do?’ and, having given his order,
he returned to Telyanin.
Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in
which Rostov had left him, rubbing his small white hands.
‘Well there certainly are disgusting people,’ thought
Rostov as he entered.
‘Have you told them to bring the horse?’ asked
Telyanin, getting up and looking carelessly about him.
‘I have.’
‘Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov
about yesterday’s order. Have you got it, Denisov?’
‘Not yet. But where are you off to?’
‘I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,’
said Telyanin.
They went through the porch and into the stable. The
lieutenant explained how to rivet the hoof and went away
to his own quarters.
When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka
and a sausage on the table. Denisov was sitting there
scratching with his pen on a sheet of paper. He looked
gloomily in Rostov’s face and said: ‘I am witing to her.’
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his
hand and, evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in

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words what he wanted to write, told Rostov the contents

of his letter.
‘You see, my fwiend,’ he said, ‘we sleep when we
don’t love. We are childwen of the dust... but one falls in
love and one is a God, one is pua’ as on the first day of
cweation... Who’s that now? Send him to the devil, I’m
busy!’ he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to him not
in the least abashed.
‘Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It’s
the quartermaster for the money.’
Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply
but stopped.
‘Wetched business,’ he muttered to himself. ‘How
much is left in the puhse?’ he asked, turning to Rostov.
‘Seven new and three old imperials.’
‘Oh, it’s wetched! Well, what are you standing there
for, you sca’cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh,’ he shouted
to Lavrushka.
‘Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some,
you know,’ said Rostov, blushing.
‘Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I
don’t,’ growled Denisov.

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‘But if you won’t accept money from me like a

comrade, you will offend me. Really I have some,’
Rostov repeated.
‘No, I tell you.’
And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from
under the pillow.
‘Where have you put it, Wostov?’
‘Under the lower pillow.’
‘It’s not there.’
Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse
was not there.
‘That’s a miwacle.’
‘Wait, haven’t you dropped it?’ said Rostov, picking
up the pillows one at a time and shaking them.
He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not
there.
‘Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember
thinking that you kept it under your head like a treasure,’
said Rostov. ‘I put it just here. Where is it?’ he asked,
turning to Lavrushka.
‘I haven’t been in the room. It must be where you put
it.’
‘But it isn’t?..’

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‘You’re always like that; you thwow a thing down

anywhere and forget it. Feel in your pockets.’
‘No, if I hadn’t thought of it being a treasure,’ said
Rostov, ‘but I remember putting it there.’
Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under
the bed and under the table, searched everywhere, and
stood still in the middle of the room. Denisov silently
watched Lavrushka’s movements, and when the latter
threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be
found Denisov glanced at Rostov.
‘Wostov, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks..’
Rostov felt Denisov’s gaze fixed on him, raised his
eyes, and instantly dropped them again. All the blood
which had seemed congested somewhere below his throat
rushed to his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.
‘And there hasn’t been anyone in the room except the
lieutenant and yourselves. It must be here somewhere,’
said Lavrushka.
‘Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for
it!’ shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and
rushing at the man with a threatening gesture. ‘If the
purse isn’t found I’ll flog you, I’ll flog you all.’
Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning
his coat, buckled on his saber, and put on his cap.

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‘I must have that purse, I tell you,’ shouted Denisov,

shaking his orderly by the shoulders and knocking him
against the wall.
‘Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,’ said
Rostov, going toward the door without raising his eyes.
Denisov paused, thought a moment, and, evidently
understanding what Rostov hinted at, seized his arm.
‘Nonsense!’ he cried, and the veins on his forehead
and neck stood out like cords. ‘You are mad, I tell you. I
won’t allow it. The purse is here! I’ll flay this scoundwel
alive, and it will be found.’
‘I know who has taken it,’ repeated Rostov in an
unsteady voice, and went to the door.
‘And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!’ shouted
Denisov, rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much
anger as though Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly
fixed his eyes directly on his face.
‘Do you understand what you’re saying?’ he said in a
trembling voice. ‘There was no one else in the room
except myself. So that if it is not so, then..’
He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
‘Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody,’ were the
last words Rostov heard.

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Rostov went to Telyanin’s quarters.

‘The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,’ said
Telyanin’s orderly. ‘Has something happened?’ he added,
surprised at the cadet’s troubled face.
‘No, nothing.’
‘You’ve only just missed him,’ said the orderly.
The headquarters were situated two miles away from
Salzeneck, and Rostov, without returning home, took a
horse and rode there. There was an inn in the village
which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to it and
saw Telyanin’s horse at the porch.
In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting
over a dish of sausages and a bottle of wine.
‘Ah, you’ve come here too, young man!’ he said,
smiling and raising his eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter
the word; and he sat down at the nearest table.
Both were silent. There were two Germans and a
Russian officer in the room. No one spoke and the only
sounds heard were the clatter of knives and the munching
of the lieutenant.
When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of
his pocket a double purse and, drawing its rings aside

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with his small, white, turned-up fingers, drew out a gold

imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to the waiter.
‘Please be quick,’ he said.
The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to
Telyanin.
‘Allow me to look at your purse,’ he said in a low,
almost inaudible, voice.
With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin
handed him the purse.
‘Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,’ he said, growing
suddenly pale, and added, ‘Look at it, young man.’
Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the
money in it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was
looking about in his usual way and suddenly seemed to
grow very merry.
‘If we get to Vienna I’ll get rid of it there but in these
wretched little towns there’s nowhere to spend it,’ said he.
‘Well, let me have it, young man, I’m going.’
Rostov did not speak.
‘And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed
you quite decently here,’ continued Telyanin. ‘Now then,
let me have it.’
He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse.
Rostov let go of it. Telyanin took the purse and began

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carelessly slipping it into the pocket of his riding

breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth slightly
open, as if to say, ‘Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my
pocket and that’s quite simple and is no else’s business.’
‘Well, young man?’ he said with a sigh, and from
under his lifted brows he glanced into Rostov’s eyes.
Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin’s
eyes to Rostov’s and back, and back again and again in an
instant.
‘Come here,’ said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin’s
arm and almost dragging him to the window. ‘That money
is Denisov’s; you took it...’ he whispered just above
Telyanin’s ear.
‘What? What? How dare you? What?’ said Telyanin.
But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry
and an entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard
them, an enormous load of doubt fell from him. He was
glad, and at the same instant began to pity the miserable
man who stood before him, but the task he had begun had
to be completed.
‘Heaven only knows what the people here may
imagine,’ muttered Telyanin, taking up his cap and
moving toward a small empty room. ‘We must have an
explanation..’

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‘I know it and shall prove it,’ said Rostov.

‘I..’
Every muscle of Telyanin’s pale, terrified face began
to quiver, his eyes still shifted from side to side but with a
downward look not rising to Rostov’s face, and his sobs
were audible.
‘Count!... Don’t ruin a young fellow... here is this
wretched money, take it...’ He threw it on the table. ‘I
have an old father and mother!..’
Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin’s eyes, and
went out of the room without a word. But at the door he
stopped and then retraced his steps. ‘O God,’ he said with
tears in his eyes, ‘how could you do it?’
‘Count...’ said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.
‘Don’t touch me,’ said Rostov, drawing back. ‘If you
need it, take the money,’ and he threw the purse to him
and ran out of the inn.

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Chapter V

That same evening there was an animated discussion

among the squadron’s officers in Denisov’s quarters.
‘And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the
colonel!’ said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with
enormous mustaches and many wrinkles on his large
features, to Rostov who was crimson with excitement.
The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to
the ranks for affairs of honor and had twice regained his
commission.
‘I will allow no one to call me a liar!’ cried Rostov.
‘He told me I lied, and I told him he lied. And there it
rests. He may keep me on duty every day, or may place
me under arrest, but no one can make me apologize,
because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..’
‘You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen,’
interrupted the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly
stroking his long mustache. ‘You tell the colonel in the
presence of other officers that an officer has stolen..’
‘I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the
presence of other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have

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spoken before them, but I am not a diplomatist. That’s

why I joined the hussars, thinking that here one would not
need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying- so let him
give me satisfaction..’
‘That’s all right. No one thinks you a coward, but
that’s not the point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of
the question for a cadet to demand satisfaction of his
regimental commander?’
Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening
to the conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in
it. He answered the staff captain’s question by a
disapproving shake of his head.
‘You speak to the colonel about this nasty business
before other officers,’ continued the staff captain, ‘and
Bogdanich’ (the colonel was called Bogdanich) ‘shuts
you up.’
‘He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an
untruth.’
‘Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to
him and must apologize.’
‘Not on any account!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘I did not expect this of you,’ said the staff captain
seriously and severely. ‘You don’t wish to apologize, but,
man, it’s not only to him but to the whole regiment- all of

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us- you’re to blame all round. The case is this: you ought
to have thought the matter over and taken advice; but no,
you go and blurt it all straight out before the officers.
Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried
and disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole
regiment because of one scoundrel? Is that how you look
at it? We don’t see it like that. And Bogdanich was a
brick: he told you you were saying what was not true. It’s
not pleasant, but what’s to be done, my dear fellow? You
landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth
the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing,
and you wish to make the whole affair public. You are
offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not apologize
to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich
may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!
You’re quick at taking offense, but you don’t mind
disgracing the whole regiment!’ The staff captain’s voice
began to tremble. ‘You have been in the regiment next to
no time, my lad, you’re here today and tomorrow you’ll
be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your
fingers when it is said ‘There are thieves among the
Pavlograd officers!’ But it’s not all the same to us! Am I
not right, Denisov? It’s not the same!’

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Denisov remained silent and did not move, but

occasionally looked with his glittering black eyes at
Rostov.
‘You value your own pride and don’t wish to
apologize,’ continued the staff captain, ‘but we old
fellows, who have grown up in and, God willing, are
going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the
regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old
fellow! And all this is not right, it’s not right! You may
take offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It’s
not right!’
And the staff captain rose and turned away from
Rostov.
‘That’s twue, devil take it’ shouted Denisov, jumping
up. ‘Now then, Wostov, now then!’
Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first
at one officer and then at the other.
‘No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite
understand. You’re wrong to think that of me... I... for
me... for the honor of the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll
show that in action, and for me the honor of the flag...
Well, never mind, it’s true I’m to blame, to blame all
round. Well, what else do you want?..’

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‘Come, that’s right, Count!’ cried the staff captain,

turning round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with
his big hand.
‘I tell you,’ shouted Denisov, ‘he’s a fine fellow.’
‘That’s better, Count,’ said the staff captain, beginning
to address Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his
confession. ‘Go and apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!’
‘Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word
from me,’ said Rostov in an imploring voice, ‘but I can’t
apologize, by God I can’t, do what you will! How can I
go and apologize like a little boy asking forgiveness?’
Denisov began to laugh.
‘It’ll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and
you’ll pay for your obstinacy,’ said Kirsten.
‘No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe
the feeling. I can’t..’
‘Well, it’s as you like,’ said the staff captain. ‘And
what has become of that scoundrel?’ he asked Denisov.
‘He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off
the list tomowwow,’ muttered Denisov.
‘It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,’
said the staff captain.
‘Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill
him!’ shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.

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Just then Zherkov entered the room.

‘What brings you here?’ cried the officers turning to
the newcomer.
‘We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has
surrendered with his whole army.’
‘It’s not true!’
‘I’ve seen him myself!’
‘What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?’
‘Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such
news! But how did you come here?’
‘I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of
that devil, Mack. An Austrian general complained of me.
I congratulated him on Mack’s arrival... What’s the
matter, Rostov? You look as if you’d just come out of a
hot bath.’
‘Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these
last two days.’
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the
news brought by Zherkov. They were under orders to
advance next day.
‘We’re going into action, gentlemen!’
‘Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!’

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Chapter VI

Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind

him the bridges over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and
Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the Russian troops were
crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian baggage
train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse
that opened out before the heights on which the Russian
batteries stood guarding the bridge was at times veiled by
a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and then, suddenly
spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could be
clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down
below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-
roofed houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides
of which streamed jostling masses of Russian troops. At
the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island, and a castle
with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of
the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky
left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a
mystic background of green treetops and bluish gorges.
The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a wild virgin

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pine forest, and far away on the other side of the Enns the
enemy’s horse patrols could be discerned.
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the
general in command of the rearguard stood with a staff
officer, scanning the country through his fieldglass. A
little behind them Nesvitski, who had been sent to the
rearguard by the commander in chief, was sitting on the
trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him
had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski
was treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel.
The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
‘Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no
fool. It’s a fine place! Why are you not eating anything,
gentlemen?’ Nesvitski was saying.
‘Thank you very much, Prince,’ answered one of the
officers, pleased to be talking to a staff officer of such
importance. ‘It’s a lovely place! We passed close to the
park and saw two deer... and what a splendid house!’
‘Look, Prince,’ said another, who would have dearly
liked to take another pie but felt shy, and therefore
pretended to be examining the countryside- ‘See, our
infantrymen have already got there. Look there in the
meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging

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something. They’ll ransack that castle,’ he remarked with

evident approval.
‘So they will,’ said Nesvitski. ‘No, but what I should
like,’ added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped
handsome mouth, ‘would be to slip in over there.’
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his
eyes narrowed and gleamed.
‘That would be fine, gentlemen!’
The officers laughed.
‘Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian
girls among them. On my word I’d give five years of my
life for it!’
‘They must be feeling dull, too,’ said one of the bolder
officers, laughing.
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed
out something to the general, who looked through his
field glass.
‘Yes, so it is, so it is,’ said the general angrily,
lowering the field glass and shrugging his shoulders, ‘so it
is! They’ll be fired on at the crossing. And why are they
dawdling there?’
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the
naked eye, and from their battery a milk-white cloud

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arose. Then came the distant report of a shot, and our

troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.
Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general,
smiling.
‘Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?’
he said.
‘It’s a bad business,’ said the general without
answering him, ‘our men have been wasting time.’
‘Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?’ asked
Nesvitski.
‘Yes, please do,’ answered the general, and he repeated
the order that had already once been given in detail: ‘and
tell the hussars that they are to cross last and to fire the
bridge as I ordered; and the inflammable material on the
bridge must be reinspected.’
‘Very good,’ answered Nesvitski.
He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put
away the knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person
easily into the saddle.
‘I’ll really call in on the nuns,’ he said to the officers
who watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the
winding path down the hill.

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‘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.

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Chapter VII

Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the

bridge, where there was a crush. Halfway across stood
Prince Nesvitski, who had alighted from his horse and
whose big body was body was jammed against the
railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who
stood a few steps behind him holding two horses by their
bridles. Each time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on,
soldiers and carts pushed him back again and pressed him
against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.
‘What a fine fellow you are, friend!’ said the Cossack
to a convoy soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto
the infantrymen who were crowded together close to his
wheels and his horses. ‘What a fellow! You can’t wait a
moment! Don’t you see the general wants to pass?’
But the convoyman took no notice of the word
‘general’ and shouted at the soldiers who were blocking
his way. ‘Hi there, boys! Keep to the left! Wait a bit.’ But
the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to shoulder, their
bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw
the rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling

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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.

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‘If he’ (he meant the enemy) ‘begins popping at the

bridge now,’ said the old soldier dismally to a comrade,
‘you’ll forget to scratch yourself.’
That soldier passed on, and after him came another
sitting on a cart.
‘Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?’
said an orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in
the back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came
some merry soldiers who had evidently been drinking.
‘And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth
with the butt end of his gun...’ a soldier whose greatcoat
was well tucked up said gaily, with a wide swing of his
arm.
‘Yes, the ham was just delicious...’ answered another
with a loud laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that
Nesvitski did not learn who had been struck on the teeth,
or what the ham had to do with it.
‘Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they
think they’ll all be killed,’ a sergeant was saying angrily
and reproachfully.
‘As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,’ said a
young soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining
from laughing, ‘I felt like dying of fright. I did, ‘pon my

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word, I got that frightened!’ said he, as if bragging of

having been frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any
that had gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of
horses led by a German, and seemed loaded with a whole
houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with a large
udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an
unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl
with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds.
Evidently these fugitives were allowed to pass by special
permission. The eyes of all the soldiers turned toward the
women, and while the vehicle was passing at foot pace all
the soldiers’ remarks related to the two young ones. Every
face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly
thoughts about the women.
‘Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!’
‘Sell me the missis,’ said another soldier, addressing
the German, who, angry and frightened, strode
energetically along with downcast eyes.
‘See how smart she’s made herself! Oh, the devils!’
‘There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!’
‘I have seen as much before now, mate!’

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‘Where are you going?’ asked an infantry officer who

was eating an apple, also half smiling as he looked at the
handsome girl.
The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not
understand.
‘Take it if you like,’ said the officer, giving the girl an
apple.
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of
the men on the bridge did not take his eyes off the women
till they had passed. When they had gone by, the same
stream of soldiers followed, with the same kind of talk,
and at last all stopped. As often happens, the horses of a
convoy wagon became restive at the end of the bridge,
and the whole crowd had to wait.
‘And why are they stopping? There’s no proper order!’
said the soldiers. ‘Where are you shoving to? Devil take
you! Can’t you wait? It’ll be worse if he fires the bridge.
See, here’s an officer jammed in too’- different voices
were saying in the crowd, as the men looked at one
another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the
bridge, Nesvitski suddenly heard a sound new to him, of
something swiftly approaching... something big, that
splashed into the water.

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‘Just see where it carries to!’ a soldier near by said

sternly, looking round at the sound.
‘Encouraging us to get along quicker,’ said another
uneasily.
The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it
was a cannon ball.
‘Hey, Cossack, my horse!’ he said. ‘Now, then, you
there! get out of the way! Make way!’
With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse,
and shouting continually he moved on. The soldiers
squeezed themselves to make way for him, but again
pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and those
nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves
pressed still harder from behind.
‘Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!’ came a hoarse
voice from behind him.
Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces
away but separated by the living mass of moving infantry,
Vaska Denisov, red and shaggy, with his cap on the back
of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over his
shoulder.
‘Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!’ shouted
Denisov evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with

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their bloodshot whites glittering and rolling as he waved

his sheathed saber in a small bare hand as red as his face.
‘Ah, Vaska!’ joyfully replied Nesvitski. ‘What’s up
with you?’
‘The squadwon can’t pass,’ shouted Vaska Denisov,
showing his white teeth fiercely and spurring his black
thoroughbred Arab, which twitched its ears as the
bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam
from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his
hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had
his rider let him. ‘What is this? They’re like sheep! Just
like sheep! Out of the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there,
you devil with the cart! I’ll hack you with my saber!’ he
shouted, actually drawing his saber from its scabbard and
flourishing it
The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified
faces, and Denisov joined Nesvitski.
‘How’s it you’re not drunk today?’ said Nesvitski
when the other had ridden up to him.
‘They don’t even give one time to dwink!’ answered
Vaska Denisov. ‘They keep dwagging the wegiment to
and fwo all day. If they mean to fight, let’s fight. But the
devil knows what this is.’

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‘What a dandy you are today!’ said Nesvitski, looking

at Denisov’s new cloak and saddlecloth.
Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a
handkerchief that diffused a smell of perfume, and put it
to Nesvitski’s nose.
‘Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved,
bwushed my teeth, and scented myself.’
The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his
Cossack, and the determination of Denisov who
flourished his sword and shouted frantically, had such an
effect that they managed to squeeze through to the farther
side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to
deliver the order, and having done this he rode back.
Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of
the bridge. Carelessly holding in his stallion that was
neighing and pawing the ground, eager to rejoin its
fellows, he watched his squadron draw nearer. Then the
clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping, resounded
on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and
began to emerge on his side of it.
The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the
bridge in the trampled mud and gazed with that particular

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feeling of ill-will, estrangement, and ridicule with which

troops of different arms usually encounter one another at
the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in regular
order.
‘Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!’ said one.
‘What good are they? They’re led about just for show!’
remarked another.
‘Don’t kick up the dust, you infantry!’ jested an hussar
whose prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot
soldiers.
‘I’d like to put you on a two days’ march with a
knapsack! Your fine cords would soon get a bit rubbed,’
said an infantryman, wiping the mud off his face with his
sleeve. ‘Perched up there, you’re more like a bird than a
man.’
‘There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse.
You’d look fine,’ said a corporal, chaffing a thin little
soldier who bent under the weight of his knapsack.
‘Take a stick between your legs, that’ll suit you for a
horse!’ the hussar shouted back.

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Chapter VIII

The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge,

squeezing together as they approached it as if passing
through a funnel. At last the baggage wagons had all
crossed, the crush was less, and the last battalion came
onto the bridge. Only Denisov’s squadron of hussars
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the
enemy, who could be seen from the hill on the opposite
bank but was not yet visible from the bridge, for the
horizon as seen from the valley through which the river
flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile
away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a
few groups of our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly
on the road at the top of the high ground, artillery and
troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the French.
A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot.
All the officers and men of Denisov’s squadron, though
they tried to talk of other things and to look in other
directions, thought only of what was there on the hilltop,
and kept constantly looking at the patches appearing on
the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy’s troops.
The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was

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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.

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On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke

of a cannon rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads
of the hussar squadron. The officers who had been
standing together rode off to their places. The hussars
began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the
whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front
and at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of
command. A second and a third cannon ball flew past.
Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but the balls
with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the
horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars
did not look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the
word of command, the whole squadron with its rows of
faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while the
ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again.
The soldiers without turning their heads glanced at one
another, curious to see their comrades’ impression. Every
face, from Denisov’s to that of the bugler, showed one
common expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement,
around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned,
looking at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them.
Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostov
on the left flank, mounted on his Rook- a handsome horse
despite its game leg- had the happy air of a schoolboy

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called up before a large audience for an examination in

which he feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was
glancing at everyone with a clear, bright expression, as if
asking them to notice how calmly he sat under fire. But
despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
something new and stern showed round the mouth.
‘Who’s that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That’s
not wight! Look at me,’ cried Denisov who, unable to
keep still on one spot, kept turning his horse in front of
the squadron.
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov,
and his whole short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy
hand and stumpy fingers in which he held the hilt of his
naked saber, looked just as it usually did, especially
toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle;
he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head
thrown back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs
mercilessly into the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and
sitting as though falling backwards in the saddle, he
galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in
a hoarse voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode
up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed,
steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its

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long mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were

brighter than usual.
‘Well, what about it?’ said he to Denisov. ‘It won’t
come to a fight. You’ll see- we shall retire.’
‘The devil only knows what they’re about!’ muttered
Denisov. ‘Ah, Wostov,’ he cried noticing the cadet’s
bright face, ‘you’ve got it at last.’
And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the
cadet. Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the
commander appeared on the bridge. Denisov galloped up
to him.
‘Your excellency! Let us attack them! I’ll dwive them
off.’
‘Attack indeed!’ said the colonel in a bored voice,
puckering up his face as if driving off a troublesome fly.
‘And why are you stopping here? Don’t you see the
skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron back.’
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range
of fire without having lost a single man. The second
squadron that had been in the front line followed them
across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side of the
river.
The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the
bridge, retired up the hill one after the other. Their

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colonel, Karl Bogdanich Schubert, came up to Denisov’s

squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostov,
without taking any notice of him although they were now
meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning
Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in
the power of a man toward whom he now admitted that he
had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the colonel’s
athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
neck. It seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only
pretending not to notice him, and that his whole aim now
was to test the cadet’s courage, so he drew himself up and
looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that
Bogdanich rode so near in order to show him his courage.
Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron
on a desperate attack just to punish him- Rostov. Then he
imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would come up
to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously
extend the hand of reconciliation.
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the
Pavlograds as he had but recently left their regiment, rode
up to the colonel. After his dismissal from headquarters
Zherkov had not remained in the regiment, saying he was
not such a fool as to slave at the front when he could get
more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had

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succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to

Prince Bagration. He now came to his former chief with
an order from the commander of the rear guard.
‘Colonel,’ he said, addressing Rostov’s enemy with an
air of gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades,
‘there is an order to stop and fire the bridge.’
‘An order to who?’ asked the colonel morosely.
‘I don’t myself know ‘to who,’’ replied the cornet in a
serious tone, ‘but the prince told me to ‘go and tell the
colonel that the hussars must return quickly and fire the
bridge.’’
Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who
rode up to the colonel of hussars with the same order.
After him the stout Nesvitski came galloping up on a
Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his weight.
‘How’s this, Colonel?’ he shouted as he approached. ‘I
told you to fire the bridge, and now someone has gone
and blundered; they are all beside themselves over there
and one can’t make anything out.’
The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and
turned to Nesvitski.
‘You spoke to me of inflammable material,’ said he,
‘but you said nothing about firing it.’

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‘But, my dear sir,’ said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking

off his cap and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration
with his plump hand, ‘wasn’t I telling you to fire the
bridge, when inflammable material had been put in
position?’
‘I am not your ‘dear sir,’ Mr. Staff Officer, and you did
not tell me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is
my habit orders strictly to obey. You said the bridge
would be burned, but who would it burn, I could not
know by the holy spirit!’
‘Ah, that’s always the way!’ said Nesvitski with a
wave of the hand. ‘How did you get here?’ said he,
turning to Zherkov.
‘On the same business. But you are damp! Let me
wring you out!’
‘You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer...’ continued the
colonel in an offended tone.
‘Colonel,’ interrupted the officer of the suite, ‘You
must be quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use
grapeshot.’
The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at
the stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.

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‘I will the bridge fire,’ he said in a solemn tone as if to

announce that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to
endure he would still do the right thing.
Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it
were to blame for everything, the colonel moved forward
and ordered the second squadron, that in which Rostov
was serving under Denisov, to return to the bridge.
‘There, it’s just as I thought,’ said Rostov to himself.
‘He wishes to test me!’ His heart contracted and the blood
rushed to his face. ‘Let him see whether I am a coward!’
he thought.
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the
serious expression appeared that they had worn when
under fire. Rostov watched his enemy, the colonel,
closely- to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov,
and looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and
stern. Then came the word of command.
‘Look sharp! Look sharp!’ several voices repeated
around him.
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs
jingling, the hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing
what they were to do. The men were crossing themselves.
Rostov no longer looked at the colonel, he had no time.

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He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much

afraid that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he
gave his horse into an orderly’s charge, and he felt the
blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past
him, leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw
nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs
catching and their sabers clattering.
‘Stretchers!’ shouted someone behind him.
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers
meant; he ran on, trying only to be ahead of the others;
but just at the bridge, not looking at the ground, he came
on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled, and fell on his
hands. The others outstripped him.
‘At boss zides, Captain,’ he heard the voice of the
colonel, who, having ridden ahead, had pulled up his
horse near the bridge, with a triumphant, cheerful face.
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches
looked at his enemy and was about to run on, thinking
that the farther he went to the front the better. But
Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing Rostov,
shouted to him:
‘Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To
the right! Come back, Cadet!’ he cried angrily; and

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turning to Denisov, who, showing off his courage, had

ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
‘Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,’ he
said.
‘Oh, every bullet has its billet,’ answered Vaska
Denisov, turning in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the
suite were standing together out of range of the shots,
watching, now the small group of men with yellow
shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord, and blue
riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and
then at what was approaching in the distance from the
opposite side- the blue uniforms and groups with horses,
easily recognizable as artillery.
‘Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there
first? Will they get there and fire the bridge or will the
French get within grapeshot range and wipe them out?’
These were the questions each man of the troops on the
high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself
with a sinking heart- watching the bridge and the hussars
in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing
from the other side with their bayonets and guns.
‘Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!’ said Nesvitski; ‘they
are within grapeshot range now.’

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‘He shouldn’t have taken so many men,’ said the

officer of the suite.
‘True enough,’ answered Nesvitski; ‘two smart fellows
could have done the job just as well.’
‘Ah, your excellency,’ put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed
on the hussars, but still with that naive air that made it
impossible to know whether he was speaking in jest or in
earnest. ‘Ah, your excellency! How you look at things!
Send two men? And who then would give us the Vladimir
medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,
the squadron may be recommended for honors and he
may get a ribbon. Our Bogdanich knows how things are
done.’
‘There now!’ said the officer of the suite, ‘that’s
grapeshot.’
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which
were being detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a
cloud of smoke appeared, then a second and a third
almost simultaneously, and at the moment when the first
report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two reports one
after another, and a third.

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‘Oh! Oh!’ groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain,

seizing the officer of the suite by the arm. ‘Look! A man
has fallen! Fallen, fallen!’
‘Two, I think.’
‘If I were Tsar I would never go to war,’ said
Nesvitski, turning away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in
their blue uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run.
Smoke appeared again but at irregular intervals, and
grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the bridge. But this
time Nesvitski could not see what was happening there, as
a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had
succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries
were now firing at them, no longer to hinder them but
because the guns were trained and there was someone to
fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot
before the hussars got back to their horses. Two were
misdirected and the shot went too high, but the last round
fell in the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three
of them over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had
paused on the bridge not knowing what to do. There was
no one to hew down (as he had always imagined battles to

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himself), nor could he help to fire the bridge because he

had not brought any burning straw with him like the other
soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he
heard a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and
the hussar nearest to him fell against the rails with a
groan. Rostov ran up to him with the others. Again
someone shouted, ‘Stretchers!’ Four men seized the
hussar and began lifting him.
‘Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!’ cried the
wounded man, but still he was lifted and laid on the
stretcher.
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for
something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the
Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky
looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright
and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter
the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still
were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the
nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests
veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace and
happiness... ‘I should wishing for nothing else, nothing, if
only I were there,’ thought Rostov. ‘In myself alone and
in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here...
groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry...

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There- they are shouting again, and again are all running
back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death,
is here above me and around... Another instant and I shall
never again see the sun, this water, that gorge!..’
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds,
and other stretchers came into view before Rostov. And
the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun
and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening
agitation.
‘O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save,
forgive, and protect me!’ Rostov whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses;
their voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers
disappeared from sight.
‘Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!’ shouted
Vaska Denisov just above his ear.
‘It’s all over; but I am a coward- yes, a coward!’
thought Rostov, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his
horse, which stood resting one foot, from the orderly and
began to mount.
‘Was that grapeshot?’ he asked Denisov.
‘Yes and no mistake!’ cried Denisov. ‘You worked
like wegular bwicks and it’s nasty work! An attack’s
pleasant work! Hacking away at the dogs! But this sort of

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thing is the very devil, with them shooting at you like a

target.’
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near
Rostov, composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and
the officer from the suite.
‘Well, it seems that no one has noticed,’ thought
Rostov. And this was true. No one had taken any notice,
for everyone knew the sensation which the cadet under
fire for the first time had experienced.
‘Here’s something for you to report,’ said Zherkov.
‘See if I don’t get promoted to a sublieutenancy.’
‘Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!’ said the
colonel triumphantly and gaily.
‘And if he asks about the losses?’
‘A trifle,’ said the colonel in his bass voice: ‘two
hussars wounded, and one knocked out,’ he added, unable
to restrain a happy smile, and pronouncing the phrase
‘knocked out’ with ringing distinctness.

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Chapter IX

Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand

men under the command of Bonaparte, encountering a
population that was unfriendly to it, losing confidence in
its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies, and
compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything
that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five
thousand men commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly
retreating along the Danube, stopping where overtaken by
the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy
equipment. There had been actions at Lambach,
Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the courage and
endurance- acknowledged even by the enemy- with which
the Russians fought, the only consequence of these
actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that
had escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at
Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and
Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted
forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be
thought of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which,
carefully prepared in accord with the modern science of

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strategics, had been handed to Kutuzov when he was in

Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost
unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a
junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia,
without losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his
army crossed to the left bank of the Danube and took up a
position for the first time with the river between himself
and the main body of the French. On the thirtieth he
attacked Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank,
and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies
were taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals.
For the first time, after a fortnight’s retreat, the Russian
troops had halted and after a fight had not only held the
field but had repulsed the French. Though the troops were
ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number in
killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of
sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side
of the Danube with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted
them to the humanity of the enemy; and though the big
hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into military
hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and
wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory
over Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably.

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Throughout the whole army and at headquarters most

joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of the imaginary
approach of columns from Russia, of some victory gained
by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the frightened
Bonaparte.
Prince Andrew during the battle had been in
attendance on the Austrian General Schmidt, who was
killed in the action. His horse had been wounded under
him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a
mark of the commander in chief’s special favor he was
sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court,
now no longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the
French) but at Brunn. Despite his apparently delicate
build Prince Andrew could endure physical fatigue far
better than many very muscular men, and on the night of
the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary,
with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent
immediately with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so
sent meant not only a reward but an important step toward
promotion.
The night was dark but starry, the road showed black
in the snow that had fallen the previous day- the day of
the battle. Reviewing his impressions of the recent battle,
picturing pleasantly to himself the impression his news of

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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

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bread; the more severely wounded looked silently, with

the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy hurrying
past them.
Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a
soldier in what action they had been wounded. ‘Day
before yesterday, on the Danube,’ answered the soldier.
Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the soldier
three gold pieces.
‘That’s for them all,’ he said to the officer who came
up.
‘Get well soon, lads!’ he continued, turning to the
soldiers. ‘There’s plenty to do still.’
‘What news, sir?’ asked the officer, evidently anxious
to start a conversation.
‘Good news!... Go on!’ he shouted to the driver, and
they galloped on.
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled
over the paved streets of Brunn and found himself
surrounded by high buildings, the lights of shops, houses,
and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that atmosphere of
a large and active town which is always so attractive to a
soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and
sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the
palace felt even more vigorous and alert than he had done

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the day before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly and his
thoughts followed one another with extraordinary
clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the
details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the
concise form concise form in which he imagined himself
stating them to the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined
the casual questions that might be put to him and the
answers he would give. He expected to be at once
presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the
palace, however, an official came running out to meet
him, and learning that he was a special messenger led him
to another entrance.
‘To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren!
There you will find the adjutant on duty,’ said the official.
‘He will conduct you to the Minister of War.’
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked
him to wait, and went in to the Minister of War. Five
minutes later he returned and bowing with particular
courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along a
corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at
work. The adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to
wish to ward off any attempt at familiarity on the part of
the Russian messenger.

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Prince Andrew’s joyous feeling was considerably

weakened as he approached the door of the minister’s
room. He felt offended, and without his noticing it the
feeling of offense immediately turned into one of disdain
which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly
suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right
to despise the adjutant and the minister. ‘Away from the
smell of powder, they probably think it easy to gain
victories!’ he thought. His eyes narrowed disdainfully, he
entered the room of the Minister of War with peculiarly
deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading
some papers and making pencil notes on them, and for the
first two or three minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A
wax candle stood at each side of the minister’s bent bald
head with its gray temples. He went on reading to the end,
without raising his eyes at the opening of the door and the
sound of footsteps.
‘Take this and deliver it,’ said he to his adjutant,
handing him the papers and still taking no notice of the
special messenger.
Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov’s
army interested the Minister of War less than any of the
other matters he was concerned with, or he wanted to give

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the Russian special messenger that impression. ‘But that

is a matter of perfect indifference to me,’ he thought. The
minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged
them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an
intellectual and distinctive head, but the instant he turned
to Prince Andrew the firm, intelligent expression on his
face changed in a way evidently deliberate and habitual to
him. His face took on the stupid artificial smile (which
does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man
who is continually receiving many petitioners one after
another.
‘From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?’ he asked. ‘I
hope it is good news? There has been an encounter with
Mortier? A victory? It was high time!’
He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and
began to read it with a mournful expression.
‘Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!’ he exclaimed in
German. ‘What a calamity! What a calamity!’
Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the
table and looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering
something.
‘Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive?
But Mortier is not captured.’ Again he pondered. ‘I am
very glad you have brought good news, though Schmidt’s

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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.

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Chapter X

Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian

acquaintance of his in the diplomatic service.
‘Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome
visitor,’ said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince
Andrew. ‘Franz, put the prince’s things in my bedroom,’
said he to the servant who was ushering Bolkonski in. ‘So
you’re a messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am
sitting here ill, as you see.’
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into
the diplomat’s luxurious study and sat down to the dinner
prepared for him. Bilibin settled down comfortably beside
the fire.
After his journey and the campaign during which he
had been deprived of all the comforts of cleanliness and
all the refinements of life, Prince Andrew felt a pleasant
sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such as he
had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was
pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if
not in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least
with a Russian who would, he supposed, share the general

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Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was then

particularly strong.
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the
same circle as Prince Andrew. They had known each
other previously in Petersburg, but had become more
intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with
Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who
gave promise of rising high in the military profession, so
to an even greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in
his diplomatic career. He still a young man but no longer
a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age
of sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now
held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the foreign
minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and
valued him. He was not one of those many diplomats who
are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one
of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite
his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his
writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his
work. It was not the question ‘What for?’ but the question
‘How?’ that interested him. What the diplomatic matter
might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to
prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully,

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pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin’s services were valued

not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in dealing
and conversing with those in the highest spheres.
Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when
it could be made elegantly witty. In society he always
awaited an opportunity to say something striking and took
part in a conversation only when that was possible. His
conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were
prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a portable
form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society
people might carry them from drawing room to drawing
room. And, in fact, Bilibin’s witticisms were hawked
about in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an
influence on matters considered important.
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep
wrinkles, which always looked as clean and well washed
as the tips of one’s fingers after a Russian bath. The
movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play of
expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker
into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his
eyebrows would descend and deep wrinkles would crease
his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always twinkled and
looked out straight.

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‘Well, now tell me about your exploits,’ said he.

Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning
himself, described the engagement and his reception by
the Minister of War.
‘They received me and my news as one receives a dog
in a game of skittles,’ said he in conclusion.
Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face
disappeared.
‘Cependant, mon cher,’ he remarked, examining his
nails from a distance and puckering the skin above his left
eye, ‘malgre la haute estime que je professe pour the
Orthodox Russian army, j’avoue que votre victoire n’est
pas des plus victorieuses.’*
*"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the
Orthodox Russian army, I must say that your victory was
not particularly victorious.’
He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only
those words in Russian on which he wished to put a
contemptuous emphasis.
‘Come now! You with all your forces fall on the
unfortunate Mortier and his one division, and even then
Mortier slips through your fingers! Where’s the victory?’

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‘But seriously,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘we can at any

rate say without boasting that it was a little better than at
Ulm..’
‘Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?’
‘Because not everything happens as one expects or
with the smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I
told you, to get at their rear by seven in the morning but
had not reached it by five in the afternoon.’
‘And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning?
You ought to have been there at seven in the morning,’
returned Bilibin with a smile. ‘You ought to have been
there at seven in the morning.’
‘Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte
by diplomatic methods that he had better leave Genoa
alone?’ retorted Prince Andrew in the same tone.
‘I know,’ interrupted Bilibin, ‘you’re thinking it’s very
easy to take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is
true, but still why didn’t you capture him? So don’t be
surprised if not only the Minister of War but also his Most
August Majesty the Emperor and King Francis is not
much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor secretary
of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of
my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his
Liebchen to the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..’

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He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly

unwrinkled his forehead.
‘It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,’ said
Bolkonski. ‘I confess I do not understand: perhaps there
are diplomatic subtleties here beyond my feeble
intelligence, but I can’t make it out. Mack loses a whole
army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl
give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder.
Kutuzov alone at last gains a real victory, destroying the
spell of the invincibility of the French, and the Minister of
War does not even care to hear the details.’
‘That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for
the Tsar, for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All
that is beautiful, but what do we, I mean the Austrian
court, care for your victories? Bring us nice news of a
victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
archduke’s as good as another, as you know) and even if
it is only over a fire brigade of Bonaparte’s, that will be
another story and we’ll fire off some cannon! But this sort
of thing seems done on purpose to vex us. The Archduke
Karl does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand disgraces
himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its defense- as
much as to say: ‘Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
and your capital!’ The one general whom we all loved,

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Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you

congratulate us on the victory! Admit that more irritating
news than yours could not have been conceived. It’s as if
it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides,
suppose you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the
Archduke Karl gained a victory, what effect would that
have on the general course of events? It’s too late now
when Vienna is occupied by the French army!’
‘What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?’
‘Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn,
and the count, our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for
orders.’
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his
reception, and especially after having dined, Bolkonski
felt that he could not take in the full significance of the
words he heard.
‘Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,’ Bilibin
continued, ‘and showed me a letter in which the parade of
the French in Vienna was fully described: Prince Murat et
tout le tremblement... You see that your victory is not a
matter for great rejoicing and that you can’t be received as
a savior.’
‘Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,’ said
Prince Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of

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the battle before Krems was really of small importance in

view of such events as the fall of Austria’s capital. ‘How
is it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and its
celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?’ he
said.
‘Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river,
and is defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still
he is defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No,
the bridge has not yet been taken and I hope it will not be,
for it is mined and orders have been given to blow it up.
Otherwise we should long ago have been in the mountains
of Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a
bad quarter of an hour between two fires.’
‘But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,’
said Prince Andrew.
‘Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but
they daren’t say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of
the campaign, it won’t be your skirmishing at
Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the
matter, but those who devised it,’ said Bilibin quoting one
of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead,
and pausing. ‘The only question is what will come of the
meeting between the Emperor Alexander and the King of

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Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia joins the Allies, Austria’s

hand will be forced and there will be war. If not it is
merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of
the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up.’
‘What an extraordinary genius!’ Prince Andrew
suddenly exclaimed, clenching his small hand and striking
the table with it, ‘and what luck the man has!’
‘Buonaparte?’ said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up
his forehead to indicate that he was about to say
something witty. ‘Buonaparte?’ he repeated, accentuating
the u: ‘I think, however, now that he lays down laws for
Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l’u!* I
shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply
Bonaparte!’
*"We must let him off the u!’
‘But joking apart,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘do you really
think the campaign is over?’
‘This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of,
and she is not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has
been fooled in the first place because her provinces have
been pillaged- they say the Holy Russian army loots
terribly- her army is destroyed, her capital taken, and all
this for the beaux yeux* of His Sardinian Majesty. And
therefore- this is between ourselves- I instinctively feel

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that we are being deceived, my instinct tells me of

negotiations with France and projects for peace, a secret
peace concluded separately.’
*Fine eyes.
‘Impossible!’ cried Prince Andrew. ‘That would be too
base.’
‘If we live we shall see,’ replied Bilibin, his face again
becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an
end.
When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for
him and lay down in a clean shirt on the feather bed with
its warmed and fragrant pillows, he felt that the battle of
which he had brought tidings was far, far away from him.
The alliance with Prussia, Austria’s treachery,
Bonaparte’s new triumph, tomorrow’s levee and parade,
and the audience with the Emperor Francis occupied his
thoughts.
He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of
cannonading, of musketry and the rattling of carriage
wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now again drawn out in
a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill, the
French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he
rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily

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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.

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Chapter XI

Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent

impressions, the first thought that came into his mind was
that today he had to be presented to the Emperor Francis;
he remembered the Minister of War, the polite Austrian
adjutant, Bilibin, and last night’s conversation. Having
dressed for his attendance at court in full parade uniform,
which he had not worn for a long time, he went into
Bilibin’s study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his
hand bandaged. In the study were four gentlemen of the
diplomatic corps. With Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who
was a secretary to the embassy, Bolkonski was already
acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the others.
The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin’s were young,
wealthy, gay society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed
a special set which Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.*
This set, consisting almost exclusively of diplomats,
evidently had its own interests which had nothing to do
with war or politics but related to high society, to certain
women, and to the official side of the service. These
gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves,
an honor they did not extend to many. From politeness

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and to start conversation, they asked him a few questions

about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off
into merry jests and gossip.
*Ours.
‘But the best of it was,’ said one, telling of the
misfortune of a fellow diplomat, ‘that the Chancellor told
him flatly that his appointment to London was a
promotion and that he was so to regard it. Can you fancy
the figure he cut?..’
‘But the worst of it, gentlemen- I am giving Kuragin
away to you- is that that man suffers, and this Don Juan,
wicked fellow, is taking advantage of it!’
Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his
legs over its arm. He began to laugh.
‘Tell me about that!’ he said.
‘Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!’ cried several voices.
‘You, Bolkonski, don’t know,’ said Bilibin turning to
Prince Andrew, ‘that all the atrocities of the French army
(I nearly said of the Russian army) are nothing compared
to what this man has been doing among the women!’
‘La femme est la compagne de l’homme,’* announced
Prince Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette
at his elevated legs.
*"Woman is man’s companion.’

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Bilibin and the rest of ‘ours’ burst out laughing in

Hippolyte’s face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte,
of whom- he had to admit- he had almost been jealous on
his wife’s account, was the butt of this set.
‘Oh, I must give you a treat,’ Bilibin whispered to
Bolkonski. ‘Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses
politics- you should see his gravity!’
He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his
forehead began talking to him about politics. Prince
Andrew and the others gathered round these two.
‘The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of
alliance,’ began Hippolyte gazing round with importance
at the others, ‘without expressing... as in its last note...
you understand... Besides, unless His Majesty the
Emperor derogates from the principle of our alliance...
‘Wait, I have not finished...’ he said to Prince Andrew,
seizing him by the arm, ‘I believe that intervention will be
stronger than nonintervention. And...’ he paused. ‘Finally
one cannot impute the nonreceipt of our dispatch of
November 18. That is how it will end.’ And he released
Bolkonski’s arm to indicate that he had now quite
finished.

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‘Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou

secretest in thy golden mouth!’ said Bilibin, and the mop
of hair on his head moved with satisfaction.
Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone.
He was evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but
could not restrain the wild laughter that convulsed his
usually impassive features.
‘Well now, gentlemen,’ said Bilibin, ‘Bolkonski is my
guest in this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain
him as far as I can, with all the pleasures of life here. If
we were in Vienna it would be easy, but here, in this
wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult, and I beg
you all to help me. Brunn’s attractions must be shown
him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,
Hippolyte, of course the women.’
‘We must let him see Amelie, she’s exquisite!’ said
one of ‘ours,’ kissing his finger tips.
‘In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to
more humane interests,’ said Bilibin.
‘I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your
hospitality, gentlemen, it is already time for me to go,’
replied Prince Andrew looking at his watch.
‘Where to?’
‘To the Emperor.’

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‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir,

Prince! Come back early to dinner,’ cried several voices.
‘We’ll take you in hand.’
‘When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can
to praise the way that provisions are supplied and the
routes indicated,’ said Bilibin, accompanying him to the
hall.
‘I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the
facts, I can’t,’ replied Bolkonski, smiling.
‘Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a
passion for giving audiences, but he does not like talking
himself and can’t do it, as you will see.’

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Chapter XII

At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian

officers as he had been told to, and the Emperor Francis
merely looked fixedly into his face and just nodded to him
with to him with his long head. But after it was over, the
adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously
informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give him
an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing
in the middle of the room. Before the conversation began
Prince Andrew was struck by the fact that the Emperor
seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to
say.
‘Tell me, when did the battle begin?’ he asked
hurriedly.
Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions
just as simple: ‘Was Kutuzov well? When had he left
Krems?’ and so on. The Emperor spoke as if his sole aim
were to put a given number of questions- the answers to
these questions, as was only too evident, did not interest
him.
‘At what o’clock did the battle begin?’ asked the
Emperor.

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‘I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o’clock the

battle began at the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was,
our attack began after five in the afternoon,’ replied
Bolkonski growing more animated and expecting that he
would have a chance to give a reliable account, which he
had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But
the Emperor smiled and interrupted him.
‘How many miles?’
‘From where to where, Your Majesty?’
‘From Durrenstein to Krems.’
‘Three and a half miles, Your Majesty.’
‘The French have abandoned the left bank?’
‘According to the scouts the last of them crossed on
rafts during the night.’
‘Is there sufficient forage in Krems?’
‘Forage has not been supplied to the extent..’
The Emperor interrupted him.
‘At what o’clock was General Schmidt killed?’
‘At seven o’clock, I believe.’
‘At seven o’clock? It’s very sad, very sad!’
The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed.
Prince Andrew withdrew and was immediately
surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he saw
friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday’s

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adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the

palace, and offered him his own house. The Minister of
War came up and congratulated him on the Maria Theresa
Order of the third grade, which the Emperor was
conferring on him. The Empress’ chamberlain invited him
to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see
him. He did not know whom to answer, and for a few
seconds collected his thoughts. Then the Russian
ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the
window, and began to talk to him.
Contrary to Bilibin’s forecast the news he had brought
was joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was
arranged, Kutuzov was awarded the Grand Cross of Maria
Theresa, and the whole army received rewards. Bolkonski
was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole
morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries.
Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all
his calls, he was returning to Bilibin’s house thinking out
a letter to his father about the battle and his visit to Brunn.
At the door he found a vehicle half full of luggage. Franz,
Bilibin’s man, was dragging a portmanteau with some
difficulty out of the front door.

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Before returning to Bilibin’s Prince Andrew had gone

to bookshop to provide himself with some books for the
campaign, and had spent some time in the shop.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Oh, your excellency!’ said Franz, with difficulty
rolling the portmanteau into the vehicle, ‘we are to move
on still farther. The scoundrel is again at our heels!’
‘Eh? What?’ asked Prince Andrew.
Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face
showed excitement.
‘There now! Confess that this is delightful,’ said he.
‘This affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have
crossed without striking a blow!’
Prince Andrew could not understand.
‘But where do you come from not to know what every
coachman in the town knows?’
‘I come from the archduchess’. I heard nothing there.’
‘And you didn’t see that everybody is packing up?’
‘I did not... What is it all about?’ inquired Prince
Andrew impatiently.
‘What’s it all about? Why, the French have crossed the
bridge that Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was
not blown up: so Murat is now rushing along the road to
Brunn and will be here in a day or two.’

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‘What? Here? But why did they not blow up the

bridge, if it was mined?’
‘That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte,
knows why.’
Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.
‘But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too
is lost? It will be cut off,’ said he.
‘That’s just it,’ answered Bilibin. ‘Listen! The French
entered Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which
was yesterday, those gentlemen, messieurs les
marechaux,* Murat, Lannes,and Belliard, mount and ride
to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
‘Gentlemen,’ says one of them, ‘you know the Thabor
Bridge is mined and doubly mined and that there are
menacing fortifications at its head and an army of fifteen
thousand men has been ordered to blow up the bridge and
not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign the
Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three
go and take it!’ ‘Yes, let’s!’ say the others. And off they
go and take the bridge, cross it, and now with their whole
army are on this side of the Danube, marching on us, you,
and your lines of communication.’
*The marshalls.

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‘Stop jesting,’ said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously.

This news grieved him and yet he was pleased.
As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in
such a hopeless situation it occurred to him that it was he
who was destined to lead it out of this position; that here
was the Toulon that would lift him from the ranks of
obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on
reaching the army he would give an opinion at the war
council which would be the only one that could save the
army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
executing of the plan.
‘Stop this jesting,’ he said
‘I am not jesting,’ Bilibin went on. ‘Nothing is truer or
sadder. These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and
wave white handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty
that they, the marshals, are on their way to negotiate with
Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the tete-de-pont.*
They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war
is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting
with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,
and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these
gentlemen embrace the officers, crack jokes, sit on the
cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to the

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bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary material

into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length
appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg
von Mautern himself. ‘Dearest foe! Flower of the
Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars Hostilities are
ended, we can shake one another’s hand.... The Emperor
Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince
Auersperg’s acquaintance.’ In a word, those gentlemen,
Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and
he is so flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with
the French marshals, and so dazzled by the sight of
Murat’s mantle and ostrich plumes, qu’il n’y voit que du
feu, et oublie celui qu’il devait faire faire sur
l’ennemi!’*[2] In spite of the animation of his speech,
Bilibin did not forget to pause after this mot to give time
for its due appreciation. ‘The French battalion rushes to
the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the bridge is taken!
But what is best of all,’ he went on, his excitement
subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, ‘is
that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to
give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge,
this sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running
onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his
hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his

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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 Bilibin.’It’s not treachery nor rascality nor
stupidity: it is just as at Ulm... it is...’- he seemed to be
trying to find the right expression. ‘C’est... c’est du Mack.
Nous sommes mackes [It is... it is a bit of Mack. We are
Macked],’ he concluded, feeling that he had produced a

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good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His

hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of
pleasure, and with a slight smile he began to examine his
nails.
‘Where are you off to?’ he said suddenly to Prince
Andrew who had risen and was going toward his room.
‘I am going away.’
‘Where to?’
‘To the army.’
‘But you meant to stay another two days?’
‘But now I am off at once.’
And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his
departure went to his room.
‘Do you know, mon cher,’ said Bilibin following him,
‘I have been thinking about you. Why are you going?’
And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all
the wrinkles vanished from his face.
Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no
reply.
‘Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to
gallop back to the army now that it is in danger. I
understand that. Mon cher, it is heroism!’
‘Not at all,’ said Prince Andrew.

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‘But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look

at the other side of the question and you will see that your
duty, on the contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it
to those who are no longer fit for anything else.... You
have not been ordered to return and have not been
dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with
us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going
to Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I
will travel comfortably in my caleche.’
‘Do stop joking, Bilibin,’ cried Bolkonski.
‘I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where
and why are you going, when you might remain here?
You are faced by one of two things,’ and the skin over his
left temple puckered, ‘either you will not reach your
regiment before peace is concluded, or you will share
defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov’s whole army.’
And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the
dilemma was insoluble.
‘I cannot argue about it,’ replied Prince Andrew
coldly, but he thought: ‘I am going to save the army.’
‘My dear fellow, you are a hero!’ said Bilibin.

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Chapter XIII

That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of

War, Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing
where he would find it and fearing to be captured by the
French on the way to Krems.
In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing
up, and the heavy baggage was already being dispatched
to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince Andrew struck the
high road along which the Russian army was moving with
great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so
obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a
carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from
a Cossack commander, and hungry and weary, making his
way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the
commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister
reports of the position of the army reached him as he went
along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly
flight confirmed these rumors.
‘Cette armee russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a
transportee des extremites de l’univers, nous allons lui
faire eprouver le meme sort- (le sort de l’armee d’Ulm).’*
He remembered these words in Bonaparte’s address to his

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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

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din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering

knee-deep in mud pushed the guns and wagons
themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped, traces broke,
and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
directing the march rode backward and forward between
the carts. Their voices were but feebly heard amid the
uproar and one saw by their faces that they despaired of
the possibility of checking this disorder.
‘Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army,’ thought
Bolkonski, recalling Bilibin’s words.
Wishing to find out where the commander in chief
was, he rode up to a convoy. Directly opposite to him
came a strange one-horse vehicle, evidently rigged up by
soldiers out of any available materials and looking like
something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a caleche. A
soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat
behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.
Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question
to a soldier when his attention was diverted by the
desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An officer
in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was
driving the woman’s vehicle for trying to get ahead of
others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of the
equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince

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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.

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‘That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,’

came a voice from behind.
Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of
senseless, tipsy rage when a man does not know what he
is saying. He saw that his championship of the doctor’s
wife in her queer trap might expose him to what he
dreaded more than anything in the world- to ridicule; but
his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his
sentence Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode
up to him and raised his riding whip.
‘Kind...ly let- them- pass!’
The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
‘It’s all the fault of these fellows on the staff that
there’s this disorder,’ he muttered. ‘Do as you like.’
Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily
away from the doctor’s wife, who was calling him her
deliverer, and recalling with a sense of disgust the
minutest details of this humiliating scene he galloped on
to the village where he was told that the commander in
chief was.
On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the
nearest house, intending to rest if but for a moment, eat
something, and try to sort out the stinging and tormenting
thoughts that confused his mind. ‘This is a mob of

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scoundrels and not an army,’ he was thinking as he went

up to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice
called him by name.
He turned round. Nesvitski’s handsome face looked
out of the little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips
as he chewed something, and flourishing his arm, called
him to enter.
‘Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come
quick...’ he shouted.
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and
another adjutant having something to eat. They hastily
turned round to him asking if he had any news. On their
familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. This was
particularly noticeable on Nesvitski’s usually laughing
countenance.
‘Where is the commander in chief?’ asked Bolkonski.
‘Here, in that house,’ answered the adjutant.
‘Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?’ asked
Nesvitski.
‘I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it
was all I could do to get here.’
‘And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to
laugh at Mack, we’re getting it still worse,’ said
Nesvitski. ‘But sit down and have something to eat.’

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‘You won’t be able to find either your baggage or

anything else now, Prince. And God only knows where
your man Peter is,’ said the other adjutant.
‘Where are headquarters?’
‘We are to spend the night in Znaim.’
‘Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,’
said Nesvitski. ‘They’ve made up splendid packs for me-
fit to cross the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad
lookout, old fellow! But what’s the matter with you? You
must be ill to shiver like that,’ he added, noticing that
Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
‘It’s nothing,’ replied Prince Andrew.
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the
doctor’s wife and the convoy officer.
‘What is the commander in chief doing here?’ he
asked.
‘I can’t make out at all,’ said Nesvitski.
‘Well, all I can make out is that everything is
abominable, abominable, quite abominable!’ said Prince
Andrew, and he went off to the house where the
commander in chief was.
Passing by Kutuzov’s carriage and the exhausted
saddle horses of his suite, with their Cossacks who were
talking loudly together, Prince Andrew entered the

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passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the house

with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the
Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the
passage little Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in
front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned up, was
hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards.
Kozlovski’s face looked worn- he too had evidently not
slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not
even nod to him.
‘Second line... have you written it?’ he continued
dictating to the clerk. ‘The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..’
‘One can’t write so fast, your honor,’ said the clerk,
glancing angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.
Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov’s voice,
excited and dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an
unfamiliar voice. From the sound of these voices, the
inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him, the disrespectful
manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to
the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of
the Cossacks holding the horses near the window, Prince
Andrew felt that something important and disastrous was
about to happen.
He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.

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‘Immediately, Prince,’ said Kozlovski. ‘Dispositions

for Bagration.’
‘What about capitulation?’
‘Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.’
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence
voices were heard. Just as he was going to open it the
sounds ceased, the door opened, and Kutuzov with his
eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway. Prince
Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the expression
of the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to
be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be
oblivious of his presence. He looked straight at his
adjutant’s face without recognizing him.
‘Well, have you finished?’ said he to Kozlovski.
‘One moment, your excellency.’
Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height
with a firm, impassive face of Oriental type, came out
after the commander in chief.
‘I have the honor to present myself,’ repeated Prince
Andrew rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.
Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!’
Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.

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‘Well, good-by, Prince,’ said he to Bagration. ‘My

blessing, and may Christ be with you in your great
endeavor!’
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his
eyes. With his left hand he drew Bagration toward him,
and with his right, on which he wore a ring, he made the
sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration kissed
him on the neck instead.
‘Christ be with you!’ Kutuzov repeated and went
toward his carriage. ‘Get in with me,’ said he to
Bolkonski.
‘Your excellency, I should like to be of use here.
Allow me to remain with Prince Bagration’s detachment.’
‘Get in,’ said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski
still delayed, he added: ‘I need good officers myself, need
them myself!’
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes
in silence.
‘There is still much, much before us,’ he said, as if
with an old man’s penetration he understood all that was
passing in Bolkonski’s mind. ‘If a tenth part of his
detachment returns I shall thank God,’ he added as if
speaking to himself.

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Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov’s face only a foot

distant from him and involuntarily noticed the carefully
washed seams of the scar near his temple, where an Ismail
bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye socket.
‘Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s
death,’ thought Bolkonski.
‘That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,’ he
said.
Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten
what he had been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five
minutes later, gently swaying on the soft springs of the
carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew. There was not a
trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his
interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had
heard at court concerning the Krems affair, and about
some ladies they both knew.

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Chapter XIV

On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy,

news that the army he commanded was in an almost
hopeless position. The spy reported that the French, after
crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in
immense force upon Kutuzov’s line of communication
with the troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov
decided to remain at Krems, Napoleon’s army of one
hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off
completely and surround his exhausted army of forty
thousand, and he would find himself in the position of
Mack at Ulm. If Kutuzov decided to abandon the road
connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia, he
would have to march with no road into unknown parts of
the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against
superior forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a
junction with Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat
along the road from Krems to Olmutz, to unite with the
troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on
that road by the French who had crossed the Vienna
bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport,
having to accept battle on the march against an enemy

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three times as strong, who would hem him in from two

sides.
Kutuzov chose this latter course.
The French, the spy reported, having crossed the
Vienna bridge, were advancing by forced marches toward
Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles off on the line of
Kutuzov’s retreat. If he reached Znaim before the French,
there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his
whole army to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter
destruction. But to forestall the French with his whole
army was impossible. The road for the French from
Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for
the Russians from Krems to Znaim.
The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent
Bagration’s vanguard, four thousand strong, to the right
across the hills from the Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-
Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march without
resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear,
and if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to
delay them as long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all
his transport took the road to Znaim.
Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless
hills, with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third

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of his men as stragglers by the way, Bagration came out

on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrunn a few hours
ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrunn
from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to
march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence
Bagration with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men
would have to detain for days the whole enemy army that
came upon him at Hollabrunn, which was clearly
impossible. But a freak of fate made the impossible
possible. The success of the trick that had placed the
Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight
led Murat to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way.
Meeting Bagration’s weak detachment on the Znaim road
he supposed it to be Kutuzov’s whole army. To be able to
crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of the rest of the
troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with this
object offered a three days’ truce on condition that both
armies should remain in position without moving. Murat
declared that negotiations for peace were already
proceeding, and that he therefore offered this truce to
avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count Nostitz, the Austrian
general occupying the advanced posts, believed Murat’s
emissary and retired, leaving Bagration’s division
exposed. Another emissary rode to the Russian line to

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announce the peace negotiations and to offer the Russian

army the three days’ truce. Bagration replied that he was
not authorized either to accept or refuse a truce and sent
his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he had
received.
A truce was Kutuzov’s sole chance of gaining time,
giving Bagration’s exhausted troops some rest, and letting
the transport and heavy convoys (whose movements were
concealed from the French) advance if but one stage
nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and a
quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On
receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant
General Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to
the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely to agree
to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to
the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the
entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration’s
exhausted and hungry detachment, which alone covered
this movement of the transport and of the whole army,
had to remain stationary in face of an enemy eight times
as strong as itself.
Kutuzov’s expectations that the proposals of
capitulation (which were in no way binding) might give

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time for part of the transport to pass, and also that Murat’s
mistake would very soon be discovered, proved correct.
As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen
miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat’s dispatch with
the proposal of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a
ruse and wrote the following letter to Murat:
Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
at eight o’clock in the morning
To PRINCE MURAT,
I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure.
You command only my advance guard, and have no right
to arrange an armistice without my order. You are causing
me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break the armistice
immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so,
and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that
convention, I will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on,
destroy the Russian army.... You are in a position to seize
its baggage and artillery.
The Russian Emperor’s aide-de-camp is an impostor.
Officers are nothing when they have no powers; this one
had none.... The Austrians let themselves be tricked at the

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crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are letting yourself be

tricked by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.
NAPOLEON
Bonaparte’s adjutant rode full gallop with this
menacing letter to Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting
to his generals, moved with all the Guards to the field of
battle, afraid of letting a ready victim escape, and
Bagration’s four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for
the first time for three days, and not one of them knew or
imagined what was in store for him.

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Chapter XV

Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon Prince

Andrew, who had persisted in his request to Kutuzov,
arrived at Grunth and reported himself to Bagration.
Bonaparte’s adjutant had not yet reached Murat’s
detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In
Bagration’s detachment no one knew anything of the
general position of affairs. They talked of peace but did
not believe in its possibility; others talked of a battle but
also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement.
Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a favorite and trusted
adjutant, received him with distinction and special marks
of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be
an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full
liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join the
rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, ‘which
is also very important.’
‘However, there will hardly be an engagement today,’
said Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.
‘If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to
earn a medal he can get his reward just as well in the
rearguard, but if he wishes to stay with me, let him... he’ll

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be of use here if he’s a brave officer,’ thought Bagration.

Prince Andrew, without replying, asked the prince’s
permission to ride round the position to see the
disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings
should he be sent to execute an order. The officer on duty,
a handsome, elegantly dressed man with a diamond ring
on his forefinger, who was fond of speaking French
though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince
Andrew.
On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with
dejected faces who seemed to be seeking something, and
soldiers dragging doors, benches, and fencing from the
village.
‘There now, Prince! We can’t stop those fellows,’ said
the staff officer pointing to the soldiers. ‘The officers
don’t keep them in hand. And there,’ he pointed to a
sutler’s tent, ‘they crowd in and sit. This morning I turned
them all out and now look, it’s full again. I must go there,
Prince, and scare them a bit. It won’t take a moment.’
‘Yes, let’s go in and I will get myself a roll and some
cheese,’ said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to
eat anything.
‘Why didn’t you mention it, Prince? I would have
offered you something.’

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They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers,

with flushed and weary faces, were sitting at the table
eating and drinking.
‘Now what does this mean, gentlemen?’ said the staff
officer, in the reproachful tone of a man who has repeated
the same thing more than once. ‘You know it won’t do to
leave your posts like this. The prince gave orders that no
one should leave his post. Now you, Captain,’ and he
turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who without
his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to
dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered,
smiling not altogether comfortably.
‘Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Captain
Tushin?’ he continued. ‘One would think that as an
artillery officer you would set a good example, yet here
you are without your boots! The alarm will be sounded
and you’ll be in a pretty position without your boots!’
(The staff officer smiled.) ‘Kindly return to your posts,
gentlemen, all of you, all!’ he added in a tone of
command.
Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the
artillery officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting
from one stockinged foot to the other, glanced inquiringly

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with his large, intelligent, kindly eyes from Prince

Andrew to the staff officer.
‘The soldiers say it feels easier without boots,’ said
Captain Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable
position, evidently wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But
before he had finished he felt that his jest was
unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.
‘Kindly return to your posts,’ said the staff officer
trying to preserve his gravity.
Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer’s
small figure. There was something peculiar about it, quite
unsoldierly, rather comic, but extremely attractive.
The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their
horses and rode on.
Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting
and overtaking soldiers and officers of various regiments,
they saw on their left some entrenchments being thrown
up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up red. Several
battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite the cold
wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white
ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown
up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew
and the officer rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and
went on again. Just behind it they came upon some

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dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by others, who

ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses
and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned
atmosphere of these latrines.
‘Voila l’agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,’*
said the staff officer.
*"This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince.’
They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French
could already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began
examining the position.
‘That’s our battery,’ said the staff officer indicating the
highest point. ‘It’s in charge of the queer fellow we saw
without his boots. You can see everything from there;
let’s go there, Prince.’
‘Thank you very much, I will go on alone,’ said Prince
Andrew, wishing to rid himself of this staff officer’s
company, ‘please don’t trouble yourself further.’
The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew
rode on alone.
The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the
more orderly and cheerful were the troops. The greatest
disorder and depression had been in the baggage train he
had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven miles
away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension

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and alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew

came to the French lines the more confident was the
appearance of our troops. The soldiers in their greatcoats
were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company
officers were counting the men, poking the last man in
each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand
up. Soldiers scattered over the whole place were dragging
logs and brushwood and were building shelters with
merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or
mending boots or overcoats and crowding round the
boilers and porridge cookers. In one company dinner was
ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly at the
steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a
quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to
an officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been
tasted.
Another company, a lucky one for not all the
companies had vodka, crowded round a pock-marked,
broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting a keg, filled
one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The
soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential
faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths,
and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened

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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.

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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!

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Fine, isn’t it? It’s all the Frenchy can do to keep up with
him. There now, Sidorov!’
‘Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!’ answered Sidorov,
who was considered an adept at French.
The soldier to whom the laughers referred was
Dolokhov. Prince Andrew recognized him and stopped to
listen to what he was saying. Dolokhov had come from
the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with his
captain.
‘Now then, go on, go on!’ incited the officer, bending
forward and trying not to lose a word of the speech which
was incomprehensible to him. ‘More, please: more!
What’s he saying?’
Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been
drawn into a hot dispute with the French grenadier. They
were naturally talking about the campaign. The
Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians,
was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and
had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov
maintained that the Russians had not surrendered but had
beaten the French.
‘We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall
drive you off,’ said Dolokhov.

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‘Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all
captured!’ said the French grenadier.
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
‘We’ll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,’*
said Dolokhov.
*"On vous fera danser.’
‘Qu’ est-ce qu’il chante?’* asked a Frenchman.
*"What’s he singing about?’
‘It’s ancient history,’ said another, guessing that it
referred to a former war. ‘The Emperor will teach your
Suvara as he has taught the others..’
‘Bonaparte...’ began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman
interrupted him.
‘Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!’
cried he angrily.
‘The devil skin your Emperor.’
And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s
Russian and shouldering his musket walked away.
‘Let us go, Ivan Lukich,’ he said to the captain.
‘Ah, that’s the way to talk French,’ said the picket
soldiers. ‘Now, Sidorov, you have a try!’
Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to
jabber meaningless sounds very fast: ‘Kari, mala, tafa,

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safi, muter, Kaska,’ he said, trying to give an expressive

intonation to his voice.
‘Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!’ came peals of
such healthy and good-humored laughter from the
soldiers that it infected the French involuntarily, so much
so that the only thing left to do seemed to be to unload the
muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return
home as quickly as possible.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in
blockhouses and entrenchments looked out just as
menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon confronted one
another as before.

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Chapter XVI

Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to

left, Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from
which the staff officer had told him the whole field could
be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped beside the
farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns
an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at
attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed
his measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were
their limbers and still farther back picket ropes and
artillerymen’s bonfires. To the left, not far from the
farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle
shed from which came the sound of officers’ voices in
eager conversation.
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian
position and the greater part of the enemy’s opened out
from this battery. Just facing it, on the crest of the
opposite hill, the village of Schon Grabern could be seen,
and in three places to left and right the French troops
amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of
whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the
hill. To the left from that village, amid the smoke, was

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something resembling a battery, but it was impossible to

see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was
posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the
French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at
the farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where
Tushin’s battery stood and from which Prince Andrew
was surveying the position, was the easiest and most
direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from
Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a
copse, in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who
were felling wood. The French line was wider than ours,
and it was plain that they could easily outflank us on both
sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip,
making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire.
Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the
cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some
notes on two points, intending to mention them to
Bagration. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the
artillery in the center, and secondly, to withdraw the
cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew, being
always near the commander in chief, closely following
the mass movements and general orders, and constantly
studying historical accounts of battles, involuntarily
pictured to himself the course of events in the

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forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only

important possibilities: ‘If the enemy attacks the right
flank,’ he said to himself, ‘the Kiev grenadiers and the
Podolsk chasseurs must hold their position till reserves
from the center come up. In that case the dragoons could
successfully make a flank counterattack. If they attack our
center we, having the center battery on this high ground,
shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat to
the dip by echelons.’ So he reasoned.... All the time he
had been beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the
officers distinctly, but as often happens had not
understood a word of what they were saying. Suddenly,
however, he was struck by a voice coming from the shed,
and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.
‘No, friend,’ said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince
Andrew, a familiar voice, ‘what I say is that if it were
possible to know what is beyond death, none of us would
be afraid of it. That’s so, friend.’
Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: ‘Afraid or
not, you can’t escape it anyhow.’
‘All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,’
said a third manly voice interrupting them both. ‘Of
course you artillery men are very wise, because you can
take everything along with you- vodka and snacks.’

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And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an

infantry officer, laughed.
‘Yes, one is afraid,’ continued the first speaker, he of
the familiar voice. ‘One is afraid of the unknown, that’s
what it is. Whatever we may say about the soul going to
the sky... we know there is no sky but only an
atmosphere.’
The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
‘Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin,’ it
said.
‘Why,’ thought Prince Andrew, ‘that’s the captain who
stood up in the sutler’s hut without his boots.’ He
recognized the agreeable, philosophizing voice with
pleasure.
‘Some herb vodka? Certainly!’ said Tushin. ‘But still,
to conceive a future life..’
He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the
air; nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster,
a cannon ball, as if it had not finished saying what was
necessary, thudded into the ground near the shed with
super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The
ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the
corner of his mouth and his kind, intelligent face rather

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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.

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Chapter XVII

Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with

the battery, looking at the puff from the gun that had sent
the ball. His eyes ran rapidly over the wide space, but he
only saw that the hitherto motionless masses of the
French now swayed and that there really was a battery to
their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping
up the hill. A small but distinctly visible enemy column
was moving down the hill, probably to strengthen the
front line. The smoke of the first shot had not yet
dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a
report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his
horse and galloped back to Grunth to find Prince
Bagration. He heard the cannonade behind him growing
louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun
to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys
had taken place, came the report of musketry.
Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte’s
stern letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate
his fault, had at once moved his forces to attack the center
and outflank both the Russian wings, hoping before

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evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to crush the

contemptible detachment that stood before him.
‘It has begun. Here it is!’ thought Prince Andrew,
feeling the blood rush to his heart. ‘But where and how
will my Toulon present itself?’
Passing between the companies that had been eating
porridge and drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before,
he saw everywhere the same rapid movement of soldiers
forming ranks and getting their muskets ready, and on all
their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled
his heart. ‘It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but
enjoyable!’ was what the face of each soldier and each
officer seemed to say.
Before he had reached the embankments that were
being thrown up, he saw, in the light of the dull autumn
evening, mounted men coming toward him. The foremost,
wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a
white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew
stopped, waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration
reined in his horse and recognizing Prince Andrew
nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince
Andrew told him what he had seen.
The feeling, ‘It has begun! Here it is!’ was seen even
on Prince Bagration’s hard brown face with its half-

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closed, dull, sleepy eyes. Prince Andrew gazed with

anxious curiosity at that impassive face and wished he
could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking and
feeling at that moment. ‘Is there anything at all behind
that impassive face?’ Prince Andrew asked himself as he
looked. Prince Bagration bent his head in sign of
agreement with what Prince Andrew told him, and said,
‘Very good!’ in a tone that seemed to imply that
everything that took place and was reported to him was
exactly what he had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of
breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince
Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental accent,
spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that
there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a
trot in the direction of Tushin’s battery. Prince Andrew
followed with the suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an
officer of the suite, the prince’s personal adjutant,
Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty,
riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian- an accountant
who had asked permission to be present at the battle out
of curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man,
looked around him with a naive smile of satisfaction and
presented a strange appearance among the hussars,

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Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on

his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
‘He wants to see a battle,’ said Zherkov to Bolkonski,
pointing to the accountant, ‘but he feels a pain in the pit
of his stomach already.’
‘Oh, leave off!’ said the accountant with a beaming but
rather cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the
subject of Zherkov’s joke, and purposely trying to appear
stupider than he really was.
‘It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince,’ said the staff
officer. (He remembered that in French there is some
peculiar way of addressing a prince, but could not get it
quite right.)
By this time they were all approaching Tushin’s
battery, and a ball struck the ground in front of them.
‘What’s that that has fallen?’ asked the accountant
with a naive smile.
‘A French pancake,’ answered Zherkov.
‘So that’s what they hit with?’ asked the accountant.
‘How awful!’
He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly
finished speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly
violent whistling which suddenly ended with a thud into
something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding a little to

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their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth

with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over
their saddles and turned their horses away. The
accountant stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined
him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but
the horse still struggled.
Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round,
and, seeing the cause of the confusion, turned away with
indifference, as if to say, ‘Is it worth while noticing
trifles?’ He reined in his horse with the case of a skillful
rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his saber
which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned
saber of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew
remembered the story of Suvorov giving his saber to
Bagration in Italy, and the recollection was particularly
pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery at
which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the
battlefield.
‘Whose company?’ asked Prince Bagration of an
artilleryman standing by the ammunition wagon.
He asked, ‘Whose company?’ but he really meant,
‘Are you frightened here?’ and the artilleryman
understood him.

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‘Captain Tushin’s, your excellency!’ shouted the red-

haired, freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to
attention.
‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Bagration as if considering
something, and he rode past the limbers to the farthest
cannon.
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it
deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that
suddenly surrounded the gun they could see the gunners
who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner,
Number One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to
the wheel; while Number Two with a trembling hand
placed a charge in the cannon’s mouth. The short, round-
shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over the tail of the
gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the
general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.
‘Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,’ cried he
in a feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing
note, ill suited to his weak figure. ‘Number Two!’ he
squeaked. ‘Fire, Medvedev!’
Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three
fingers to his cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not
at all like a military salute but like a priest’s benediction,

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approached the general. Though Tushin’s guns had been

intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary
balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just opposite,
in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to
fire, but after consulting his sergeant major,
Zakharchenko, for whom he had great respect, he had
decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the
village. ‘Very good!’ said Bagration in reply to the
officer’s report, and began deliberately to examine the
whole battlefield extended before him. The French had
advanced nearest on our right. Below the height on which
the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the
rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of
musketry was heard, and much farther to the right beyond
the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to
Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To
the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince
Bagration ordered two battalions from the center to be
sent to reinforce the right flank. The officer of the suite
ventured to remark to the prince that if these battalions
went away, the guns would remain without support.
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull
eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew

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that the officer’s remark was just and that really no

answer could be made to it. But at that moment an
adjutant galloped up with a message from the commander
of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense
masses of the French were coming down upon them and
that his regiment was in disorder and was retreating upon
the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagration bowed his head in
sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to the
right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to
attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour
later with the news that the commander of the dragoons
had already retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a
heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing
men uselessly, and so had hastened to throw some
sharpshooters into the wood.
‘Very good!’ said Bagration.
As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the
left also, and as it was too far to the left flank for him to
have time to go there himself, Prince Bagration sent
Zherkov to tell the general in command (the one who had
paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at Braunau) that he
must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in
the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to
withstand the enemy’s attack very long. About Tushin

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and the battalion that had been in support of his battery all
was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened attentively to
Bagration’s colloquies with the commanding officers and
the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no
orders were really given, but that Prince Bagration tried to
make it appear that everything done by necessity, by
accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was
done, if not by his direct command, at least in accord with
his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that
though what happened was due to chance and was
independent of the commander’s will, owing to the tact
Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable.
Officers who approached him with disturbed
countenances became calm; soldiers and officers greeted
him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and were
evidently anxious to display their courage before him.

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Chapter XVIII

Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of

our right flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of
musketry was heard but where on account of the smoke
nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to the hollow
the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded
men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being
dragged along by two soldiers who supported him under
the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he was
spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat
or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but
without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm
which had just been hurt, while blood from it was
streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that
moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather
than suffering. Crossing a road they descended a steep
incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they
also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were
unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill
breathing heavily, and despite the general’s presence were
talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them rows of

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gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and

an officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting
after the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back.
Bagration rode up to the ranks along which shots crackled
now here and now there, drowning the sound of voices
and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked with
smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened
with it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting
powder on the touchpans or taking charges from their
pouches, while others were firing, though who they were
firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was
no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and
whistling of bullets were often heard. ‘What is this?’
thought Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of
soldiers. ‘It can’t be an attack, for they are not moving; it
can’t be a square- for they are not drawn up for that.’
The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking
old man with a pleasant smile- his eyelids drooping more
than half over his old eyes, giving him a mild expression,
rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as a host
welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment
had been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the
attack had been repulsed, he had lost more than half his
men. He said the attack had been repulsed, employing this

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military term to describe what had occurred to his

regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what had
happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to
him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack
had been repulsed or his regiment had been broken up.
All he knew was that at the commencement of the action
balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and
hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted
‘Cavalry!’ and our men had begun firing. They were still
firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at
French infantry who had come into the hollow and were
firing at our men. Prince Bagration bowed his head as a
sign that this was exactly what he had desired and
expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to bring
down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom
they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the
changed expression on Prince Bagration’s face at this
moment. It expressed the concentrated and happy
resolution you see on the face of a man who on a hot day
takes a final run before plunging into the water. The dull,
sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation
of profound thought. The round, steady, hawk’s eyes
looked before him eagerly and rather disdainfully, not

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resting on anything although his movements were still

slow and measured.
The commander of the regiment turned to Prince
Bagration, entreating him to go back as it was too
dangerous to remain where they were. ‘Please, your
excellency, for God’s sake!’ he kept saying, glancing for
support at an officer of the suite who turned away from
him. ‘There, you see!’ and he drew attention to the bullets
whistling, singing, and hissing continually around them.
He spoke in the tone of entreaty and reproach that a
carpenter uses to a gentleman who has picked up an ax:
‘We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister your hands.’
He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and his
half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his
words. The staff officer joined in the colonel’s appeals,
but Bagration did not reply; he only gave an order to
cease firing and re-form, so as to give room for the two
approaching battalions. While he was speaking, the
curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by
a rising wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn
by an invisible hand, and the hill opposite, with the
French moving about on it, opened out before them. All
eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column
advancing against them and winding down over the

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uneven ground. One could already see the soldiers’

shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from the men, and
see the standard flapping against its staff.
‘They march splendidly,’ remarked someone in
Bagration’s suite.
The head of the column had already descended into the
hollow. The clash would take place on this side of it...
The remains of our regiment which had been in action
rapidly formed up and moved to the right; from behind it,
dispersing the laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth
Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had reached
Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching
in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to
Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-
faced man, with a stupid and happy expression- the same
man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how
dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the
commander.
With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he
stepped lightly with his muscular legs as if sailing along,
stretching himself to his full height without the smallest
effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy tread of the
soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close

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to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and

not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior
officers and now back at the men without losing step, his
whole powerful body turning flexibly. It was as if all the
powers of his soul were concentrated on passing the
commander in the best possible manner, and feeling that
he was doing it well he was happy. ‘Left... left... left...’ he
seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in
time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of
soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched
in step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed
to be repeating to himself at each alternate step, ‘Left...
left... left...’ A fat major skirted a bush, puffing and
falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his
face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot, panting
to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the
air, flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and
fell into the column to the measure of ‘Left... left!’ ‘Close
up!’ came the company commander’s voice in jaunty
tones. The soldiers passed in a semicircle round
something where the ball had fallen, and an old trooper on
the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped
beside the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling
into step with a hop, looked back angrily, and through the

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ominous silence and the regular tramp of feet beating the

ground in unison, one seemed to hear left... left... left.
‘Well done, lads!’ said Prince Bagration.
‘Glad to do our best, your ex’len-lency!’ came a
confused shout from the ranks. A morose soldier
marching on the left turned his eyes on Bagration as he
shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: ‘We
know that ourselves!’ Another, without looking round, as
though fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open
and passed on.
The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past
him and dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took
off and handed over his felt coat, stretched his legs, and
set his cap straight. The head of the French column, with
its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.
‘Forward, with God!’ said Bagration, in a resolute,
sonorous voice, turning for a moment to the front line,
and slightly swinging his arms, he went forward uneasily
over the rough field with the awkward gait of a
cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power
was leading him forward, and experienced great
happiness.

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The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking

beside Bagration, could clearly distinguish their
bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their faces. (He
distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered
legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.)
Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently
continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one
shot after another rang out from the French, smoke
appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket shots
sounded. Several of our men fell, among them the round-
faced officer who had marched so gaily and
complacently. But at the moment the first report was
heard, Bagration looked round and shouted, ‘Hurrah!’
‘Hurrah- ah!- ah!’ rang a long-drawn shout from our
ranks, and passing Bagration and racing one another they
rushed in an irregular but joyous and eager crowd down
the hill at their disordered foe.

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Chapter XIX

The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of

our right flank. In the center Tushin’s forgotten battery,
which had managed to set fire to the Schon Grabern
village, delayed the French advance. The French were
putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and
thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center
to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was
hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get
mixed. But our left- which consisted of the Azov and
Podolsk infantry and the Pavlograd hussars- was
simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior
French forces under Lannes and was thrown into
confusion. Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general
commanding that left flank with orders to retreat
immediately.
Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned
his horse about and galloped off. But no sooner had he
left Bagration than his courage failed him. He was seized
by panic and could not go where it was dangerous.
Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the
front where the firing was, he began to look for the

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general and his staff where they could not possibly be,
and so did not deliver the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to
the commander of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at
Braunau and in which Dolokhov was serving as a private.
But the command of the extreme left flank had been
assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment in
which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose.
The two commanders were much exasperated with one
another and, long after the action had begun on the right
flank and the French were already advancing, were
engaged in discussion with the sole object of offending
one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry,
were by no means ready for the impending action. From
privates to general they were not expecting a battle and
were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding
the horses and the infantry collecting wood.
‘He higher iss dan I in rank,’ said the German colonel
of the hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who
had ridden up, ‘so let him do what he vill, but I cannot
sacrifice my hussars... Bugler, sount ze retreat!’
But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and
musketry, mingling together, thundered on the right and
in the center, while the capotes of Lannes’ sharpshooters

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were already seen crossing the milldam and forming up

within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in
command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky
steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight
and tall and rode to the Pavlograd commander. The
commanders met with polite bows but with secret
malevolence in their hearts.
‘Once again, Colonel,’ said the general, ‘I can’t leave
half my men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you,’ he
repeated, ‘to occupy the position and prepare for an
attack.’
‘I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your
business!’ suddenly replied the irate colonel. ‘If you vere
in the cavalry..’
‘I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian
general and if you are not aware of the fact..’
‘Quite avare, your excellency,’ suddenly shouted the
colonel, touching his horse and turning purple in the face.
‘Vill you be so goot to come to ze front and see dat zis
position iss no goot? I don’t vish to destroy my men for
your pleasure!’
‘You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my
own pleasure and I won’t allow it to be said!’

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Taking the colonel’s outburst as a challenge to his

courage, the general expanded his chest and rode,
frowning, beside him to the front line, as if their
differences would be settled there amongst the bullets.
They reached the front, several bullets sped over them,
and they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be
seen from the line, for from where they had been before it
had been evident that it was impossible for cavalry to act
among the bushes and broken ground, as well as that the
French were outflanking our left. The general and colonel
looked sternly and significantly at one another like two
fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to
detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the
examination successfully. As there was nothing to said,
and neither wished to give occasion for it to be alleged
that he had been the first to leave the range of fire, they
would have remained there for a long time testing each
other’s courage had it not been that just then they heard
the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind
them in the wood. The French had attacked the men
collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible for
the hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off
from the line of retreat on the left by the French. However

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inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to attack

in order to cut away through for themselves.
The squadron in which Rostov was serving had
scarcely time to mount before it was halted facing the
enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge, there was nothing
between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear- resembling
the line separating the living from the dead- lay between
them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the
question whether they would they would cross it or not,
and how they would cross it, agitated them all.
The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply
to questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man
desperately insisting on having his own way, gave an
order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor of an
attack spread through the squadron. The command to
form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were
drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The
troops of the left flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that
the commander did not himself know what to do, and this
irresolution communicated itself to the men.
‘If only they would be quick!’ thought Rostov, feeling
that at last the time had come to experience the joy of an

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attack of which he had so often heard from his fellow

hussars.
‘Fo’ward, with God, lads!’ rang out Denisov’s voice.
‘At a twot fo’ward!’
The horses’ croups began to sway in the front line.
Rook pulled at the reins and started of his own accord.
Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of
his hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he
could not see distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots
could be heard, but some way off.
‘Faster!’ came the word of command, and Rostov felt
Rook’s flanks drooping as he broke into a gallop.
Rostov anticipated his horse’s movements and became
more and more elated. He had noticed a solitary tree
ahead of him. This tree had been in the middle of the line
that had seemed so terrible- and now he had crossed that
line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and
animated. ‘Oh, how I will slash at him!’ thought Rostov,
gripping the hilt of his saber.
‘Hur-a-a-a-ah!’ came a roar of voices. ‘Let anyone
come my way now,’ thought Rostov driving his spurs into
Rook and letting him go at a full gallop so that he
outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was already

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visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to

sweep over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready
to strike, but at that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who
was galloping ahead, shot away from him, and Rostov felt
as in a dream that he continued to be carried forward with
unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From
behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against
him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk’s horse
swerved and galloped past.
‘How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!’
Rostov asked and answered at the same instant. He was
alone in the middle of a field. Instead of the moving
horses and hussars’ backs, he saw nothing before him but
the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There
was warm blood under his arm. ‘No, I am wounded and
the horse is killed.’ Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but
fell back, pinning his rider’s leg. Blood was flowing from
his head; he struggled but could not rise. Rostov also tried
to rise but fell back, his sabretache having become
entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and where
the French, he did not know. There was no one near.
Having disentangled his leg, he rose. ‘Where, on which
side, was now the line that had so sharply divided the two
armies?’ he asked himself and could not answer. ‘Can

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something bad have happened to me?’ he wondered as he

got up: and at that moment he felt that something
superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The
wrist felt as if it were not his. He examined his hand
carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it. ‘Ah, here are
people coming,’ he thought joyfully, seeing some men
running toward him. ‘They will help me!’ In front came a
man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy,
sunburned, and with a hooked nose. Then came two more,
and many more running behind. One of them said
something strange, not in Russian. In among the hindmost
of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian
hussar. He was being held by the arms and his horse was
being led behind him.
‘It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that
they will take me too? Who are these men?’ thought
Rostov, scarcely believing his eyes. ‘Can they be
French?’ He looked at the approaching Frenchmen, and
though but a moment before he had been galloping to get
at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now
seemed so awful that he could not believe his eyes. ‘Who
are they? Why are they running? Can they be coming at
me? And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond
of?’ He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his

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family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to

kill him seemed impossible. ‘But perhaps they may do it!’
For more than ten seconds he stood not moving from the
spot or realizing the situation. The foremost Frenchman,
the one with the hooked nose, was already so close that
the expression of his face could be seen. And the excited,
alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding
his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He
seized his pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the
Frenchman and ran with all his might toward the bushes.
He did not now run with the feeling of doubt and conflict
with which he had trodden the Enns bridge, but with the
feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single
sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life,
possessed his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows,
he fled across the field with the impetuosity he used to
show at catchplay, now and then turning his good-
natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder of
terror went through him: ‘No, better not look,’ he thought,
but having reached the bushes he glanced round once
more. The French had fallen behind, and just as he looked
round the first man changed his run to a walk and,
turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade farther
back. Rostov paused. ‘No, there’s some mistake,’ thought

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he. ‘They can’t have wanted to kill me.’ But at the same
time, his left arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound
weight were tied to it. He could run no more. The
Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov closed his
eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another
whistled past him. He mustered his last remaining
strength, took hold of his left hand with his right, and
reached the bushes. Behind these were some Russian
sharpshooters.
CHAPTER XX
The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares
in the outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different
companies getting mixed, and retreated as a disorderly
crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the senseless cry,
‘Cut off!’ that is so terrible in battle, and that word
infected the whole crowd with a feeling of panic.
‘Surrounded! Cut off? We’re lost!’ shouted the
fugitives.
The moment he heard the firing and the cry from
behind, the general realized that something dreadful had
happened to his regiment, and the thought that he, an
exemplary officer of many years’ service who had never
been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters
for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that,

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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.

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The general had a fit of coughing as a result of

shouting and of the powder smoke and stopped in despair.
Everything seemed lost. But at that moment the French
who were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent
reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and
Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It
was Timokhin’s company, which alone had maintained its
order in the wood and, having lain in ambush in a ditch,
now attacked the French unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed
only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such a
desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination that,
taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their
muskets and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin,
killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was the first to
seize the surrendering French officer by his collar. Our
fugitives returned, the battalions re-formed, and the
French who had nearly cut our left flank in half were for
the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join
up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental
commander and Major Ekonomov had stopped beside a
bridge, letting the retreating companies pass by them,
when a soldier came up and took hold of the
commander’s stirrup, almost leaning against him. The
man was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no

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knapsack or cap, his head was bandaged, and over his

shoulder a French munition pouch was slung. He had an
officer’s sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his blue
eyes looked impudently into the commander’s face, and
his lips were smiling. Though the commander was
occupied in giving instructions to Major Ekonomov, he
could not help taking notice of the soldier.
‘Your excellency, here are two trophies,’ said
Dolokhov, pointing to the French sword and pouch. ‘I
have taken an officer prisoner. I stopped the company.’
Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and spoke in
abrupt sentences. ‘The whole company can bear witness. I
beg you will remember this, your excellency!’
‘All right, all right,’ replied the commander, and turned
to Major Ekonomov.
But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the
handkerchief around his head, pulled it off, and showed
the blood congealed on his hair.
‘A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember,
your excellency!’
Tushin’s battery had been forgotten and only at the
very end of the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing
the cannonade in the center, send his orderly staff officer,
and later Prince Andrew also, to order the battery to retire

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as quickly as possible. When the supports attached to

Tushin’s battery had been moved away in the middle of
the action by someone’s order, the battery had continued
firing and was only not captured by the French because
the enemy could not surmise that anyone could have the
effrontery to continue firing from four quite undefended
guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery
led the French to suppose that here- in the center- the
main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had
attempted to attack this point, but on each occasion had
been driven back by grapeshot from the four isolated guns
on the hillock.
Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had
succeeded in setting fire to Schon Grabern.
‘Look at them scurrying! It’s burning! Just see the
smoke! Fine! Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!’
exclaimed the artillerymen, brightening up.
All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being
fired in the direction of the conflagration. As if urging
each other on, the soldiers cried at each shot: ‘Fine!
That’s good! Look at it... Grand!’ The fire, fanned by the
breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French columns that
had advanced beyond the village went back; but as though
in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to

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the right of the village and began firing them at Tushin’s

battery.
In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their
luck in successfully cannonading the French, our
artillerymen only noticed this battery when two balls, and
then four more, fell among our guns, one knocking over
two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon
driver’s leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not
diminished, but only changed character. The horses were
replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the
wounded were carried away, and the four guns were
turned against the ten-gun battery. Tushin’s companion
officer had been killed at the beginning of the engagement
and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the
guns’ crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were
still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the
French appearing below them, and then they fired
grapeshot at them.
Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept
telling his orderly to ‘refill my pipe for that one!’ and
then, scattering sparks from it, ran forward shading his
eyes with his small hand to look at the French.
‘Smack at ‘em, lads!’ he kept saying, seizing the guns
by the wheels and working the screws himself.

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Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports

which always made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe
from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now aiming, now
counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing
dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and
shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and
irresolute. His face grew more and more animated. Only
when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and turn
away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as
is always the case, hesitated about lifting the injured or
dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows
and, as is always the case in an artillery company, a head
and shoulders taller and twice as broad as their officer- all
looked at their commander like children in an
embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was
invariably reflected on theirs.
Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for
concentration and activity, Tushin did not experience the
slightest unpleasant sense of fear, and the thought that he
might be killed or badly wounded never occurred to him.
On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It
seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a
day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first
shot, and that the corner of the field he stood on was well-

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known and familiar ground. Though he thought of

everything, considered everything, and did everything the
best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state
akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.
From the deafening sounds of his own guns around
him, the whistle and thud of the enemy’s cannon balls,
from the flushed and perspiring faces of the crew bustling
round the guns, from the sight of the blood of men and
horses, from the little puffs of smoke on the enemy’s side
(always followed by a ball flying past and striking the
earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these
things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession
of his brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure.
The enemy’s guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes
from which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible
smoker.
‘There... he’s puffing again,’ muttered Tushin to
himself, as a small cloud rose from the hill and was borne
in a streak to the left by the wind.
‘Now look out for the ball... we’ll throw it back.’
‘What do you want, your honor?’ asked an
artilleryman, standing close by, who heard him muttering.
‘Nothing... only a shell...’ he answered.

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‘Come along, our Matvevna!’ he said to himself.

‘Matvevna"* was the name his fancy gave to the farthest
gun of the battery, which was large and of an old pattern.
The French swarming round their guns seemed to him
like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number
One of the second gun’s crew was ‘uncle"; Tushin looked
at him more often than at anyone else and took delight in
his every movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of
the hill, now diminishing, now increasing, seemed like
someone’s breathing. He listened intently to the ebb and
flow of these sounds.
*Daughter of Matthew.
‘Ah! Breathing again, breathing!’ he muttered to
himself.
He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful
man who was throwing cannon balls at the French with
both hands.
‘Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don’t let me
down!’ he was saying as he moved from the gun, when a
strange, unfamiliar voice called above his head: ‘Captain
Tushin! Captain!’
Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer
who had turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was
shouting in a gasping voice:

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‘Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat,

and you..’
‘Why are they down on me?’ thought Tushin, looking
in alarm at his superior.
‘I... don’t...’ he muttered, holding up two fingers to his
cap. ‘I..’
But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to
say. A cannon ball, flying close to him, caused him to
duck and bend over his horse. He paused, and just as he
was about to say something more, another ball stopped
him. He turned his horse and galloped off.
‘Retire! All to retire!’ he shouted from a distance.
The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant
arrived with the same order.
It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding
up to the space where Tushin’s guns were stationed was
an unharnessed horse with a broken leg, that lay
screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses. Blood
was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the
limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another
passed over as he approached and he felt a nervous
shudder run down his spine. But the mere thought of
being afraid roused him again. ‘I cannot be afraid,’
thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He

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delivered the order and did not leave the battery. He

decided to have the guns removed from their positions
and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Tushin,
stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from
the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.
‘A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped
off,’ said an artilleryman to Prince Andrew. ‘Not like
your honor!’
Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both
so busy as to seem not to notice one another. When
having limbered up the only two cannon that remained
uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the
hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind),
Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin.
‘Well, till we meet again...’ he said, holding out his
hand to Tushin.
‘Good-by, my dear fellow,’ said Tushin. ‘Dear soul!
Good-by, my dear fellow!’ and for some unknown reason
tears suddenly filled his eyes.

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Chapter XXI

The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with

the powder smoke, hung low over the field of battle on
the horizon. It was growing dark and the glow of two
conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The cannonade
was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on
the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin
with his guns, continually driving round or coming upon
wounded men, was out of range of fire and had descended
into the dip, he was met by some of the staff, among them
the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice sent to
Tushin’s battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how
to proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin
gave no orders, and, silently- fearing to speak because at
every word he felt ready to weep without knowing why-
rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the orders were
to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged
themselves after troops and begged for seats on the gun
carriages. The jaunty infantry officer who just before the
battle had rushed out of Tushin’s wattle shed was laid,
with a bullet in his stomach, on ‘Matvevna’s’ carriage. At

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the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one

hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a
seat.
‘Captain, for God’s sake! I’ve hurt my arm,’ he said
timidly. ‘For God’s sake... I can’t walk. For God’s sake!’
It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly
asked for a lift and been refused. He asked in a hesitating,
piteous voice.
‘Tell them to give me a seat, for God’s sake!’
‘Give him a seat,’ said Tushin. ‘Lay a cloak for him to
sit on, lad,’ he said, addressing his favorite soldier. ‘And
where is the wounded officer?’
‘He has been set down. He died,’ replied someone.
‘Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread
out the cloak, Antonov.’
The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the
other; he was pale and his jaw trembled, shivering
feverishly. He was placed on ‘Matvevna,’ the gun from
which they had removed the dead officer. The cloak they
spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
breeches and arm.
‘What, are you wounded, my lad?’ said Tushin,
approaching the gun on which Rostov sat.
‘No, it’s a sprain.’

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‘Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?’ inquired

Tushin.
‘It was the officer, your honor, stained it,’ answered
the artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat
sleeve, as if apologizing for the state of his gun.
It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise
aided by the infantry, and having reached the village of
Gruntersdorf they halted. It had grown so dark that one
could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces off, and the
firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of
shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French
attack and was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the
village houses. They all rushed out of the village again,
but Tushin’s guns could not move, and the artillerymen,
Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they
awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers,
talking eagerly, streamed out of a side street.
‘Not hurt, Petrov?’ asked one.
‘We’ve given it ‘em hot, mate! They won’t make
another push now,’ said another.
‘You couldn’t see a thing. How they shot at their own
fellows! Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn’t
there something to drink?’

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The French had been repulsed for the last time. And
again and again in the complete darkness Tushin’s guns
moved forward, surrounded by the humming infantry as
by a frame.
In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen
river was flowing always in one direction, humming with
whispers and talk and the sound of hoofs and wheels.
Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the
wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound
in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the
army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt
into one with the darkness of the night. After a while the
moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on a
white horse followed by his suite, and said something in
passing: ‘What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it?
Did he thank us?’ came eager questions from all sides.
The whole moving mass began pressing closer together
and a report spread that they were ordered to halt:
evidently those in front had halted. All remained where
they were in the middle of the muddy road.
Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible.
Captain Tushin, having given orders to his company, sent
a soldier to find a dressing station or a doctor for the
cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the soldiers had kindled

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on the road. Rostov, too, dragged himself to the fire. From

pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his
whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him,
but he kept awake kept awake by an excruciating pain in
his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory position.
He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the
fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the
feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting
cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin’s large, kind,
intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
commiseration on Rostov, who saw that Tushin with his
whole heart wished to help him but could not.
From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the
infantry, who were walking, driving past, and settling
down all around. The sound of voices, the tramping feet,
the horses’ hoofs moving in mud, the crackling of wood
fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.
It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river
flowing through the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and
gradually subsiding after a storm. Rostov looked at and
listened listlessly to what passed before and around him.
An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels,
held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.

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‘You don’t mind your honor?’ he asked Tushin. ‘I’ve

lost my company, your honor. I don’t know where... such
bad luck!’
With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged
cheek came up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin
asked him to have the guns moved a trifle to let a wagon
go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to the
campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately,
each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both
holding on to.
‘You picked it up?... I dare say! You’re very smart!’
one of them shouted hoarsely.
Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a
bloodstained leg band, came up and in angry tones asked
the artillerymen for water.
‘Must one die like a dog?’ said he.
Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a
cheerful soldier ran up, begging a little fire for the
infantry.
‘A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to
you, fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we’ll return
it with interest,’ said he, carrying away into the darkness a
glowing stick.

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Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on

a cloak, and passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.
‘Who the devil has put the logs on the road?’ snarled
he.
‘He’s dead- why carry him?’ said another.
‘Shut up!’
And they disappeared into the darkness with with their
load.
‘Still aching?’ Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in
the hut here,’ said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.
‘Coming, friend.’
Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it
straight, walked away from the fire.
Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had
been prepared for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner,
talking with some commanding officers who had gathered
at his quarters. The little old man with the half-closed
eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years,
flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff
officer with the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily

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glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew, pale, with

compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.
In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from
the French, and the accountant with the naive face was
feeling its texture, shaking his head in perplexity- perhaps
because the banner really interested him, perhaps because
it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at a
dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut
there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner
by our dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at
him. Prince Bagration was thanking the individual
commanders and inquiring into details of the action and
our losses. The general whose regiment had been
inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as
soon as the action began he had withdrawn from the
wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and,
allowing the French to pass him, had made a bayonet
charge with two battalions and had broken up the French
troops.
‘When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion
was disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: ‘I’ll
let them come on and will meet them with the fire of the
whole battalion’- and that’s what I did.’

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The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry

he had not managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it
had really happened. Perhaps it might really have been
so? Could one possibly make out amid all that confusion
what did or did not happen?
‘By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,’ he
continued- remembering Dolokhov’s conversation with
Kutuzov and his last interview with the gentleman-ranker-
‘that Private Dolokhov, who was reduced to the ranks,
took a French officer prisoner in my presence and
particularly distinguished himself.’
‘I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your
excellency,’ chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around.
He had not seen the hussars all that day, but had heard
about them from an infantry officer. ‘They broke up two
squares, your excellency.’
Several of those present smiled at Zherkov’s words,
expecting one of his usual jokes, but noticing that what he
was saying redounded to the glory of our arms and of the
day’s work, they assumed a serious expression, though
many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the
old colonel:

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‘Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved

heroically: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that
two guns were abandoned in the center?’ he inquired,
searching with his eyes for someone. (Prince Bagration
did not ask about the guns on the left flank; he knew that
all the guns there had been abandoned at the very
beginning of the action.) ‘I think I sent you?’ he added,
turning to the staff officer on duty.
‘One was damaged,’ answered the staff officer, ‘and
the other I can’t understand. I was there all the time
giving orders and had only just left.... It is true that it was
hot there,’ he added, modestly.
Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was
bivouacking close to the village and had already been sent
for.
‘Oh, but you were there?’ said Prince Bagration,
addressing Prince Andrew.
‘Of course, we only just missed one another,’ said the
staff officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.
‘I had not the pleasure of seeing you,’ said Prince
Andrew, coldly and abruptly.
All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and
made his way timidly from behind the backs of the
generals. As he stepped past the generals in the crowded

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hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the sight of

his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
‘How was it a gun was abandoned?’ asked Bagration,
frowning, not so much at the captain as at those who were
laughing, among whom Zherkov laughed loudest.
Only now, when he was confronted by the stern
authorities, did his guilt and the disgrace of having lost
two guns and yet remaining alive present themselves to
Tushin in all their horror. He had been so excited that he
had not thought about it until that moment. The officers’
laughter confused him still more. He stood before
Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly
able to mutter: ‘I don’t know... your excellency... I had no
men... your excellency.’
‘You might have taken some from the covering
troops.’
Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops,
though that was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting
some other officer into trouble, and silently fixed his eyes
on Bagration as a schoolboy who has blundered looks at
an examiner.
The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration,
apparently not wishing to be severe, found nothing to say;

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the others did not venture to intervene. Prince Andrew

looked at Tushin from under his brows and his fingers
twitched nervously.
‘Your excellency!’ Prince Andrew broke the silence
with his abrupt voice,’ you were pleased to send me to
Captain Tushin’s battery. I went there and found two
thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two guns
smashed, and no supports at all.’
Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal
intentness at Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed
agitation.
‘And, if your excellency will allow me to express my
opinion,’ he continued, ‘we owe today’s success chiefly
to the action of that battery and the heroic endurance of
Captain Tushin and his company,’ and without awaiting a
reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant
to show distrust in Bolkonski’s emphatic opinion yet not
feeling able fully to credit it, bent his head, and told
Tushin that he could go. Prince Andrew went out with
him.
‘Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!’ said
Tushin.

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Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and

went away. He felt sad and depressed. It was all so
strange, so unlike what he had hoped.
‘Who are they? Why are they here? What do they
want? And when will all this end?’ thought Rostov,
looking at the changing shadows before him. The pain in
his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his
eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a
sense of loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was
they, these soldiers- wounded and unwounded- it was
they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting the
sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and
shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval
innumerable things appeared to him in a dream: his
mother and her large white hand, Sonya’s thin little
shoulders, Natasha’s eyes and laughter, Denisov with his
voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with
Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing
as this soldier with the harsh voice, and it was that affair
and this soldier that were so agonizingly, incessantly
pulling and pressing his arm and always dragging it in one
direction. He tried to get away from them, but they would

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not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair’s breadth. It

would not ache- it would be well- if only they did not pull
it, but it was immpossible to get rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy
of night hung less than a yard above the glow of the
charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were fluttering in that
light. Tushin had not returned, the doctor had not come.
He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting
naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin
yellow body.
‘Nobody wants me!’ thought Rostov. ‘There is no one
to help me or pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong,
happy, and loved.’ He sighed and, doing so, groaned
involuntarily.
‘Eh, is anything hurting you?’ asked the soldier,
shaking his shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an
answer he gave a grunt and added: ‘What a lot of men
have been crippled today- frightful!’
Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the
snowflakes fluttering above the fire and remembered a
Russian winter at his warm, bright home, his fluffy fur
coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his healthy body, and all
the affection and care of his family. ‘And why did I come
here?’ he wondered.

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Next day the French army did not renew their attack,
and the remnant of Bagration’s detachment was reunited
to Kutuzov’s army.

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BOOK THREE: 1805

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Chapter I

Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought

out his plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for
his own advantage. He was merely a man of the world
who had got on and to whom getting on had become a
habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly
accounted to himself, but which formed the whole interest
of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his
mind, arising from the circumstances and persons he met.
Of these plans he had not merely one or two in his head
but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
some approaching achievement, and some in course of
disintegration. He did not, for instance, say to himself:
‘This man now has influence, I must gain his confidence
and friendship and through him obtain a special grant.’
Nor did he say to himself: ‘Pierre is a rich man, I must
entice him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty
thousand rubles I need.’ But when he came across came
across a man of position his instinct immediately told him
that this man could be useful, and without any
premeditation Prince Vasili took the first opportunity to
gain his confidence, flatter him, become intimate with
him, and finally make his request.

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He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him

an appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which
at that time conferred the status of Councilor of State, and
insisted on the young man accompanying him to
Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent
absent-mindedness, yet with unhesitating assurance that
he was doing the right thing, Prince Vasili did everything
to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he thought out his
plans beforehand he could not have been so natural and
shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with
everybody both above and below him in social standing.
Something always drew him toward those richer and more
powerful than himself and he had rare skill in seizing the
most opportune moment for making use of people.
Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov
and a rich man, felt himself after his recent loneliness and
freedom from cares so beset and preoccupied that only in
bed was he able to be by himself. He had to sign papers,
to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward,
to visit his estate near Moscow, and to receive many
people who formerly did not even wish to know of his
existence but would now have been offended and grieved
had he chosen not to see them. These different people-

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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

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knowing what for. From that day the eldest princess quite
changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped scarf
for him.
‘Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put
up with a great deal from the deceased,’ said Prince Vasili
to him, handing him a deed to sign for the princess’
benefit.
Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was
necessary to throw this bone- a bill for thirty thousand
rubles- to the poor princess that it might not occur to her
to speak of his share in the affair of the inlaid portfolio.
Pierre signed the deed and after that the princess grew still
kinder. The younger sisters also became affectionate to
him, especially the youngest, the pretty one with the mole,
who often made him feel confused by her smiles and her
own confusion when meeting him.
It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like
him, and it would have seemed so unnatural had anyone
disliked him, that he could not but believe in the sincerity
of those around him. Besides, he had no time to ask
himself whether these people were sincere or not. He was
always busy and always felt in a state of mild and
cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center
of some important and general movement; that something

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was constantly expected of him, that if he did not do it he

would grieve and disappoint many people, but if he did
this and that, all would be well; and he did what was
demanded of him, but still that happy result always
remained in the future.
More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession
of Pierre’s affairs and of Pierre himself in those early
days. From the death of Count Bezukhov he did not let go
his hold of the lad. He had the air of a man oppressed by
business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for
pity’s sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was
the son of his old friend and the possessor of such
enormous wealth, to the caprice of fate and the designs of
rogues. During the few days he spent in Moscow after the
death of Count Bezukhov, he would call Pierre, or go to
him himself, and tell him what ought to be done in a tone
of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding every
time: ‘You know I am overwhelmed with business and it
is purely out of charity that I trouble myself about you,
and you also know quite well that what I propose is the
only thing possible.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last,’
said Prince Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering
Pierre’s elbow, speaking as if he were saying something

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which had long since been agreed upon and could not
now be altered. ‘We start tomorrow and I’m giving you a
place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important
business here is now settled, and I ought to have been off
long ago. Here is something I have received from the
chancellor. I asked him for you, and you have been
entered in the diplomatic corps and made a Gentleman of
the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open
before you.’
Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with
which these words were pronounced, Pierre, who had so
long been considering his career, wished to make some
suggestion. But Prince Vasili interrupted him in the
special deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of
interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases
when special persuasion was needed.
‘Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy
my conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No
one has ever complained yet of being too much loved; and
besides, you are free, you could throw it up tomorrow.
But you will see everything for yourself when you get to
Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from these
terrible recollections.’ Prince Vasili sighed. ‘Yes, yes, my
boy. And my valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was

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nearly forgetting,’ he added. ‘You know, mon cher, your

father and I had some accounts to settle, so I have
received what was due from the Ryazan estate and will
keep it; you won’t require it. We’ll go into the accounts
later.’
By ‘what was due from the Ryazan estate’ Prince
Vasili meant several thousand rubles quitrent received
from Pierre’s peasants, which the prince had retained for
himself.
In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same
atmosphere of gentleness and affection. He could not
refuse the post, or rather the rank (for he did nothing), that
Prince Vasili had procured for him, and acquaintances,
invitations, and social occupations were so numerous that,
even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of
bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some
good, always in front of him but never attained.
Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no
longer in Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front;
Dolokhov had been reduced to the ranks; Anatole was in
the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew was
abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his
nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his
mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself

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and whom he respected. His whole time was taken up

with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince
Vasili’s house in the company of the stout princess, his
wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.
Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre
the change of attitude toward him that had taken place in
society.
Formerly in Anna Pavlovna’s presence, Pierre had
always felt that what he was saying was out of place,
tactless and unsuitable, that remarks which seemed to him
clever while they formed in his mind became foolish as
soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary
Hippolyte’s stupidest remarks came out clever and apt.
Now everything Pierre said was charmant. Even if Anna
Pavlovna did not say so, he could see that she wished to
and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.
In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre
received one of Anna Pavlovna’s usual pink notes with an
invitation to which was added: ‘You will find the
beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful to
see.’
When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first
time that some link which other people recognized had
grown up between himself and Helene, and that thought

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both alarmed him, as if some obligation were being

imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased
him as an entertaining supposition.
Anna Pavlovna’s ‘At Home’ was like the former one,
only the novelty she offered her guests this time was not
Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the
very latest details of the Emperor Alexander’s visit to
Potsdam, and of how the two august friends had pledged
themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause
of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna
Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy,
evidently relating to the young man’s recent loss by the
death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly
considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was greatly
afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known),
and her melancholy was just like the august melancholy
she showed at the mention of her most august Majesty the
Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre felt flattered by this.
Anna Pavlovna arranged the different groups in her
drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in
which were Prince Vasili and the generals, had the benefit
of the diplomat. Another group was at the tea table. Pierre
wished to join the former, but Anna Pavlovna- who was
in the excited condition of a commander on a battlefield

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to whom thousands of new and brilliant ideas occur which

there is hardly time to put in action- seeing Pierre,
touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:
‘Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this
evening.’ (She glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) ‘My
dear Helene, be charitable to my poor aunt who adores
you. Go and keep her company for ten minutes. And that
it will not be too dull, here is the dear count who will not
refuse to accompany you.’
The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna
detained Pierre, looking as if she had to give some final
necessary instructions.
‘Isn’t she exquisite?’ she said to Pierre, pointing to the
stately beauty as she glided away. ‘And how she carries
herself! For so young a girl, such tact, such masterly
perfection of manner! It comes from her heart. Happy the
man who wins her! With her the least worldly of men
would occupy a most brilliant position in society. Don’t
you think so? I only wanted to know your opinion,’ and
Anna Pavlovna let Pierre go.
Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to
Helene’s perfection of manner. If he ever thought of
Helene, it was just of her beauty and her remarkable skill
in appearing silently dignified in society.

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The old aunt received the two young people in her

corner, but seemed desirous of hiding her adoration for
Helene and inclined rather to show her fear of Anna
Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if inquiring what
she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna
Pavlovna again touched Pierre’s sleeve, saying: ‘I hope
you won’t say that it is dull in my house again,’ and she
glanced at Helene.
Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not
admit the possibility of anyone seeing her without being
enchanted. The aunt coughed, swallowed, and said in
French that she was very pleased to see Helene, then she
turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome and the
same look. In the middle of a dull and halting
conversation, Helene turned to Pierre with the beautiful
bright smile that she gave to everyone. Pierre was so used
to that smile, and it had so little meaning for him, that he
paid no attention to it. The aunt was just speaking of a
collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre’s
father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box.
Princess Helene asked to see the portrait of the aunt’s
husband on the box lid.
‘That is probably the work of Vinesse,’ said Pierre,
mentioning a celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over

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the table to take the snuffbox while trying to hear what

was being said at the other table.
He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed
him the snuffbox, passing it across Helene’s back. Helene
stooped forward to make room, and looked round with a
smile. She was, as always at evening parties, wearing a
dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at front
and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble
to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes
could not but perceive the living charm of her neck and
shoulders, so near to his lips that he need only have bent
his head a little to have touched them. He was conscious
of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the
creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see her
marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress,
but all the charm of her body only covered by her
garments. And having once seen this he could not help
being aware it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we
have once seen through.
‘So you have never noticed before how beautiful I
am?’ Helene seemed to say. ‘You had not noticed that I
am a woman? Yes, I am a woman who may belong to
anyone- to you too,’ said her glance. And at that moment

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Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his
wife, and that it could not be otherwise.
He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had
been standing at the altar with her. How and when this
would be he did not know, he did not even know if it
would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why,
that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would
happen.
Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished
once more to see her as a distant beauty far removed from
him, as he had seen her every day until then, but he could
no longer do it. He could not, any more than a man who
has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the mist
and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he
has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was
terribly close to him. She already had power over him,
and between them there was no longer any barrier except
the barrier of his own will.
‘Well, I will leave you in your little corner,’ came
Anna Pavlovna’s voice, ‘I see you are all right there.’
And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he
had done anything reprehensible, looked round with a
blush. It seemed to him that everyone knew what had
happened to him as he knew it himself.

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A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna

Pavlovna said to him: ‘I hear you are refitting your
Petersburg house?’
This was true. The architect had told him that it was
necessary, and Pierre, without knowing why, was having
his enormous Petersburg house done up.
‘That’s a good thing, but don’t move from Prince
Vasili’s. It is good to have a friend like the prince,’ she
said, smiling at Prince Vasili. ‘I know something about
that. Don’t I? And you are still so young. You need
advice. Don’t be angry with me for exercising an old
woman’s privilege.’
She paused, as women always do, expecting something
after they have mentioned their age. ‘If you marry it will
be a different thing,’ she continued, uniting them both in
one glance. Pierre did not look at Helene nor she at him.
But she was just as terribly close to him. He muttered
something and colored.
When he got home he could not sleep for a long time
for thinking of what had happened. What had happened?
Nothing. He had merely understood that the woman he
had known as a child, of whom when her beauty was
mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: ‘Yes, she’s good

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looking,’ he had understood that this woman might

belong to him.
‘But she’s stupid. I have myself said she is stupid,’ he
thought. ‘There is something nasty, something wrong, in
the feeling she excites in me. I have been told that her
brother Anatole was in love with her and she with him,
that there was quite a scandal and that that’s why he was
sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her
father... It’s bad....’ he reflected, but while he was
thinking this (the reflection was still incomplete), he
caught himself smiling and was conscious that another
line of thought had sprung up, and while thinking of her
worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be
his wife, how she would love him become quite different,
and how all he had thought and heard of her might be
false. And he again saw her not as the daughter of Prince
Vasili, but visualized her whole body only veiled by its
gray dress. ‘But no! Why did this thought never occur to
me before?’ and again he told himself that it was
impossible, that there would be something unnatural, and
as it seemed to him dishonorable, in this marriage. He
recalled her former words and looks and the words and
looks of those who had seen them together. He recalled
Anna Pavlovna’s words and looks when she spoke to him

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about his house, recalled thousands of such hints from

Prince Vasili and others, and was seized by terror lest he
had already, in some way, bound himself to do something
that was evidently wrong and that he ought not to do. But
at the very time he was expressing this conviction to
himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in all
its womanly beauty.

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Chapter II

In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour

of inspection in four different provinces. He had arranged
this for himself so as to visit his neglected estates at the
same time and pick up his son Anatole where his regiment
was stationed, and take him to visit Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the
daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home
and undertaking these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to
settle matters with Pierre, who, it is true, had latterly spent
whole days at home, that is, in Prince Vasili’s house
where he was staying, and had been absurd, excited, and
foolish in Helene’s presence (as a lover should be), but
had not yet proposed to her.
‘This is all very fine, but things must be settled,’ said
Prince Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one
morning, feeling that Pierre who was under such
obligations to him ("But never mind that’) was not
behaving very well in this matter. ‘Youth, frivolity... well,
God be with him,’ thought he, relishing his own goodness
of heart, ‘but it must be brought to a head. The day after
tomorrow will be Lelya’s name day. I will invite two or

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three people, and if he does not understand what he ought

to do then it will be my affair- yes, my affair. I am her
father.’
Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna’s ‘At Home’ and after
the sleepless night when he had decided that to marry
Helene would be a calamity and that he ought to avoid her
and go away, Pierre, despite that decision, had not left
Prince Vasili’s and felt with terror that in people’s eyes he
was every day more and more connected with her, that it
was impossible for him to return to his former conception
of her, that he could not break away from her, and that
though it would be a terrible thing he would have to unite
his fate with hers. He might perhaps have been able to
free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had rarely before
given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without
having an evening party at which Pierre had to be present
unless he wished to spoil the general pleasure and
disappoint everyone’s expectation. Prince Vasili, in the
rare moments when he was at home, would take Pierre’s
hand in passing and draw it downwards, or absent-
mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for
Pierre to kiss and would say: ‘Till tomorrow,’ or, ‘Be in
to dinner or I shall not see you,’ or, ‘I am staying in for
your sake,’ and so on. And though Prince Vasili, when he

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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

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that dreadful step. A thousand times during that month

and a half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer
to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: ‘What am I
doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have none?’
He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that
in this matter he lacked that strength of will which he had
known in himself and really possessed. Pierre was one of
those who are only strong when they feel themselves
quite innocent, and since that day when he was
overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over
the snuffbox at Anna Pavlovna’s, an unacknowledged
sense of the guilt of that desire paralyzed his will.
On Helene’s name day, a small party of just their own
people- as his wife said- met for supper at Prince Vasili’s.
All these friends and relations had been given to
understand that the fate of the young girl would be
decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had
once been handsome, was sitting at the head of the table.
On either side of her sat the more important guests- an old
general and his wife, and Anna Pavlovna Scherer. At the
other end sat the younger and less important guests, and
there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and
Helene, side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any

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supper: he went round the table in a merry mood, sitting

down now by one, now by another, of the guests. To each
of them he made some careless and agreeable remark
except to Pierre and Helene, whose presence he seemed
not to notice. He enlivened the whole party. The wax
candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal gleamed, so
did the ladies’ toilets and the gold and silver of the men’s
epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved round the
table, the clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled
with the animated hum of several conversations. At one
end of the table, the old chamberlain was heard assuring
an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at which
she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the
misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the
center of the table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody’s
attention. With a facetious smile on his face, he was
telling the ladies about last Wednesday’s meeting of the
Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich Vyazmitinov,
the new military governor general of Petersburg, had
received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor
Alexander from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which
the Emperor said that he was receiving from all sides
declarations of the people’s loyalty, that the declaration
from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that he

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was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would

endeavor to be worthy of it. This rescript began with the
words: ‘Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach
me,’ etc.
‘Well, and so he never got farther than: ‘Sergey
Kuzmich’?’ asked one of the ladies.
‘Exactly, not a hair’s breadth farther,’ answered Prince
Vasili, laughing, ‘‘Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides...
From all sides... Sergey Kuzmich...’ Poor Vyazmitinov
could not get any farther! He began the rescript again and
again, but as soon as he uttered ‘Sergey’ he sobbed, ‘Kuz-
mi-ch,’ tears, and ‘From all sides’ was smothered in sobs
and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief,
and again: ‘Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,’... and tears,
till at last somebody else was asked to read it.’
‘Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears,’ someone
repeated laughing.
‘Don’t be unkind,’ cried Anna Pavlovna from her end
of the table holding up a threatening finger. ‘He is such a
worthy and excellent man, our dear Vyazmitinov...’
Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the
table, where the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to
be in high spirits and under the influence of a variety of
exciting sensations. Only Pierre and Helene sat silently

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side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a

suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that
had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich- a smile of
bashfulness at their own feelings. But much as all the rest
laughed, talked, and joked, much as they enjoyed their
Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they avoided
looking at the young couple, and heedless and
unobservant as they seemed of them, one could feel by
the occasional glances they gave that the story about
Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were all a
pretense, and that the whole attention of that company
was directed to- Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili
mimicked the sobbing of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same
time his eyes glanced toward his daughter, and while he
laughed the expression on his face clearly said: ‘Yes... it’s
getting on, it will all be settled today.’ Anna Pavlovna
threatened him on behalf of ‘our dear Vyazmitinov,’ and
in her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince
Vasili read a congratulation on his future son-in-law and
on his daughter’s happiness. The old princess sighed
sadly as she offered some wine to the old lady next to her
and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh seemed
to say: ‘Yes, there’s nothing left for you and me but to sip
sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for

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these young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy.’

‘And what nonsense all this is that I am saying!’ thought a
diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces of the lovers.
‘That’s happiness!’
Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests
uniting that society had entered the simple feeling of the
attraction of a healthy and handsome young man and
woman for one another. And this human feeling
dominated everything else and soared above all their
affected chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting,
and the animation was evidently forced. Not only the
guests but even the footmen waiting at table seemed to
feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked at the
beautiful Helene with her radiant face and at the red,
broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed
as if the very light of the candles was focused on those
two happy faces alone.
Pierre felt that he the center of it all, and this both
pleased and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely
absorbed in some occupation. He did not see, hear, or
understand anything clearly. Only now and then detached
ideas and impressions from the world of reality shot
unexpectedly through his mind.

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‘So it is all finished!’ he thought. ‘And how has it all

happened? How quickly! Now I know that not because of
her alone, nor of myself alone, but because of everyone, it
must inevitably come about. They are all expecting it,
they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I cannot,
disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it
will certainly happen!’ thought Pierre, glancing at those
dazzling shoulders close to his eyes.
Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not
what. He felt it awkward to attract everyone’s attention
and to be considered a lucky man and, with his plain face,
to be looked on as a sort of Paris possessed of a Helen.
‘But no doubt it always is and must be so!’ he consoled
himself. ‘And besides, what have I done to bring it about?
How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince
Vasili. Then there was nothing. So why should I not stay
at his house? Then I played cards with her and picked up
her reticule and drove out with her. How did it begin,
when did it all come about?’ And here he was sitting by
her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her
nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then
it would suddenly seem to him that it was not she but he
was so unusually beautiful, and that that was why they all
looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration

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he would expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at

his good fortune. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice
repeating something to him a second time. But Pierre was
so absorbed that he did not understand what was said.
‘I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski,’
repeated Prince Vasili a third time. ‘How absent-minded
you are, my dear fellow.’
Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone
was smiling at him and Helene. ‘Well, what of it, if you
all know it?’ thought Pierre. ‘What of it? It’s the truth!’
and he himself smiled his gentle childlike smile, and
Helene smiled too.
‘When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?’
repeated Prince Vasili, who pretended to want to know
this in order to settle a dispute.
‘How can one talk or think of such trifles?’ thought
Pierre.
‘Yes, from Olmutz,’ he answered, with a sigh.
After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others
into the drawing room. The guests began to disperse,
some without taking leave of Helene. Some, as if
unwilling to distract her from an important occupation,
came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved

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a mournful silence as he left the drawing room. He

pictured the vanity of his diplomatic career in comparison
with Pierre’s happiness. The old general grumbled at his
wife when she asked how his leg was. ‘Oh, the old fool,’
he thought. ‘That Princess Helene will be beautiful still
when she’s fifty.’
‘I think I may congratulate you,’ whispered Anna
Pavlovna to the old princess, kissing her soundly. ‘If I
hadn’t this headache I’d have stayed longer.’
The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by
jealousy of her daughter’s happiness.
While the guests were taking their leave Pierre
remained for a long time alone with Helene in the little
drawing room where they were sitting. He had often
before, during the last six weeks, remained alone with her,
but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it
was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take
the final step. He felt ashamed; he felt that he was
occupying someone else’s place here beside Helene. ‘This
happiness is not for you,’ some inner voice whispered to
him. ‘This happiness is for those who have not in them
what there is in you.’
But, as he had to say something, he began by asking
her whether she was satisfied with the party. She replied

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in her usual simple manner that this name day of hers had
been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.
Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They
were sitting in the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came
up to Pierre with languid footsteps. Pierre rose and said it
was getting late. Prince Vasili gave him a look of stern
inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was so
strange that one could not take it in. But then the
expression of severity changed, and he drew Pierre’s hand
downwards, made him sit down, and smiled
affectionately.
‘Well, Lelya?’ he asked, turning instantly to his
daughter and addressing her with the careless tone of
habitual tenderness natural to parents who have petted
their children from babyhood, but which Prince Vasili had
only acquired by imitating other parents.
And he again turned to Pierre.
‘Sergey Kuzmich- From all sides-’ he said,
unbuttoning the top button of his waistcoat.
Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was
not the story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince
Vasili just then, and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew
this. He suddenly muttered something and went away. It
seemed to Pierre that even the prince was disconcerted.

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The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the

world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too
seemed disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: ‘Well,
it is your own fault.’
‘The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!’
thought Pierre, and he again began speaking about
indifferent matters, about Sergey Kuzmich, asking what
the point of the story was as he had not heard it properly.
Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the
princess, his wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly
lady about Pierre.
‘Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness,
my dear..’
‘Marriages are made in heaven,’ replied the elderly
lady.
Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies,
and sat down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He
closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. His head sank
forward and then he roused himself.
‘Aline,’ he said to his wife, ‘go and see what they are
about.’
The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a
dignified and indifferent air, and glanced into the little

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drawing room. Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as

before.
‘Still the same,’ she said to her husband.
Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks
quivered and his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant
expression peculiar to him. Shaking himself, he rose,
threw back his head, and with resolute steps went past the
ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he
went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually
triumphant that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it.
‘Thank God!’ said Prince Vasili. ‘My wife has told me
everything!- (He put one arm around Pierre and the other
around his daughter.)- ‘My dear boy... Lelya... I am very
pleased.’ (His voice trembled.) ‘I loved your father... and
she will make you a good wife... God bless you!..’
He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and
kissed him with his malodorous mouth. Tears actually
moistened his cheeks.
‘Princess, come here!’ he shouted.
The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly
lady was using her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed,
and he kissed the beautiful Helene’s hand several times.
After a while they were left alone again.

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‘All this had to be and could not be otherwise,’ thought

Pierre, ‘so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It
is good because it’s definite and one is rid of the old
tormenting doubt.’ Pierre held the hand of his betrothed in
silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it rose and fell.
‘Helene!’ he said aloud and paused.
‘Something special is always said in such cases,’ he
thought, but could not remember what it was that people
say. He looked at her face. She drew nearer to him. Her
face flushed.
‘Oh, take those off... those...’ she said, pointing to his
spectacles.
Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange
look eyes have from which spectacles have just been
removed, had also a frightened and inquiring look. He
was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but with a
rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she
intercepted his lips and met them with her own. Her face
struck Pierre, by its altered, unpleasantly excited
expression.
‘It is too late now, it’s done; besides I love her,’
thought Pierre.

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‘Je vous aime!’* he said, remembering what has to be

said at such moments: but his words sounded so weak that
he felt ashamed of himself.
*"I love you.’
Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count
Bezukhov’s large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the
happy possessor, as people said, of a wife who was a
celebrated beauty and of millions of money.

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Chapter III

Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from

Prince Vasili in November, 1805, announcing that he and
his son would be paying him a visit. ‘I am starting on a
journey of inspection, and of course I shall think nothing
of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at the same
time, my honored benefactor,’ wrote Prince Vasili. ‘My
son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army,
so I hope you will allow him personally to express the
deep respect that, emulating his father, he feels for you.’
‘It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out,
suitors are coming to us of their own accord,’ incautiously
remarked the little princess on hearing the news.
Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili’s servants
came one evening in advance of him, and he and his son
arrived next day.
Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of
Prince Vasili’s character, but more so recently, since in
the new reigns of Paul and Alexander Prince Vasili had
risen to high position and honors. And now, from the
hints contained in his letter and given by the little

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princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and

his low opinion changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill
will. He snorted whenever he mentioned him. On the day
of Prince Vasili’s arrival, Prince Bolkonski was
particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he
was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or
whether his being in a bad temper made him specially
annoyed at Prince Vasili’s visit, he was in a bad temper,
and in the morning Tikhon had already advised the
architect not to go the prince with his report.
‘Do you hear how he’s walking?’ said Tikhon, drawing
the architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s
footsteps. ‘Stepping flat on his heels- we know what that
means...’
However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat
with a sable collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It
had snowed the day before and the path to the hothouse,
along which the prince was in the habit of walking, had
been swept: the marks of the broom were still visible in
the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The
prince went through the conservatories, the serfs’
quarters, and the outbuildings, frowning and silent.

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‘Can a sleigh pass?’ he asked his overseer, a venerable

man, resembling his master in manners and looks, who
was accompanying him back to the house.
‘The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your
honor.’
The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch.
‘God be thanked,’ thought the overseer, ‘the storm has
blown over!’
‘It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,’ he
added. ‘I heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to
visit your honor.’
The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his
eyes on him, frowning.
‘What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?’
he said in his shrill, harsh voice. ‘The road is not swept
for the princess my daughter, but for a minister! For me,
there are no ministers!’
‘Your honor, I thought..’
‘You thought!’ shouted the prince, his words coming
more and more rapidly and indistinctly. ‘You thought!...
Rascals! Blackgaurds!... I’ll teach you to think!’ and
lifting his stick he swung it and would have hit Alpatych,
the overseer, had not the latter instinctively avoided the

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blow. ‘Thought... Blackguards...’ shouted the prince

rapidly.
But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity
in avoiding the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his
bald head resignedly before him, or perhaps for that very
reason, the prince, though he continued to shout:
‘Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!’ did
not lift his stick again but hurried into the house.
Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle
Bourienne, who knew that the prince was in a bad humor,
stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle Bourienne with a
radiant face that said: ‘I know nothing, I am the same as
usual,’ and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with
downcast eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to
know that on such occasions she ought to behave like
Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not. She thought: ‘If I
seem not to notice he will think that I do not sympathize
with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will
say (as he has done before) that I’m in the dumps.’
The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and
snorted.
‘Fool... or dummy!’ he muttered.

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‘And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling

tales,’ he thought- referring to the little princess who was
not in the dining room.
‘Where is the princess?’ he asked. ‘Hiding?’
‘She is not very well,’ answered Mademoiselle
Bourienne with a bright smile, ‘so she won’t come down.
It is natural in her state.’
‘Hm! Hm!’ muttered the prince, sitting down.
His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing
to a spot he flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it
to a footman. The little princess was not unwell, but had
such an overpowering fear of the prince that, hearing he
was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.
‘I am afraid for the baby,’ she said to Mademoiselle
Bourienne: ‘Heaven knows what a fright might do.’
In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in
constant fear, and with a sense of antipathy to the old
prince which she did not realize because the fear was so
much the stronger feeling. The prince reciprocated this
antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt for
her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life
at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle
Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep

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in her room, and often talked with her about the old prince
and criticized him.
‘So we are to have visitors, mon prince?’ remarked
Mademoiselle Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin
with her rosy fingers. ‘His Excellency Prince Vasili
Kuragin and his son, I understand?’ she said inquiringly.
‘Hm!- his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his
appointment in the service,’ said the prince disdainfully.
‘Why his son is coming I don’t understand. Perhaps
Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don’t want
him.’ (He looked at his blushing daughter.) ‘Are you
unwell today? Eh? Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that idiot
Alpatych called him this morning?’
‘No, mon pere.’
Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so
unsuccessful in her choice of a subject, she did not stop
talking, but chattered about the conservatories and the
beauty of a flower that had just opened, and after the soup
the prince became more genial.
After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The
little princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with
Masha, her maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-
law.

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She was much altered. She was now plain rather than
pretty. Her cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and
her eyes drawn down.
‘Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,’ she said in reply to
the prince’s question as to how she felt.
‘Do you want anything?’
‘No, merci, mon pere.’
‘Well, all right, all right.’
He left the room and went to the waiting room where
Alpatych stood with bowed head.
‘Has the snow been shoveled back?’
‘Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake...
It was only my stupidity.’
‘All right, all right,’ interrupted the prince, and
laughing his unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for
Alpatych to kiss, and then proceeded to his study.
Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the
avenue by coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts,
dragged his sleighs up to one of the lodges over the road
purposely laden with snow.
Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned
to them.
Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms
akimbo before a table on a corner of which he smilingly

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and absent-mindedly fixed his large and handsome eyes.

He regarded his whole life as a continual round of
amusement which someone for some reason had to
provide for him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish
old man and a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All
this might, he thought, turn out very well and amusingly.
‘And why not marry her if she really has so much money?
That never does any harm,’ thought Anatole.
He shaved and scented himself with the care and
elegance which had become habitual to him and, his
handsome head held high, entered his father’s room with
the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.
Prince Vasili’s two valets were busy dressing him, and he
looked round with much animation and cheerfully nodded
to his son as the latter entered, as if to say: ‘Yes, that’s
how I want you to look.’
‘I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?’
Anatole asked, as if continuing a conversation the subject
of which had often been mentioned during the journey.
‘Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be
respectful and cautious with the old prince.’
‘If he starts a row I’ll go away,’ said Prince Anatole. ‘I
can’t bear those old men! Eh?’
‘Remember, for you everything depends on this.’

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In the meantime, not only was it known in the

maidservants’ rooms that the minister and his son had
arrived, but the appearance of both had been minutely
described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
vainly trying to master her agitation.
‘Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It
can never happen!’ she said, looking at herself in the
glass. ‘How shall I enter the drawing room? Even if I like
him I can’t now be myself with him.’ The mere thought of
her father’s look filled her with terror. The little princess
and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received from
Masha, the lady’s maid, the necessary report of how
handsome the minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks
and dark eyebrows, and with what difficulty the father
had dragged his legs upstairs while the son had followed
him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received
this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne, whose chattering voices had reached her from
the corridor, went into Princess Mary’s room.
‘You know they’ve come, Marie?’ said the little
princess, waddling in, and sinking heavily into an
armchair.
She was no longer in the loose gown she generally
wore in the morning, but had on one of her best dresses.

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Her hair was carefully done and her face was animated,
which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society,
it was still more noticeable how much plainer she had
become. Some unobtrusive touch had been added to
Mademoiselle Bourienne’s toilet which rendered her fresh
and prettyface yet more attractive.
‘What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear
princess?’ she began. ‘They’ll be announcing that the
gentlemen are in the drawing room and we shall have to
go down, and you have not smartened yourself up at all!’
The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and
hurriedly and merrily began to devise and carry out a plan
of how Princess Mary should be dressed. Princess Mary’s
self-esteem was wounded by the fact that the arrival of a
suitor agitated her, and still more so by both her
companions’ not having the least conception that it could
be otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for
herself and for them would be to betray her agitation,
while to decline their offers to dress her would prolong
their banter and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes
grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on
the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as
she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and

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Lise. Both these women quite sincerely tried to make her

look pretty. She was so plain that neither of them could
think of her as a rival, so they began dressing her with
perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction
women have that dress can make a face pretty.
‘No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,’ said Lise,
looking sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance.
‘You have a maroon dress, have it fetched. Really! You
know the fate of your whole life may be at stake. But this
one is too light, it’s not becoming!’
It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of
Princess Mary that was not pretty, but neither
Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little princess felt this;
they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed in the
hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged
lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be
well. They forgot that the frightened face and the figure
could not be altered, and that however they might change
the setting and adornment of that face, it would still
remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to
which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair
had been arranged on the top of her head (a style that
quite altered and spoiled her looks) and she had put on a
maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the little princess

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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.

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‘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.

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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

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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?

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Chapter IV

When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his

son were already in the drawing room, talking to the little
princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne. When she entered
with her heavy step, treading on her heels, the gentlemen
and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
indicating her to the gentlemen, said: ‘Voila Marie!’
Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She
saw Prince Vasili’s face, serious for an instant at the sight
of her, but immediately smiling again, and the little
princess curiously noting the impression ‘Marie’
produced on the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle
Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her
unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but him
she could not see, she only saw something large, brilliant,
and handsome moving toward her as she entered the
room. Prince Vasili approached first, and she kissed the
bold forehead that bent over her hand and answered his
question by saying that, on the contrary, she remembered
him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still
could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers
firmly, and she touched with her lips a white forehead,

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over which was beautiful light-brown hair smelling of

pomade. When she looked up at him she was struck by his
beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a button
of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,
slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent,
looked with beaming face at the princess without
speaking and evidently not thinking about her at all.
Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in
conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable in
society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession.
If a man lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a
first introduction and betrays a consciousness of the
impropriety of such silence and an anxiety to find
something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was
dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the
princess’ hair. It was evident that he could be silent in this
way for a very long time. ‘If anyone finds this silence
inconvenient, let him talk, but I don’t want to‘‘ he seemed
to say. Besides this, in his behavior to women Anatole
had a manner which particularly inspires in them
curiosity, awe, and even love- a supercilious
consciousness of his own superiority. It was was as if he
said to them: ‘I know you, I know you, but why should I
bother about you? You’d be only too glad, of course.’

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Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women-

even probably he did not, for in general he thought very
little- but his looks and manner gave that impression. The
princess felt this, and as if wishing to show him that she
did not even dare expect to interest him, she turned to his
father. The conversation was general and animated,
thanks to Princess Lise’s voice and little downy lip that
lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that
playful manner often employed by lively chatty people,
and consisting in the assumption that between the person
they so address and themselves there are some semi-
private, long-established jokes and amusing
reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist-
just as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily
adopted her tone and the little princess also drew Anatole,
whom she hardly knew, into these amusing recollections
of things that had never occurred. Mademoiselle
Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt
herself pleasantly made to share in these merry
reminiscences.
‘Here at least we shall have the benefit of your
company all to ourselves, dear prince,’ said the little
princess (of course, in French) to Prince Vasili. ‘It’s not

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as at Annette’s* receptions where you always ran away;

you remember cette chere Annette!’
*Anna Pavlovna.
‘Ah, but you won’t talk politics to me like Annette!’
‘And our little tea table?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘Why is it you were never at Annette’s?’ the little
princess asked Anatole. ‘Ah, I know, I know,’ she said
with a sly glance, ‘your brother Hippolyte told me about
your goings on. Oh!’ and she shook her finger at him, ‘I
have even heard of your doings in Paris!’
‘And didn’t Hippolyte tell you?’ asked Prince Vasili,
turning to his son and seizing the little princess’ arm as if
she would have run away and he had just managed to
catch her, ‘didn’t he tell you how he himself was pining
for the dear princess, and how she showed him the door?
Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess,’ he added,
turning to Princess Mary.
When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne
for her part seized the opportunity of joining in the
general current of recollections.
She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long
since Anatole had left Paris and how he had liked that
city. Anatole answered the Frenchwoman very readily

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and, looking at her with a smile, talked to her about her

native land. When he saw the pretty little Bourienne,
Anatole came to the conclusion that he would not find
Bald Hills dull either. ‘Not at all bad!’ he thought,
examining her, ‘not at all bad, that little companion! I
hope she will bring her along with her when we’re
married, la petite est gentille.’*
*The little one is charming.
The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning
and considering what he was to do. The coming of these
visitors annoyed him. ‘What are Prince Vasili and that son
of his to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow braggart and his
son, no doubt, is a fine specimen,’ he grumbled to
himself. What angered him was that the coming of these
visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question he
always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived
himself. The question was whether he could ever bring
himself to part from his daughter and give her to a
husband. The prince never directly asked himself that
question, knowing beforehand that he would have to
answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his
feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without
Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was
unthinkable to him. ‘And why should she marry?’ he

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thought. ‘To be unhappy for certain. There’s Lise,

married to Andrew- a better husband one would think
could hardly be found nowadays- but is she contented
with her lot? And who would marry Marie for love? Plain
and awkward! They’ll take her for her connections and
wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and even
the happier for it?’ So thought Prince Bolkonski while
dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off
demanded an immediate answer. Prince Vasili had
brought his son with the evident intention of proposing,
and today or tomorrow he would probably ask for an
answer. His birth and position in society were not bad.
‘Well, I’ve nothing against it,’ the prince said to himself,
‘but he must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall
see.’
‘That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!’
he added aloud.
He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step,
glancing rapidly round the company. He noticed the
change in the little princess’ dress, Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess Mary’s unbecoming
coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s and Anatole’s smiles,
and the loneliness of his daughter amid the general
conversation. ‘Got herself up like a fool!’ he thought,

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looking irritably at her. ‘She is shameless, and he ignores

her!’
He went straight up to Prince Vasili.
‘Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!’
‘Friendship laughs at distance,’ began Prince Vasili in
his usual rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. ‘Here is my
second son; please love and befriend him.’
Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.
‘Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!’ he said.
‘Well, come and kiss me,’ and he offered his cheek.
Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with
curiosity and perfect composure, waiting for a display of
the eccentricities his father had told him to expect.
Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the
corner of the sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince
Vasili, pointed to it and began questioning him about
political affairs and news. He seemed to listen attentively
to what Prince Vasili said, but kept glancing at Princess
Mary.
‘And so they are writing from Potsdam already?’ he
said, repeating Prince Vasili’s last words. Then rising, he
suddenly went up to his daughter.
‘Is it for visitors you’ve got yourself up like that, eh?’
said he. ‘Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in

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this new way for the visitors, and before the visitors I tell
you that in future you are never to dare to change your
way of dress without my consent.’
‘It was my fault, mon pere,’ interceded the little
princess, with a blush.
‘You must do as you please,’ said Prince Bolkonski,
bowing to his daughter-in-law, ‘but she need not make a
fool of herself, she’s plain enough as it is.’
And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his
daughter, who was reduced to tears.
‘On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very
well,’ said Prince Vasili.
‘Now you, young prince, what’s your name?’ said
Prince Bolkonski, turning to Anatole, ‘come here, let us
talk and get acquainted.’
‘Now the fun begins,’ thought Anatole, sitting down
with a smile beside the old prince.
‘Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve been educated
abroad, not taught to read and write by the deacon, like
your father and me. Now tell me, my dear boy, are you
serving in the Horse Guards?’ asked the old man,
scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.
‘No, I have been transferred to the line,’ said Anatole,
hardly able to restrain his laughter.

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‘Ah! That’s a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to

serve the Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine
fellow must serve. Well, are you off to the front?’
‘No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I
am attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?’ said
Anatole, turning to his father with a laugh.
‘A splendid soldier, splendid! ‘What am I attached to!’
Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole
laughed still louder. Suddenly Prince Bolkonski frowned.
‘You may go,’ he said to Anatole.
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
‘And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince
Vasili, haven’t you?’ said the old prince to Prince Vasili.
‘I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the
education there is much better than ours.’
‘Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is
changed. The lad’s a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well,
come with me now.’ He took Prince Vasili’s arm and led
him to his study. As soon as they were alone together,
Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the old
prince.
‘Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can’t part
from her?’ said the old prince angrily. ‘What an idea! I’m
ready for it tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to

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know my son-in-law better. You know my principles-

everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow in your
presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can
stay and I’ll see.’ The old prince snorted. ‘Let her marry,
it’s all the same to me!’ he screamed in the same piercing
tone as when parting from his son.
‘I will tell you frankly,’ said Prince Vasili in the tone
of a crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning
with so keen-sighted companion. ‘You know, you see
right through people. Anatole is no genius, but he is an
honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent son or kinsman.’
‘All right, all right, we’ll see!’
As always happens when women lead lonely lives for
any length of time without male society, on Anatole’s
appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonski’s
household felt that their life had not been real till then.
Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing
immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which
seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit
up by a new brightness, full of significance.
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and
coiffure. The handsome open face of the man who might
perhaps be her husband absorbed all her attention. He
seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and

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magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of

dreams of a future family life continually rose in her
imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal
them.
‘But am I not too cold with him?’ thought the princess.
‘I try to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel
too near to him already, but then he cannot know what I
think of him and may imagine that I do not like him.’
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be
cordial to her new guest. ‘Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!’
thought Anatole.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great
excitement by Anatole’s arrival, thought in another way.
Of course, she, a handsome young woman without any
definite position, without relations or even a country, did
not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkonski,
to reading aloud to him and being friends with Princess
Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for
a Russian prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her
superiority to the plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian
princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her off;
and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle
Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but finished
in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself. It

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was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to

whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and
reproached her for yielding to a man without being
married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to
tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her
seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared.
He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mere would
appear and he would marry her. So her future shaped
itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne’s head at the very time
she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not
calculation that guided her (she did not even for a moment
consider what she should do), but all this had long been
familiar to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just
grouped itself around him and she wished and tried to
please him as much as possible.
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the
trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition,
prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any
ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and
lighthearted gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed
the role of a man tired of being run after by women, his
vanity was flattered by the spectacle of his power over
these three women. Besides that, he was beginning to feel

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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.

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In the evening, after supper, when all were about to

retire, Anatole kissed Princess Mary’s hand. She did not
know how she found the courage, but she looked straight
into his handsome face as it came near to her shortsighted
eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed
Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette,
but then he did everything so simply and with such
assurance!) Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave
the princess a frightened look.
‘What delicacy! ‘ thought the princess. ‘Is it possible
that Amelie’ (Mademoiselle Bourienne) ‘thinks I could be
jealous of her, and not value her pure affection and
devotion to me?’ She went up to her and kissed her
warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess’ hand.
‘No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that
you are behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss.
Not till then!’ she said. And smilingly raising a finger at
him, she left the room.

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Chapter V

They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep

as soon as he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that
night.
‘Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so
kind- yes, kind, that is the chief thing,’ thought Princess
Mary; and fear, which she had seldom experienced, came
upon her. She feared to look round, it seemed to her that
someone was there standing behind the screen in the dark
corner. And this someone was he- the devil- and he was
also this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows,
and red lips.
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her
room.
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the
conservatory for a long time that evening, vainly
expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of
her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.
The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed
was badly made. She could not lie either on her face or on
her side. Every position was awkward and uncomfortable,

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and her burden oppressed her now more than ever

because Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the
time when she was not like that and when everything was
light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket
and nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and
turned the heavy feather bed for the third time, muttering
to herself.
‘I told you it was all lumps and holes!’ the little
princess repeated. ‘I should be glad enough to fall asleep,
so it’s not my fault!’ and her voice quivered like that of a
child about to cry.
The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep,
heard him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old
prince felt as though he had been insulted through his
daughter. The insult was the more pointed because it
concerned not himself but another, his daughter, whom he
loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he
would consider the whole matter and decide what was
right and how he should act, but instead of that he only
excited himself more and more.
‘The first man that turns up- she forgets her father and
everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and
wags her tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her
father over! And she knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr!

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And don’t I see that that idiot had eyes only for
Bourienne- I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she
has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for
herself she might at least have some for my sake! She
must be shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her
and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but
I’ll let her see...’
The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she
was making a mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with
Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary’s self-esteem
would be wounded and his point (not to be parted from
her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.
‘What devil brought them here?’ thought he, while
Tikhon was putting the nightshirt over his dried-up old
body and gray-haired chest. ‘I never invited them. They
came to disturb my life- and there is not much of it left.’
‘Devil take ‘em!’ he muttered, while his head was still
covered by the shirt.
Tikhon knew his master’s habit of sometimes thinking
aloud, and therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily
inquisitive expression of the face that emerged from the
shirt.
‘Gone to bed?’ asked the prince.

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Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the

direction of his master’s thoughts. He guessed that the
question referred to Prince Vasili and his son.
‘They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your
excellency.’
‘No good... no good...’ said the prince rapidly, and
thrusting his feet into his slippers and his arms into the
sleeves of his dressing gown, he went to the couch on
which he slept.
Though no words had passed between Anatole and
Mademoiselle Bourienne, they quite understood one
another as to the first part of their romance, up to the
appearance of the pauvre mere; they understood that they
had much to say to one another in private and so they had
been seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one
another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father’s
room at the usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and
Anatole met in the conservatory.
Princess Mary went to the door of the study with
special trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did
everybody know that her fate would be decided that day,
but that they also knew what she thought about it. She
read this in Tikhon’s face and in that of Prince Vasili’s

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valet, who made her a low bow when she met him in the
corridor carrying hot water.
The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his
treatment of his daughter that morning. Princess Mary
well knew this painstaking expression of her father’s. His
face wore that expression when his dry hands clenched
with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk
away from her, repeating in a low voice the same words
several times over.
He came to the point at once, treating her
ceremoniously.
‘I have had a proposition made me concerning you,’ he
said with an unnatural smile. ‘I expect you have guessed
that Prince Vasili has not come and brought his pupil with
him’ (for some reason Prince Bolkonski referred to
Anatole as a ‘pupil’) ‘for the sake of my beautiful eyes.
Last night a proposition was made me on your account
and, as you know my principles, I refer it to you.’
‘How am I to understand you, mon pere?’ said the
princess, growing pale and then blushing.
‘How understand me!’ cried her father angrily. ‘Prince
Vasili finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and
makes a proposal to you on his pupil’s behalf. That’s how

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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.

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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.

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‘Who’s that? Why? Wait a moment!’ Anatole’s face

seemed to say. Princess Mary looked at them in silence.
She could not understand it. At last Mademoiselle
Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to
Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join
in a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his
shoulders went to the door that led to his own apartments.
An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to
the old prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there.
When Tikhon came to her Princess Mary was sitting on
the sofa in her room, holding the weeping Mademoiselle
Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her hair. The
princess’ beautiful eyes with all their former calm
radiance were looking with tender affection and pity at
Mademoiselle Bourienne’s pretty face.
‘No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!’ said
Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘Why? I love you more than ever,’ said Princess Mary,
‘and I will try to do all I can for your happiness.’
‘But you despise me. You who are so pure can never
understand being so carried away by passion. Oh, only
my poor mother..’

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‘I quite understand,’ answered Princess Mary, with a

sad smile. ‘Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my
father,’ she said, and went out.
Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other
and a snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile
of deep emotion on his face, as if stirred to his heart’s
core and himself regretting and laughing at his own
sensibility, when Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly
took a pinch of snuff.
‘Ah, my dear, my dear!’ he began, rising and taking
her by both hands. Then, sighing, he added: ‘My son’s
fate is in your hands. Decide, my dear, good, gentle
Marie, whom I have always loved as a daughter!’
He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
‘Fr... fr...’ snorted Prince Bolkonski. ‘The prince is
making a proposition to you in his pupil’s- I mean, his
son’s- name. Do you wish or not to be Prince Anatole
Kuragin’s wife? Reply: yes or no,’ he shouted, ‘and then I
shall reserve the right to state my opinion also. Yes, my
opinion, and only my opinion,’ added Prince Bolkonski,
turning to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look.
‘Yes, or no?’
‘My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to
separate my life from yours. I don’t wish to marry,’ she

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answered positively, glancing at Prince Vasili and at her

father with her beautiful eyes.
‘Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!’
cried Prince Bolkonski, frowning and taking his
daughter’s hand; he did not kiss her, but only bending his
forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so
that she winced and uttered a cry.
Prince Vasili rose.
‘My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall
never, never forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a
little hope of touching this heart, so kind and generous?
Say ‘perhaps’... The future is so long. Say ‘perhaps.’’
‘Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I
thank you for the honor, but I shall never be your son’s
wife.’
‘Well, so that’s finished, my dear fellow! I am very
glad to have seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms,
Princess. Go!’ said the old prince. ‘Very, very glad to
glad to have seen you,’ repeated he, embracing Prince
Vasili.
‘My vocation is a different one,’ thought Princess
Mary. ‘My vocation is to be happy with another kind of
happiness, the happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And
cost what it may, I will arrange poor Amelie’s happiness,

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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.

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Chapter VI

It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas.

Not till midwinter was the count at last handed a letter
addressed in his son’s handwriting. On receiving it, he ran
on tiptoe to his study in alarm and haste, trying to escape
notice, closed the door, and began to read the letter.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that
passed in the house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter
went softly into the room and found the count with it in
his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had
improved, was still living with the Rostovs.
‘My dear friend?’ said she, in a tone of pathetic
inquiry, prepared to sympathize in any way.
The count sobbed yet more.
‘Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my
darling boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer...
thank God... How tell the little countess!’
Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own
handkerchief wiped the tears from his eyes and from the
letter, then having dried her own eyes she comforted the
count, and decided that at dinner and till teatime she

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would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God’s

help, would inform her.
At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time
about the war news and about Nikolenka, twice asked
when the last letter had been received from him, though
she knew that already, and remarked that they might very
likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each time that
these hints began to make the countess anxious and she
glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna,
the latter very adroitly turned the conversation to
insignificant matters. Natasha, who, of the whole family,
was the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades of
intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from
the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was
some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna,
that it had something to do with her brother, and that
Anna Mikhaylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as she
was, Natasha, who knew how sensitive her mother was to
anything relating to Nikolenka, did not venture to ask any
questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat
anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless
of her governess’ remarks. After dinner, she rushed head
long after Anna Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung

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herself on her neck as soon as she overtook her in the

sitting room.
‘Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!’
‘Nothing, my dear.’
‘No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won’t give up- I
know you know something.’
Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.
‘You are a little slyboots,’ she said.
‘A letter from Nikolenka! I’m sure of it!’ exclaimed
Natasha, reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna’s
face.
‘But for God’s sake, be careful, you know how it may
affect your mamma.’
‘I will, I will, only tell me! You won’t? Then I will go
and tell at once.’
Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the
contents of the letter, on condition that she should tell no
one.
‘No, on my true word of honor,’ said Natasha,crossing
herself, ‘I won’t tell anyone!’ and she ran off at once to
Sonya.
‘Nikolenka... wounded... a letter,’ she announced in
gleeful triumph.
‘Nicholas!’ was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.

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Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother’s

wound produced on Sonya, felt for the first time the
sorrowful side of the news.
She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.
‘A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is
well now, he wrote himself,’ said she through her tears.
‘There now! It’s true that all you women are
crybabies,’ remarked Petya, pacing the room with large,
resolute strides. ‘Now I’m very glad, very glad indeed,
that my brother has distinguished himself so. You are all
blubberers and understand nothing.’
Natasha smiled through her tears.
‘You haven’t read the letter?’ asked Sonya.
‘No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now
an officer.’
‘Thank God!’ said Sonya, crossing herself. ‘But
perhaps she deceived you. Let us go to Mamma.’
Petya paced the room in silence for a time.
‘If I’d been in Nikolenka’s place I would have killed
even more of those Frenchmen,’ he said. ‘What nasty
brutes they are! I’d have killed so many that there’d have
been a heap of them.’
‘Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!’

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‘I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,’
said Petya.
‘Do you remember him?’ Natasha suddenly asked,
after a moment’s silence.
Sonya smiled.
‘Do I remember Nicholas?’
‘No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you
remember him perfectly, remember everything?’ said
Natasha, with an expressive gesture, evidently wishing to
give her words a very definite meaning. ‘I remember
Nikolenka too, I remember him well,’ she said. ‘But I
don’t remember Boris. I don’t remember him a bit.’
‘What! You don’t remember Boris?’ asked Sonya in
surprise.
‘It’s not that I don’t remember- I know what he is like,
but not as I remember Nikolenka. Him- I just shut my
eyes and remember, but Boris... No!’ (She shut her
eyes.)’No! there’s nothing at all.’
‘Oh, Natasha!’ said Sonya, looking ecstatically and
earnestly at her friend as if she did not consider her
worthy to hear what she meant to say and as if she were
saying it to someone else, with whom joking was out of
the question, ‘I am in love with your brother once for all

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and, whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never

cease to love him as long as I live.’
Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and
inquisitive eyes, and said nothing. She felt that Sonya was
speaking the truth, that there was such love as Sonya was
speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt anything like it.
She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
‘Shall you write to him?’ she asked.
Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to
write to Nicholas, and whether she ought to write,
tormented her. Now that he was already an officer and a
wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself
and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had
taken on himself?
‘I don’t know. I think if he writes, I will write too,’ she
said, blushing.
‘And you won’t feel ashamed to write to him?’
Sonya smiled.
‘No.’
‘And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I’m not
going to.’
‘Why should you be ashamed?’
‘Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward and would make me
ashamed.’

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‘And I know why she’d be ashamed,’ said Petya,

offended by Natasha’s previous remark. ‘It’s because she
was in love with that fat one in spectacles’ (that was how
Petya described his namesake, the new Count Bezukhov)
‘and now she’s in love with that singer’ (he meant
Natasha’s Italian singing master), ‘that’s why she’s
ashamed!’
‘Petya, you’re a stupid!’ said Natasha.
‘Not more stupid than you, madam,’ said the nine-
year-old Petya, with the air of an old brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by Anna
Mikhaylovna’s hints at dinner. On retiring to her own
room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a
miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox,
while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna
Mikhaylovna, with the letter, came on tiptoe to the
countess’ door and paused.
‘Don’t come in,’ she said to the old count who was
following her. ‘Come later.’ And she went in, closing the
door behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then
Anna Mikhaylovna’s voice alone in a long speech, then a
cry, then silence, then both voices together with glad

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intonations, and then footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna

opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression of a
surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and
admits the public to appreciate his skill.
‘It is done!’ she said to the count, pointing
triumphantly to the countess, who sat holding in one hand
the snuffbox with its portrait and in the other the letter,
and pressing them alternately to her lips.
When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to
him, embraced his bald head, over which she again
looked at the letter and the portrait, and in order to press
them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away the bald
head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya now entered the
room, and the reading of the letter began. After a brief
description of the campaign and the two battles in which
he had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that
he kissed his father’s and mother’s hands asking for their
blessing, and that he kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya.
Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling,
Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss
for him ‘dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just
the same as ever.’ When she heard this Sonya blushed so
that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks
turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled

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round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a

balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the
floor. The countess was crying.
‘Why are you crying, Mamma?’ asked Vera. ‘From all
he says one should be glad and not cry.’
This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and
Natasha looked at her reproachfully. ‘And who is it she
takes after?’ thought the countess.
Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and
those who were considered worthy to hear it had to come
to the countess, for she did not let it out of her hands. The
tutors came, and the nurses, and Dmitri, and several
acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter each time
with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
proofs of Nikolenka’s virtues. How strange, how
extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the
scarcely perceptible motion of whose tiny limbs she had
felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom she
used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that
son who had first learned to say ‘pear’ and then ‘granny,’
that this son should now be away in a foreign land amid
strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of
man’s work of his own, without help or guidance. The
universal experience of ages, showing that children do

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grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not

exist for the countess. Her son’s growth toward manhood,
at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her as
if there had never existed the millions of human beings
who grew up in the same way. As twenty years before, it
seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her
breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe
that that little creature could be this strong, brave man,
this model son and officer that, judging by this letter, he
now was.
‘What a style! How charmingly he describes!’ said she,
reading the descriptive part of the letter. ‘And what a
soul! Not a word about himself.... Not a word! About
some Denisov or other, though he himself, I dare say, is
braver than any of them. He says nothing about his
sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he
has remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I
always said when he was only so high- I always said...’
For more than a week preparations were being made,
rough drafts of letters to Nicholas from all the household
were written and copied out, while under the supervision
of the countess and the solicitude of the count, money and
all things necessary for the uniform and equipment of the

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newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna

Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even
managed by favor with army authorities to secure
advantageous means of communication for herself and
her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the
Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the
Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards,
Abroad, was quite a definite address, and that if a letter
reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards there
was no reason why it should not reach the Pavlograd
regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the same
neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters
and money by the Grand Duke’s courier to Boris and
Boris was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were
from the old count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha,
and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles for
his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his
son.

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Chapter VII

On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov’s active army,

in camp before Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed
next day by the two Emperors- the Russian and the
Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent the
night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to
come straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz
by ten o’clock.
That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris,
telling him that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for
the night ten miles from Olmutz and that he wanted to see
him as he had a letter and money for him. Rostov was
particularly in need of money now that the troops, after
their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the
camp swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian
Jews offering all sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds
held feast after feast, celebrating awards they had
received for the campaign, and made expeditions to
Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had
recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.
Rostov, who had just celebrated his promotion to a
cornetcy and bought Denisov’s horse, Bedouin, was in

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debt all round, to his comrades and the sutlers. On

receiving Boris’ letter he rode with a fellow officer to
Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set
off alone to the Guards’ camp to find his old playmate.
Rostov had not yet had time to get his uniform. He had on
a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with a soldier’s cross,
equally shabby cadet’s riding breeches lined with worn
leather, and an officer’s saber with a sword knot. The Don
horse he was riding was one he had bought from a
Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled
hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As
he rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress
Boris and all his comrades of the Guards by his
appearance- that of a fighting hussar who had been under
fire.
The Guards had made their whole march as if on a
pleasure trip, parading their cleanliness and discipline.
They had come by easy stages, their knapsacks conveyed
on carts, and the Austrian authorities had provided
excellent dinners for the officers at every halting place.
The regiments had entered and left the town with their
bands playing, and by the Grand Duke’s orders the men
had marched all the way in step (a practice on which the
Guards prided themselves), the officers on foot and at

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their proper posts. Boris had been quartered, and had

marched all the way, with Berg who was already in
command of a company. Berg, who had obtained his
captaincy during the campaign, had gained the confidence
of his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had
arranged his money matters very satisfactorily. Boris,
during the campaign, had made the acquaintance of many
persons who might prove useful to him, and by a letter of
recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom
he hoped to obtain a post on the commander in chief’s
staff. Berg and Boris, having rested after yesterday’s
march, were sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a round
table in the clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess.
Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Boris, in the
accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little
pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while
awaiting Berg’s move, and watched his opponent’s face,
evidently thinking about the game as he always thought
only of whatever he was engaged on.
‘Well, how are you going to get out of that?’ he
remarked.
‘We’ll try to,’ replied Berg, touching a pawn and then
removing his hand.

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At that moment the door opened.

‘Here he is at last!’ shouted Rostov. ‘And Berg too!
Oh, you petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!’ he exclaimed,
imitating his Russian nurse’s French, at which he and
Boris used to laugh long ago.
‘Dear me, how you have changed!’
Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit
to steady and replace some chessmen that were falling. He
was about to embrace his friend, but Nicholas avoided
him. With that peculiar feeling of youth, that dread of
beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner
different from that of its elders which is often insincere,
Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting his
friend. He wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything
but kiss him- a thing everybody did. But notwithstanding
this, Boris embraced him in a quiet, friendly way and
kissed him three times.
They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at
the age when young men take their first steps on life’s
road, each saw immense changes in the other, quite a new
reflection of the society in which they had taken those
first steps. Both had changed greatly since they last met
and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had
taken place in them.

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‘Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you’d

been to a fete, not like us sinners of the line,’ cried
Rostov, with martial swagger and with baritone notes in
his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his own mud-
bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing
Rostov’s loud voice, popped her head in at the door.
‘Eh, is she pretty?’ he asked with a wink.
‘Why do you shout so? You’ll frighten them!’ said
Boris. ‘I did not expect you today,’ he added. ‘I only sent
you the note yesterday by Bolkonski- an adjutant of
Kutuzov’s, who’s a friend of mine. I did not think he
would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you? Been
under fire already?’ asked Boris.
Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier’s Cross
of St. George fastened to the cording of his uniform and,
indicating a bandaged arm, glanced at Berg with a smile.
‘As you see,’ he said.
‘Indeed? Yes, yes!’ said Boris, with a smile. ‘And we
too have had a splendid march. You know, of course, that
His Imperial Highness rode with our regiment all the
time, so that we had every comfort and every advantage.
What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and
balls! I can’t tell you. And the Tsarevich was very
gracious to all our officers.’

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And the two friends told each other of their doings, the
one of his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the
other of the pleasures and advantages of service under
members of the Imperial family.
‘Oh, you Guards!’ said Rostov. ‘I say, send for some
wine.’
Boris made a grimace.
‘If you really want it,’ said he.
He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean
pillow, and sent for wine.
‘Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you,’
he added.
Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the
sofa, put both arms on the table and began to read. After
reading a few lines, he glanced angrily at Berg, then,
meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the letter.
‘Well, they’ve sent you a tidy sum,’ said Berg, eying
the heavy purse that sank into the sofa. ‘As for us, Count,
we get along on our pay. I can tell you for myself..’
‘I say, Berg, my dear fellow,’ said Rostov, ‘when you
get a letter from home and meet one of your own people
whom you want to talk everything over with, and I
happen to be there, I’ll go at once, to be out of your way!
Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!’ he

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exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder

and looking amiably into his face, evidently wishing to
soften the rudeness of his words, he added, ‘Don’t be
hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from my heart as
to an old acquaintance.’
‘Oh, don’t mention it, Count! I quite understand,’ said
Berg, getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural
voice.
‘Go across to our hosts: they invited you,’ added Boris.
Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or
speck of dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed
the hair on his temples upwards, in the way affected by
the Emperor Alexander, and, having assured himself from
the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had been noticed,
left the room with a pleasant smile.
‘Oh dear, what a beast I am!’ muttered Rostov, as he
read the letter.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have
given them such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!’ he
repeated, flushing suddenly. ‘Well, have you sent Gabriel
for some wine? All right let’s have some!’
In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of
recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at

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Anna Mikhaylovna’s advice had obtained through an

acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take it to
its destination and make use of it.
‘What nonsense! Much I need it!’ said Rostov,
throwing the letter under the table.
‘Why have you thrown that away?’ asked Boris.
‘It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil
do I want it for!’
‘Why ‘What the devil’?’ said Boris, picking it up and
reading the address. ‘This letter would be of great use to
you.’
‘I want nothing, and I won’t be anyone’s adjutant.’
‘Why not?’ inquired Boris.
‘It’s a lackey’s job!’
‘You are still the same dreamer, I see,’ remarked
Boris, shaking his head.
‘And you’re still the same diplomatist! But that’s not
the point... Come, how are you?’ asked Rostov.
‘Well, as you see. So far everything’s all right, but I
confess I should much like to be an adjutant and not
remain at the front.’
‘Why?’

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‘Because when once a man starts on military service,

he should try to make as successful a career of it as
possible.’
‘Oh, that’s it!’ said Rostov, evidently thinking of
something else.
He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend’s
eyes, evidently trying in vain to find the answer to some
question.
Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
‘Shouldn’t we now send for Berg?’ asked Boris. ‘He
would drink with you. I can’t.’
‘Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that
German?’ asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.
‘He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,’
answered Boris.
Again Rostov looked intently into Boris’ eyes and
sighed. Berg returned, and over the bottle of wine
conversation between the three officers became animated.
The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and how they
had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad.
They spoke of the sayings and doings of their
commander, the Grand Duke, and told stories of his
kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, kept silent when
the subject did not relate to himself, but in connection

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with the stories of the Grand Duke’s quick temper he

related with gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal
with the Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of the
regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of a
movement. With a pleasant smile Berg related how the
Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent passion,
shouting: ‘Arnauts!’ ("Arnauts’ was the Tsarevich’s
favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for
the company commander.
‘Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed,
because I knew I was right. Without boasting, you know,
I may say that I know the Army Orders by heart and know
the Regulations as well as I do the Lord’s Prayer. So,
Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and
so my conscience was at ease. I came forward....’ (Berg
stood up and showed how he presented himself, with his
hand to his cap, and really it would have been difficult for
a face to express greater respect and self-complacency
than his did.) ‘Well, he stormed at me, as the saying is,
stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of
life but rather of death, as the saying is. ‘Albanians!’ and
‘devils!’ and ‘To Siberia!’’ said Berg with a sagacious
smile. ‘I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was not
that best, Count?... ‘Hey, are you dumb?’ he shouted. Still

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I remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The

next day it was not even mentioned in the Orders of the
Day. That’s what keeping one’s head means. That’s the
way, Count,’ said Berg, lighting his pipe and emitting
rings of smoke.
‘Yes, that was fine,’ said Rostov, smiling.
But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of
Berg, and skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to
tell them how and where he got his wound. This pleased
Rostov and he began talking about it, and as he went on
became more and more animated. He told them of his
Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in
a battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like
it to have been, as they have heard it described by others,
and as sounds well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov
was a truthful young man and would on no account have
told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to tell
everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly,
involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If
he had told the truth to his hearers- who like himself had
often heard stories of attacks and had formed a definite
idea of what an attack was and were expecting to hear just
such a story- they would either not have believed him or,
still worse, would have thought that Rostov was himself

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to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of

cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell
them simply that everyone went at a trot and that he fell
off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as
he could from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell
everything as it really happened, it would have been
necessary to make an effort of will to tell only what
happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young
people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a
story of how beside himself and all aflame with
excitement, he had flown like a storm at the square, cut
his way in, slashed right and left, how his saber had tasted
flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And so he
told them all that.
In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: ‘You
cannot imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences
during an attack,’ Prince Andrew, whom Boris was
expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who liked to
help young men, was flattered by being asked for his
assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had
managed to please him the day before, he wished to do
what the young man wanted. Having been sent with
papers from Kutuzov to the Tsarevich, he looked in on
Boris, hoping to find him alone. When he came in and

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saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits

(Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man), he
gave Boris a pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed
eyes he looked at Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and
sat down languidly on the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to
have dropped in on bad company. Rostov flushed up on
noticing this, but he did not care, this was a mere stranger.
Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too seemed
ashamed of the hussar of the line.
In spite of Prince Andrew’s disagreeable, ironical tone,
in spite of the contempt with which Rostov, from his
fighting army point of view, regarded all these little
adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer was
evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and became
silent. Boris inquired what news there might be on the
staff, and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about
our plans.
‘We shall probably advance,’ replied Bolkonski,
evidently reluctant to say more in the presence of a
stranger.
Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness,
whether, as was rumored, the allowance of forage money
to captains of companies would be doubled. To this
Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he could give

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no opinion on such an important government order, and

Berg laughed gaily.
‘As to your business,’ Prince Andrew continued,
addressing Boris, ‘we will talk of it later’ (and he looked
round at Rostov). ‘Come to me after the review and we
will do what is possible.’
And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew
turned to Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish
embarrassment now changing to anger he did not
condescend to notice, and said: ‘I think you were talking
of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?’
‘I was there,’ said Rostov angrily, as if intending to
insult the aide-de-camp.
Bolkonski noticed the hussar’s state of mind, and it
amused him. With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said:
‘Yes, there are many stories now told about that affair!’
‘Yes, stories!’ repeated Rostov loudly, looking with
eyes suddenly grown furious, now at Boris, now at
Bolkonski. ‘Yes, many stories! But our stories are the
stories of men who have been under the enemy’s fire! Our
stories have some weight, not like the stories of those
fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing
anything!’

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‘Of whom you imagine me to be one?’ said Prince

Andrew, with a quiet and particularly amiable smile.
A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for
this man’s self-possession mingled at that moment in
Rostov’s soul.
‘I am not talking about you,’ he said, ‘I don’t know
you and, frankly, I don’t want to. I am speaking of the
staff in general.’
‘And I will tell you this,’ Prince Andrew interrupted in
a tone of quiet authority, ‘you wish to insult me, and I am
ready to agree with you that it would be very easy to do
so if you haven’t sufficient self-respect, but admit that the
time and place are very badly chosen. In a day or two we
shall all have to take part in a greater and more serious
duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old
friend of yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the
misfortune to displease you. However,’ he added rising,
‘you know my name and where to find me, but don’t
forget that I do not regard either myself or you as having
been at all insulted, and as a man older than you, my
advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday after
the review I shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!’
exclaimed Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both
he went out.

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Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think

of what he ought to have said. And he was still more
angry at having omitted to say it. He ordered his horse at
once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode home. Should
he go to headquarters next day and challenge that affected
adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question
that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the
pleasure he would have at seeing the fright of that small
and frail but proud man when covered by his pistol, and
then he felt with surprise that of all the men he knew there
was none he would so much like to have for a friend as
that very adjutant whom he so hated.

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Chapter VIII

The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review

was held of the Austrian and Russian troops, both those
freshly arrived from Russia and those who had been
campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors, the
Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with
the Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty
thousand men.
From early morning the smart clean troops were on the
move, forming up on the field before the fortress. Now
thousands of feet and bayonets moved and halted at the
officers’ command, turned with banners flying, formed up
at intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of
infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the
rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry
in blue, red, and green braided uniforms, with smartly
dressed bandsmen in front mounted on black, roan, or
gray horses; then again, spreading out with the brazen
clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the
gun carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the
artillery which crawled between the infantry and cavalry
and took up its appointed position. Not only the generals

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in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists

drawn in to the utmost, their red necks squeezed into their
stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all their decorations,
not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every soldier
with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons
clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse
groomed till its coat shone like satin and every hair of its
wetted mane lay smooth- felt that no small matter was
happening, but an important and solemn affair. Every
general and every soldier was conscious of his own
insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of
men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his
strength as a part of that enormous whole.
From early morning strenuous activities and efforts
had begun and by ten o’clock all had been brought into
due order. The ranks were drown up on the vast field. The
whole army was extended in three lines: the cavalry in
front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the
infantry.
A space like a street was left between each two lines of
troops. The three parts of that army were sharply
distinguished: Kutuzov’s fighting army (with the
Pavlograds on the right flank of the front); those recently
arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the

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line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the
same lines, under one command, and in a like order.
Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: ‘They’re
coming! They’re coming!’ Alarmed voices were heard,
and a stir of final preparation swept over all the troops.
From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group
was seen approaching. And at that moment, though the
day was still, a light gust of wind blowing over the army
slightly stirred the streamers on the lances and the
unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It looked
as if by that slight motion the army itself was expressing
its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was
heard shouting: ‘Eyes front!’ Then, like the crowing of
cocks at sunrise, this was repeated by others from various
sides and all became silent.
In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was
heard. This was the Emperors’ suites. The Emperors rode
up to the flank, and the trumpets of the first cavalry
regiment played the general march. It seemed as though
not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army itself,
rejoicing at the Emperors’ approach, had naturally burst
into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly
voice of the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He
gave the words of greeting, and the first regiment roared

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‘Hurrah!’ so deafeningly, continuously, and joyfully that

the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
immensity of the power they constituted.
Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov’s army
which the Tsar approached first, experienced the same
feeling as every other man in that army: a feeling of self-
forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of might, and a
passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
triumph.
He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast
mass (and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go
through fire and water, commit crime, die, or perform
deeds of highest heroism, and so he could not but tremble
and his heart stand still at the imminence of that word.
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ thundered from all sides,
one regiment after another greeting the Tsar with the
strains of the march, and then ‘Hurrah!’... Then the
general march, and again ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ growing ever
stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening roar.
Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and
immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he
came up it became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the
whole line along which he had already passed. Through
the terrible and deafening roar of those voices, amid the

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square masses of troops standing motionless as if turned

to stone, hundreds of riders composing the suites moved
carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in
front of them two men- the Emperors. Upon them the
undivided, tensely passionate attention of that whole mass
of men was concentrated.
The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the
uniform of the Horse Guards, wearing a cocked hat with
its peaks front and back, with his pleasant face and
resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone’s
attention.
Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his
keen sight had recognized the Tsar and watched his
approach. When he was within twenty paces, and
Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his
handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling
tenderness and ecstasy such as he had never before
known. Every trait and every movement of the Tsar’s
seemed to him enchanting.
Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said
something in French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself
and felt a still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He
longed to show that love in some way and knowing that

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this was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar called the
colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.
‘Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor
spoke to me?’ thought Rostov. ‘I should die of
happiness!’
The Tsar addressed the officers also: ‘I thank you all,
gentlemen, I thank you with my whole heart.’ To Rostov
every word sounded like a voice from heaven. How
gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!
‘You have earned the St. George’s standards and will
be worthy of them.’
‘Oh, to die, to die for him ‘ thought Rostov.
The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not
hear, and the soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted
‘Hurrah!’
Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted ‘Hurrah!’
with all his might, feeling that he would like to injure
himself by that shout, if only to express his rapture fully.
The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars
as if undecided.
‘How can the Emperor be undecided?’ thought Rostov,
but then even this indecision appeared to him majestic
and enchanting, like everything else the Tsar did.

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That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar’s foot,

in the narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the
groin of the bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a
white glove gathered up the reins, and he moved off
accompanied by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-
camp. Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at other
regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to
Rostov from amid the suites that surrounded the
Emperors.
Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed
Bolkonski, sitting his horse indolently and carelessly.
Rostov recalled their quarrel of yesterday and the question
presented itself whether he ought or ought not to
challenge Bolkonski. ‘Of course not!’ he now thought. ‘Is
it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a
time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice,
what do any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love
and forgive everybody now.’
When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments,
the troops began a ceremonial march past him, and
Rostov on Bedouin, recently purchased from Denisov,
rode past too, at the rear of his squadron- that is, alone
and in full view of the Emperor.

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Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid

horseman, spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put
him to the showy trot in which the animal went when
excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his tail
extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor’s
eye upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a
high and graceful action, as if flying through the air
without touching the ground.
Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach
drawn in and feeling himself one with his horse, rode past
the Emperor with a frowning but blissful face ‘like a
vewy devil,’ as Denisov expressed it.
‘Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!’ remarked the Emperor.
‘My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to
leap into the fire this instant!’ thought Rostov.
When the review was over, the newly arrived officers,
and also Kutuzov’s, collected in groups and began to talk
about the awards, about the Austrians and their uniforms,
about their lines, about Bonaparte, and how badly the
latter would fare now, especially if the Essen corps
arrived and Prussia took our side.
But the talk in every group was chiefly about the
Emperor Alexander. His every word and movement was
described with ecstasy.

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They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as

possible against the enemy under the Emperor’s
command. Commanded by the Emperor himself they
could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so
thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review.
All were then more confident of victory than the
winning of two battles would have made them.

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Chapter IX

The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and
with his comrade Berg’s best wishes for success, rode to
Olmutz to see Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his
friendliness and obtain for himself the best post he could-
preferably that of adjutant to some important personage, a
position in the army which seemed to him most attractive.
‘It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him ten
thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to
cringe to anybody and not be anyone’s lackey, but I who
have nothing but my brains have to make a career and
must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of
them!’ he reflected.
He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but
the appearance of the town where the headquarters and
the diplomatic corps were stationed and the two Emperors
were living with their suites, households, and courts only
strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.
He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman’s
uniform, all these exalted personages passing in the
streets in their elegant carriages with their plumes,
ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military men,

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seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant

officer of the Guards, that they not only did not wish to,
but simply could not, be aware of his existence. At the
quarters of the commander in chief, Kutuzov, where he
inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even the
orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on
him that a great many officers like him were always
coming there and that everybody was heartily sick of
them. In spite of this, or rather because of it, next day,
November 15, after dinner he again went to Olmutz and,
entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for
Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown
into a large hall probably formerly used for dancing, but
in which five beds now stood, and furniture of various
kinds: a table, chairs, and a clavichord. One adjutant,
nearest the door, was sitting at the table in a Persian
dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout Nesvitski,
lay on a bed with his arms under his head, laughing with
an officer who had sat down beside him. A third was
playing a Viennese waltz on the clavichord, while a
fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang the tune. Bolkonski
was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his
position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing and
whom Boris addressed turned round crossly and told him

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Bolkonski was on duty and that he should go through the

door on the left into the reception room if he wished to
see him. Boris thanked him and went to the reception
room, where he found some ten officers and generals.
When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping
contemptuously (with that peculiar expression of polite
weariness which plainly says, ‘If it were not my duty I
would not talk to you for a moment’), was listening to an
old Russian general with decorations, who stood very
erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier’s obsequious
expression on his purple face, reporting something.
‘Very well, then, be so good as to wait,’ said Prince
Andrew to the general, in Russian, speaking with the
French intonation he affected when he wished to speak
contemptuously, and noticing Boris, Prince Andrew,
paying no more heed to the general who ran after him
imploring him to hear something more, nodded and
turned to him with a cheerful smile.
At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had
before surmised, that in the army, besides the
subordination and discipline prescribed in the military
code, which he and the others knew in the regiment, there
was another, more important, subordination, which made
this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait respectfully

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while Captain Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose

to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskoy. More than ever was
Boris resolved to serve in future not according to the
written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt now
that merely by having been recommended to Prince
Andrew he had already risen above the general who at the
front had the power to annihilate him, a lieutenant of the
Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his
hand.
‘I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I
was fussing about with Germans all day. We went with
Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans
start being accurate, there’s no end to it!’
Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew
was alluding to as something generally known. But it the
first time he had heard Weyrother’s name, or even the
term ‘dispositions.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an
adjutant? I have been thinking about you.’
‘Yes, I was thinking’- for some reason Boris could not
help blushing- ‘of asking the commander in chief. He has
had a letter from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted
to ask because I fear the Guards won’t be in action,’ he
added as if in apology.

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‘All right, all right. We’ll talk it over,’ replied Prince

Andrew. ‘Only let me report this gentleman’s business,
and I shall be at your disposal.’
While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-
faced general, that gentleman- evidently not sharing
Boris’ conception of the advantages of the unwritten code
of subordination- looked so fixedly at the presumptuous
lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to
say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He
turned away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrew’s
return from the commander in chief’s room.
‘You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about
you,’ said Prince Andrew when they had gone into the
large room where the clavichord was. ‘It’s no use your
going to the commander in chief. He would say a lot of
pleasant things, ask you to dinner’ ("That would not be
bad as regards the unwritten code,’ thought Boris), ‘but
nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a
battalion of us aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is
what we’ll do: I have a good friend, an adjutant general
and an excellent fellow, Prince Dolgorukov; and though
you may not know it, the fact is that now Kutuzov with
his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything is now
centered round the Emperor. So we will go to

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Dolgorukov; I have to go there anyhow and I have already

spoken to him about you. We shall see whether he cannot
attach you to himself or find a place for you somewhere
nearer the sun.’
Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he
had to guide a young man and help him to worldly
success. Under cover of obtaining help of this kind for
another, which from pride he would never accept for
himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers
success and which attracted him. He very readily took up
Boris’ cause and went with him to Dolgorukov.
It was late in the evening when they entered the palace
at Olmutz occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.
That same day a council of war had been held in which
all the members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors
took part. At that council, contrary to the views of the old
generals Kutuzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been
decided to advance immediately and give battle to
Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when Prince
Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to
find Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still
under the spell of the day’s council, at which the party of
the young had triumphed. The voices of those who
counseled delay and advised waiting for something else

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before advancing had been so completely silenced and

their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of
the advantages of attacking that what had been discussed
at the council- the coming battle and the victory that
would certainly result from it- no longer seemed to be in
the future but in the past. All the advantages were on our
side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior to
Napoleon’s, were concentrated in one place, the troops
inspired by the Emperors’ presence were eager for action.
The strategic position where the operations would take
place was familiar in all its details to the Austrian General
Weyrother: a lucky accident had ordained that the
Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on the
very fields where the French had now to be fought; the
adjacent locality was known and shown in every detail on
the maps, and Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was
undertaking nothing.
Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an
attack, had just returned from the council, tired and
exhausted but eager and proud of the victory that had
been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his protege, but
Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand
said nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the

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thoughts which were uppermost in his mind at that

moment, addressed Prince Andrew in French.
‘Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained!
God grant that the one that will result from it will be as
victorious! However, dear fellow,’ he said abruptly and
eagerly, ‘I must confess to having been unjust to the
Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What exactitude,
what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what
foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to
the smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions
better than our present ones could have been devised. This
combination of Austrian precision with Russian valor-
what more could be wished for?’
‘So the attack is definitely resolved on?’ asked
Bolkonski.
‘And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that
Bonaparte has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a
letter was received from him today for the Emperor.’
Dolgorukov smiled significantly.
‘Is that so? And what did he say?’ inquired Bolkonski.
‘What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to
gain time. I tell you he is in our hands, that’s certain! But
what was most amusing,’ he continued, with a sudden,
good-natured laugh, ‘was that we could not think how to

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address the reply! If not as ‘Consul’ and of course not as

‘Emperor,’ it seemed to me it should be to ‘General
Bonaparte.’’
‘But between not recognizing him as Emperor and
calling him General Bonaparte, there is a difference,’
remarked Bolkonski.
‘That’s just it,’ interrupted Dolgorukov quickly,
laughing. ‘You know Bilibin- he’s a very clever fellow.
He suggested addressing him as ‘Usurper and Enemy of
Mankind.’’
Dolgorukov laughed merrily.
‘Only that?’ said Bolkonski.
‘All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form
for the address. He is a wise and clever fellow.’
‘What was it?’
‘To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du
gouvernement francais,’ said Dolgorukov, with grave
satisfaction. ‘Good, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but he will dislike it extremely,’ said Bolkonski.
‘Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he’s
dined with him- the present Emperor- more than once in
Paris, and tells me he never met a more cunning or subtle
diplomatist- you know, a combination of French
adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale

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about him and Count Markov? Count Markov was the

only man who knew how to handle him. You know the
story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!’
And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris,
now to Prince Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to
test Markov, our ambassador, purposely dropped a
handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at Markov,
probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how
Markov immediately dropped his own beside it and
picked it up without touching Bonaparte’s.
‘Delightful!’ said Bolkonski. ‘But I have come to you,
Prince, as a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You
see...’ but before Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-
camp came in to summon Dolgorukov to the Emperor.
‘Oh, what a nuisance,’ said Dolgorukov, getting up
hurriedly and pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and
Boris. ‘You know I should be very glad to do all in my
power both for you and for this dear young man.’ Again
he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. ‘But you see...
another time!’
Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to
the higher powers as he felt himself to be at that moment.
He was conscious that here he was in contact with the

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springs that set in motion the enormous movements of the

mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny,
obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince
Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met- coming out of
the door of the Emperor’s room by which Dolgorukov
had entered- a short man in civilian clothes with a clever
face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling
his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of
expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an
intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool
intensity, walking straight toward him and evidently
expecting him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince
Andrew did neither: a look of animosity appeared on his
face and the other turned away and went down the side of
the corridor.
‘Who was that?’ asked Boris.
‘He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most
unpleasant of men- the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince
Adam Czartoryski.... It is such men as he who decide the
fate of nations,’ added Bolkonski with a sigh he could not
suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the
very battle of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either

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Prince Andrew or Dolgorukov again and remained for a

while with the Ismaylov regiment.

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Chapter X

At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov’s

squadron, in which Nicholas Rostov served and which
was in Prince Bagration’s detachment, moved from the
place where it had spent the night, advancing into action
as arranged, and after going behind other columns for
about two thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad.
Rostov saw the Cossacks and then the first and second
squadrons of hussars and infantry battalions and artillery
pass by and go forward and then Generals Bagration and
Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants. All the fear
before action which he had experienced as previously, all
the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of
distinguishing himself as a true hussar in this battle, had
been wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and
Nicholas Rostov spent that day in a dull and wretched
mood. At nine in the morning, he heard firing in front and
shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought back
(there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a
whole detachment of French cavalry was brought in,
convoyed by a sontnya of Cossacks. Evidently the affair
was over and, though not big, had been a successful

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engagement. The men and officers returning spoke of a

brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau
and the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was
bright and sunny after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful
glitter of that autumn day was in keeping with the news of
victory which was conveyed, not only by the tales of
those who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful
expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and
adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And
Nicholas, who had vainly suffered all the dread that
precedes a battle and had spent that happy day in
inactivity, was all the more depressed.
‘Come here, Wostov. Let’s dwink to dwown our
gwief!’ shouted Denisov, who had settled down by the
roadside with a flask and some food.
The officers gathered round Denisov’s canteen, eating
and talking.
‘There! They are bringing another!’ cried one of the
officers, indicating a captive French dragoon who was
being brought in on foot by two Cossacks.
One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large
French horse he had taken from the prisoner.
‘Sell us that horse!’ Denisov called out to the
Cossacks.

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‘If you like, your honor!’

The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and
their prisoner. The French dragoon was a young Alsatian
who spoke French with a German accent. He was
breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when he
heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to
the officers, addressing first one, then another. He said he
would not have been taken, it was not his fault but the
corporal’s who had sent him to seize some horsecloths,
though he had told him the Russians were there. And at
every word he added: ‘But don’t hurt my little horse!’ and
stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp
where he was. Now he excused himself for having been
taken prisoner and now, imagining himself before his own
officers, insisted on his soldierly discipline and zeal in the
service. He brought with him into our rearguard all the
freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which was
so alien to us.
The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and
Rostov, being the richest of the officers now that he had
received his money, bought it.
‘But don’t hurt my little horse!’ said the Alsatian good-
naturedly to Rostov when the animal was handed over to
the hussar.

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Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him

money.
‘Alley! Alley!’ said the Cossack, touching the
prisoner’s arm to make him go on.
‘The Emperor! The Emperor!’ was suddenly heard
among the hussars.
All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up
the road behind him several riders with white plumes in
their hats. In a moment everyone was in his place,
waiting.
Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his
place and mounted. Instantly his regret at not having been
in action and his dejected mood amid people of whom he
was weary had gone, instantly every thought of himself
had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness
to the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made
up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover
when the longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not
daring to look round and without looking round, he was
ecstatically conscious of his approach. He felt it not only
from the sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade,
but because as he drew near everything grew brighter,
more joyful, more significant, and more festive around
him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding

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beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he

felt himself enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice,
that kindly, calm, and majestic voice that was yet so
simple! And as if in accord with Rostov’s feeling, there
was a deathly stillness amid which was heard the
Emperor’s voice.
‘The Pavlograd hussars?’ he inquired.
‘The reserves, sire!’ replied a voice, a very human one
compared to that which had said: ‘The Pavlograd
hussars?’
The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted.
Alexander’s face was even more beautiful than it had
been three days before at the review. It shone with such
gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested
the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was
the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while
surveying the squadron, the Emperor’s eyes met Rostov’s
and rested on them for not more than two seconds.
Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going
on in Rostov’s soul (it seemed to Rostov that he
understood everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes
gazed for about two seconds into Rostov’s face. A gentle,
mild light poured from them. Then all at once he raised

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his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left

foot, and galloped on.
The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be
present at the battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of
his courtiers, at twelve o’clock left the third column with
which he had been and galloped toward the vanguard.
Before he came up with the hussars, several adjutants met
him with news of the successful result of the action.
This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French
squadron, was represented as a brilliant victory over the
French, and so the Emperor and the whole army,
especially while the smoke hung over the battlefield,
believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the
Emperor had passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered
to advance. In Wischau itself, a petty German town,
Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the market place,
where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers
whom there had not been time to move. The Emperor,
surrounded by his suite of officers and courtiers, was
riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a different one from that
which he had ridden at the review, and bending to one
side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and

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looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his

uncovered head. The wounded soldier was so dirty,
coarse, and revolting that his proximity to the Emperor
shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the Emperor’s rather
round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run
down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping
the horse’s side with the spur, and how the well-trained
horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir. An
adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to
place him on a stretcher that had been brought. The
soldier groaned.
‘Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?’ said the
Emperor apparently suffering more than the dying soldier,
and he rode away.
Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard
him, as he was riding away, say to Czartoryski: ‘What a
terrible thing war is: what a terrible thing! Quelle terrible
chose que la guerre!’
The troops of the vanguard were stationed before
Wischau, within sight of the enemy’s lines, which all day
long had yielded ground to us at the least firing. The
Emperor’s gratitude was announced to the vanguard,
rewards were promised, and the men received a double
ration of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers’

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songs resounded even more merrily than on the previous

night. Denisov celebrated his promotion to the rank of
major, and Rostov, who had already drunk enough, at the
end of the feast proposed the Emperor’s health. ‘Not ‘our
Sovereign, the Emperor,’ as they say at official dinners,’
said he, ‘but the health of our Sovereign, that good,
enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his health and
to the certain defeat of the French!’
‘If we fought before,’ he said, ‘not letting the French
pass, as at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now
when he is at the front? We will all die for him gladly! Is
it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not saying it right, I
have drunk a good deal- but that is how I feel, and so do
you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!’
‘Hurrah!’ rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted
enthusiastically and no less sincerely than the twenty-
year-old Rostov.
When the officers had emptied and smashed their
glasses, Kirsten filled others and, in shirt sleeves and
breeches, went glass in hand to the soldiers’ bonfires and
with his long gray mustache, his white chest showing
under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the
light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.

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‘Lads! here’s to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and

victory over our enemies! Hurrah!’ he exclaimed in his
dashing, old, hussar’s baritone.
The hussars crowded round and responded heartily
with loud shouts.
Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with
his short hand patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.
‘As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign,
he’s fallen in love with the Tsar,’ he said.
‘Denisov, don’t make fun of it!’ cried Rostov. ‘It is
such a lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..’
‘I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and
appwove..’
‘No, you don’t understand!’
And Rostov got up and went wandering among the
campfires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to die-
not in saving the Emperor’s life (he did not even dare to
dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes. He really
was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian
arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the
only man to experience that feeling during those
memorable days preceding the battle of Austerlitz: nine
tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in love,

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though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of

the Russian arms.

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Chapter XI

The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and

Villier, his physician, was repeatedly summoned to see
him. At headquarters and among the troops near by the
news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing
and had slept badly that night, those around him reported.
The cause of this indisposition was the strong impression
made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and
wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who
had come with a flag of truce, demanding an audience
with the Russian Emperor, was brought into Wischau
from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The Emperor
had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At
midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later
he rode off with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post
of the French army.
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to
Alexander a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride
of the whole army, a personal interview was refused, and
instead of the Sovereign, Prince Dolgorukov, the victor at
Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate with

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Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations

were actuated by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight
to the Tsar, and remained alone with him for a long time.
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the
army advanced two days’ march and the enemy’s outposts
after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest
army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a great,
excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the
morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of
Austerlitz was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager
talk, running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was
confined to the Emperor’s headquarters. But on the
afternoon of that day, this activity reached Kutiizov’s
headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of
columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to all
ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the
nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand
allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of
voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous
mass six miles long.
The concentrated activity which had begun at the
Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started

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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

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the result of all the complicated human activities of

160,000 Russians and French- all their passions, desires,
remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear,
and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of
Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that
is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of
human history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant
attendance on the commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor’s
headquarters and after staying but a short time with the
Tsar went to see the grand marshal of the court, Count
Tolstoy.
Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some
details of the coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that
Kutuzov was upset and dissatisfied about something and
that at headquarters they were dissatisfied with him, and
also that at the Emperor’s headquarters everyone adopted
toward him the tone of men who know something others
do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.
‘Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?’ said
Dolgorukov, who was sitting at tea with Bilibin. ‘The fete
is for tomorrow. How is your old fellow? Out of sorts?’

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‘I won’t say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would

like to be heard.’
‘But they heard him at the council of war and will hear
him when he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for
something now when Bonaparte fears nothing so much as
a general battle is impossible.’
‘Yes, you have seen him?’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Well,
what is Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?’
‘Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears
nothing so much as a general engagement,’ repeated
Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this general conclusion
which he had arrived at from his interview with
Napoleon. ‘If he weren’t afraid of a battle why did he ask
for that interview? Why negotiate, and above all why
retreat, when to retreat is so contrary to his method of
conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid, afraid of a
general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!’
‘But tell me, what is he like, eh?’ said Prince Andrew
again.
‘He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I
should call him ‘Your Majesty,’ but who, to his chagrin,
got no title from me! That’s the sort of man he is, and
nothing more,’ replied Dolgorukov, looking round at
Bilibin with a smile.

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‘Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov,’ he

continued, ‘we should be a nice set of fellows if we were
to wait about and so give him a chance to escape, or to
trick us, now that we certainly have him in our hands! No,
we mustn’t forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put
yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to
attack. Believe me in war the energy of young men often
shows the way better than all the experience of old
Cunctators.’
‘But in what position are we going to attack him? I
have been at the outposts today and it is impossible to say
where his chief forces are situated,’ said Prince Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he
had himself formed.
‘Oh, that is all the same,’ Dolgorukov said quickly,
and getting up he spread a map on the table. ‘All
eventualities have been foreseen. If he is standing before
Brunn..’
And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly
explained Weyrother’s plan of a flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own
plan, which might have been as good as Weyrother’s, but
for the disadvantage that Weyrother’s had already been
approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to

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demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his

own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and
gazed absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince
Andrew’s face.
‘There will be a council of war at Kutuzov’s tonight,
though; you can say all this there,’ remarked Dolgorukov.
‘I will do so,’ said Prince Andrew, moving away from
the map.
‘Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?’ said
Bilibin, who, till then, had listened with an amused smile
to their conversation and now was evidently ready with a
joke. ‘Whether tomorrow brings victory or defeat, the
glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your
Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a
column! The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le
Comte de Langeron, le Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince,
de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on like all
those Polish names.’
‘Be quiet, backbiter!’ said Dolgorukov. ‘It is not true;
there are now two Russians, Miloradovich, and
Dokhturov, and there would be a third, Count Arakcheev,
if his nerves were not too weak.’
‘However, I think General Kutuzov has come out,’
said Prince Andrew. ‘I wish you good luck and success,

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gentlemen!’ he added and went out after shaking hands

with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain
from asking Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him,
what he thought of tomorrow’s battle.
Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a
pause, replied: ‘I think the battle will be lost, and so I told
Count Tolstoy and asked him to tell the Emperor. What
do you think he replied? ‘But, my dear general, I am
engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military matters
yourself!’ Yes... That was the answer I got!’

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Chapter XII

Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Weyrother

drove with his plans to Kutuzov’s quarters where the
council of war was to be held. All the commanders of
columns were summoned to the commander in chief’s and
with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to
come, were all there at the appointed time.
Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed
battle, by his eagerness and briskness presented a marked
contrast to the dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who
reluctantly played the part of chairman and president of
the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
at the head of a movement that had already become
unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill
harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or
being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at
headlong speed with no time to consider what this
movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that
evening to the enemy’s picket line to reconnoiter
personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters

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where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and

now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov’s.
He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be
polite to the commander in chief. He interrupted him,
talked rapidly and indistinctly, without looking at the man
he was addressing, and did not reply to questions put to
him. He was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful,
weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was
haughty and self-confident.
Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman’s castle of modest
dimensions near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room
which had become the commander in chief’s office were
gathered Kutuzov himself, Weyrother, and the members
of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only
awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last
Bagration’s orderly came with the news that the prince
could not attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the
commander in chief of this and, availing himself of
permission previously given him by Kutuzov to be
present at the council, he remained in the room.
‘Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin,’
said Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going
up to the table on which an enormous map of the environs
of Brunn was spread out.

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Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat

neck bulged over his collar as if escaping, was sitting
almost asleep in a low chair, with his podgy old hands
resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound of
Weyrother’s voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.
‘Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late,’ said he, and
nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
If at first the members of the council thought that
Kutuzov was pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose
emitted during the reading that followed proved that the
commander in chief at that moment was absorbed by a far
more serious matter than a desire to show his contempt
for the dispositions or anything else- he was engaged in
satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really
was asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy
to lose a moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having
convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and
in a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the
dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading
which he also read out:
‘Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position
behind Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805.’
The dispositions were very complicated and difficult.
They began as follows:

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‘As the enemy’s left wing rests on wooded hills and

his right extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind
the ponds that are there, while we, on the other hand, with
our left wing by far outflank his right, it is advantageous
to attack the enemy’s latter wing especially if we occupy
the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can
both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain
between Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding
the defiles of Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the
enemy’s front. For this object it is necessary that... The
first column marches... The second column marches...
The third column marches...’ and so on, read Weyrother.
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the
difficult dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General
Buxhowden stood, leaning his back against the wall, his
eyes fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen
or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite
Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon
him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy
Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned
outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders
raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at
Weyrother’s face, and only turned away his eyes when the
Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then

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Miloradovich looked round significantly at the other

generals. But one could not tell from that significant look
whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not
with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count
Langeron who, with a subtle smile that never left his
typically southern French face during the whole time of
the reading, gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly
twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on which was a
portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences, he
stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head,
and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his
thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something.
But the Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned
angrily and jerked his elbows, as if to say: ‘You can tell
me your views later, but now be so good as to look at the
map and listen.’ Langeron lifted his eyes with an
expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as
if seeking an explanation, but meeting the latter’s
impressive but meaningless gaze drooped his eyes sadly
and again took to twirling his snuffbox.
‘A geography lesson!’ he muttered as if to himself, but
loud enough to be heard.
Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified
politeness, held his hand to his ear toward Weyrother,

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with the air of a man absorbed in attention. Dohkturov, a

little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an assiduous and
modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the
unfamiliar locality. He asked Weyrother several times to
repeat words he had not clearly heard and the difficult
names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohkturov
noted them down.
When the reading which lasted more than an hour was
over, Langeron again brought his snuffbox to rest and,
without looking at Weyrother or at anyone in particular,
began to say how difficult it was to carry out such a plan
in which the enemy’s position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was
in movement. Langeron’s objections were valid but it was
obvious that their chief aim was to show General
Weyrother- who had read his dispositions with as much
self-confidence as if he were addressing school children-
that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could
teach him something in military matters.
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother’s voice
ceased, Kutuzov opened his eye as a miller wakes up
when the soporific drone of the mill wheel is interrupted.
He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, ‘So

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you are still at that silly business!’ quickly closed his eye
again, and let his head sink still lower.
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting
Weyrother’s vanity as author of the military plan, argued
that Bonaparte might easily attack instead of being
attacked, and so render the whole of this plan perfectly
worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to
meet all objections be they what they might.
‘If he could attack us, he would have done so today,’
said he.
‘So you think he is powerless?’ said Langeron.
‘He has forty thousand men at most,’ replied
Weyrother, with the smile of a doctor to whom an old
wife wishes to explain the treatment of a case.
‘In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our
attack,’ said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again
glancing round for support to Miloradovich who was near
him.
But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently
thinking of anything rather than of what the generals were
disputing about.
‘Ma foi!’ said he, ‘tomorrow we shall see all that on
the battlefield.’

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Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say

that to him it was strange and ridiculous to meet
objections from Russian generals and to have to prove to
them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
‘The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual
noise is heard from his camp,’ said he. ‘What does that
mean? Either he is retreating, which is the only thing we
need fear, or he is changing his position.’ (He smiled
ironically.) ‘But even if he also took up a position in the
Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of trouble and
all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the
same.’
‘How is that?...’ began Prince Andrew, who had for
long been waiting an opportunity to express his doubts.
Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked
round at the generals.
‘Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow- or rather
for today, for it is past midnight- cannot now be altered,’
said he. ‘You have heard them, and we shall all do our
duty. But before a battle, there is nothing more
important...’ he paused, ‘than to have a good sleep.’
He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired.
It was past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.

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The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not

been able to express his opinion as he had hoped to, left
on him a vague and uneasy impression. Whether
Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, and
the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were
right- he did not know. ‘But was it really not possible for
Kutuzov to state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it
possible that on account of court and personal
considerations tens of thousands of lives, and my life, my
life,’ he thought, ‘must be risked?’
‘Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,’
he thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a
whole series of most distant, most intimate, memories
rose in his imagination: he remembered his last parting
from his father and his wife; he remembered the days
when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and
felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously
emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in
which he was billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk
up and down before it.
The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight
gleamed mysteriously. ‘Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!’ he
thought. ‘Tomorrow everything may be over for me! All
these memories will be no more, none of them will have

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any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly, I

have a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to
show all I can do.’ And his fancy pictured the battle, its
loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the
hesitation of all the commanders. And then that happy
moment, that Toulon for which he had so long waited,
presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly
expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to
the Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views,
but no one undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a
regiment, a division- stipulates that no one is to interfere
with his arrangements- leads his division to the decisive
point, and gains the victory alone. ‘But death and
suffering?’ suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,
however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming
of his triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are
planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant
on Kutuzov’s staff, but he does everything alone. The
next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is removed and
he is appointed... ‘Well and then?’ asked the other voice.
‘If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or
betrayed, well... what then?...’ ‘Well then,’ Prince
Andrew answered himself, ‘I don’t know what will
happen and don’t want to know, and can’t, but if I want

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this- want glory, want to be known to men, want to be

loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want
nothing but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone!
I shall never tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I
love nothing but fame and men’s esteem? Death, wounds,
the loss of family- I fear nothing. And precious and dear
as many persons are to me- father, sister, wife- those
dearest to me- yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I
would give them all at once for a moment of glory, of
triumph over men, of love from men I don’t know and
never shall know, for the love of these men here,’ he
thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov’s courtyard.
The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing
up; one voice, probably a coachman’s, was teasing
Kutuzov’s old cook whom Prince Andrew knew, and who
was called Tit. He was saying, ‘Tit, I say, Tit!’
‘Well?’ returned the old man.
‘Go, Tit, thresh a bit!’ said the wag.
‘Oh, go to the devil!’ called out a voice, drowned by
the laughter of the orderlies and servants.
‘All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph
over them all, I value this mystic power and glory that is
floating here above me in this mist!’

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Chapter XIII

That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on

skirmishing duty in front of Bagration’s detachment. His
hussars were placed along the line in couples and he
himself rode along the line trying to master the sleepiness
that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our
army’s campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen
behind him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov
could see nothing, peer as he would into that foggy
distance: now something gleamed gray, now there was
something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer
where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only
something in his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in
his fancy appeared- now the Emperor, now Denisov, and
now Moscow memories- and he again hurriedly opened
his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears of the
horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within
six paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the
distance was still the same misty darkness. ‘Why not?... It
might easily happen,’ thought Rostov, ‘that the Emperor
will meet me and give me an order as he would to any
other officer; he’ll say: ‘Go and find out what’s there.’

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There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in

just such a chance way and attaching him to himself!
What if he gave me a place near him? Oh, how I would
guard him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would
unmask his deceivers!’ And in order to realize vividly his
love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to himself
an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only
kill with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face
before the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout aroused
him. He started and opened his eyes.
‘Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass
and watchword- shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our
squadron will be in reserve tomorrow,’ he thought. ‘I’ll
ask leave to go to the front, this may be my only chance
of seeing the Emperor. It won’t be long now before I am
off duty. I’ll take another turn and when I get back I’ll go
to the general and ask him.’ He readjusted himself in the
saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round
his hussars. It seemed to him that it was getting lighter.
To the left he saw a sloping descent lit up, and facing it a
black knoll that seemed as steep as a wall. On this knoll
there was a white patch that Rostov could not at all make
out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or
some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even

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thought something moved on that white spot. ‘I expect it’s

snow... that spot... a spot- une tache,’ he thought. ‘There
now... it’s not a tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes...
Na... tasha... (Won’t she be surprised when I tell her how
I’ve seen the Emperor?) Natasha... take my sabretache...’-
‘Keep to the right, your honor, there are bushes here,’
came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was
riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head
that had sunk almost to his horse’s mane and pulled up
beside the hussar. He was succumbing to irresistible,
youthful, childish drowsiness. ‘But what was I thinking? I
mustn’t forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor? No,
that’s not it- that’s tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha...
sabretache... saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the
hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskaya Street rode
the hussar with mustaches... I thought about him too, just
opposite Guryev’s house... Old Guryev.... Oh, but
Denisov’s a fine fellow. But that’s all nonsense. The chief
thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me
and wished to say something, but dared not.... No, it was I
who dared not. But that’s nonsense, the chief thing is not
to forget the important thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-
tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That’s right!’ And his
head once more sank to his horse’s neck. All at once it

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seemed to him that he was being fired at. ‘What? What?

What?... Cut them down! What?...’ said Rostov, waking
up. At the moment he opened his eyes his eyes he heard
in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn
shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and the horse of
the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts.
Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up
and went out again, then another, and all along the French
line on the hill fires flared up and the shouting grew
louder and louder. Rostov could hear the sound of French
words but could not distinguish them. The din of many
voices was too great; all he could hear was: ‘ahahah!’ and
‘rrrr!’
‘What’s that? What do you make of it?’ said Rostov to
the hussar beside him. ‘That must be the enemy’s camp!’
The hussar did not reply.
‘Why, don’t you hear it?’ Rostov asked again, after
waiting for a reply.
‘Who can tell, your honor?’ replied the hussar
reluctantly.
‘From the direction, it must be the enemy,’ repeated
Rostov.

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‘It may be he or it may be nothing,’ muttered the

hussar. ‘It’s dark... Steady!’ he cried to his fidgeting
horse.
Rostov’s horse was also getting restive: it pawed the
frozen ground, pricking its ears at the noise and looking at
the lights. The shouting grew still louder and merged into
a general roar that only an army of several thousand men
could produce. The lights spread farther and farther,
probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no
longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of
the enemy army had a stimulating effect on him. ‘Vive
l’Empereur! L’Empereur!’ he now heard distinctly.
‘They can’t be far off, probably just beyond the
stream,’ he said to the hussar beside him.
The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed
angrily. The sound of horse’s hoofs approaching at a trot
along the line of hussars was heard, and out of the foggy
darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars suddenly
appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
‘Your honor, the generals!’ said the sergeant, riding up
to Rostov.
Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the
shouts, rode with the sergeant to meet some mounted men
who were riding along the line. One was on a white horse.

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Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov with their

adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of
the lights and shouts in the enemy’s camp. Rostov rode up
to Bagration, reported to him, and then joined the
adjutants listening to what the generals were saying.
‘Believe me,’ said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing
Bagration, ‘it is nothing but a trick! He has retreated and
ordered the rearguard to kindle fires and make a noise to
deceive us.’
‘Hardly,’ said Bagration. ‘I saw them this evening on
that knoll; if they had retreated they would have
withdrawn from that too.... Officer!’ said Bagration to
Rostov, ‘are the enemy’s skirmishers still there?’
‘They were there this evening, but now I don’t know,
your excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to
see?’ replied Rostov.
Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see
Rostov’s face in the mist.
‘Well, go and see,’ he said, after a pause.
‘Yes, sir.’
Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant
Fedchenko and two other hussars, told them to follow
him, and trotted downhill in the direction from which the
shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be

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riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and

dangerous misty distance where no one had been before
him. Bagration called to him from the hill not to go
beyond the stream, but Rostov pretended not to hear him
and did not stop but rode on and on, continually mistaking
bushes for trees and gullies for men and continually
discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a
trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy’s fires,
but heard the shouting of the French more loudly and
distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like
a river, but when he reached it he found it was a road.
Having come out onto the road he reined in his horse,
hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride over
the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because
it would be easier to see people coming along it. ‘Follow
me!’ said he, crossed the road, and began riding up the
hill at a gallop toward the point where the French pickets
had been standing that evening.
‘Your honor, there he is!’ cried one of the hussars
behind him. And before Rostov had time to make out
what the black thing was that had suddenly appeared in
the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report, and a
bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound

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passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but

flashed in the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped
back. Four more reports followed at intervals, and the
bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in different
tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose spirits had risen,
like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace.
‘Well, some more! Some more!’ a merry voice was
saying in his soul. But no more shots came.
Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his
horse gallop again, and with his hand at the salute rode up
to the general.
Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had
retreated and had only lit fires to deceive us.
‘What does that prove?’ he was saying as Rostov rode
up. ‘They might retreat and leave the pickets.’
‘It’s plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince,’ said
Bagration. ‘Wait till tomorrow morning, we’ll find out
everything tomorrow.’
‘The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just
where it was in the evening,’ reported Rostov, stooping
forward with his hand at the salute and unable to repress
the smile of delight induced by his ride and especially by
the sound of the bullets.

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‘Very good, very good,’ said Bagration. ‘Thank you,

officer.’
‘Your excellency,’ said Rostov, ‘may I ask a favor?’
‘What is it?’
‘Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask
to be attached to the first squadron?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Count Rostov.’
‘Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me.’
‘Count Ilya Rostov’s son?’ asked Dolgorukov.
But Rostov did not reply.
‘Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?’
‘I will give the order.’
‘Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some
message to the Emperor,’ thought Rostov.
‘Thank God!’
The fires and shouting in the enemy’s army were
occasioned by the fact that while Napoleon’s
proclamation was being read to the troops the Emperor
himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing
him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, ‘Vive
l’Empereur!’ Napoleon’s proclamation was as follows:
Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you
to avenge the Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same

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battalions you broke at Hollabrunn and have pursued ever

since to this place. The position we occupy is a strong
one, and while they are marching to go round me on the
right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will
myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you
with your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into
the enemy’s ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even
for a moment, you will see your Emperor exposing
himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there must be
no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is at
stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to
the honor of our nation.
Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the
wounded! Let every man be fully imbued with the
thought that we must defeat these hirelings of England,
inspired by such hatred of our nation! This victory will
conclude our campaign and we can return to winter
quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised
in France will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will
be worthy of my people, of you, and of myself.
NAPOLEON

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Chapter XIV

At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The

troops of the center, the reserves, and Bagration’s right
flank had not yet moved, but on the left flank the columns
of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which were to be the
first to descend the heights to attack the French right flank
and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to
plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the
campfires, into which they were throwing everything
superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold and dark.
The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting,
the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with
their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires
throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs,
tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they did not want
or could not carry away with them. Austrian column
guides were moving in and out among the Russian troops
and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an
Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding
officer’s quarters, the regiment began to move: the
soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their
boots, their bags into the carts, got their muskets ready,

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and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their coats,

buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along
the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies
harnessed and packed the wagons and tied on the loads.
The adjutants and battalion and regimental commanders
mounted, crossed themselves, gave final instructions,
orders, and commissions to the baggage men who
remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands
of feet resounded. The column moved forward without
knowing where and unable, from the masses around them,
the smoke and the increasing fog, to see either the place
they were leaving or that to which they were going.
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along
by his regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship.
However far he has walked, whatever strange, unknown,
and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is always
surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his
ship, so the soldier always has around him the same
comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan
Mitrich, the same company dog Jack, and the same
commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude
in which his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle-
heaven knows how and whence- a stern note of which all
are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army,

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announcing the approach of something decisive and

solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity.
On the day of battle the soldiers excitedly try to get
beyond the interests of their regiment, they listen intently,
look about, and eagerly ask concerning what is going on
around them.
The fog had grown so dense that though it was
growing light they could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes
looked like gigantic trees and level ground like cliffs and
slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might encounter an
enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced
for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and
ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going
over new and unknown ground, and nowhere
encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers
became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other
Russian columns were moving in the same direction.
Every soldier felt glad to know that to the unknown place
where he was going, many more of our men were going
too.
‘There now, the Kurskies have also gone past,’ was
being said in the ranks.

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‘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.

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‘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.

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‘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

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another, at first irregularly at varying intervals- trata... tat-

and then more and more regularly and rapidly, and the
action at the Goldbach Stream began.
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the
stream, and having stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no
encouraging word from their commanders, and with a
consciousness of being too late spreading through the
ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front
or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged
shots with the enemy lazily and advanced and again
halted, receiving no timely orders from the officers or
adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those
unknown surroundings unable to find their own
regiments. In this way the action began for the first,
second, and third columns, which had gone down into the
valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov was,
stood on the Pratzen Heights.
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still
thick fog; on the higher ground it was clearing, but
nothing could be seen of what was going on in front.
Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed, six
miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of
mist, no one knew till after eight o’clock.

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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

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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

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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.

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Chapter XV

At eight o’clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of

the fourth column, Miloradovich’s, the one that was to
take the place of Przebyszewski’s and Langeron’s
columns which had already gone down into the valley. He
greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave them
the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to
lead that column himself. When he had reached the
village of Pratzen he halted. Prince Andrew was behind,
among the immense number forming the commander in
chief’s suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement
and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the
approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly
convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his
bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not
know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the
position of our troops were known to him as far as they
could be known to anyone in our army. His own strategic
plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was
forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother’s plan, Prince
Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed

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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

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wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left

beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and
disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved
infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the end
of the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning
Kutuzov seemed worn and irritable. The infantry passing
before him came to a halt without any command being
given, apparently obstructed by something in front.
‘Do order them to form into battalion columns and go
round the village!’ he said angrily to a general who had
ridden up. ‘Don’t you understand, your excellency, my
dear sir, that you must not defile through narrow village
streets when we are marching against the enemy?’
‘I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your
excellency,’ answered the general.
Kutuzov laughed bitterly.
‘You’ll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of
the enemy! Very fine!’
‘The enemy is still far away, your excellency.
According to the dispositions..’
‘The dispositions!’ exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. ‘Who
told you that?... Kindly do as you are ordered.’
‘Yes, sir.’

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‘My dear fellow,’ Nesvitski whispered to Prince

Andrew, ‘the old man is as surly as a dog.’
An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green
plumes in his hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the
Emperor’s name had the fourth column advanced into
action.
Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye
happened to fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside
him. Seeing him, Kutuzov’s malevolent and caustic
expression softened, as if admitting that what was being
done was not his adjutant’s fault, and still not answering
the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.
‘Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division
has passed the village. Tell it to stop and await my
orders.’
Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped
him.
‘And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted,’ he
added. ‘What are they doing? What are they doing?’ he
murmured to himself, still not replying to the Austrian.
Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he
stopped the third division and convinced himself that
there really were no sharpshooters in front of our

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columns. The colonel at the head of the regiment was

much surprised at the commander in chief’s order to
throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there
were other troops in front of him and that the enemy must
be at least six miles away. There was really nothing to be
seen in front except a barren descent hidden by dense
mist. Having given orders in the commander in chief’s
name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped
back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body
resting heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat
yawning wearily with closed eyes. The troops were no
longer moving, but stood with the butts of their muskets
on the ground.
‘All right, all right!’ he said to Prince Andrew, and
turned to a general who, watch in hand, was saying it was
time they started as all the left-flank columns had already
descended.
‘Plenty of time, your excellency,’ muttered Kutuzov in
the midst of a yawn. ‘Plenty of time,’ he repeated.
Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the
sound of regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came
nearer along the whole extended line of the advancing
Russian columns. Evidently the person they were greeting
was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in

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front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he

rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown.
Along the road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a
squadron of horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them
rode side by side in front, at full gallop. One in a black
uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed
chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode
a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by
their suites. Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old
soldier at the front, gave the command ‘Attention!’ and
rode up to the Emperors with a salute. His whole
appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He
put on the air of a subordinate who obeys without
reasoning. With an affectation of respect which evidently
struck Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.
This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the
young and happy face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze
across a clear sky and vanished. After his illness he
looked rather thinner that day than on the field of Olmutz
where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time abroad,
but there was still the same bewitching combination of
majesty and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his
delicate lips the same capacity for varying expression and

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the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted innocent

youth.
At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic;
here he seemed brighter and more energetic. He was
slightly flushed after galloping two miles, and reining in
his horse he sighed restfully and looked round at the faces
of his suite, young and animated as his own. Czartoryski,
Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the
others, all richly dressed gay young men on splendid,
well-groomed, fresh, only slightly heated horses,
exchanging remarks and smiling, had stopped behind the
Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young
man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking
about him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He
beckoned to one of his white adjutants and asked some
question- ‘Most likely he is asking at what o’clock they
started,’ thought Prince Andrew, watching his old
acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he
recalled his reception at Brunn. In the Emperors’ suite
were the picked young orderly officers of the Guard and
line regiments, Russian and Austrian. Among them were
grooms leading the Tsar’s beautiful relay horses covered
with embroidered cloths.

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As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from

the fields enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness,
energy, and confidence of success reached Kutuzov’s
cheerless staff with the galloping advent of all these
brilliant young men.
‘Why aren’t you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?’
said the Emperor Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov,
glancing courteously at the same time at the Emperor
Francis.
‘I am waiting, Your Majesty,’ answered Kutuzov,
bending forward respectfully.
The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward
as if he had not quite heard.
‘Waiting, Your Majesty,’ repeated Kutuzov. (Prince
Andrew noted that Kutuzov’s upper lip twitched
unnaturally as he said the word ‘waiting.’) ‘Not all the
columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty.’
The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he
shrugged his rather round shoulders and glanced at
Novosiltsev who was near him, as if complaining of
Kutuzov.
‘You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not
on the Empress’ Field where a parade does not begin till
all the troops are assembled,’ said the Tsar with another

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glance at the Emperor Francis, as if inviting him if not to

join in at least to listen to what he was saying. But the
Emperor Francis continued to look about him and did not
listen.
‘That is just why I do not begin, sire,’ said Kutuzov in
a resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility
of not being heard, and again something in his face
twitched- ‘That is just why I do not begin, sire, because
we are not on parade and not on the Empress’ Field.’ said
clearly and distinctly.
In the Emperor’s suite all exchanged rapid looks that
expressed dissatisfaction and reproach. ‘Old though he
may be, he should not, he certainly should not, speak like
that,’ their glances seemed to say.
The Tsar looked intently and observantly into
Kutuzov’s eye waiting to hear whether he would say
anything more. But Kutuzov, with respectfully bowed
head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted for
about a minute.
‘However, if you command it, Your Majesty,’ said
Kutuzov, lifting his head and again assuming his former
tone of a dull, unreasoning, but submissive general.

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He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich,

the commander of the column, gave him the order to
advance.
The troops again began to move, and two battalions of
the Novgorod and one of the Apsheron regiment went
forward past the Emperor.
As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced
Miloradovich, without his greatcoat, with his Orders on
his breast and an enormous tuft of plumes in his cocked
hat worn on one side with its corners front and back,
galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute
reined in his horse before the Emperor.
‘God be with you, general!’ said the Emperor.
‘Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre
possibilite, sire,’* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless
ironic smiles among the gentlemen of the Tsar’s suite by
his poor French.
*"Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to
do, Sire.’
Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed
himself a little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men,
excited by the Tsar’s presence, passed in step before the
Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk pace.

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‘Lads!’ shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident,

and cheery voice, obviously so elated by the sound of
firing, by the prospect of battle, and by the sight of the
gallant Apsherons, his comrades in Suvorov’s time, now
passing so gallantly before the Emperors, that he forgot
the sovereigns’ presence. ‘Lads, it’s not the first village
you’ve had to take,’ cried he.
‘Glad to do our best!’ shouted the soldiers.
The Emperor’s horse started at the sudden cry. This
horse that had carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia
bore him also here on the field of Austerlitz, enduring the
heedless blows of his left foot and pricking its ears at the
sound of shots just as it had done on the Empress’ Field,
not understanding the significance of the firing, nor of the
nearness of the Emperor Francis’ black cob, nor of all that
was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his
followers and made a remark to him, pointing to the
gallant Apsherons.

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Chapter XVI

Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a

walking pace behind the carabineers.
When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of
the column he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that
had probably once been an inn, where two roads parted.
Both of them led downhill and troops were marching
along both.
The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were
already dimly visible about a mile and a half off on the
opposite heights. Down below, on the left, the firing
became more distinct. Kutuzov had stopped and was
speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was
a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask
him for a field glass.
‘Look, look!’ said this adjutant, looking not at the
troops in the distance, but down the hill before him. ‘It’s
the French!’
The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the
field glass, trying to snatch it from one another. The
expression on all their faces suddenly changed to one of
horror. The French were supposed to be a mile and a half

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away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just in

front of us.
‘It’s the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain....
But how is that?’ said different voices.
With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to
the right, not more than five hundred paces from where
Kutuzov was standing, a dense French column coming up
to meet the Apsherons.
‘Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn
has come,’ thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse
he rode up to Kutuzov.
‘The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency,’
cried he. But at that very instant a cloud of smoke spread
all round, firing was heard quite close at hand, and a voice
of naive terror barely two steps from Prince Andrew
shouted, ‘Brothers! All’s lost!’ And at this as if at a
command, everyone began to run.
Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running
back to where five minutes before the troops had passed
the Emperors. Not only would it have been difficult to
stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to be carried
back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to lose
touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to
grasp what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with

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an angry face, red and unlike himself, was shouting to

Kutuzov that if he did not ride away at once he would
certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov remained in the same
place and without answering drew out a handkerchief.
Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced
his way to him.
‘You are wounded?’ he asked, hardly able to master
the trembling of his lower jaw.
‘The wound is not here, it is there!’ said Kutuzov,
pressing the handkerchief to his wounded cheek and
pointing to the fleeing soldiers. ‘Stop them!’ he shouted,
and at the same moment, probably realizing that it was
impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the
right.
A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore
him back with it.
The troops were running in such a dense mass that
once surrounded by them it was difficult to get out again.
One was shouting, ‘Get on! Why are you hindering us?’
Another in the same place turned round and fired in the
air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode.
Having by a great effort got away to the left from that
flood of men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more
than half, rode toward a sound of artillery fire near by.

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Having forced his way out of the crowd of fugitives,

Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on the
slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that
was still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher
up stood some Russian infantry, neither moving forward
to protect the battery nor backward with the fleeing
crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the
infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov’s suite
only four remained. They were all pale and exchanged
looks in silence.
‘Stop those wretches!’ gasped Kutuzov to the
regimental commander, pointing to the flying soldiers; but
at that instant, as if to punish him for those words, bullets
flew hissing across the regiment and across Kutuzov’s
suite like a flock of little birds.
The French had attacked the battery and, seeing
Kutuzov, were firing at him. After this volley the
regimental commander clutched at his leg; several
soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the
flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but
caught on the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers
started firing without orders.
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ groaned Kutuzov despairingly and
looked around.... ‘Bolkonski!’ he whispered, his voice

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trembling from a consciousness of the feebleness of age,

‘Bolkonski!’ he whispered, pointing to the disordered
battalion and at the enemy, ‘what’s that?’
But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew,
feeling tears of shame and anger choking him, had already
leapt from his horse and run to the standard.
‘Forward, lads!’ he shouted in a voice piercing as a
child’s.
‘Here it is!’ thought he, seizing the staff of the standard
and hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently
aimed at him. Several soldiers fell.
‘Hurrah!’ shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to
hold up the heavy standard, he ran forward with full
confidence that the whole battalion would follow him.
And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier
moved and then another and soon the whole battalion ran
forward shouting ‘Hurrah!’ and overtook him. A sergeant
of the battalion ran up and took the flag that was swaying
from its weight in Prince Andrew’s hands, but he was
immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the
standard and, dragging it by the staff, ran on with the
battalion. In front he saw our artillerymen, some of whom
were fighting, while others, having abandoned their guns,
were running toward him. He also saw French infantry

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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

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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!..’

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Chapter XVII

On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine

o’clock the battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree
to Dolgorukov’s demand to commence the action, and
wishing to avert responsibility from himself, Prince
Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to inquire of
the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the
distance between the two flanks was more than six miles,
even if the messenger were not killed (which he very
likely would be), and found the commander in chief
(which would be very difficult), he would not be able to
get back before evening.
Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes
round his suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless
with excitement and hope, was the first to catch his eye.
He sent him.
‘And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the
commander in chief, your excellency?’ said Rostov, with
his hand to his cap.
‘You can give the message to His Majesty,’ said
Dolgorukov, hurriedly interrupting Bagration.

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On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had

managed to get a few hours’ sleep before morning and felt
cheerful, bold, and resolute, with elasticity of movement,
faith in his good fortune, and generally in that state of
mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant,
and easy.
All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there
was to be a general engagement in which he was taking
part, more than that, he was orderly to the bravest general,
and still more, he was going with a message to Kutuzov,
perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning was
bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was
full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave
his horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he
rode along the line of Bagration’s troops, which had not
yet advanced into action but were standing motionless;
then he came to the region occupied by Uvarov’s cavalry
and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for
battle; having passed Uvarov’s cavalry he clearly heard
the sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The
firing grew louder and louder.
In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or
three musket shots at irregular intervals as before,
followed by one or two cannon shots, but a roll of volleys

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of musketry from the slopes of the hill before Pratzen,

interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that
sometimes several of them were not separated from one
another but merged into a general roar.
He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to
chase one another down the hillsides, and clouds of
cannon smoke rolling, spreading, and mingling with one
another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets visible
through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry
and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.
Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to
see what was going on, but strain his attention as he
would he could not understand or make out anything of
what was happening: there in the smoke men of some sort
were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of
troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was
impossible to make out. These sights and sounds had no
depressing or intimidating effect on him; on the contrary,
they stimulated his energy and determination.
‘Go on! Go on! Give it them!’ he mentally exclaimed
at these sounds, and again proceeded to gallop along the
line, penetrating farther and farther into the region where
the army was already in action.

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‘How it will be there I don’t know, but all will be

well!’ thought Rostov.
After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the
next part of the line (the Guards) was already in action.
‘So much the better! I shall see it close,’ he thought.
He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of
men came galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans
who with disordered ranks were returning from the attack.
Rostov got out of their way, involuntarily noticed that one
of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
‘That is no business of mine,’ he thought. He had not
ridden many hundred yards after that before he saw to his
left, across the whole width of the field, an enormous
mass of cavalry in brilliant white uniforms, mounted on
black horses, trotting straight toward him and across his
path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they
continued at the same speed, but they kept increasing their
pace, so that some of the horses were already galloping.
Rostov heard the thud of their hoofs and the jingle of their
weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and even
their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our
Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that
was coming to meet them.

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The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in

their horses. Rostov could already see their faces and
heard the command: ‘Charge!’ shouted by an officer who
was urging his thoroughbred to full speed. Rostov, fearing
to be crushed or swept into the attack on the French,
galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but
still was not in time to avoid them.
The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked
fellow, frowned angrily on seeing Rostov before him,
with whom he would inevitably collide. This Guardsman
would certainly have bowled Rostov and his Bedouin
over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to
these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to
Rostov to flourish his whip before the eyes of the
Guardsman’s horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen hands
high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked
Guardsman drove his huge spurs in violently, and the
horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck, galloped
on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov
before he heard them shout, ‘Hurrah!’ and looking back
saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some
foreign cavalry with red epaulets, probably French. He
could see nothing more, for immediately afterwards

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cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke

enveloped everything.
At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed
him, disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether
to gallop after them or to go where he was sent. This was
the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that amazed the
French themselves. Rostov was horrified to hear later that
of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those
brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had
galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only
eighteen were left after the charge.
‘Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and
maybe I shall see the Emperor immediately! ‘ thought
Rostov and galloped on.
When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed
that about them and around them cannon balls were
flying, of which he was aware not so much because he
heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on the
soldiers’ faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those
of the officers.
Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot
Guards he heard a voice calling him by name.
‘Rostov!’
‘What?’ he answered, not recognizing Boris.

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‘I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment

attacked!’ said Boris with the happy smile seen on the
faces of young men who have been under fire for the first
time.
Rostov stopped.
‘Have you?’ he said. ‘Well, how did it go?’
‘We drove them back!’ said Boris with animation,
growing talkative. ‘Can you imagine it?’ and he began
describing how the Guards, having taken up their position
and seeing troops before them, thought they were
Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon
balls discharged by those troops that they were
themselves in the front line and had unexpectedly to go
into action. Rostov without hearing Boris to the end
spurred his horse.
‘Where are you off to?’ asked Boris.
‘With a message to His Majesty.’
‘There he is!’ said Boris, thinking Rostov had said ‘His
Highness,’ and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his
high shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces
away from them in his helmet and Horse Guards’ jacket,
shouting something to a pale, white uniformed Austrian
officer.

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‘But that’s the Grand Duke, and I want the commander

in chief or the Emperor,’ said Rostov, and was about to
spur his horse.
‘Count! Count!’ shouted Berg who ran up from the
other side as eager as Boris. ‘Count! I am wounded in my
right hand’ (and he showed his bleeding hand with a
handkerchief tied round it) ‘and I remained at the front. I
held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family- the
von Bergs- have been knights!’
He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to
hear it and rode away.
Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty
space, Rostov, to avoid again getting in front of the first
line as he had done when the Horse Guards charged,
followed the line of reserves, going far round the place
where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard.
Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him
and behind our troops, where he could never have
expected the enemy to be.
‘What can it be?’ he thought. ‘The enemy in the rear of
our army? Impossible!’ And suddenly he was seized by a
panic of fear for himself and for the issue of the whole
battle. ‘But be that what it may,’ he reflected, ‘there is no
riding round it now. I must look for the commander in

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chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with the

rest.’
The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over
Rostov was more and more confirmed the farther he rode
into the region behind the village of Pratzen, which was
full of troops of all kinds.
‘What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing
at? Who is firing?’ Rostov kept asking as he came up to
Russian and Austrian soldiers running in confused crowds
across his path.
‘The devil knows! They’ve killed everybody! It’s all
up now!’ he was told in Russian, German, and Czech by
the crowd of fugitives who understood what was
happening as little as he did.
‘Kill the Germans!’ shouted one.
‘May the devil take them- the traitors!’
‘Zum Henker diese Russen!’* muttered a German.
*"Hang these Russians!’
Several wounded men passed along the road, and
words of abuse, screams, and groans mingled in a general
hubbub, then the firing died down. Rostov learned later
that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing at one
another.

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‘My God! What does it all mean?’ thought he. ‘And

here, where at any moment the Emperor may see them....
But no, these must be only a handful of scoundrels. It will
soon be over, it can’t be that, it can’t be! Only to get past
them quicker, quicker!’
The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov’s
head. Though he saw French cannon and French troops on
the Pratzen Heights just where he had been ordered to
look for the commander in chief, he could not, did not
wish to, believe that.

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Chapter XVIII

Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the

Emperor near the village of Pratzen. But neither they nor
a single commanding officer were there, only
disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He urged
on his already weary horse to get quickly past these
crowds, but the farther he went the more disorganized
they were. The highroad on which he had come out was
thronged with caleches, carriages of all sorts, and Russian
and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in
confusion under the dismal influence of cannon balls
flying from the French batteries stationed on the Pratzen
Heights.
‘Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?’ Rostov
kept asking everyone he could stop, but got no answer
from anyone.
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to
answer.
‘Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!’ said the
soldier, laughing for some reason and shaking himself
free.

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Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk,

Rostov stopped the horse of a batman or groom of some
important personage and began to question him. The man
announced that the Tsar had been driven in a carriage at
full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.
‘It can’t be!’ said Rostov. ‘It must have been someone
else.’
‘I saw him myself.’ replied the man with a self-
confident smile of derision. ‘I ought to know the Emperor
by now, after the times I’ve seen him in Petersburg. I saw
him just as I see you.... There he sat in the carriage as pale
as anything. How they made the four black horses fly!
Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I knew the
Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don’t think Ilya drives
anyone except the Tsar!’
Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on,
when a wounded officer passing by addressed him:
‘Who is it you want?’ he asked. ‘The commander in
chief? He was killed by a cannon ball- struck in the breast
before our regiment.’
‘Not killed- wounded!’ another officer corrected him.
‘Who? Kutuzov?’ asked Rostov.

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‘Not Kutuzov, but what’s his name- well, never mind...

there are not many left alive. Go that way, to that village,
all the commanders are there,’ said the officer, pointing to
the village of Hosjeradek, and he walked on.
Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to
whom he was now going. The Emperor was wounded, the
battle lost. It was impossible to doubt it now. Rostov rode
in the direction pointed out to him, in which he saw
turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he
now to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were
alive and unwounded?
‘Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed
at once!’ a soldier shouted to him. ‘They’d kill you there!’
‘Oh, what are you talking about?’ said another. ‘Where
is he to go? That way is nearer.’
Rostov considered, and then went in the direction
where they said he would be killed.
‘It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I
to try to save myself?’ he thought. He rode on to the
region where the greatest number of men had perished in
fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not yet occupied
that region, and the Russians- the uninjured and slightly
wounded- had left it long ago. All about the field, like
heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to

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fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The

wounded crept together in twos and threes and one could
hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes
feigned- or so it seemed to Rostov. He put his horse to a
trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt
afraid- afraid not for his life, but for the courage he
needed and which he knew would not stand the sight of
these unfortunates.
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn
with dead and wounded where there was no one left to
fire at, on seeing an adjutant riding over it trained a gun
on him and fired several shots. The sensation of those
terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around him
merged in Rostov’s mind into a single feeling of terror
and pity for himself. He remembered his mother’s last
letter. ‘What would she feel,’ thought he, ‘if she saw me
here now on this field with the cannon aimed at me?’
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops
retiring from the field of battle, who though still in some
confusion were less disordered. The French cannon did
not reach there and the musketry fire sounded far away.
Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle was
lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the
Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the

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Emperor was wounded was correct, others that it was not,

and explained the false rumor that had spread by the fact
that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped from the
field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-
Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the
battlefield with others in the Emperor’s suite. One officer
told Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters
behind the village to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not
hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience.
When he had ridden about two miles and had passed the
last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden
with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing the
ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar
to Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
Rostov fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch,
struck his horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein
leaped lightly over. Only a little earth crumbled from the
bank under the horse’s hind hoofs. Turning the horse
sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently
suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose
figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted
his attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and

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hand and by that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his

lamented and adored monarch.
‘But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty
field!’ thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned
his head and Rostov saw the beloved features that were so
deeply engraved on his memory. The Emperor was pale,
his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm, the
mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was
happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor
being wounded were false. He was happy to be seeing
him. He knew that he might and even ought to go straight
to him and give the message Dolgorukov had ordered him
to deliver.
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares
not utter the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but
looks around for help or a chance of delay and flight
when the longed-for moment comes and he is alone with
her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he had
longed for more than anything else in the world, did not
know how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand
reasons occurred to him why it would be inconvenient,
unseemly, and impossible to do so.
‘What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take
advantage of his being alone and despondent! A strange

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face may seem unpleasant or painful to him at this

moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him now,
when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the
mere sight of him?’ Not one of the innumerable speeches
addressed to the Emperor that he had composed in his
imagination could he now recall. Those speeches were
intended for quite other conditions, they were for the most
part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,
generally when he was dying of wounds and the
sovereign had thanked him for heroic deeds, and while
dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
‘Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions
for the right flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and
the battle is lost? No, certainly I must not approach him, I
must not intrude on his reflections. Better die a thousand
times than risk receiving an unkind look or bad opinion
from him,’ Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and with a
heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back
at the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of
indecision.
While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding
sadly away, Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same
spot, and seeing the Emperor at once rode up to him,
offered his services, and assisted him to cross the ditch on

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foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling unwell, sat

down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside
him. Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse
how von Toll spoke long and warmly to the Emperor and
how the Emperor, evidently weeping, covered his eyes
with his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.
‘And I might have been in his place!’ thought Rostov,
and hardly restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he
rode on in utter despair, not knowing where to or why he
was now riding.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his
own weakness was the cause his grief.
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to
the sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his
devotion to the Emperor and he had not made use of it....
‘What have I done?’ thought he. And he turned round and
galloped back to the place where he had seen the
Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now.
Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one
of the drivers he learned that Kutuzov’s staff were not far
off, in the village the vehicles were going to. Rostov
followed them. In front of him walked Kutuzov’s groom
leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and

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behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in

a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
‘Tit! I say, Tit!’ said the groom.
‘What?’ answered the old man absent-mindedly.
‘Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!’
‘Oh, you fool!’ said the old man, spitting angrily.
Some time passed in silence, and then the same joke was
repeated.
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all
points. More than a hundred cannon were already in the
hands of the French.
Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms.
Other columns after losing half their men were retreating
in disorderly confused masses.
The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhturov’s mingled
forces were crowding around the dams and banks of the
ponds near the village of Augesd.
After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a
hot cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to
be heard from numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of
the Pratzen Heights, directed at our retreating forces.
In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some
battalions kept up a musketry fire at the French cavalry
that was pursuing our troops. It was growing dusk. On the

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narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the old

miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap
peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves
rolled up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the
watering can, on that dam over which for so many years
Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully
driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had
returned dusty with flour whitening their carts- on that
narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the
horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels, men
disfigured by fear of death now crowded together,
crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying and
killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be
killed themselves in the same way.
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the
air around, or a shell burst in the midst of that dense
throng, killing some and splashing with blood those near
them.
Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on
foot, with the regimental commander on horseback and
some ten men of his company, represented all that was
left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the crowd, they
had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and,
jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in

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front had fallen under a cannon and the crowd were

dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone behind
them, another fell in front and splashed Dolokhov with
blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed
together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.
‘Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved,
remain here another two minutes and it is certain death,’
thought each one.
Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced
his way to the edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off
their feet, and ran onto the slippery ice that covered the
millpool.
‘Turn this way!’ he shouted, jumping over the ice
which creaked under him; ‘turn this way!’ he shouted to
those with the gun. ‘It bears!..’
The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was
plain that it would give way not only under a cannon or a
crowd, but very soon even under his weight alone. The
men looked at him and pressed to the bank, hesitating to
step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth
to address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so
low above the crowd that everyone ducked. It flopped into
something moist, and the general fell from his horse in a

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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.

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Chapter XIX

On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the

flagstaff in his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski
bleeding profusely and unconsciously uttering a gentle,
piteous, and childlike moan.
Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite
still. He did not know how long his unconsciousness
lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was alive and
suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
‘Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now,
but saw today?’ was his first thought. ‘And I did not know
this suffering either,’ he thought. ‘Yes, I did not know
anything, anything at all till now. But where am I?’
He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses,
and voices speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above
him again was the same lofty sky with clouds that had
risen and were floating still higher, and between them
gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did
not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and
voices, had ridden up and stopped near him.
It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp.
Bonaparte riding over the battlefield had given final

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orders to strengthen the batteries firing at the Augesd

Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left on
the field.
‘Fine men!’ remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead
Russian grenadier, who, with his face buried in the
ground and a blackened nape, lay on his stomach with an
already stiffened arm flung wide.
‘The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted,
Your Majesty,’ said an adjutant who had come from the
batteries that were firing at Augesd.
‘Have some brought from the reserve,’ said Napoleon,
and having gone on a few steps he stopped before Prince
Andrew, who lay on his back with the flagstaff that had
been dropped beside him. (The flag had already been
taken by the French as a trophy.)
‘That’s a fine death!’ said Napoleon as he gazed at
Bolkonski.
Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him
and that it was Napoleon who said it. He heard the
speaker addressed as Sire. But he heard the words as he
might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only did they
not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once
forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself
bleeding to death, and he saw above him the remote,

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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

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the hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger

and was able to look about him and even speak.
The first words he heard on coming to his senses were
those of a French convoy officer, who said rapidly: ‘We
must halt here: the Emperor will pass here immediately; it
will please him to see these gentlemen prisoners.’
‘There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole
Russian army, that he is probably tired of them,’ said
another officer.
‘All the same! They say this one is the commander of
all the Emperor Alexander’s Guards,’ said the first one,
indicating a Russian officer in the white uniform of the
Horse Guards.
Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met
in Petersburg society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen,
also a wounded officer of the Horse Guards.
Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his
horse.
‘Which is the senior?’ he asked, on seeing the
prisoners.
They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.
‘You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander’s
regiment of Horse Guards?’ asked Napoleon.
‘I commanded a squadron,’ replied Repnin.

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‘Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably,’ said

Napoleon.
‘The praise of a great commander is a soldier’s highest
reward,’ said Repnin.
‘I bestow it with pleasure,’ said Napoleon. ‘And who is
that young man beside you?’
Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
‘He’s very young to come to meddle with us.’
‘Youth is no hindrance to courage,’ muttered
Sukhtelen in a failing voice.
‘A splendid reply!’ said Napoleon. ‘Young man, you
will go far!’
Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward
before the Emperor’s eyes to complete the show of
prisoners, could not fail to attract his attention. Napoleon
apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield and,
addressing him, again used the epithet ‘young man’ that
was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.
‘Well, and you, young man,’ said he. ‘How do you
feel, mon brave?’
Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been
able to say a few words to the soldiers who were carrying
him, now with his eyes fixed straight on Napoleon, he

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was silent.... So insignificant at that moment seemed to

him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did
his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory
appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky
which he had seen and understood, that he could not
answer him.
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in
comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought
that weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the
nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the
insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life
which no one could understand, and the still greater
unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive
could understand or explain.
The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned
away and said to one of the officers as he went: ‘Have
these gentlemen attended to and taken to my bivouac; let
my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir,
Prince Repnin!’ and he spurred his horse and galloped
away.
His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had
noticed and taken the little gold icon Princess Mary had

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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

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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.

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BOOK FOUR: 1806

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Chapter I

Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home

on leave. Denisov was going home to Voronezh and
Rostov persuaded him to travel with him as far as
Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at
the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had
drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the
jolting ruts across the snow-covered road, did not once
wake up on the way to Moscow, but lay at the bottom of
the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew more and more
impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
‘How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these
insufferable streets, shops, bakers’ signboards, street
lamps, and sleighs!’ thought Rostov, when their leave
permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
entered Moscow.
‘Denisov! We’re here! He’s asleep,’ he added, leaning
forward with his whole body as if in that position he
hoped to hasten the speed of the sleigh.
Denisov gave no answer.
‘There’s the corner at the crossroads, where the
cabman, Zakhar, has his stand, and there’s Zakhar himself
and still the same horse! And here’s the little shop where

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we used to buy gingerbread! Can’t you hurry up? Now

then!’
‘Which house is it?’ asked the driver.
‘Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don’t you
see? That’s our house,’ said Rostov. ‘Of course, it’s our
house! Denisov, Denisov! We’re almost there!’
Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no
answer.
‘Dmitri,’ said Rostov to his valet on the box, ‘those
lights are in our house, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, sir, and there’s a light in your father’s study.’
‘Then they’ve not gone to bed yet? What do you think?
Mind now, don’t forget to put out my new coat,’ added
Rostov, fingering his new mustache. ‘Now then, get on,’
he shouted to the driver. ‘Do wake up, Vaska!’ he went
on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again nodding.
‘Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka- get
on!’ Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three
houses from his door. It seemed to him the horses were
not moving at all. At last the sleigh bore to the right, drew
up at an entrance, and Rostov saw overhead the old
familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off, the porch,
and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out
before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house

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stood cold and silent, as if quite regardless of who had

come to it. There was no one in the hall. ‘Oh God! Is
everyone all right?’ he thought, stopping for a moment
with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to run
along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar
staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always
angered the countess when it was not properly cleaned,
turned as loosely as ever. A solitary tallow candle burned
in the anteroom.
Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the
footman, who was so strong that he could lift the back of
the carriage from behind, sat plaiting slippers out of cloth
selvedges. He looked up at the opening door and his
expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to
one of delighted amazement.
‘Gracious heavens! The young count!’ he cried,
recognizing his young master. ‘Can it be? My treasure!’
and Prokofy, trembling with excitement, rushed toward
the drawing-room door, probably in order to announce
him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to
kiss the young man’s shoulder.
‘All well?’ asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.
‘Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They’ve just finished
supper. Let me have a look at you, your excellency.’

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‘Is everything quite all right?’

‘The Lord be thanked, yes!’
Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not
wishing anyone to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and
ran on tiptoe through the large dark ballroom. All was the
same: there were the same old card tables and the same
chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had already
seen the young master, and, before he had reached the
drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a
tornado and began hugging and kissing him. Another and
yet another creature of the same kind sprang from a
second door and a third; more hugging, more kissing,
more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish
which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya.
Everyone shouted, talked, and kissed him at the same
time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed that.
‘And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..’
‘Here he is... our own... Kolya,* dear fellow... How he
has changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..’
*Nicholas.
‘And me, kiss me!’
‘Dearest... and me!’
Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and
the old count were all hugging him, and the serfs, men

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and maids, flocked into the room, exclaiming and oh-ing

and ah-ing.
Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, ‘And me
too!’
Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and
covered his face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt
of his coat, sprang away and pranced up and down in one
place like a goat and shrieked piercingly.
All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of
joy, and all around were lips seeking a kiss.
Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant
with bliss, looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the
look for which she longed. Sonya now was sixteen and
she was very pretty, especially at this moment of happy,
rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not taking her
eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave
her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for
someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now
steps were heard at the door, steps so rapid that they could
hardly be his mother’s.
Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not
know, made since he had left. All the others let him go,
and he ran to her. When they met, she fell on his breast,
sobbing. She could not lift her face, but only pressed it to

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the cold braiding of his hussar’s jacket. Denisov, who had

come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and
wiped his eyes at the sight.
‘Vasili Denisov, your son’s friend,’ he said,
introducing himself to the count, who was looking
inquiringly at him.
‘You are most welcome! I know, I know,’ said the
count, kissing and embracing Denisov. ‘Nicholas wrote
us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here is Denisov!’
The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy
figure of Denisov.
‘Darling Denisov!’ screamed Natasha, beside herself
with rapture, springing to him, putting her arms round
him, and kissing him. This escapade made everybody feel
confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled and, taking
Natasha’s hand, kissed it.
Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and
the Rostovs all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting
room.
The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing
it every moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round
him, watched every movement, word, or look of his,
never taking their blissfully adoring eyes off him. His
brother and sisters struggled for the places nearest to him

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and disputed with one another who should bring him his
tea, handkerchief, and pipe.
Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him;
but the first moment of meeting had been so beatific that
his present joy seemed insufficient, and he kept expecting
something more, more and yet more.
Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the
travelers slept till ten o’clock.
In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion
of sabers, satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and
dirty boots. Two freshly cleaned pairs with spurs had just
been placed by the wall. The servants were bringing in
jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, and their well-
brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell
of tobacco.
‘Hallo, Gwiska- my pipe!’ came Vasili Denisov’s
husky voice. ‘Wostov, get up!’
Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together,
raised his disheveled head from the hot pillow.
‘Why, is it late?’
‘Late! It’s nearly ten o’clock,’ answered Natasha’s
voice. A rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering
and laughter of girls’ voices came from the adjoining
room. The door was opened a crack and there was a

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glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair, and

merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had
come to see whether they were getting up.
‘Nicholas! Get up!’ Natasha’s voice was again heard at
the door.
‘Directly!’
Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers
in the outer room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of
a military elder brother, and forgetting that it was
unbecoming for the girls to see men undressed, opened
the bedroom door.
‘Is this your saber?’ he shouted.
The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs
under the blanket, looking with a scared face at his
comrade for help. The door, having let Petya in, closed
again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.
‘Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!’ said
Natasha’s voice.
‘Is this your saber?’ asked Petya. ‘Or is it yours?’ he
said, addressing the black-mustached Denisov with
servile deference.
Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on
his dressing gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one
spurred boot and was just getting her foot into the other.

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Sonya, when he came in, was twirling round and was

about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down.
They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and
were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but
Natasha, taking her brother’s arm, led him into the sitting
room, where they began talking. They hardly gave one
another time to ask questions and give replies concerning
a thousand little matters which could not interest anyone
but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he said or
that she said herself, not because what they were saying
was amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable
to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter.
‘Oh, how nice, how splendid!’ she said to everything.
Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays
of love, that childlike smile which had not once appeared
on his face since he left home now for the first time after
eighteen months again brightened his soul and his face.
‘No, but listen,’ she said, ‘now you are quite a man,
aren’t you? I’m awfully glad you’re my brother.’ She
touched his mustache. ‘I want to know what you men are
like. Are you the same as we? No?’
‘Why did Sonya run away?’ asked Rostov.
‘Ah, yes! That’s a whole long story! How are you
going to speak to her- thou or you?’

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‘As may happen,’ said Rostov.

‘No, call her you, please! I’ll tell you all about it some
other time. No, I’ll tell you now. You know Sonya’s my
dearest friend. Such a friend that I burned my arm for her
sake. Look here!’
She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red
scar on her long, slender, delicate arm, high above the
elbow on that part that is covered even by a ball dress.
‘I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a
ruler in the fire and pressed it there!’
Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms,
in what used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into
Natasha’s wildly bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world
of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone
else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life; and
the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did
not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not
surprised at it.
‘Well, and is that all?’ he asked.
‘We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler
business was just nonsense, but we are friends forever.
She, if she loves anyone, does it for life, but I don’t
understand that, I forget quickly.’
‘Well, what then?’

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‘Well, she loves me and you like that.’

Natasha suddenly flushed.
‘Why, you remember before you went away?... Well,
she says you are to forget all that.... She says: ‘I shall love
him always, but let him be free.’ Isn’t that lovely and
noble! Yes, very noble? Isn’t it?’ asked Natasha, so
seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what she
was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
Rostov became thoughtful.
‘I never go back on my word,’ he said. ‘Besides, Sonya
is so charming that only a fool would renounce such
happiness.’
‘No, no!’ cried Natasha, ‘she and I have already talked
it over. We knew you’d say so. But it won’t do, because
you see, if you say that- if you consider yourself bound by
your promise- it will seem as if she had not meant it
seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying her because
you must, and that wouldn’t do at all.’
Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them.
Sonya had already struck him by her beauty on the
preceding day. Today, when he had caught a glimpse of
her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a charming girl
of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did
not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her

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now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now
there were so many other pleasures and interests before
him! ‘Yes, they have taken a wise decision,’ he thought,
‘I must remain free.’
‘Well then, that’s excellent,’ said he. ‘We’ll talk it over
later on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!
‘Well, and are you still true to Boris?’ he continued.
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ cried Natasha, laughing. ‘I don’t
think about him or anyone else, and I don’t want anything
of the kind.’
‘Dear me! Then what are you up now?’
‘Now?’ repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her
face. ‘Have you seen Duport?’
‘No.’
‘Not seen Duport- the famous dancer? Well then, you
won’t understand. That’s what I’m up to.’
Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as
dancers do, ran back a few steps, turned, cut a caper,
brought her little feet sharply together, and made some
steps on the very tips of her toes.
‘See, I’m standing! See!’ she said, but could not
maintain herself on her toes any longer. ‘So that’s what
I’m up to! I’ll never marry anyone, but will be a dancer.
Only don’t tell anyone.’

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Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in

his bedroom, felt envious and Natasha could not help
joining in.
‘No, but don’t you think it’s nice?’ she kept repeating.
‘Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?’
Natasha flared up. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone. And
I’ll tell him so when I see him!’
‘Dear me!’ said Rostov.
‘But that’s all rubbish,’ Natasha chattered on. ‘And is
Denisov nice?’ she asked.
‘Yes, indeed!’
‘Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very
terrible, Denisov?’
‘Why terrible?’ asked Nicholas. ‘No, Vaska is a
splendid fellow.’
‘You call him Vaska? That’s funny! And is he very
nice?’
‘Very.’
‘Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast
together.’
And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe,
like a ballet dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of
fifteen can smile. When Rostov met Sonya in the drawing
room, he reddened. He did not know how to behave with

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her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of

meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it
could not be done; he felt that everybody, including his
mother and sisters, was looking inquiringly at him and
watching to see how he would behave with her. He kissed
her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you- Sonya.
But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having
dared, by Natasha’s intermediacy, to remind him of his
promise, and then thanked him for his love. His looks
thanked her for offering him his freedom and told her that
one way or another he would never cease to love her, for
that would be impossible.
‘How strange it is,’ said Vera, selecting a moment
when all were silent, ‘that Sonya and Nicholas now say
you to one another and meet like strangers.’
Vera’s remark was correct, as her remarks always
were, but, like most of her observations, it made everyone
feel uncomfortable, not only Sonya, Nicholas, and
Natasha, but even the old countess, who- dreading this
love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a
brilliant match- blushed like a girl.
Denisov, to Rostov’s surprise, appeared in the drawing
room with pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new

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uniform, looking just as smart as he made himself when

going into battle, and he was more amiable to the ladies
and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.

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Chapter II

On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas

Rostov was welcomed by his home circle as the best of
sons, a hero, and their darling Nikolenka; by his relations
as a charming, attractive, and polite young man; by his
acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old
count had money enough that year, as all his estates had
been remortgaged, and so Nicholas, acquiring a trotter of
his own, very stylish riding breeches of the latest cut, such
as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the latest
fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver
spurs, passed his time very gaily. After a short period of
adapting himself to the old conditions of life, Nicholas
found it very pleasant to be at home again. He felt that he
had grown up and matured very much. His despair at
failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money
from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on
the sly- he now recalled all this as childishness he had left
immeasurably behind. Now he was a lieutenant of
hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and wearing the

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Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in

action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and
respected racing men was training a trotter of his own for
a race. He knew a lady on one of the boulevards whom he
visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at the
Arkharovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal
Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate
terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had
introduced
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in
Moscow. But still, as he did not see him and had no
opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke about him and
about his love for him, letting it be understood that he had
not told all and that there was something in his feelings
for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with
his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in
Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of as the
‘angel incarnate.’
During Rostov’s short stay in Moscow, before
rejoining the army, he did not draw closer to Sonya, but
rather drifted away from her. She was very pretty and
sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was
at the period of youth when there seems so much to do
that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man

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fears to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he

needs for so many other things. When he thought of
Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself,
‘Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls
somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time
enough to think about love when I want to, but now I
have no time.’ Besides, it seemed to him that the society
of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went
to balls and into ladies’ society with an affectation of
doing so against his will. The races, the English Club,
sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house- that
was another matter and quite the thing for a dashing
young hussar!
At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was
very busy arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration
at the English Club.
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing
gown, giving orders to the club steward and to the famous
Feoktist, the Club’s head cook, about asparagus, fresh
cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish for this dinner.
The count had been a member and on the committee of
the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club
entrusted the arrangement of the festival in honor of
Bagration, for few men knew so well how to arrange a

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feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and still fewer

men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success
of the fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the
count’s orders with pleased faces, for they knew that
under no other management could they so easily extract a
good profit for themselves from a dinner costing several
thousand rubles.
‘Well then, mind and have cocks’ comb in the turtle
soup, you know!’
‘Shall we have three cold dishes then?’ asked the cook.
The count considered.
‘We can’t have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise,
that’s one,’ said he, bending down a finger.
‘Then am I to order those large sterlets?’ asked the
steward.
‘Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah,
dear me! I was forgetting. We must have another entree.
Ah, goodness gracious!’ he clutched at his head. ‘Who is
going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh, Dmitri! Gallop
off to our Moscow estate,’ he said to the factotum who
appeared at his call. ‘Hurry off and tell Maksim, the
gardener, to set the serfs to work. Say that everything out

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of the hothouses must be brought here well wrapped up in

felt. I must have two hundred pots here on Friday.’
Having given several more orders, he was about to go
to his ‘little countess’ to have a rest, but remembering
something else of importance, he returned again, called
back the cook and the club steward, and again began
giving orders. A light footstep and the clinking of spurs
were heard at the door, and the young count, handsome,
rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and
made sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the
room.
‘Ah, my boy, my head’s in a whirl!’ said the old man
with a smile, as if he felt a little confused before his son.
‘Now, if you would only help a bit! I must have singers
too. I shall have my own orchestra, but shouldn’t we get
the gypsy singers as well? You military men like that sort
of thing.’
‘Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried
himself less before the battle of Schon Grabern than you
do now,’ said his son with a smile.
The old count pretended to be angry.
‘Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!’

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And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd

and respectful expression, looked observantly and
sympathetically at the father and son.
‘What have the young people come to nowadays, eh,
Feoktist?’ said he. ‘Laughing at us old fellows!’
‘That’s so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat
a good dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that’s
not their business!
‘That’s it, that’s it!’ exclaimed the count, and gaily
seizing his son by both hands, he cried, ‘Now I’ve got
you, so take the sleigh and pair at once, and go to
Bezukhob’s, and tell him ‘Count Ilya has sent you to ask
for strawberries and fresh pineapples.’ We can’t get them
from anyone else. He’s not there himself, so you’ll have
to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to
the Rasgulyay- the coachman Ipatka knows- and look up
the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at Count Orlov’s,
you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him
along to me.’
‘And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?’
asked Nicholas, laughing. ‘Dear, dear!..’
At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the
businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look
which never left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the

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hall. Though she came upon the count in his dressing

gown every day, he invariably became confused and
begged her to excuse his costume.
‘No matter at all, my dear count,’ she said, meekly
closing her eyes. ‘But I’ll go to Bezukhov’s myself. Pierre
has arrived, and now we shall get anything we want from
his hothouses. I have to see him in any case. He has
forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is
now on the staff.’
The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna’s
taking upon herself one of his commissions and ordered
the small closed carriage for her.
‘Tell Bezukhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his
wife with him?’ he asked.
Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound
sadness was depicted on her face.
‘Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,’ she said.
‘If what we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we
dreamed of such a thing when we were rejoicing at his
happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul as young
Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to
give him what consolation I can.’
‘Wh-what is the matter?’ asked both the young and old
Rostov.

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Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.

‘Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna’s son,’ she said in a
mysterious whisper, ‘has compromised her completely,
they say. Pierre took him up, invited him to his house in
Petersburg, and now... she has come here and that
daredevil after her!’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to
show her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary
intonations and a half smile betraying her sympathy for
the ‘daredevil,’ as she called Dolokhov. ‘They say Pierre
is quite broken by his misfortune.’
‘Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club- it
will all blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet.’
Next day, the third of March, soon after one o’clock,
two hundred and fifty members of the English Club and
fifty guests were awaiting the guest of honor and hero of
the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration, to dinner.
On the first arrival of the news of the battle of
Austerlitz, Moscow had been bewildered. At that time,
the Russians were so used to victories that on receiving
news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,
while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so
strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were
distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered
when the news began to arrive in December, nothing was

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said about the war and the last battle, as though all were
in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone in
conversation- Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri
Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince
Vyazemski- did not show themselves at the Club, but met
in private houses in intimate circles, and the Moscovites
who took their opinions from others- Ilya Rostov among
them- remained for a while without any definite opinion
on the subject of the war and without leaders. The
Moscovites felt that something was wrong and that to
discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best to
be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its
room, the bigwigs who guided the Club’s opinion
reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and
definitely. Reasons were found for the incredible,
unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat,
everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow
the same things began to be said. These reasons were the
treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the
treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski and of the
Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov’s incapacity, and (it was
whispered) the youth and inexperience of the sovereign,
who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But
the army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was

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extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor.The

soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero
of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished by his
Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz,
where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and
had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as
numerous as his own. What also conduced to Bagration’s
being selected as Moscow’s hero was the fact that he had
no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In his
person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian
soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one who
was associated by memories of the Italian campaign with
the name of Suvorov. Moreover, paying such honor to
Bagration was the best way of expressing disapproval and
dislike of Kutuzov.
‘Had there been no Bagration, it would have been
necessary to invent him,’ said the wit Shinshin, parodying
the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov no one spoke of, except
some who abused him in whispers, calling him a court
weathercock and an old satyr.
All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov’s saying: ‘If
you go on modeling and modeling you must get smeared
with clay,’ suggesting consolation for our defeat by the
memory of former victories; and the words of Rostopchin,

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that French soldiers have to be incited to battle by

highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to
show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to
advance, but that Russian soldiers only need to be
restrained and held back! On all sides, new and fresh
anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism
shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had
saved a standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a
third had loaded five cannon singlehanded. Berg was
mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having,
when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the
left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said,
and only those who knew him intimately regretted that he
had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife with his
eccentric father.

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Chapter III

On that third of March, all the rooms in the English

Club were filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum
of bees swarming in springtime. The members and guests
of the Club wandered hither and thither, sat, stood, met,
and separated, some in uniform and some in evening
dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in
Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with
buckled shoes and smart stockings, stood at every door
anxiously noting visitors’ every movement in order to
offer their services. Most of those present were elderly,
respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat
fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of
guests and members sat in certain habitual places and met
in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present
were casual guests- chiefly young men, among whom
were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov- who was now
again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of
these young people, especially those who were
militarymen, bore that expression of condescending
respect for their elders which seems to say to the older

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generation, ‘We are prepared to respect and honor you,

but all the same remember that the future belongs to us.’
Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club.
Pierre, who at his wife’s command had let his hair grow
and abandoned his spectacles, went about the rooms
fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here, as
elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of
subservience to his wealth, and being in the habit of
lording it over these people, he treated them with absent-
minded contempt.
By his age he should have belonged to the younger
men, but by his wealth and connections he belonged to
the groups old and honored guests, and so he went from
one group to another. Some of the most important old
men were the center of groups which even strangers
approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known
men. The largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin,
Valuev, and Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how
the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians
and had had to force their way through them with
bayonets.
Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been
sent from Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was
thinking about Austerlitz.

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In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the

meeting of the Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov
crowed like a cock in reply to the nonsense talked by the
Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing close by, tried to
make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently failed to
learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of
crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced
severely at the wit, making him feel that in that place and
on that day, it was improper to speak so of Kutuzov.
Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went
about in his soft boots between the dining and drawing
rooms, hastily greeting the important and unimportant, all
of whom he knew, as if they were all equals, while his
eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up young
son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young
Rostov stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose
acquaintance he had lately made and highly valued. The
old count came up to them and pressed Dolokhov’s hand.
‘Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy...
been together out there... both playing the hero... Ah,
Vasili Ignatovich... How d’ye do, old fellow?’ he said,
turning to an old man who was passing, but before he had
finished his greeting there was a general stir, and a

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footman who had run in announced, with a frightened

face: ‘He’s arrived!’
Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and- like rye
shaken together in a shovel- the guests who had been
scattered about in different rooms came together and
crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
ballroom.
Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom
without hat or sword, which, in accord with the Club
custom, he had given up to the hall porter. He had no
lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip over
his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of
the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with
Russian and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on
his left breast. Evidently just before coming to the dinner
he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed, which changed
his appearance for the worse. There was something
naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his
firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical
expression. Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had
arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him, as
the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration was
embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their
courtesy, and this caused some delay at the doors, but

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after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly and

awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room,
not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more
accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he
had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon
Grabern- and he would have found that easier. The
committeemen met him at the first door and, expressing
their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took
possession of him as it were, without waiting for his
reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room.
It was at first impossible to enter the drawing-room door
for the crowd of members and guests jostling one another
and trying to get a good look at Bagration over each
other’s shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count
Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, ‘Make
way, dear boy! Make way, make way!’ pushed through
the crowd more energetically than anyone, led the guests
into the drawing room, and seated them on the center
sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the
Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting
his way through the crowd, went out of the drawing room
and reappeared a minute later with another
committeeman, carrying a large silver salver which he
presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some

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verses composed and printed in the hero’s honor.

Bagration, on seeing the salver, glanced around in
dismay, as though seeking help. But all eyes demanded
that he should submit. Feeling himself in their power, he
resolutely took the salver with both hands and looked
sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented
it to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from
Bagration (or he would, it seemed, have held it till
evening and have gone in to dinner with it) and drew his
attention to the verses.
‘Well, I will read them, then!’ Bagration seemed to
say, and, fixing his weary eyes on the paper, began to read
them with a fixed and serious expression. But the author
himself took the verses and began reading them aloud.
Bagration bowed his bead and listened:
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, Bagration,
And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...
But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-
domo announced that dinner was ready! The door opened,

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and from the dining room came the resounding strains of

the polonaise:
Conquest’s joyful thunder waken,
Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who
went on reading his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone
rose, feeling that dinner was more important than verses,
and Bagration, again preceding all the rest, went in to
dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two
Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a
significant allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three
hundred persons took their seats in the dining room,
according to their rank and importance: the more
important nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as
water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.
Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son
to Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to
him, disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he
spoke that day, and Count Ilya looked joyfully and
proudly around while Bagration spoke to his son.
Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new
acquaintance, Dolokhov, sat almost at the middle of the
table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince Nesvitski.
Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of the

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committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very

personification of Moscow hospitality, did the honors to
the prince.
His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the
Lenten and the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not
feel quite at ease till the end of the meal. He winked at the
butler, whispered directions to the footmen, and awaited
each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything was
excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at
sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious
pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling
the champagne glasses. After the fish, which made a
certain sensation, the count exchanged glances with the
other committeemen. ‘There will be many toasts, it’s time
to begin,’ he whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose.
All were silent, waiting for what he would say.
‘To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!’ he
cried, and at the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist
with tears of joy and enthusiasm. The band immediately
struck up ‘Conquest’s joyful thunder waken...’ All rose
and cried ‘Hurrah!’ Bagration also rose and shouted
‘Hurrah!’ in exactly the same voice in which he had
shouted it on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov’s
ecstatic voice could be heard above the three hundred

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others. He nearly wept. ‘To the health of our Sovereign,

the Emperor!’ he roared, ‘Hurrah!’ and emptying his glass
at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many followed his
example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time.
When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the
broken glass and everybody sat down again, smiling at the
noise they had made and exchanging remarks. The old
count rose once more, glanced at a note lying beside his
plate, and proposed a toast, ‘To the health of the hero of
our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!’ and
again his blue eyes grew moist. ‘Hurrah!’ cried the three
hundred voices again, but instead of the band a choir
began singing a cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich
Kutuzov:
Russians! O’er all barriers on!
Courage conquest guarantees;
Have we not Bagration?
He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.
As soon as the singing was over, another and another
toast was proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more
and more moved, more glass was smashed, and the
shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshev,
Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the
committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club

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guests, and finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the

organizer of the banquet. At that toast, the count took out
his handkerchief and, covering his face, wept outright.

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Chapter IV

Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As

usual, he ate and drank much, and eagerly. But those who
knew him intimately noticed that some great change had
come over him that day. He was silent all through dinner
and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed
eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept
rubbing the bridge of his nose. His face was depressed
and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear nothing of what
was going on around him and to be absorbed by some
depressing and unsolved problem.
The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused
by hints given by the princess, his cousin, at Moscow,
concerning Dolokhov’s intimacy with his wife, and by an
anonymous letter he had received that morning, which in
the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said
that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his
wife’s connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one
but himself. Pierre absolutely disbelieved both the
princess’ hints and the letter, but he feared now to look at
Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every time he
chanced to meet Dolokhov’s handsome insolent eyes,

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Pierre felt something terrible and monstrous rising in his

soul and turned quickly away. Involuntarily recalling his
wife’s past and her relations with Dolokhov, Pierre saw
clearly that what was said in the letter might be true, or
might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his
wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who
had fully recovered his former position after the
campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come to him.
Availing himself of his friendly relations with Pierre as a
boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his
house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money.
Pierre recalled how Helene had smilingly expressed
disapproval of Dolokhov’s living at their house, and how
cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife’s beauty to him
and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left
them for a day.
‘Yes, he is very handsome,’ thought Pierre, ‘and I
know him. It would be particularly pleasant to him to
dishonor my name and ridicule me, just because I have
exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him, and helped
him. I know and understand what a spice that would add
to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes,
if it were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to,
and can’t, believe it.’ He remembered the expression

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Dolokhov’s face assumed in his moments of cruelty, as

when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them
into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel
without any reason, or shot a post-boy’s horse with a
pistol. That expression was often on Dolokhov’s face
when looking at him. ‘Yes, he is a bully,’ thought Pierre,
‘to kill a man means nothing to him. It must seem to him
that everyone is afraid of him, and that must please him.
He must think that I, too, am afraid of him- and in fact I
am afraid of him,’ he thought, and again he felt something
terrible and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov,
Denisov, and Rostov were now sitting opposite Pierre and
seemed very gay. Rostov was talking merrily to his two
friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the other a
notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he
glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-
minded, and massive figure was a very noticeable one at
the dinner. Rostov looked inimically at Pierre, first
because Pierre appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich
civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a word- an old
woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation
and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and
had not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor’s

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health was drunk, Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or

lift his glass.
‘What are you about?’ shouted Rostov, looking at him
in an ecstasy of exasperation. ‘Don’t you hear it’s His
Majesty the Emperor’s health?’
Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass,
and, waiting till all were seated again, turned with his
kindly smile to Rostov.
‘Why, I didn’t recognize you!’ he said. But Rostov was
otherwise engaged; he was shouting ‘Hurrah!’
‘Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?’ said
Dolokhov to Rostov.
‘Confound him, he’s a fool!’ said Rostov.
‘One should make up to the husbands of pretty
women,’ said Denisov.
Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew
they were talking about him. He reddened and turned
away.
‘Well, now to the health of handsome women!’ said
Dolokhov, and with a serious expression, but with a smile
lurking at the corners of his mouth, he turned with his
glass to Pierre.
‘Here’s to the health of lovely women, Peterkin- and
their lovers!’ he added.

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Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass

without looking at Dolokhov or answering him. The
footman, who was distributing leaflets with Kutuzov’s
cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the principal
guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov,
leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began
reading it. Pierre looked at Dolokhov and his eyes
dropped, the something terrible and monstrous that had
tormented him all dinnertime rose and took possession of
him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
‘How dare you take it?’ he shouted.
Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed,
Nesvitski and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in
alarm to Bezukhov.
‘Don’t! Don’t! What are you about?’ whispered their
frightened voices.
Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel
eyes, and that smile of his which seemed to say, ‘Ah! This
is what I like!’
‘You shan’t have it!’ he said distinctly.
Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
‘You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!’ he
ejaculated, and, pushing back his chair, he rose from the
table.

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At the very instant he did this and uttered those words,

Pierre felt that the question of his wife’s guilt which had
been tormenting him the whole day was finally and
indubitably answered in the affirmative. He hated her and
was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov’s request
that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to
be Dolokhov’s second, and after dinner he discussed the
arrangements for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov’s
second. Pierre went home, but Rostov with Dolokhov and
Denisov stayed on at the Club till late, listening to the
gypsies and other singers.
‘Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,’said Dolokhov,
as he took leave of Rostov in the Club porch.
‘And do you feel quite calm?’ Rostov asked.
Dolokhov paused.
‘Well, you see, I’ll tell you the whole secret of dueling
in two words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you
make a will and write affectionate letters to your parents,
and if you think you may be killed, you are a fool and are
lost for certain. But go with the firm intention of killing
your man as quickly and surely as possible, and then all
will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma used to
tell me. ‘Everyone fears a bear,’ he says, ‘but when you
see one your fear’s all gone, and your only thought is not

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to let him get away!’ And that’s how it is with me. A

demain, mon cher.’*
*Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski
drove to the Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov,
Denisov, and Rostov already there. Pierre had the air of a
man preoccupied with considerations which had no
connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was
yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked
about distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled
by the sun. He was entirely absorbed by two
considerations: his wife’s guilt, of which after his
sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and the
guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve
the honor of a man who was nothing to him.... ‘I should
perhaps have done the same thing in his place,’ thought
Pierre. ‘It’s even certain that I should have done the same,
then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or
he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. Can’t I go
away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?’
passed through his mind. But just at moments when such
thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a particularly
calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the respect
of the onlookers, ‘Will it be long? Are things ready?’

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When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to

mark the barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went
up to Pierre.
‘I should not be doing my duty, Count,’ he said in
timid tones, ‘and should not justify your confidence and
the honor you have done me in choosing me for your
second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment I did not
tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient
ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it....
You were not right, not quite in the right, you were
impetuous..’
‘Oh yes, it is horribly stupid,’ said Pierre.
‘Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure
your opponent will accept them,’ said Nesvitski (who like
the others concerned in the affair, and like everyone in
similar cases, did not yet believe that the affair had come
to an actual duel). ‘You know, Count, it is much more
honorable to admit one’s mistake than to let matters
become irreparable. There was no insult on either side.
Allow me to convey...’
‘No! What is there to talk about?’ said Pierre. ‘It’s all
the same.... Is everything ready?’ he added. ‘Only tell me
where to go and where to shoot,’ he said with an
unnaturally gentle smile.

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He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about

the working of the trigger, as he had not before held a
pistol in his hand- a fact that he did not to confess.
‘Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,’ said he.
‘No apologies, none whatever,’ said Dolokhov to
Denisov (who on his side had been attempting a
reconciliation), and he also went up to the appointed
place.
The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces
from the road, where the sleighs had been left, in a small
clearing in the pine forest covered with melting snow, the
frost having begun to break up during the last few days.
The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther edge
of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left
tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they
had been standing and Nesvitski’s and Dolokhov’s sabers,
which were stuck intothe ground ten paces apart to mark
the barrier. It was thawing and misty; at forty paces’
distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all had
been ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.

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Chapter V

‘Well begin!’ said Dolokhov.

‘All right,’ said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A
feeling of dread was in the air. It was evident that the
affair so lightly begun could no longer be averted but was
taking its course independently of men’s will.
Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: ‘As
the adve’sawies have wefused a weconciliation, please
pwoceed. Take your pistols, and at the word thwee begin
to advance.
‘O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!’ he shouted angrily and stepped
aside.
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks,
nearer and nearer to one another, beginning to see one
another through the mist. They had the right to fire when
they liked as they approached the barrier. Dolokhov
walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently
with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist’s
face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.
‘So I can fire when I like!’ said Pierre, and at the word
‘three,’ he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path
and stepping into the deep snow. He held the pistol in his

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right hand at arm’s length, apparently afraid of shooting

himself with it. His left hand he held carefully back,
because he wished to support his right hand with it and
knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and
strayed off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at
his feet, then quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending
his finger as he had been shown, fired. Not at all
expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered at the sound
and then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The
smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him from
seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second
report as he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov’s
hurried steps, and his figure came in view through the
smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left side, while
the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face was pale.
Rostov ran toward him and said something.
‘No-o-o!’ muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, ‘no,
it’s not over.’ And after stumbling a few staggering steps
right up to the saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His
left hand was bloody; he wiped it on his coat and
supported himself with it. His frowning face was pallid
and quivered.
‘Plea...’ began Dolokhov, but could not at first
pronounce the word.

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‘Please,’ he uttered with an effort.

Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running
toward Dolokhov and was about to cross the space
between the barriers, when Dolokhov cried:
‘To your barrier!’ and Pierre, grasping what was
meant, stopped by his saber. Only ten paces divided them.
Dolokhov lowered his head to the snow, greedily bit at it,
again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew in his legs
and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked
and sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips
quivered but his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort
and exasperation as he mustered his remaining strength.
He raised his pistol and aimed.
‘Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!’
ejaculated Nesvitski.
‘Cover yourself!’ even Denisov cried to his adversary.
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his
arms and legs helplessly spread out, stood with his broad
chest directly facing Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him.
Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski closed their eyes. At the
same instant they heard a report and Dolokhov’s angry
cry.
‘Missed!’ shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly,
face downwards on the snow.

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Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went

into the forest, trampling through the deep snow, and
muttering incoherent words:
‘Folly... folly! Death... lies...’ he repeated, puckering
his face.
Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.
Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded
Dolokhov.
The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and
did not answer a word to the questions addressed to him.
But on entering Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting
his head with an effort, took Rostov, who was sitting
beside him, by the hand. Rostov was struck by the totally
altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression
on Dolokhov’s face.
‘Well? How do you feel?’ he asked.
‘Bad! But it’s not that, my friend-’ said Dolokhov with
a gasping voice. ‘Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I
don’t matter, but I have killed her, killed... She won’t get
over it! She won’t survive...’
‘Who?’ asked Rostov.
‘My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel
mother,’ and Dolokhov pressed Rostov’s hand and burst
into tears.

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When he had become a little quieter, he explained to

Rostov that he was living with his mother, who, if she
saw him dying, would not survive it. He implored Rostov
to go on and prepare her.
Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his
great surprise learned that Dolokhov the brawler,
Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old mother
and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of
sons and brothers.

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Chapter VI

Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in

Petersburg and in Moscow their house was always full of
visitors. The night after the duel he did not go to his
bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his father’s
room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and
forget all that had happened to him, but could not do so.
Such a storm of feelings, thoughts, and memories
suddenly arose within him that he could not fall asleep,
nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and
pace the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her
in the early days of their marriage, with bare shoulders
and a languid, passionate look on her face, and then
immediately he saw beside her Dolokhov’s handsome,
insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the
banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and
suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the
snow.
‘What has happened?’ he asked himself. ‘I have killed
her lover, yes, killed my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it!

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And why? How did I come to do it?’- ‘Because you

married her,’ answered an inner voice.
‘But in what was I to blame?’ he asked. ‘In marrying
her without loving her; in deceiving yourself and her.’
And he vividly recalled that moment after supper at
Prince Vasili’s, when he spoke those words he had found
so difficult to utter: ‘I love you.’ ‘It all comes from that!
Even then I felt it,’ he thought. ‘I felt then that it was not
so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out.’
He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the
recollection. Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful
was the recollection of how one day soon after his
marriage he came out of the bedroom into his study a
little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his
head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into
his face and at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if
expressing respectful understanding of his employer’s
happiness.
‘But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her
majestic beauty and social tact,’ thought he; ‘been proud
of my house, in which she received all Petersburg, proud
of her unapproachability and beauty. So this is what I was
proud of! I then thought that I did not understand her.
How often when considering her character I have told

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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.

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*"You clear out of this.’

‘Yes, I never loved her,’ said he to himself; ‘I knew
she was a depraved woman,’ he repeated, ‘but dared not
admit it to myself. And now there’s Dolokhov sitting in
the snow with a forced smile and perhaps dying, while
meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!’
Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an
appearance of what is called weak character, do not seek a
confidant in their troubles. He digested his sufferings
alone.
‘It is all, all her fault,’ he said to himself; ‘but what of
that? Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say ‘Je
vous aime’* to her, which was a lie, and worse than a lie?
I am guilty and must endure... what? A slur on my name?
A misfortune for life? Oh, that’s nonsense,’ he thought.
‘The slur on my name and honor- that’s all apart from
myself.
*I love you.
‘Louis XVI was executed because they said he was
dishonorable and a criminal,’ came into Pierre’s head,
‘and from their point of view they were right, as were
those too who canonized him and died a martyr’s death
for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a
despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if

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you are alive- live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have

died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself,
when one has only a moment of life in comparison with
eternity?’
But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed
by such reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as
she was at the moments when he had most strongly
expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the blood
rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about
and break and tear whatever came to his hand. ‘Why did I
tell her that ‘Je vous aime’?’ he kept repeating to himself.
And when he had said it for the tenth time, Molibre’s
words: ‘Mais que diable alloit-il faire dans cette galere?’
occurred to him, and he began to laugh at himself.
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up
to go to Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could
speak to her now. He resolved to go away next day and
leave a letter informing her of his intention to part from
her forever.
Next morning when the valet came into the room with
his coffee, Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an
open book in his hand.
He woke up and looked round for a while with a
startled expression, unable to realize where he was.

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‘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.

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‘So it seems you’re a hero, eh? Come now, what was

this duel about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask
you.’
Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened
his mouth, but could not reply.
‘If you won’t answer, I’ll tell you...’ Helene went on.
‘You believe everything you’re told. You were told...’
Helene laughed, ‘that Dolokhov was my lover,’ she said
in French with her coarse plainness of speech, uttering the
word amant as casually as any other word, ‘and you
believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this
duel prove? That you’re a fool, que vous etes un sot, but
everybody knew that. What will be the result? That I shall
be the laughingstock of all Moscow, that everyone will
say that you, drunk and not knowing what you were
about, challenged a man you are jealous of without
cause.’ Helene raised her voice and became more and
more excited, ‘A man who’s a better man than you in
every way..’
‘Hm... Hm...!’ growled Pierre, frowning without
looking at her, and not moving a muscle.
‘And how could you believe he was my lover? Why?
Because I like his company? If you were cleverer and
more agreeable, I should prefer yours.’

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‘Don’t speak to me... I beg you,’ muttered Pierre

hoarsely.
‘Why shouldn’t I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell
you plainly that there are not many wives with husbands
such as you who would not have taken lovers (des
amants), but I have not done so,’ said she.
Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with
eyes whose strange expression she did not understand,
and lay down again. He was suffering physically at that
moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could not
breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end
to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too
terrible.
‘We had better separate,’ he muttered in a broken
voice.
‘Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a
fortune,’ said Helene. ‘Separate! That’s a thing to frighten
me with!’
Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering
toward her.
‘I’ll kill you!’ he shouted, and seizing the marble top
of a table with a strength he had never before felt, he
made a step toward her brandishing the slab.

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Helene’s face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang

aside. His father’s nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt
the fascination and delight of frenzy. He flung down the
slab, broke it, and swooping down on her with
outstretched hands shouted, ‘Get out!’ in such a terrible
voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God
knows what he would have done at that moment had
Helene not fled from the room.
A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control
all his estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger
part of his property, and left for Petersburg alone.

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Chapter VII

Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of

Austerlitz and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached
Bald Hills, and in spite of the letters sent through the
embassy and all the searches made, his body had not been
found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst
of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a
possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield
by the people of the place and that he might now be lying,
recovering or dying, alone among strangers and unable to
send news of himself. The gazettes from which the old
prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as
usual very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant
engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had
made their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince
understood from this official report that our army had
been defeated. A week after the gazette report of the
battle of Austerlitz came a letter from Kutuzov informing
the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.
‘Your son,’ wrote Kutuzov, ‘fell before my eyes, a
standard in his hand and at the head of a regiment- he fell
as a hero, worthy of his father and his fatherland. To the

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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

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in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and

incomprehensible- the death of one she loved.
‘Father! Andrew!’- said the ungraceful, awkward
princess with such an indescribable charm of sorrow and
self-forgetfulness that her father could not bear her look
but turned away with a sob.
‘Bad news! He’s not among the prisoners nor among
the killed! Kutuzov writes...’ and he screamed as
piercingly as if he wished to drive the princess away by
that scream... ‘Killed!’
The princess did not fall down or faint. She was
already pale, but on hearing these words her face changed
and something brightened in her beautiful, radiant eyes. It
was as if joy- a supreme joy apart from the joys and
sorrows of this world- overflowed the great grief within
her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took
his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his
thin, scraggy neck.
‘Father’ she said, ‘do not turn away from me, let us
weep together.’
‘Scoundrels! Blackguards!’ shrieked the old man,
turning his face away from her. ‘Destroying the army,
destroying the men! And why? Go, go and tell Lise.’

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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.

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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.

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‘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.

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Chapter VIII

‘Dearest,’ said the little princess after breakfast on the

morning of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip
rose from old habit, but as sorrow was manifest in every
smile, the sound of every word, and even every footstep
in that house since the terrible news had come, so now the
smile of the little princess- influenced by the general
mood though without knowing its cause- was such as to
remind one still more of the general sorrow.
‘Dearest, I’m afraid this morning’s fruschtique*- as
Foka the cook calls it- has disagreed with me.’
*Fruhstuck: breakfast.
‘What is the matter with you, my darling? You look
pale. Oh, you are very pale!’ said Princess Mary in alarm,
running with her soft, ponderous steps up to her sister-in-
law.
‘Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be
sent for?’ said one of the maids who was present. (Mary
Bogdanovna was a midwife from the neighboring town,
who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)

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‘Oh yes,’ assented Princess Mary, ‘perhaps that’s it.

I’ll go. Courage, my angel.’ She kissed Lise and was
about to leave the room.
‘Oh, no, no!’ And besides the pallor and the physical
suffering on the little princess’ face, an expression of
childish fear of inevitable pain showed itself.
‘No, it’s only indigestion?... Say it’s only indigestion,
say so, Mary! Say...’ And the little princess began to cry
capriciously like a suffering child and to wring her little
hands even with some affectation. Princess Mary ran out
of the room to fetch Mary Bogdanovna.
‘Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!’ she heard as she left the
room.
The midwife was already on her way to meet her,
rubbing her small, plump white hands with an air of calm
importance.
‘Mary Bogdanovna, I think it’s beginning!’ said
Princess Mary looking at the midwife with wide-open
eyes of alarm.
‘Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess,’ said Mary
Bogdanovna, not hastening her steps. ‘You young ladies
should not know anything about it.’
‘But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here
yet?’ said the princess. (In accordance with Lise’s and

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Prince Andrew’s wishes they had sent in good time to

Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at any
moment.)
‘No matter, Princess, don’t be alarmed,’ said Mary
Bogdanovna. ‘We’ll manage very well without a doctor.’
Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard
something heavy being carried by. She looked out. The
men servants were carrying the large leather sofa from
Prince Andrew’s study into the bedroom. On their faces
was a quiet and solemn look.
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the
sounds in the house, now and then opening her door when
someone passed and watching what was going on in the
passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in and out
of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away.
She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the
door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now
taking her prayer book, now kneeling before the icon
stand. To her surprise and distress she found that her
prayers did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door
opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who
hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had
forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round
her head.

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‘I’ve come to sit with you a bit, Masha,’ said the nurse,
‘and here I’ve brought the prince’s wedding candles to
light before his saint, my angel,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Oh, nurse, I’m so glad!’
‘God is merciful, birdie.’
The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat
down by the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a
book and began reading. Only when footsteps or voices
were heard did they look at one another, the princess
anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone
in the house was dominated by the same feeling that
Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But
owing to the superstition that the fewer the people who
know of it the less a woman in travail suffers, everyone
tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart
from the ordinary staid and respectful good manners
habitual in the prince’s household, a common anxiety, a
softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something
great and mysterious was being accomplished at that
moment made itself felt.
There was no laughter in the maids’ large hall. In the
men servants’ hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the
outlying serfs’ quarters torches and candles were burning
and no one slept. The old prince, stepping on his heels,

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paced up and down his study and sent Tikhon to ask Mary
Bogdanovna what news.- ‘Say only that ‘the prince told
me to ask,’ and come and tell me her answer.’
‘Inform the prince that labor has begun,’ said Mary
Bogdanovna, giving the messenger a significant look.
Tikhon went and told the prince.
‘Very good!’ said the prince closing the door behind
him, and Tikhon did not hear the slightest sound from the
study after that.
After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles,
and, seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at
him, noticed his perturbed face, shook his head, and going
up to him silently kissed him on the shoulder and left the
room without snuffing the candles or saying why he had
entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued
its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of
suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the
unfathomable did not lessen but increased. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights when winter seems to
wish to resume its sway and scatters its last snows and
storms with desperate fury. A relay of horses had been
sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor from
Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on
horseback with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to

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guide him over the country road with its hollows and
snow-covered pools of water.
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she
sat silent, her luminous eyes fixed on her nurse’s wrinkled
face (every line of which she knew so well), on the lock
of gray hair that escaped from under the kerchief, and the
loose skin that hung under her chin.
Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low
tones, scarcely hearing or understanding her own words,
what she had told hundreds of times before: how the late
princess had given birth to Princess Mary in Kishenev
with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a
midwife.
‘God is merciful, doctors are never needed,’ she said.
Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the
casement of the window, from which the double frame
had been removed (by order of the prince, one window
frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks
returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the
damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its
chill, snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse,
putting down the stocking she was knitting, went to the
window and leaning out tried to catch the open casement.

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The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her
loose locks of gray hair.
‘Princess, my dear, there’s someone driving up the
avenue! ‘ she said, holding the casement and not closing
it. ‘With lanterns. Most likely the doctor.’
‘Oh, my God! thank God!’ said Princess Mary. ‘I must
go and meet him, he does not know Russian.’
Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to
meet the newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom
she saw through the window a carriage with lanterns,
standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On a
banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the
draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood
looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower,
beyond the turn of the staircase, one could hear the
footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that
seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.
‘Thank God!’ said the voice. ‘And Father?’
‘Gone to bed,’ replied the voice of Demyan the house
steward, who was downstairs.
Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied,
and the steps in the felt boots approached the unseen bend
of the staircase more rapidly.

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‘It’s Andrew!’ thought Princess Mary. ‘No it can’t be,

that would be too extraordinary,’ and at the very moment
she thought this, the face and figure of Prince Andrew, in
a fur cloak the deep collar of which covered with snow,
appeared on the landing where the footman stood with the
candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and
strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He
came up the stairs and embraced his sister.
‘You did not get my letter?’ he asked, and not waiting
for a reply- which he would not have received, for the
princess was unable to speak- he turned back, rapidly
mounted the stairs again with the doctor who had entered
the hall after him (they had met at the last post station),
and again embraced his sister.
‘What a strange fate, Masha darling!’ And having
taken off his cloak and felt boots, he went to the little
princess’ apartment.

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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

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coming had nothing to do with her sufferings or with their

relief. The pangs began again and Mary Bogdanovna
advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and,
meeting Princess Mary, again joined her. They began
talking in whispers, but their talk broke off at every
moment. They waited and listened.
‘Go, dear,’ said Princess Mary.
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting
in the room next to hers. A woman came from the
bedroom with a frightened face and became confused
when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with
his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous,
helpless, animal moans came through the door. Prince
Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to open it.
Someone was holding it shut.
‘You can’t come in! You can’t!’ said a terrified voice
from within.
He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and
a few more seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible
shriek- it could not be hers, she could not scream like
that- came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to the
door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an
infant.

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‘What have they taken a baby in there for?’ thought

Prince Andrew in the first second. ‘A baby? What
baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or is the baby born?’
Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of
that wail; tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the
window sill be began to cry, sobbing like a child. The
door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves tucked up,
without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out of
the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor
gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a
word. A woman rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew
stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into his
wife’s room. She was lying dead, in the same position he
had seen her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed
eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression
was on her charming childlike face with its upper lip
covered with tiny black hair.
‘I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and
what have you done to me?’- said her charming, pathetic,
dead face.
In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a
grunt and squealed in Mary Bogdanovna’s trembling
white hands.

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Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went

into his father’s room. The old man already knew
everything. He was standing close to the door and as soon
as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise round
his son’s neck, and without a word he began to sob like a
child.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and
Prince Andrew went up the steps to where the coffin
stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin
was the same face, though with closed eyes. ‘Ah, what
have you done to me?’ it still seemed to say, and Prince
Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that
he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.
He could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed
the waxen little hands that lay quietly crossed one on the
other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed to
say: ‘Ah, what have you done to me, and why?’ And at
the sight the old man turned angrily away.
Another five days passed, and then the young Prince
Nicholas Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse
supported the coverlet with her while the priest with a
goose feather anointed the boy’s little red and wrinkled
soles and palms.

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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.

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Chapter X

Rostov’s share in Dolokhov’s duel with Bezukhov was

hushed up by the efforts of the old count, and instead of
being degraded to the ranks as he expected he was
appointed an adjutant to the governor general of Moscow.
As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of
the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his
new duties. Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very
friendly with him during his convalescence. Dolokhov lay
ill at his mother’s who loved him passionately and
tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond of
Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him
about her son.
‘Yes, Count,’ she would say, ‘he is too noble and pure-
souled for our present, depraved world. No one now loves
virtue; it seems like a reproach to everyone. Now tell me,
Count, was it right, was it honorable, of Bezukhov? And
Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him and even now
never says a word against him. Those pranks in
Petersburg when they played some tricks on a policeman,
didn’t they do it together? And there! Bezukhov got off
scotfree, while Fedya had to bear the whole burden on his

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shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through! It’s true he

has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that? I
think there were not many such gallant sons of the
fatherland out there as he. And now- this duel! Have these
people no feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only
son, to challenge him and shoot so straight! It’s well God
had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who doesn’t have
intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see
things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on
for months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya
not fighting because he owed him money! What baseness!
What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear
count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few
people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly
soul!’
Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to
Rostov in a way no one would have expected of him.
‘I know people consider me a bad man!’ he said. ‘Let
them! I don’t care a straw about anyone but those I love;
but those I love, I love so that I would give my life for
them, and the others I’d throttle if they stood in my way. I
have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three
friends- you among them- and as for the rest I only care
about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And

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most of them are harmful, especially the women. Yes,

dear boy,’ he continued, ‘I have met loving, noble, high-
minded men, but I have not yet met any women-
countesses or cooks- who were not venal. I have not yet
met that divine purity and devotion I look for in women.
If I found such a one I’d give my life for her! But those!...
and he made a gesture of contempt. ‘And believe me, if I
still value my life it is only because I still hope to meet
such a divine creature, who will regenerate, purify, and
elevate me. But you don’t understand it.’
‘Oh, yes, I quite understand, ‘answered Rostov, who
was under his new friend’s influence.
In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early
in the winter Denisov also came back and stayed with
them. The first half of the winter of 1806, which Nicholas
Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of the happiest,
merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas
brought many young men to his parents’ house. Vera was
a handsome girl of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all
the charm of an opening flower; Natasha, half grown up
and half child, was now childishly amusing, now girlishly
enchanting.
At that time in the Rostovs’ house there prevailed an
amorous atmosphere characteristic of homes where there

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are very young and very charming girls. Every young man
who came to the house- seeing those impressionable,
smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and
hearing the fitful bursts of song and music and the
inconsequent but friendly prattle of young girls ready for
anything and full of hope- experienced the same feeling;
sharing with the young folk of the Rostovs’ household a
readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of
the first was Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked
except Natasha. She almost quarreled with her brother
about him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and that in
the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right and Dolokhov
wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and
unnatural.
‘There’s nothing for me to understand,’ cried out with
resolute self-will, ‘he is wicked and heartless. There now,
I like your Denisov though he is a rake and all that, still I
like him; so you see I do understand. I don’t know how to
put it... with this one everything is calculated, and I don’t
like that. But Denisov..’
‘Oh, Denisov is quite different,’ replied Nicholas,
implying that even Denisov was nothing compared to

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Dolokhov- ‘you must understand what a soul there is in

Dolokhov, you should see him with his mother. What a
heart!’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, but I am uncomfortable
with him. And do you know he has fallen in love with
Sonya?’
‘What nonsense..’
‘I’m certain of it; you’ll see.’
Natasha’s prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did
not usually care for the society of ladies, began to come
often to the house, and the question for whose sake he
came (though no one spoke of it) was soon settled. He
came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would
never have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet
every time Dolokhov appeared.
Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs’, never missed a
performance at which they were present, and went to
Iogel’s balls for young people which the Rostovs always
attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya and looked
at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and
Natasha blushed when they saw his looks.

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It was evident that this strange, strong man was under

the irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who
loved another.
Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov’s relations
with Sonya, but he did not explain to himself what these
new relations were. ‘They’re always in love with
someone,’ he thought of Sonya and Natasha. But he was
not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as before
and was less frequently at home.
In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun
talking of the war with Napoleon with even greater
warmth than the year before. Orders were given to raise
recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army,
and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the
militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in
Moscow nothing but the coming war was talked of. For
the Rostov family the whole interest of these preparations
for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of
remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination
of Denisov’s furlough after Christmas to return with him
to their regiment. His approaching departure did not
prevent his amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his
pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away from
home, at dinners, parties, and balls.

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Chapter XI

On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at

home, a thing he had rarely done of late. It was a grand
farewell dinner, as he and Denisov were leaving to join
their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people were
present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.
Never had love been so much in the air, and never had
the amorous atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the
Rostovs’ house as at this holiday time. ‘Seize the
moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only
reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we
are interested in here,’ said the spirit of the place.
Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of
horses, without visiting all the places he meant to go to
and where he had been invited, returned home just before
dinner. As soon as he entered he noticed and felt the
tension of the amorous air in the house, and also noticed a
curious embarrassment among some of those present.
Sonya, Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially
disturbed, and to a lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas
understood that something must have happened between
Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly

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sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary

with them both at dinner. On that same evening there was
to be one of the balls that Iogel (the dancing master) gave
for his pupils durings the holidays.
‘Nicholas, will you come to Iogel’s? Please do!’ said
Natasha. ‘He asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich* is also
going.’
*Denisov.
‘Where would I not go at the countess’ command!’
said Denisov, who at the Rostovs’ had jocularly assumed
the role of Natasha’s knight. ‘I’m even weady to dance
the pas de chale.’
‘If I have time,’ answered Nicholas. ‘But I promised
the Arkharovs; they have a party.’
‘And you?’ he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had
asked the question he noticed that it should not have been
put.
‘Perhaps,’ coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov,
glancing at Sonya, and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just
such a look as he had given Pierre at the Club dinner.
‘There is something up,’ thought Nicholas, and he was
further confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that
Dolokhov left immediately after dinner. He called
Natasha and asked her what was the matter.

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‘And I was looking for you,’ said Natasha running out

to him. ‘I told you, but you would not believe it,’ she said
triumphantly. ‘He has proposed to Sonya!’
Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of
late, something seemed to give way within him at this
news. Dolokhov was a suitable and in some respects a
brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From the
point of view of the old countess and of society it was out
of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore
Nicholas’ first feeling on hearing the news was one of
anger with Sonya.... He tried to say, ‘That’s capital; of
course she’ll forget her childish promises and accept the
offer,’ but before he had time to say it Natasha began
again.
‘And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!’ adding,
after a pause, ‘she told him she loved another.’
‘Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!’
thought Nicholas.
‘Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know
she won’t change once she has said..’
‘And Mamma pressed her!’ said Nicholas
reproachfully.
‘Yes,’ said Natasha. ‘Do you know, Nicholas- don’t be
angry- but I know you will not marry her. I know, heaven

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knows how, but I know for certain that you won’t marry
her.’
‘Now don’t know that at all!’ said Nicholas. ‘But I
must talk to her. What a darling Sonya is!’ he added with
a smile.
‘Ah, she is indeed a darling! I’ll send her to you.’
And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.
A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty,
and scared look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her
hand. This was the first time since his return that they had
talked alone and about their love.
‘Sophie,’ he began, timidly at first and then more and
more boldly, ‘if you wish to refuse one who is not only a
brilliant and advantageous match but a splendid, noble
fellow... he is my friend..’
Sonya interrupted him.
‘I have already refused,’ she said hurriedly.
‘If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..’
Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring,
frightened look.
‘Nicholas, don’t tell me that!’ she said.
‘No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is
best to say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell

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you the whole truth. I love you, and I think I love you
more than anyone else...’
‘That is enough for me,’ said Sonya, blushing.
‘No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall
fall in love again, though for no one have I such a feeling
of friendship, confidence, and love as I have for you.
Then I am young. Mamma does not wish it. In a word, I
make no promise. And I beg you to consider Dolokhov’s
offer,’ he said, articulating his friend’s name with
difficulty.
‘Don’t say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a
brother and always shall, and I want nothing more.’
‘You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am
afraid of misleading you.’
And Nicholas again kissed her hand.

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Chapter XII

Iogel’s were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So

said the mothers as they watched their young people
executing their newly learned steps, and so said the
youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they
were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men
and women who came to these balls with an air of
condescension and found them most enjoyable. That year
two marriages had come of these balls. The two pretty
young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and were
married and so further increased the fame of these dances.
What distinguished them from others was the absence of
host or hostess and the presence of the good-natured
Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing according to
the rules of his art, as he collected the tickets from all his
visitors. There was the fact that only those came who
wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of thirteen
and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first
time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or
seemed to be, pretty- so rapturous were their smiles and
so sparkling their eyes. Sometimes the best of the pupils,
of whom Natasha, who was exceptionally graceful, was

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first, even danced the pas de chale, but at this last ball
only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka, which
was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had
taken a ballroom in Bezukhov’s house, and the ball, as
everyone said, was a great success. There were many
pretty girls and the Rostov girls were among the prettiest.
They were both particularly happy and gay. That evening,
proud of Dolokhov’s proposal, her refusal, and her
explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before
she left home so that the maid could hardly get her hair
plaited, and she was transparently radiant with impulsive
joy.
Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of
being at a real ball was even happier. They were both
dressed in white muslin with pink ribbons.
Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the
ballroom. She was not in love with anyone in particular,
but with everyone. Whatever person she happened to look
at she was in love with for that moment.
‘Oh, how delightful it is!’ she kept saying, running up
to Sonya.
Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down,
looking with kindly patronage at the dancers.

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‘How sweet she is- she will be a weal beauty!’ said

Denisov.
‘Who?’
‘Countess Natasha,’ answered Denisov.
‘And how she dances! What gwace!’ he said again
after a pause.
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘About your sister,’ ejaculated Denisov testily.
Rostov smiled.
‘My dear count, you were one of my best pupils- you
must dance,’ said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas.
‘Look how many charming young ladies-’ He turned with
the same request to Denisov who was also a former pupil
of his.
‘No, my dear fellow, I’ll be a wallflower,’ said
Denisov. ‘Don’t you wecollect what bad use I made of
your lessons?’
‘Oh no!’ said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. ‘You
were only inattentive, but you had talent- oh yes, you had
talent!’
The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka.
Nicholas could not refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance.
Denisov sat down by the old ladies and, leaning on his
saber and beating time with his foot, told them something

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funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young

people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best
pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully
stepping with his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first
across the hall with Natasha, who, though shy, went on
carefully executing her steps. Denisov did not take his
eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that
clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was because
he would not and not because he could not. In the middle
of a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing:
‘This is not at all the thing,’ he said. ‘What sort of
Polish mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly.’
Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland
for the masterly way in which he danced the mazurka,
Nicholas ran up to Natasha:
‘Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a
wonder!’ he said.
When it came to Natasha’s turn to choose a partner,
she rose and, tripping rapidly across in her little shoes
trimmed with bows, ran timidly to the corner where
Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was looking at her
and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.

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‘Please, Vasili Dmitrich,’ Natasha was saying, ‘do

come!’
‘Oh no, let me off, Countess,’ Denisov replied.
‘Now then, Vaska,’ said Nicholas.
‘They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!’ said
Denisov jokingly.
‘I’ll sing for you a whole evening,’ said Natasha.
‘Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!’ said
Denisov, and he unhooked his saber. He came out from
behind the chairs, clasped his partner’s hand firmly, threw
back his head, and advanced his foot, waiting for the beat.
Only on horse back and in the mazurka was Denisov’s
short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow
he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he
looked sideways at his partner with a merry and
triumphant air, suddenly stamped with one foot, bounded
from the floor like a ball, and flew round the room taking
his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half
across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was
dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his
spurs and spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his
heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot clanking his
spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel
against his right, flew round again in a circle. Natasha

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guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to

him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun
her round, holding her now with his left, now with his
right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her round
him, and again jumping up, dashed so impetuously
forward that it seemed as if he would rush through the
whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he
suddenly stopped and performed some new and
unexpected steps. When at last, smartly whirling his
partner round in front of her chair, he drew up with a click
of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not even make
him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,
smiling as if she did not recognize him.
‘What does this mean?’ she brought out.
Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real
mazurka, everyone was delighted with Denisov’s skill, he
was asked again and again as a partner, and the old men
began smilingly to talk about Poland and the good old
days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping
himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and
did not leave her for the rest of the evening.

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Chapter XIII

For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at
his own or at Dolokhov’s home: on the third day he
received a note from him:
As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons
you know of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am
giving a farewell supper tonight to my friends- come to
the English Hotel.
About ten o’clock Rostov went to the English Hotel
straight from the theater, where he had been with his
family and Denisov. He was at once shown to the best
room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening. Some
twenty men were gathered round a table at which
Dolokhov sat between two candles. On the table was a
pile of gold and paper money, and he was keeping the
bank. Rostov had not seen him since his proposal and
Sonya’s refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of
how they would meet.
Dolokhov’s clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as
he entered the door, as though he had long expected him.

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‘It’s a long time since we met,’ he said. ‘Thanks for

coming. I’ll just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will
come with his chorus.’
‘I called once or twice at your house,’ said Rostov,
reddening.
Dolokhov made no reply.
‘You may punt,’ he said.
Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation
he had once had with Dolokhov. ‘None but fools trust to
luck in play,’ Dolokhov had then said.
‘Or are you afraid to play with me?’ Dolokhov now
asked as if guessing Rostov’s thought.
Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had
shown at the Club dinner and at other times, when as if
tired of everyday life he had felt a need to escape from it
by some strange, and usually cruel, action.
Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some
joke with which to reply to Dolokhov’s words. But before
he had thought of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in
his face, said slowly and deliberately so that everyone
could hear:
‘Do you remember we had a talk about cards... ‘He’s a
fool who trusts to luck, one should make certain,’ and I
want to try.’

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‘To try his luck or the certainty?’ Rostov asked

himself.
‘Well, you’d better not play,’ Dolokhov added, and
springing a new pack of cards said: ‘Bank, gentlemen!’
Moving the money forward he prepared to deal.
Rostov sat down by his side and at first did not play.
Dolokhov kept glancing at him.
‘Why don’t you play?’ he asked.
And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help
taking up a card, putting a small stake on it, and
beginning to play.
‘I have no money with me,’ he said.
‘I’ll trust you.’
Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked
again, and again lost. Dolokhov ‘killed,’ that is, beat, ten
cards of Rostov’s running.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Dolokhov after he had dealt for
some time. ‘Please place your money on the cards or I
may get muddled in the reckoning.’
One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
‘Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the
accounts mixed. So I ask you to put the money on your
cards,’ replied Dolokhov. ‘Don’t stint yourself, we’ll
settle afterwards,’ he added, turning to Rostov.

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The game continued; a waiter kept handing round

champagne.
All Rostov’s cards were beaten and he had eight
hundred rubles scored up against him. He wrote ‘800
rubles’ on a card, but while the waiter filled his glass he
changed his mind and altered it to his usual stake of
twenty rubles.
‘Leave it,’ said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to
be even looking at Rostov, ‘you’ll win it back all the
sooner. I lose to the others but win from you. Or are you
afraid of me?’ he asked again.
Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and
laid down a seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he
had picked up from the floor. He well remembered that
seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts, on
which with a broken bit of chalk he had written ‘800
rubles’ in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of
warm champagne that was handed him, smiled at
Dolokhov’s words, and with a sinking heart, waiting for a
seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov’s hands which held
the pack. Much depended on Rostov’s winning or losing
on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old
count had given his son two thousand rubles, and though
he always disliked speaking of money difficulties had told

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Nicholas that this was all he could let him have till May,
and asked him to be more economical this time. Nicholas
had replied that it would be more than enough for him and
that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more
till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left
of that money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him
not only the loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but the
necessity of going back on his word. With a sinking heart
he watched Dolokhov’s hands and thought, ‘Now then,
make haste and let me have this card and I’ll take my cap
and drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and
Sonya, and will certainly never touch a card again.’ At
that moment his home life, jokes with Petya, talks with
Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his father, and
even his comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya
rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm
that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated
bliss, long past. He could not conceive that a stupid
chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than
to the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly
appreciated and newly illumined, and plunge him into the
depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could not
be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of
Dolokhov’s hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy

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wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down the
pack and took up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.
‘So you are not afraid to play with me?’ repeated
Dolokhov, and as if about to tell a good story he put down
the cards, leaned back in his chair, and began deliberately
with a smile:
‘Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been told there’s a rumor going
about Moscow that I’m a sharper, so I advise you to be
careful.’
‘Come now, deal!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘Oh, those Moscow gossips!’ said Dolokhov, and he
took up the cards with a smile.
‘Aah!’ Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to
his head. The seven he needed was lying uppermost, the
first card in the pack. He had lost more than he could pay.
‘Still, don’t ruin yourself!’ said Dolokhov with a side
glance at Rostov as he continued to deal.

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Chapter XIV

An hour and a half later most of the players were but

little interested in their own play.
The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov.
Instead of sixteen hundred rubles he had a long column of
figures scored against him, which he had reckoned up to
ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely supposed, must
have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no
longer listening to stories or telling them, but followed
every movement of Rostov’s hands and occasionally ran
his eyes over the score against him. He had decided to
play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He had
fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of
his and Sonya’s joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on
both hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with
figures, wet with spilled wine, and littered with cards.
One tormenting impression did not leave him: that those
broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from
under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he loved and
hated, held him in their power.

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‘Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it

back’s impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!...
The knave, double or quits... it can’t be!... And why is he
doing this to me?’ Rostov pondered. Sometimes he staked
a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to accept it and fixed
the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at one
moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield
at the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card
that came first to hand from the crumpled heap under the
table would save him, now counted the cords on his coat
and took a card with that number and tried staking the
total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from
the other players, or peered at the now cold face of
Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.
‘He knows of course what this loss means to me. He
can’t want my ruin. Wasn’t he my friend? Wasn’t I fond
of him? But it’s not his fault. What’s he to do if he has
such luck?... And it’s not my fault either,’ he thought to
himself, ‘I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed
anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such
a terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little
while ago I came to this table with the thought of winning
a hundred rubles to buy that casket for Mamma’s name
day and then going home. I was so happy, so free, so

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lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was!

When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of
things begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time
in this same place at this table, chose and placed cards,
and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the same
way. When did it happen and what has happened? I am
well and strong and still the same and in the same place.
No, it can’t be! Surely it will all end in nothing!’
He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the
room was not hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see,
especially from its helpless efforts to seem calm.
The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-
three thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by
bending the corner of which he meant to double the three
thousand just put down to his score, when Dolokhov,
slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began
rapidly adding up the total of Rostov’s debt, breaking the
chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
‘Supper, it’s time for supper! And here are the
gypsies!’
Some swarthy men and women were really entering
from the cold outside and saying something in their gypsy
accents. Nicholas understood that it was all over; but he
said in an indifferent tone:

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‘Well, won’t you go on? I had a splendid card all

ready,’ as if it were the fun of the game which interested
him most.
‘It’s all up! I’m lost!’ thought he. ‘Now a bullet
through my brain- that’s all that’s left me! ‘ And at the
same time he said in a cheerful voice:
‘Come now, just this one more little card!’
‘All right!’ said Dolokhov, having finished the
addition. ‘All right! Twenty-one rubles,’ he said, pointing
to the figure twenty-one by which the total exceeded the
round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up a pack
he prepared to deal. Rostov submissively unbent the
corner of his card and, instead of the six thousand he had
intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.
‘It’s all the same to me,’ he said. ‘I only want to see
whether you will let me win this ten, or beat it.’
Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov
detested at that moment those hands with their short
reddish fingers and hairy wrists, which held him in their
power.... The ten fell to him.
‘You owe forty-three thousand, Count,’ said
Dolokhov, and stretching himself he rose from the table.
‘One does get tired sitting so long,’ he added.
‘Yes, I’m tired too,’ said Rostov.

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Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was

not for him to jest.
‘When am I to receive the money, Count?’
Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.
‘I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an
I.O.U.?’ he said.
‘I say, Rostov,’ said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and
looking Nicholas straight in the eyes, ‘you know the
saying, ‘Lucky in love, unlucky at cards.’ Your cousin is
in love with you, I know.’
‘Oh, it’s terrible to feel oneself so in this man’s
power,’ thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would
inflict on his father and mother by the news of this loss,
he knew what a relief it would be to escape it all, and felt
that Dolokhov knew that he could save him from all this
shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a
cat does with a mouse.
‘Your cousin...’ Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas
interrupted him.
‘My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not
necessary to mention her!’ he exclaimed fiercely.
‘Then when am I to have it?’
‘Tomorrow,’ replied Rostov and left the room.

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Chapter XV

To say ‘tomorrow’ and keep up a dignified tone was

not difficult, but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother,
mother, and father, confess and ask for money he had no
right to after giving his word of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young
people, after returning from the theater, had had supper
and were grouped round the clavichord. As soon as
Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic
atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household
that winter and, now after Dolokhov’s proposal and
Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker round Sonya
and Natasha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sonya
and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the
theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing
by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing
chess with Shinshin in the drawing room. The old
countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son,
sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived
in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled
hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short
fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he

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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 gazing
with his sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and
happy Natasha.
‘Splendid! Excellent!’ exclaimed Natasha. ‘Another
verse, she said, without noticing Nicholas.
‘Everything’s still the same with them,’ thought
Nicholas, glancing into the drawing room, where he saw
Vera and his mother with the old lady.
‘Ah, and here’s Nicholas!’ cried Natasha, running up
to him.
‘Is Papa at home?’ he asked.
‘I am so glad you’ve come!’ said Natasha, without
answering him. ‘We are enjoying ourselves! Vasili
Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my sake! Did you
know?’
‘No, Papa is not back yet,’ said Sonya.

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‘Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!’ called

the old countess from the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down
silently at her table began to watch her hands arranging
the cards. From the dancing room, they still heard the
laughter and merry voices trying to persuade Natasha to
sing.
‘All wight! All wight!’ shouted Denisov. ‘It’s no good
making excuses now! It’s your turn to sing the
ba’cawolla- I entweat you!’
The countess glanced at her silent son.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said he, as if weary of being continually
asked the same question. ‘Will Papa be back soon?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing
about it! Where am I to go?’ thought Nicholas, and went
again into the dancing room where the clavichord stood.
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude
to Denisov’s favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to
sing. Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
‘Why do they want to make her sing? How can she
sing? There’s nothing to be happy about!’ thought he.

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Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.

‘My God, I’m a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet
through my brain is the only thing left me- not singing! ‘
his thoughts ran on. ‘Go away? But where to? It’s one- let
them sing!’
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at
Denisov and the girls and avoiding their eyes.
‘Nikolenka, what is the matter?’ Sonya’s eyes fixed on
him seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something
had happened to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her
quick instinct, had instantly noticed her brother’s
condition. But, though she noticed it, she was herself in
such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow,
sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived
herself as young people often do. ‘No, I am too happy
now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s
sorrow,’ she felt, and she said to herself: ‘No, I must be
mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am.’
‘Now, Sonya!’ she said, going to the very middle of
the room, where she considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop
lifelessly, as ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising

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energetically from her heels to her toes, stepped to the

middle of the room and stood still.
‘Yes, that’s me!’ she seemed to say, answering the rapt
gaze with which Denisov followed her.
‘And what is she so pleased about?’ thought Nicholas,
looking at his sister. ‘Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?’
Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her
chest rose, her eyes became serious. At that moment she
was oblivious of her surroundings, and from her smiling
lips flowed sounds which anyone may produce at the
same intervals hold for the same time, but which leave
you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time
thrill you and make you weep.
Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to
sing seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in
her singing. She no longer sang as a child, there was no
longer in her singing that comical, childish, painstaking
effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing
well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: ‘It is not
trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained.’
Only they generally said this some time after she had
finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its
incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was sounding,
even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in

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it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a

virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her own
powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so
mingled with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if
nothing in that voice could be altered without spoiling it.
‘What is this?’ thought Nicholas, listening to her with
widely opened eyes. ‘What has happened to her? How she
is singing today!’ And suddenly the whole world centered
for him on anticipation of the next note, the next phrase,
and everything in the world was divided into three beats:
‘Oh mio crudele affetto.’... One, two, three... one, two,
three... One... ‘Oh mio crudele affetto.’... One, two,
three... One. ‘Oh, this senseless life of ours!’ thought
Nicholas. ‘All this misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and
anger, and honor- it’s all nonsense... but this is real....
Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling!
How will she take that si? She’s taken it! Thank God!’
And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen
the si he sung a second, a third below the high note. ‘Ah,
God! How fine! Did I really take it? How fortunate!’ he
thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was
something that was finest in Rostov’s soul! And this
something was apart from everything else in the world

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and above everything in the world. ‘What were losses,

and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One
might kill and rob and yet be happy..’

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Chapter XVI

It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from

music as he did that day. But no sooner had Natasha
finished her barcarolle than reality again presented itself.
He got up without saying a word and went downstairs to
his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count
came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas,
hearing him drive up, went to meet him.
‘Well- had a good time?’ said the old count, smiling
gaily and proudly at his son.
Nicholas tried to say ‘Yes,’ but could not: and he
nearly burst into sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and
did not notice his son’s condition.
‘Ah, it can’t be avoided!’ thought Nicholas, for the
first and last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone,
which made him feel ashamed feel of himself, he said, as
if merely asking his father to let him have the carriage to
drive to town:
‘Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was
nearly forgetting. I need some money.’
‘Dear me!’ said his father, who was in a specially good
humor. ‘I told you it would not be enough. How much?’

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‘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?’

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And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count

went out of the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for
resistance, but had not at all expected this.
‘Papa! Pa-pa!’ he called after him, sobbing, ‘forgive
me!’ And seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his
lips and burst into tears.
While father and son were having their explanation,
the mother and daughter were having one not less
important. Natasha came running to her mother, quite
excited.
‘Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..’
‘Made what?’
‘Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!’ she
exclaimed.
The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had
proposed. To whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who
not so long ago was playing with dolls and who was still
having lessons.
‘Don’t, Natasha! What nonsense!’ she said, hoping it
was a joke.
‘Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,’ said
Natasha indignantly. ‘I come to ask you what to do, and
you call it ‘nonsense!’’
The countess shrugged her shoulders.

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‘If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a

proposal, tell him he is a fool, that’s all!’
‘No, he’s not a fool!’ replied Natasha indignantly and
seriously.
‘Well then, what do you want? You’re all in love
nowadays. Well, if you are in love, marry him!’ said the
countess, with a laugh of annoyance. ‘Good luck to you!’
‘No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him, I suppose I’m
not in love with him.’
‘Well then, tell him so.’
‘Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, dear! Is it my
fault?’
‘No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go
and tell him?’ said the countess smiling.
‘No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It’s
all very well for you,’ said Natasha, with a responsive
smile. ‘You should have seen how he said it! I know he
did not mean to say it, but it came out accidently.’
‘Well, all the same, you must refuse him.’
‘No, I mustn’t. I am so sorry for him! He’s so nice.’
‘Well then, accept his offer. It’s high time for you to be
married,’ answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
‘No, Mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know
how I’m to say it.’

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‘And there’s nothing for you to say. I shall speak to

him myself,’ said the countess, indignant that they should
have dared to treat this little Natasha as grown up.
‘No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and
you’ll listen at the door,’ and Natasha ran across the
drawing room to the dancing hall, where Denisov was
sitting on the same chair by the clavichord with his face in
his hands.
He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
‘Nataly,’ he said, moving with rapid steps toward her,
‘decide my fate. It is in your hands.’
‘Vasili Dmitrich, I’m so sorry for you!... No, but you
are so nice... but it won’t do...not that... but as a friend, I
shall always love you.’
Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange
sounds she did not understand. She kissed his rough curly
black head. At this instant, they heard the quick rustle of
the countess’ dress. She came up to them.
‘Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor,’ she said,
with an embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to
Denisov- ‘but my daughter is so young, and I thought
that, as my son’s friend, you would have addressed
yourself first to me. In that case you would not have
obliged me to give this refusal.’

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‘Countess...’ said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a

guilty face. He tried to say more, but faltered.
Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a
plight. She began to sob aloud.
‘Countess, I have done w’ong,’ Denisov went on in an
unsteady voice, ‘but believe me, I so adore your daughter
and all your family that I would give my life twice over...’
He looked at the countess, and seeing her severe face
said: ‘Well, good-by, Countess,’ and kissing her hand, he
left the room with quick resolute strides, without looking
at Natasha.
Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay
another day in Moscow. All Denisov’s Moscow friends
gave him a farewell entertainment at the gypsies’, with
the result that he had no recollection of how he was put in
the sleigh or of the first three stages of his journey.
After Denisov’s departure, Rostov spent another
fortnight in Moscow, without going out of the house,
waiting for the money his father could not at once raise,
and he spent most of his time in the girls’ room.
Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever.
It was as if she wanted to show him that his losses were
an achievement that made her love him all the more, but
Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of her.

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He filled the girls’ albums with verses and music, and

having at last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three
thousand rubles and received his receipt, he left at the end
of November, without taking leave of any of his
acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was
already in Poland.

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BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07

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Chapter I

After his interview with his wife Pierre left for

Petersburg. At the Torzhok post station, either there were
no horses or the postmaster would not supply them. Pierre
was obliged to wait. Without undressing, he lay down on
the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big feet in
their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
‘Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a
bed got ready, and tea?’ asked his valet.
Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw
anything. He had begun to think of the last station and
was still pondering on the same question- one so
important that he took no notice of what went on around
him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured
accommodation at this station, but compared to the
thoughts that now occupied him it was a matter of
indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or
for the rest of his life.
The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant
woman selling Torzhok embroidery came into the room
offering their services. Without changing his careless
attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable

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to understand what they wanted or how they could go on

living without having solved the problems that so
absorbed him. He had been engrossed by the same
thoughts ever since the day he returned from Sokolniki
after the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless
night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, they seized
him with special force. No matter what he thought about,
he always returned to these same questions which he
could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It
was as if the thread of the chief screw which held his life
together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in
or out, but went on turning uselessly in the same place.
The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg
his excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what
might, he would let his excellency have the courier
horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted to
get more money from the traveler.
‘Is this good or bad?’ Pierre asked himself. ‘It is good
for me, bad for another traveler, and for himself it’s
unavoidable, because he needs money for food; the man
said an officer had once given him a thrashing for letting
a private traveler have the courier horses. But the officer
thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
possible. And I,’ continued Pierre, ‘shot Dolokhov

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because I considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was

executed because they considered him a criminal, and a
year later they executed those who executed him- also for
some reason. What is bad? What is good? What should
one love and what hate? What does one live for? And
what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power
governs all?’
There was no answer to any of these questions, except
one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to
them. The answer was: ‘You’ll die and all will end.
You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.’ But dying was
also dreadful.
The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went
on offering her wares, especially a pair of goatskin
slippers. ‘I have hundreds of rubles I don’t know what to
do with, and she stands in her tattered cloak looking
timidly at me,’ he thought. ‘And what does she want the
money for? As if that money could add a hair’s breadth to
happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world
make her or me less a prey to evil and death?- death
which ends all and must come today or tomorrow- at any
rate, in an instant as compared with eternity.’ And again
he twisted the screw with the stripped thread, and again it
turned uselessly in the same place.

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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

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tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the aid of
his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt
boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,
nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on
the sofa, leaned back his big head with its broad temples
and close-cropped hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The
stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of that look
struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to the stranger, but
by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a
question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes.
His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of
one of them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a
seal representing a death’s head. The stranger sat without
stirring, either resting or, as it seemed to Pierre, sunk in
profound and calm meditation. His servant was also a
yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
evidently not because he was shaven but because they had
never grown. This active old servant was unpacking the
traveler’s canteen and preparing tea. He brought in a
boiling samovar. When everything was ready, the stranger
opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a tumbler with
tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom
he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness,

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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.

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Chapter II

‘I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I

am not mistaken,’ said the stranger in a deliberate and
loud voice.
Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his
spectacles.
‘I have heard of you, my dear sir, ‘continued the
stranger, ‘and of your misfortune.’ He seemed to
emphasize the last word, as if to say- ‘Yes, misfortune!
Call it what you please, I know that what happened to you
in Moscow was a misfortune.’- ‘I regret it very much, my
dear sir.’
Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down
from the bed, bent forward toward the old man with a
forced and timid smile.
‘I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir,
but for greater reasons.’
He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on
the sofa by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside
him. Pierre felt reluctant to enter into conversation with
this old man, but, submitting to him involuntarily, came
up and sat down beside him.

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‘You are unhappy, my dear sir,’ the stranger continued.

‘You are young and I am old. I should like to help you as
far as lies in my power.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Pierre, with a forced smile. ‘I am very
grateful to you. Where are you traveling from?’
The stranger’s face was not genial, it was even cold
and severe, but in spite of this, both the face and words of
his new acquaintance were irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
‘But if for reason you don’t feel inclined to talk to me,’
said the old man, ‘say so, my dear sir.’ And he suddenly
smiled, in an unexpected and tenderly paternal way.
‘Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to
make your acquaintance,’ said Pierre. And again, glancing
at the stranger’s hands, he looked more closely at the ring,
with its skull- a Masonic sign.
‘Allow me to ask,’ he said, ‘are you a Mason?’
‘Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons,’
said the stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre’s
eyes. ‘And in their name and my own I hold out a
brotherly hand to you.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Pierre, smiling, and wavering
between the confidence the personality of the Freemason
inspired in him and his own habit of ridiculing the
Masonic beliefs- ‘I am afraid I am very far from

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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!’

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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

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finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and said in a tone of

indifferent politeness:
‘Where are you going to now, my dear sir?’
‘I?... I’m going to Petersburg,’ answered Pierre, in a
childlike, hesitating voice. ‘I thank you. I agree with all
you have said. But do not suppose me to be so bad. With
my whole soul I wish to be what you would have me be,
but I have never had help from anyone.... But it is I, above
all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me,
and perhaps I may..’
Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently
considering.
‘Help comes from God alone,’ he said, ‘but such
measure of help as our Order can bestow it will render
you, my dear sir. You are going to Petersburg. Hand this
to Count Willarski’ (he took out his notebook and wrote a
few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).
‘Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach
the capital, first of all devote some time to solitude and
self-examination and do not resume your former way of
life. And now I wish you a good journey, my dear sir,’ he
added, seeing that his servant had entered... ‘and success.’

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The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre

saw from the postmaster’s book. Bazdeev had been one of
the best-known Freemasons and Martinists, even in
Novikov’s time. For a long while after he had gone, Pierre
did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down
the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a
rapturous sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the
blissful, irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to
him so easy. It seemed to him that he had been vicious
only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to
be virtuous. Not a trace of his former doubts remained in
his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility of the
brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one
another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry
presented itself to him.

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Chapter III

On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know

of his arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in
reading Thomas a Kempis, whose book had been sent him
by someone unknown. One thing he continually realized
as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of
believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in
the possibility of active brotherly love among men, which
Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his
arrival, the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre
had known slightly in Petersburg society, came into his
room one evening in the official and ceremonious manner
in which Dolokhov’s second had called on him, and,
having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself
that there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.
‘I have come to you with a message and an offer,
Count,’ he said without sitting down. ‘A person of very
high standing in our Brotherhood has made application
for you to be received into our Order before the usual
term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person’s wishes. Do

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you wish to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under

my sponsorship?’
The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had
almost always before met at balls, amiably smiling in the
society of the most brilliant women, surprised Pierre.
‘Yes, I do wish it,’ said he.
Willarski bowed his head.
‘One more question, Count,’ he said, ‘which beg you
to answer in all sincerity- not as a future Mason but as an
honest man: have you renounced your former
convictions- do you believe in God?’
Pierre considered.
‘Yes... yes, I believe in God,’ he said.
‘In that case...’ began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted
him.
‘Yes, I do believe in God,’ he repeated.
‘In that case we can go,’ said Willarski. ‘My carriage
is at your service.’
Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre’s
inquiries as to what he must do and how he should
answer, Willarski only replied that brothers more worthy
than he would test him and that Pierre had only to tell the
truth.

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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,’

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added Willarski. ‘I wish you courage and success,’ and,

pressing Pierre’s hand, he went out.
Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way.
Once or twice he shrugged his and raised his hand to the
kerchief, as if wishing to take it off, but let it drop again.
The five minutes spent with his eyes bandaged seemed to
him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs almost gave
way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt
afraid of what would happen to him and still more afraid
of showing his fear. He felt curious to know what was
going to happen and what would be revealed to him; but
most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had come when
he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on
the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming
since he met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard
at the door. Pierre took the bandage off his eyes and
glanced around him. The room was in black darkness,
only a small lamp was burning inside something white.
Pierre went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black
table on which lay an open book. The book was the
Gospel, and the white thing with the lamp inside was a
human skull with its cavities and teeth. After reading the
first words of the Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word

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and the Word was with God,’ Pierre went round the table
and saw a large open box filled with something. It was a
coffin with bones inside. He was not at all surprised by
what he saw. Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite
unlike the old one, he expected everything to be unusual,
even more unusual than what he was seeing. A skull, a
coffin, the Gospel- it seemed to him that he had expected
all this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions
he looked around. ‘God, death, love, the brotherhood of
man,’ he kept saying to himself, associating these words
with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened and
someone came in.
By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become
accustomed, he saw rather short man. Having evidently
come from the light into the darkness, the man paused,
then moved with cautious steps toward the table and
placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.
This short man had on a white leather apron which
covered his chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of
necklace above which rose a high white ruffle, outlining
his rather long face which was lit up from below.
‘For what have you come hither?’ asked the
newcomer, turning in Pierre’s direction at a slight rustle
made by the latter. ‘Why have you, who do not believe in

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the truth of the light and who have not seen the light,
come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
enlightenment?’
At the moment the door opened and the stranger came
in, Pierre felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he
had experienced in his boyhood at confession; he felt
himself in the presence of one socially a complete
stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of
man. With bated breath and beating heart he moved
toward the Rhetor (by which name the brother who
prepared a seeker for entrance into the Brotherhood was
known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a
man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think
that the newcomer was an acquaintance- he wished him
simply a brother and a virtuous instructor. For a long time
he could not utter a word, so that the Rhetor had to repeat
his question.
‘Yes... I... I... desire regeneration,’ Pierre uttered with
difficulty.
‘Very well,’ said Smolyaninov, and went on at once:
‘Have you any idea of the means by which our holy Order
will help you to reach your aim?’ said he quietly and
quickly.

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‘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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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‘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.

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Chapter IV

Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to

fetch Pierre, not the Rhetor but Pierre’s sponsor,
Willarski, whom he recognized by his voice. To fresh
questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre
replied: ‘Yes, yes, I agree,’ and with a beaming, childlike
smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and
timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he
advanced, while Willarski held a sword to his bare chest.
He was conducted from that room along passages that
turned backwards and forwards and was at last brought to
the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was
answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors
opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still
blindfold) questioned him as to who he was, when and
where he was born, and so on. Then he was again led
somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was
told allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy
friendship, of the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of
the courage with which he should endure toils and
dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre noticed that he
was spoken of now as the ‘Seeker,’ now as the ‘Sufferer,’

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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

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more than ten voices said together: ‘Sic transit gloria

mundi.’
Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked
about at the room and at the people in it. Round a long
table covered with black sat some twelve men in garments
like those he had already seen. Some of them Pierre had
met in Petersburg society. In the President’s chair sat a
young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross
hanging from his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe
whom Pierre had met at Anna Pavlovna’s two years
before. There were also present a very distinguished
dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
Kuragins’. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to
the words of the President, who held a mallet in his hand.
Let into the wall was a star-shaped light. At one side of
the table was a small carpet with various figures worked
upon it, at the other was something resembling an altar on
which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it stood seven
large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the
brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right
angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must
prostrate himself at the Gates of the Temple.
‘He must first receive the trowel,’ whispered one of the
brothers.

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‘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

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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

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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.

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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.

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Chapter V

The day after he had been received into the Lodge,

Pierre was sitting at home reading a book and trying to
fathom the significance of the Square, one side of which
symbolized God, another moral things, a third physical
things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and
then his attention wandered from the book and the Square
and he formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the
previous evening at the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor
of his duel had reached the Emperor and that it would be
wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going
to his estates in the south and there attending to the
welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new
life, when Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.
‘My dear fellow, what have you been up to in
Moscow? Why have you quarreled with Helene, mon
cher? You are under a delusion,’ said Prince Vasili, as he
entered. ‘I know all about it, and I can tell you positively
that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was before
the Jews.’
Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted
him.

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‘And why didn’t you simply come straight to me as to

a friend? I know all about it and understand it all,’ he said.
‘You behaved as becomes a man values his honor,
perhaps too hastily, but we won’t go into that. But
consider the position in which you are placing her and me
in the eyes of society, and even of the court,’ he added,
lowering his voice. ‘She is living in Moscow and you are
here. Remember, dear boy,’ and he drew Pierre’s arm
downwards, ‘it is simply a misunderstanding. I expect you
feel it so yourself. Let us write her a letter at once, and
she’ll come here and all will be explained, or else, my
dear boy, let me tell you it’s quite likely you’ll have to
suffer for it.’
Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.
‘I know from reliable sources that the Dowager
Empress is taking a keen interest in the whole affair. You
know she is very gracious to Helene.’
Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand,
Prince Vasili did not let him and, on the other, Pierre
himself feared to begin to speak in the tone of decided
refusal and disagreement in which he had firmly resolved
to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the
Masonic statutes, ‘be kindly and courteous,’ recurred to
him. He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again,

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struggling with himself to do what was for him the most

difficult thing in life- to say an unpleasant thing to a
man’s face, to say what the other, whoever he might be,
did not expect. He was so used to submitting to Prince
Vasili’s tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he
would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that
on what he said now his future depended- whether he
would follow the same old road, or that new path so
attractively shown him by the Masons, on which he firmly
believed he would be reborn to a new life.
‘Now, dear boy,’ said Prince Vasili playfully, ‘say
‘yes,’ and I’ll write to her myself, and we will kill the
fatted calf.’
But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful
speech, Pierre, without looking at him, and with a kind of
fury that made him like his father, muttered in a whisper:
‘Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!’ And he
jumped up and opened the door for him.
‘Go!’ he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see
the look of confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince
Vasili’s face.
‘What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?’
‘Go!’ the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili
had to go without receiving any explanation.

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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.

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Chapter VI

The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up

and, in spite of the Emperor’s severity regarding duels at
that time, neither the principals nor their seconds suffered
for it. But the story of the duel, confirmed by Pierre’s
rupture with his wife, was the talk of society. Pierre who
had been regarded with patronizing condescension when
he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when
he was the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the
esteem of society after his marriage- when the
marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing to
hope from him- especially as he did not know how, and
did not wish, to court society’s favor. Now he alone was
blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely
jealous and subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty
rage. And when after Pierre’s departure Helene returned
to Petersburg, she was received by all her acquaintances
not only cordially, but even with a shade of deference due
to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her
husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which
with characteristic tact she had acquired though she did
not understand its significance. This expression suggested

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that she had resolved to endure her troubles

uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross laid
upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion
more openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was
mentioned and, pointing to his forehead, remarked:
‘A bit touched- I always said so.’
‘I said from the first,’ declared Anna Pavlovna
referring to Pierre, ‘I said at the time and before anyone
else’ (she insisted on her priority) ‘that that senseless
young man was spoiled by the depraved ideas of these
days. I said so even at the time when everybody was in
raptures about him, when he had just returned from
abroad, and when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of
Marat at one of my soirees. And how has it ended? I was
against this marriage even then and foretold all that has
happened.’
Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the
same kind of soirees as before- such as she alone had the
gift of arranging- at which was to be found ‘the cream of
really good society, the bloom of the intellectual essence
of Petersburg,’ as she herself put it. Besides this refined
selection of society Anna Pavlovna’s receptions were also
distinguished by the fact that she always presented some
new and interesting person to the visitors and that

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nowhere else was the state of the political thermometer of

legitimate Petersburg court society so dearly and
distinctly indicated.
Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of
Napoleon’s destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and
Auerstadt and the surrender of most of the Prussian
fortresses had been received, when our troops had already
entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon was
beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The
‘cream of really good society’ consisted of the fascinating
Helene, forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the
delightful Prince Hippolyte who had just returned from
Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a young man
referred to in that drawing room as ‘a man of great merit’
(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed
maid of honor and her mother, and several other less
noteworthy persons.
The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her
guests that evening was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just
arrived as a special messenger from the Prussian army
and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.
The temperature shown by the political thermometer to
the company that evening was this:

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‘Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders

may do to countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and
us in general, annoyance and mortification, our opinion of
Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not cease to express our
sincere views on that subject, and can only say to the
King Prussia and others: ‘So much the worse for you. Tu
l’as voulu, George Dandin,’ that’s all we have to say
about it!’
When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests,
entered the drawing room, almost all the company had
assembled, and the conversation, guided by Anna
Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with Austria
and the hope of an alliance with her.
Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and
self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly
dressed in the uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly
conducted to pay his respects to the aunt and then brought
back to the general circle.
Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss
and introduced him to several persons whom he did not
know, giving him a whispered description of each. charge
d’affaires from Copenhagen- a profound intellect,’ and
simply, ‘Mr. Shitov- a man of great merit’- this of the
man usually so described.

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Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna’s efforts, his own tastes,

and the peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had
managed during his service to place himself very
advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a very important
personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special
messenger. He had become thoroughly conversant with
that unwritten code with which he had been so pleased at
Olmutz and according to which an ensign might rank
incomparably higher than a general, and according to
which what was needed for success in the service was not
effort or work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the
knowledge of how to get on with those who can grant
rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity
of his success and at the inability of others to understand
these things. In consequence of this discovery his whole
manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all his
plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not
rich, but would spend his last groat to be better dressed
than others, and would rather deprive himself of many
pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a shabby
equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in an old
uniform. He made friends with and sought the
acquaintance of only those above him in position and who

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could therefore be of use to him. He liked Petersburg and

despised Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostovs’
house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant
to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since
the day of his departure for the army. To be in Anna
Pavlovna’s drawing room he considered an important step
up in the service, and he at once understood his role,
letting his hostess make use of whatever interest he had to
offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising
the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of
those present, and the advantages that might accrue. He
took the seat indicated to him beside the fair Helene and
listened to the general conversation.
‘Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so
unattainable that not even a continuity of most brilliant
successes would secure them, and she doubts the means
we have of gaining them. That is the actual phrase used
by the Vienna cabinet,’ said the Danish charge d’affaires.
‘The doubt is flattering,’ said ‘the man of profound
intellect,’ with a subtle smile.
‘We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and
the Emperor of Austria,’ said Mortemart. ‘The Emperor
of Austria can never have thought of such a thing, it is
only the cabinet that says it.’

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‘Ah, my dear vicomte,’ put in Anna Pavlovna,

‘L’Urope’ (for some reason she called it Urope as if that
were a specially refined French pronunciation which she
could allow herself when conversing with a Frenchman),
‘L’Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere.’*
*"Europe will never be our sincere ally.’
After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and
firmness of the King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris
into the conversation.
Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers,
awaiting his turn, but managed meanwhile to look round
repeatedly at his neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose
eyes several times met those of the handsome young aide-
de-camp with a smile.
Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna
very naturally asked Boris to tell them about his journey
to Glogau and in what state he found the Prussian army.
Boris, speaking with deliberation, told them in pure,
correct French many interesting details about the armies
and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an
opinion of his own about the facts he was recounting. For
some time he engrossed the general attention, and Anna
Pavlovna felt that the novelty she had served up was
received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest

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attention of all to Boris’ narrative was shown by Helene.

She asked him several questions about his journey and
seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian
army. As soon as he had finished she turned to him with
her usual smile.
‘You absolutely must come and see me,’ she said in a
tone that implied that, for certain considerations he could
not know of, this was absolutely necessary.
‘On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me
great pleasure.’
Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to
begin a conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna
called him away on the pretext that her aunt wished to
hear him.
‘You know her husband, of course?’ said Anna
Pavlovna, closing her eyes and indicating Helene with a
sorrowful gesture. ‘Ah, she is such an unfortunate and
charming woman! Don’t mention him before her- please
don’t! It is too painful for her!’

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Chapter VII

When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others

Prince Hippolyte had the ear of the company.
Bending forward in his armchair he said: ‘Le Roi de
Prusse!’ and having said this laughed. Everyone turned
toward him.
‘Le Roi de Prusse?’ Hippolyte said interrogatively,
again laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in
his chair. Anna Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as
he seemed quite decided to say no more she began to tell
of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the
sword of Frederick the Great.
‘It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...’ she
began, but Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: ‘Le
Roi de Prusse...’ and again, as soon as soon as all turned
toward him, excused himself and said no more.
Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s
friend, addressed him firmly.
‘Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?’
Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...’ (he wanted to
repeat a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had

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been trying all that evening to get in) ‘I only wished to

say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de Prusse!’
Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as
ironical or appreciative according to the way the joke was
received. Everybody laughed.
‘Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,’ said Anna
Pavlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
‘We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for
right principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!’ she
said.
The conversation did not flag all evening and turned
chiefly on the political news. It became particularly
animated toward the end of the evening when the rewards
bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
‘You know N- N- received a snuffbox with the portrait
last year?’ said ‘the man of profound intellect.’ ‘Why
shouldn’t S- S- get the same distinction?’
‘Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor’s portrait is
a reward but not a distinction,’ said the diplomatist- ‘a
gift, rather.’
‘There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg.’
‘It’s impossible,’ replied another.
‘Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different
matter...’

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When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken

very little all the evening again turned to Boris, asking
him in a tone of caressing significant command to come
to her on Tuesday.
‘It is of great importance to me,’ she said, turning with
a smile toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with
the same sad smile with which she spoke of her exalted
patroness, supported Helene’s wish.
It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that
evening about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly
found it necessary to see him. She seemed to promise to
explain that necessity to him when he came on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene’s
splendid salon, Boris received no clear explanation of
why it had been necessary for him to come. There were
other guests and the countess talked little to him, and only
as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly
and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: ‘Come
to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come....
Come!’
During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an
intimate in the countess’ house.

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Chapter VIII

The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian

frontier. Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, ‘the
enemy of mankind.’ Militiamen and recruits were being
enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war came
contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously
interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski, Prince
Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since
1805.
In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight
commanders in chief then appointed to supervise the
enrollment decreed throughout Russia. Despite the
weakness of age, which had become particularly
noticeable since the time when he thought his son had
been killed, he did not think it right to refuse a duty to
which he had been appointed by the Emperor himself, and
this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy and
strength. He was continually traveling through the three
provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment
of his duties, severe to cruelty with his subordinates, and
went into everything down to the minutest details himself.
Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics

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from her father, and when the old prince was at home
went to his study with the wet nurse and little Prince
Nicholas (as his grandfather called him). The baby Prince
Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse Savishna in
the late princess’ rooms and Princess Mary spent most of
the day in the nursery, taking a mother’s place to her little
nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too,
seemed passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary
often deprived herself to give her friend the pleasure of
dandling the little angel- as she called her nephew- and
playing with him.
Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a
chapel over the tomb of the little princess, and in this
chapel was a marble monument brought from Italy,
representing an angel with outspread wings ready to fly
upwards. The angel’s upper lip was slightly raised as
though about to smile, and once on coming out of the
chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one
another that the angel’s face reminded them strangely of
the little princess. But what was still stranger, though of
this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in
the expression the sculptor had happened to give the
angel’s face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach

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he had read on the face of his dead wife: ‘Ah, why have
you done this to me?’
Soon after Prince Andrew’s return the old prince made
over to him a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-
five miles from Bald Hills. Partly because of the
depressing memories associated with Bald Hills, partly
because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal to
bearing with his father’s peculiarities, and partly because
he needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of
Bogucharovo, began building and spent most of his time
there.
After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had
firmly resolved not to continue his military service, and
when the war recommenced and everybody had to serve,
he took a post under his father in the recruitment so as to
avoid active service. The old prince and his son seemed to
have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old
man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the
new campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary,
taking no part in the war and secretly regretting this, saw
only the dark side.
On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of
his circuits. Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as
usual during his father’s absence. Little Nicholas had

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been unwell for four days. The coachman who had driven
the old prince to town returned bringing papers and letters
for Prince Andrew.
Not finding the young prince in his study the valet
went with the letters to Princess Mary’s apartments, but
did not find him there. He was told that the prince had
gone to the nursery.
‘If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought
some papers,’ said one of the nursemaids to Prince
Andrew who was sitting on a child’s little chair while,
frowning and with trembling hands, he poured drops from
a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of water.
‘What is it?’ he said crossly, and, his hand shaking
unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass.
He threw the mixture onto the floor and asked for some
more water. The maid brought it.
There were in the room a child’s cot, two boxes, two
armchairs, a table, a child’s table, and the little chair on
which Prince Andrew was sitting. The curtains were
drawn, and a single candle was burning on the table,
screened by a bound music book so that the light did not
fall on the cot.

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‘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

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sorrow on one another and reproached and disputed with

each other.
‘Petrusha has come with papers from your father,’
whispered the maid.
Prince Andrew went out.
‘Devil take them!’ he muttered, and after listening to
the verbal instructions his father had sent and taking the
correspondence and his father’s letter, he returned to the
nursery.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Still the same. Wait, for heaven’s sake. Karl Ivanich
always says that sleep is more important than anything,’
whispered Princess Mary with a sigh.
Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He
was burning hot.
‘Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!’ He took the
glass with the drops and again went up to the cot.
‘Andrew, don’t!’ said Princess Mary.
But he scowled at her angrily though also with
suffering in his eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the
infant.
‘But I wish it,’ he said. ‘I beg you- give it him!’
Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the
glass submissively and calling the nurse began giving the

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medicine. The child screamed hoarsely. Prince Andrew

winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat down on
a sofa in the next room.
He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them
mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and
then using abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated
hand on blue paper as follows:
Have just this moment received by special messenger
very joyful news- if it’s not false. Bennigsen seems to
have obtained a complete victory over Buonaparte at
Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and the
rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a
German- I congratulate him! I can’t make out what the
commander at Korchevo- a certain Khandrikov- is up to;
till now the additional men and provisions have not
arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say I’ll have his
head off if everything is not here in a week. Have
received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle
from Petenka- he took part in it- and it’s all true. When
mischief-makers don’t meddle even a German beats
Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great disorder.
Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without delay and carry
out instructions!

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Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another

envelope. It was a closely written letter of two sheets
from Bilibin. He folded it up without reading it and reread
his father’s letter, ending with the words: ‘Gallop off to
Korchevo and carry out instructions!’
‘No, pardon me, I won’t go now till the child is better,’
thought he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently
rocking the baby.
‘Ah yes, and what else did he say that’s unpleasant?’
thought Prince Andrew, recalling his father’s letter. ‘Yes,
we have gained a victory over Bonaparte, just when I’m
not serving. Yes, yes, he’s always poking fun at me.... Ah,
well! Let him!’ And he began reading Bilibin’s letter
which was written in French. He read without
understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a
moment, what he had too long been thinking of so
painfully to the exclusion of all else.

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Chapter IX

Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic

capacity, and though he wrote in French and used French
jests and French idioms, he described the whole campaign
with a fearless self-censure and self-derision genuinely
Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation of diplomatic
discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in
Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could
pour out the bile he had accumulated at the sight of all
that was being done in the army. The letter was old,
having been written before the battle at Preussisch-Eylau.
‘Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz,’
wrote Bilibin, ‘as you know, my dear prince, I never leave
headquarters. I have certainly acquired a taste for war,
and it is just as well for me; what I have seen during these
last three months is incredible.
‘I begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,’ as
you know, attacks the Prussians. The Prussians are our
faithful allies who have only betrayed us three times in
three years. We take up their cause, but it turns out that
‘the enemy of the human race’ pays no heed to our fine
speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself

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on the Prussians without giving them time to finish the

parade they had begun, and in two twists of the hand he
breaks them to smithereens and installs himself in the
palace at Potsdam.
‘‘I most ardently desire,’ writes the King of Prussia to
Bonaparte, ‘that Your Majesty should be received and
treated in my palace in a manner agreeable to yourself,
and in so far as circumstances allowed, I have hastened to
take all steps to that end. May I have succeeded!’ The
Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the
French and lay down their arms at the first demand.
‘The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand
men, asks the King of Prussia what he is to do if he is
summoned to surrender.... All this is absolutely true.
‘In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a
warlike attitude, it turns out that we have landed ourselves
in war, and what is more, in war on our own frontiers,
with and for the King of Prussia. We have everything in
perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely, a
commander in chief. As it was considered that the
Austerlitz success might have been more decisive had the
commander in chief not been so young, all our
octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and
Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to

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us, Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with

acclamations of joy and triumph.
‘On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg.
The mails are taken to the field marshal’s room, for he
likes to do everything himself. I am called in to help sort
the letters and take those meant for us. The field marshal
looks on and waits for letters addressed to him. We
search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows
impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from
the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he
bursts into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone
and everything, seizes the letters, opens them, and reads
those from the Emperor addressed to others. ‘Ah! So
that’s the way they treat me! No confidence in me! Ah,
ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then! Get along
with you!’ So he writes the famous order of the day to
General Bennigsen:
’I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently
cannot command the army. You have brought your army
corps to Pultusk, routed: here it is exposed, and without
fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as you
yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you
must think of retreating to our frontier- which do today.’

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‘‘From all my riding,’ he writes to the Emperor, ‘I

have got a saddle sore which, coming after all my
previous journeys, quite prevents my riding and
commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the
command to the general next in seniority, Count
Buxhowden, having sent him my whole staff and all that
belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack of bread, to
move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only one
day’s ration of bread remains, and in some regiments
none at all, as reported by the division commanders,
Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had
has been eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at
Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
submit my report, with the information that if the army
remains in its present bivouac another fortnight there will
not be a healthy man left in it by spring.
‘‘Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man
who is already in any case dishonored by being unable to
fulfill the great and glorious task for which he was
chosen. I shall await your most gracious permission here
in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a
secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal
from the army does not produce the slightest stir- a blind
man has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.’

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‘The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he

punishes us all, isn’t it logical?
‘This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally
increasingly interesting and entertaining. After the field
marshal’s departure it appears that we are within sight of
the enemy and must give battle. Buxhowden is
commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his
corps who are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to
profit by the opportunity to fight a battle ‘on his own
hand’ as the Germans say. He does so. This is the battle of
Pultusk, which is considered a great victory but in my
opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you
know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle
was won or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost
it is what we say; and according to that it is we who lost
the battle of Pultusk. In short, we retreat after the battle
but send a courier to Petersburg with news of a victory,
and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive from
Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for
his victory, does not give up the command of the army to
General Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a
very original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim
is no longer, as it should be, to avoid or attack the enemy,

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but solely to avoid General Buxhowden who by right of

seniority should be our chief. So energetically do we
pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable river we
burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy,
who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden.
General Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by
a superior enemy force as a result of one of these
maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhowden
pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our
side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy.
Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are
angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhowden’s part
and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen’s. But at the critical
moment the courier who carried the news of our victory at
Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our appointment as
commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is
vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second,
Bonaparte. But as it turns out, just at that moment a third
enemy rises before us- namely the Orthodox Russian
soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder,
and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads impassable.
The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our
last campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments
form bands and scour the countryside and put everything

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to fire and sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the

hospitals overflow with sick, and famine is everywhere.
Twice the marauders even attack our headquarters, and
the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to
disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off
my empty portmanteau and my dressing gown. The
Emperor proposes to give all commanders of divisions the
right to shoot marauders, but I much fear this will oblige
one half the army to shoot the other.’
At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but
after a while, in spite of himself (although he knew how
far it was safe to trust Bilibin), what he had read began to
interest him more and more. When he had read thus far,
he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. It was not
what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life
out there in which he had now no part could perturb him.
He shut his eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself
of all interest in what he had read, and listened to what
was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he thought he heard
a strange noise through the door. He was seized with
alarm lest something should have happened to the child
while he was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the
nursery door and opened it.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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the chief steward, understood from this speech how they

could best handle the master for their own ends.
The chief steward expressed great sympathy with
Pierre’s intentions, but remarked that besides these
changes it would be necessary to go into the general state
of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
Despite Count Bezukhov’s enormous wealth, since he
had come into an income which was said to amount to
five hundred thousand rubles a year, Pierre felt himself far
poorer than when his father had made him an allowance
of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
following budget:
About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the
Land Bank, about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the
estate near Moscow, the town house, and the allowance to
the three princesses; about 15,000 was given in pensions
and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was
sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on
debts. The building of a new church, previously begun,
had cost about 10,000 in each of the last two years, and he
did not know how the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was
spent, and almost every year he was obliged to borrow.
Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling
him of fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of

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rebuilding factories and workshops. So the first task

Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little
aptitude or inclination- practical business.
He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief
steward. But he felt that this did not forward matters at
all. He felt that these consultations were detached from
real affairs and did not link up with them or make them
move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the state of
things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the
necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new
activities with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree.
On the other hand, Pierre demanded that steps should be
taken to liberate the serfs, which the steward met by
showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from
the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a
speedy emancipation.
The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but
suggested selling the forests in the province of Kostroma,
the land lower down the river, and the Crimean estate, in
order to make it possible: all of which operations
according to him were connected with such complicated
measures- the removal of injunctions, petitions, permits,
and so on- that Pierre became quite bewildered and only
replied:

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‘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

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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

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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

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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.

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‘How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so

much good,’ thought Pierre, ‘and how little attention we
pay to it!’
He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt
abashed at receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of
how much more he might do for these simple, kindly
people.
The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who
saw perfectly through the naive and intelligent count and
played with him as with a toy, seeing the effect these
prearranged receptions had on Pierre, pressed him still
harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all the
uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as
it was.
Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it
would be difficult to imagine happier people, and that
God only knew what would happen to them when they
were free, but he insisted, though reluctantly, on what he
thought right. The steward promised to do all in his power
to carry out the count’s wishes, seeing clearly that not
only would the count never be able to find out whether all
measures had been taken for the sale of the land and
forests and to release them from the Land Bank, but
would probably never even inquire and would never know

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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.

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Chapter XI

Returning from his journey through South Russia in

the happiest state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention
he had long had of visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he
had not seen for two years.
Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the
country among fields and forests of fir and birch, which
were partly cut down. The house lay behind a newly dug
pond filled with water to the brink and with banks still
bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that stretched
along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which
were a few fir trees.
The homestead consisted of a threshing floor,
outhouses, stables, a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick
house with semicircular facade still in course of
construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid
out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire
pumps and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed;
the paths were straight, the bridges were strong and had
handrails. Everything bore an impress of tidiness and
good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in
reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out

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a small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man

who had looked after Prince Andrew in his boyhood,
helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the prince was
at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.
Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though
clean house after the brilliant surroundings in which he
had last met his friend in Petersburg.
He quickly entered the small reception room with its
still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and
would have gone farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe
and knocked at a door.
‘Well, what is it?’ came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
‘A visitor,’ answered Anton.
‘Ask him to wait,’ and the sound was heard of a chair
being pushed back.
Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly
came face to face with Prince Andrew, who came out
frowning and looking old. Pierre embraced him and
lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek and
looked at him closely.
‘Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad,’
said Prince Andrew.
Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with
surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words

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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

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Andrew’s presence. He was ashamed to express his new

Masonic views, which had been particularly revived and
strengthened by his late tour. He checked himself, fearing
to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible desire to show his
friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite
different, and better, Pierre than he had been in
Petersburg.
‘I can’t tell you how much I have lived through since
then. I hardly know myself again.’
‘Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then,’
said Prince Andrew.
‘Well, and you? What are your plans?’
‘Plans!’ repeated Prince Andrew ironically. ‘My
plans?’ he said, as if astonished at the word. ‘Well, you
see, I’m building. I mean to settle here altogether next
year...’
Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince
Andrew’s face, which had grown much older.
‘No, I meant to ask...’ Pierre began, but Prince Andrew
interrupted him.
‘But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about
your travels and all you have been doing on your estates.’
Pierre began describing what he had done on his
estates, trying as far as possible to conceal his own part in

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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:

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‘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

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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

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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.

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‘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.’

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‘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

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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

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traveling, but at such times I collapsed so that I don’t live

at all- everything seems hateful to me... myself most of
all. Then I don’t eat, don’t wash... and how is it with
you?..’
‘Why not wash? That is not cleanly,’ said Prince
Andrew; ‘on the contrary one must try to make one’s life
as pleasant as possible. I’m alive, that is not my fault, so I
must live out my life as best I can without hurting others.’
‘But with such ideas what motive have you for living?
One would sit without moving, undertaking nothing...’
‘Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful
to do nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility
have done me the honor to choose me to be their marshal;
it was all I could do to get out of it. They could not
understand that I have not the necessary qualifications for
it- the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness necessary
for the position. Then there’s this house, which must be
built in order to have a nook of one’s own in which to be
quiet. And now there’s this recruiting.’
‘Why aren’t you serving in the army?’
‘After Austerlitz!’ said Prince Andrew gloomily. ‘No,
thank you very much! I have promised myself not to serve
again in the active Russian army. And I won’t- not even if
Bonaparte were here at Smolensk threatening Bald Hills-

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even then I wouldn’t serve in the Russian army! Well, as I

was saying,’ he continued, recovering his composure,
‘now there’s this recruiting. My father is chief in
command of the Third District, and my only way of
avoiding active service is to serve under him.’
‘Then you are serving?’
‘I am.’
He paused a little while.
‘And why do you serve?’
‘Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most
remarkable men of his time. But he is growing old, and
though not exactly cruel he has too energetic a character.
He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is terrible,
and now he has this authority of a commander in chief of
the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two
hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a
paymaster’s clerk at Yukhnovna hanged,’ said Prince
Andrew with a smile. ‘So I am serving because I alone
have any influence with my father, and now and then can
save him from actions which would torment him
afterwards.’
‘Well, there you see!’
‘Yes, but it is not as you imagine,’ Prince Andrew
continued. ‘I did not, and do not, in the least care about

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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,

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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.

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Chapter XII

In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open

carriage and drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing
at Pierre, broke the silence now and then with remarks
which showed that he was in a good temper.
Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he
was making in his husbandry.
Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in
monosyllables and apparently immersed in his own
thoughts.
He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had
gone astray, did not see the true light, and that he, Pierre,
ought to aid, enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he
thought of what he should say, he felt that Prince Andrew
with one word, one argument, would upset all his
teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid of
exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious
and sacred.
‘No, but why do you think so?’ Pierre suddenly began,
lowering his head and looking like a bull about to charge,
‘why do you think so? You should not think so.’

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‘Think? What about?’ asked Prince Andrew with

surprise.
‘About life, about man’s destiny. It can’t be so. I
myself thought like that, and do you know what saved
me? Freemasonry! No, don’t smile. Freemasonry is not a
religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it was:
Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,
aspects of humanity.’
And he began to explain Freemasonry as he
understood it to Prince Andrew. He said that Freemasonry
is the teaching of Christianity freed from the bonds of
State and Church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood, and
love.
‘Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of
life, all the rest is a dream,’ said Pierre. ‘Understand, my
dear fellow, that outside this union all is filled with deceit
and falsehood and I agree with you that nothing is left for
an intelligent and good man but to live out his life, like
you, merely trying not to harm others. But make our
fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood,
give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will
at once feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that
vast invisible chain the beginning of which is hidden in
heaven,’ said Pierre.

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Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him,

listened in silence to Pierre’s words. More than once,
when the noise of the wheels prevented his catching what
Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the peculiar
glow that came into Prince Andrew’s eyes and by his
silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and
that Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at
what he said.
They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and
which they had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and
horses were being placed on it, they also stepped on the
raft.
Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing,
gazed silently at the flooding waters glittering in the
setting sun.
‘Well, what do you think about it?’ Pierre asked. ‘Why
are you silent?’
‘What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It’s all
very well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will
show you the aim of life, the destiny of man, and the laws
which govern the world. But who are we? Men. How is it
you know everything? Why do I alone not see what you
see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I
don’t see it.’

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Pierre interrupted him.

‘Do you believe in a future life?’ he asked.
‘A future life?’ Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre,
giving him no time to reply, took the repetition for a
denial, the more readily as he knew Prince Andrew’s
former atheistic convictions.
‘You say you can’t see a reign of goodness and truth
on earth. Nor could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks
on our life here as the end of everything. On earth, here
on this earth’ (Pierre pointed to the fields), ‘there is no
truth, all is false and evil; but in the universe, in the whole
universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now
the children of earth are- eternally- children of the whole
universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one
step, between the lower and higher beings, in this vast
harmonious multitude of beings in whom the Deity- the
Supreme Power if you prefer the term- is manifest? If I
see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go
farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since
nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall always
exist and always have existed. I feel that beyond me and

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above me there are spirits, and that in this world there is

truth.’
‘Yes, that is Herder’s theory,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘but
it is not that which can convince me, dear friend- life and
death are what convince. What convinces is when one
sees a being dear to one, bound up with one’s own life,
before whom one was to blame and had hoped to make it
right’ (Prince Andrew’s voice trembled and he turned
away), ‘and suddenly that being is seized with pain,
suffers, and ceases to exist.... Why? It cannot be that there
is no answer. And I believe there is.... That’s what
convinces, that is what has convinced me,’ said Prince
Andrew.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Pierre, ‘isn’t that what I’m
saying?’
‘No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces
me of the necessity of a future life, but this: when you go
hand in hand with someone and all at once that person
vanishes there, into nowhere, and you yourself are left
facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked in...’
‘Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and
there is a Someone? There is the future life. The Someone
is- God.’

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Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses

had long since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and
reharnessed. The sun had sunk half below the horizon and
an evening frost was starring the puddles near the ferry,
but Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the
footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft
and talked.
‘If there is a God and future life, there is truth and
good, and man’s highest happiness consists in striving to
attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must
believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth,
but have lived and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,’
said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.
Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft
listening to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the
red reflection of the sun gleaming on the blue waters.
There was perfect stillness. Pierre became silent. The raft
had long since stopped and only the waves of the current
beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew felt as if the
sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words,
whispering:
‘It is true, believe it.’

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He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender

look at Pierre’s face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy
before his superior friend.
‘Yes, if it only were so!’ said Prince Andrew.
‘However, it is time to get on,’ he added, and, stepping
off the raft, he looked up at the sky to which Pierre had
pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw that
high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on that
battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering,
something that was best within him, suddenly awoke,
joyful and youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he
returned to the customary conditions of his life, but he
knew that this feeling which he did not know how to
develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre
formed an epoch in Prince Andrew’s life. Though
outwardly he continued to live in the same old way,
inwardly he began a new life.

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Chapter XIII

It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre

drove up to the front entrance of the house at Bald Hills.
As they approached the house, Prince Andrew with
asmile drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion going on at
the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on
her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black
garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the
carriage driving up. Two women ran out after them, and
all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay up
the steps of the back porch.
‘Those are Mary’s ‘God’s folk,’’ said Prince Andrew.
‘They have mistaken us for my father. This is the one
matter in which she disobeys him. He orders these
pilgrims to be driven away, but she receives them.’
‘But what are ‘God’s folk’?’ asked Pierre.
Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants
came out to meet them, and he asked where the old prince
was and whether he was expected back soon.
The old prince had gone to the town and was expected
back any minute.

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Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which

were always kept in perfect order and readiness for him in
his father’s house; he himself went to the nursery.
‘Let us go and see my sister,’ he said to Pierre when he
returned. ‘I have not found her yet, she is hiding now,
sitting with her ‘God’s folk.’ It will serve her right, she
will be confused, but you will see her ‘God’s folk.’ It’s
really very curious.’
‘What are ‘God’s folk’?’ asked Pierre.
‘Come, and you’ll see for yourself.’
Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches
came on her face when they went in. In her snug room,
with lamps burning before the icon stand, a young lad
with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk’s cassock,
sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them,
in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a
meek expression on her childlike face.
‘Andrew, why didn’t you warn me?’ said the princess,
with mild reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a
hen before her chickens.
‘Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous
voir,’* she said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had
known him as a child, and now his friendship with
Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and above all his

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kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward him.

She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and
seemed to say, ‘I like you very much, but please don’t
laugh at my people.’ After exchanging the first greetings,
they sat down.
*"Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you.’
‘Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!’ said Prince Andrew,
glancing with a smile at the young pilgrim.
‘Andrew!’ said Princess Mary, imploringly. ‘Il faut
que vous sachiez que c’est une femme,’* said Prince
Andrew to Pierre.
‘Andrew, au nom de Dieu!’*[2] Princess Mary
repeated.
*"You must know that this is a woman.’
*[2] ‘For heaven’s sake.’
It was evident that Prince Andrew’s ironical tone
toward the pilgrims and Princess Mary’s helpless attempts
to protect them were their customary long-established
relations on the matter.
‘Mais, ma bonne amie,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘vous
devriez au contraire m’etre reconnaissante de ce que
j’explique a Pierre votre intimite avec ce jeune homme.’*

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*"But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be

grateful to me for explaining to Pierre your intimacy with
this young man.’
‘Really?’ said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with
curiosity and seriousness (for which Princess Mary was
specially grateful to him) into Ivanushka’s face, who,
seeing that she was being spoken about, looked round at
them all with crafty eyes.
Princess Mary’s embarrassment on her people’s
account was quite unnecessary. They were not in the least
abashed. The old woman, lowering her eyes but casting
side glances at the newcomers, had turned her cup upside
down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and sat
quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered
another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer,
looked with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at
the young men.
‘Where have you been? To Kiev?’ Prince Andrew
asked the old woman.
‘I have, good sir,’ she answered garrulously. ‘Just at
Christmastime I was deemed worthy to partake of the
holy and heavenly sacrament at the shrine of the saint.
And now I’m from Kolyazin, master, where a great and
wonderful blessing has been revealed.’

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‘And was Ivanushka with you?’

‘I go by myself, benefactor,’ said Ivanushka, trying to
speak in a bass voice. ‘I only came across Pelageya in
Yukhnovo..’
Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently
wished to tell what she had seen.
‘In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been
revealed.’
‘What is it? Some new relics?’ asked Prince Andrew.
‘Andrew, do leave off,’ said Princess Mary. ‘Don’t tell
him, Pelageya.’
‘No... why not, my dear, why shouldn’t I? I like him.
He is kind, he is one of God’s chosen, he’s a benefactor,
he once gave me ten rubles, I remember. When I was in
Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he’s one of God’s own and
goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, ‘Why are you
not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a
wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has
been revealed.’ On hearing those words I said good-by to
the holy folk and went.’
All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in
measured tones, drawing in her breath.
‘So I come, master, and the people say to me: ‘A great
blessing has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the

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cheeks of our blessed Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of

God’...’
‘All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards,’ said
Princess Mary, flushing.
‘Let me ask her,’ said Pierre. ‘Did you see it
yourselves?’ he inquired.
‘Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a
brightness on the face like the light of heaven, and from
the blessed Mother’s cheek it drops and drops...’
‘But, dear me, that must be a fraud!’ said Pierre,
naively, who had listened attentively to the pilgrim.
‘Oh, master, what are you saying?’ exclaimed the
horrified Pelageya, turning to Princess Mary for support.
‘They impose on the people,’ he repeated.
‘Lord Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed the pilgrim woman,
crossing herself. ‘Oh, don’t speak so, master! There was a
general who did not believe, and said, ‘The monks cheat,’
and as soon as he’d said it he went blind. And he dreamed
that the Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came
to him and said, ‘Believe in me and I will make you
whole.’ So he begged: ‘Take me to her, take me to her.’
It’s the real truth I’m telling you, I saw it myself. So he
was brought, quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to
her and falls down and says, ‘Make me whole,’ says he,

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‘and I’ll give thee what the Tsar bestowed on me.’ I saw it
myself, master, the star is fixed into the icon. Well, and
what do you think? He received his sight! It’s a sin to
speak so. God will punish you,’ she said admonishingly,
turning to Pierre.
‘How did the star get into the icon?’ Pierre asked.
‘And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of
general?’ said Prince Andrew, with a smile.
Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her
hands.
‘Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a
son!’ she began, her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid
red. ‘Master, what have you said? God forgive you!’ And
she crossed herself. ‘Lord forgive him! My dear, what
does it mean?...’ she asked, turning to Princess Mary. She
got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet.
She evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have
accepted charity in a house where such things could be
said, and was at the same time sorry to have now to forgo
the charity of this house.
‘Now, why need you do it?’ said Princess Mary. ‘Why
did you come to me?..’
‘Come, Pelageya, I was joking,’ said Pierre.
‘Princesse, ma parole, je n’ai pas voulu l’offenser.* I did

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not mean anything, I was only joking,’ he said, smiling

shyly and trying to efface his offense. ‘It was all my fault,
and Andrew was only joking.’
*"Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her.’
Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre’s face there
was such a look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew
glanced so meekly now at her and now at Pierre, that she
was gradually reassured.

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Chapter XIV

The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being

encouraged to talk, gave a long account of Father
Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his hands
smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some
monks she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs,
and how she, taking some dried bread with her, had spent
two days in the catacombs with the saints. ‘I’d pray
awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to another. I’d
sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and there
was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one
don’t want to come out, even into the light of heaven
again.’
Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince
Andrew went out of the room, and then, leaving ‘God’s
folk’ to finish their tea, Princess Mary took Pierre into the
drawing room.
‘You are very kind,’ she said to him.
‘Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I
understand them so well and have the greatest respect for
them.’

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Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled

affectionately.
‘I have known you a long time, you see, and am as
fond of you as of a brother,’ she said. ‘How do you find
Andrew?’ she added hurriedly, not giving him time to
reply to her affectionate words. ‘I am very anxious about
him. His health was better in the winter, but last spring his
wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away
for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him
spiritually. He has not a character like us women who,
when we suffer, can weep away our sorrows. He keeps it
all within him. Today he is cheerful and in good spirits,
but that is the effect of your visit- he is not often like that.
If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs
activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him.
Others don’t notice it, but I see it.’
Toward ten o’clock the men servants rushed to the
front door, hearing the bells of the old prince’s carriage
approaching. Prince Andrew and Pierre also went out into
the porch.
‘Who’s that?’ asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as
he got out of, the carriage.
‘Ah! Very glad! Kiss me,’ he said, having learned who
the young stranger was.

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The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious

to Pierre.
Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his
father’s study, found him disputing hotly with his visitor.
Pierre was maintaining that a time would come when
there would be no more wars. The old prince disputed it
chaffingly, but without getting angry.
‘Drain the blood from men’s veins and put in water
instead, then there will be no more war! Old women’s
nonsense- old women’s nonsense!’ he repeated, but still
he patted Pierre affectionately on the shoulder, and then
went up to the table where Prince Andrew, evidently not
wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over the
papers his father had brought from town. The old prince
went up to him and began to talk business.
‘The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn’t sent half his
contingent. He came to town and wanted to invite me to
dinner- I gave him a pretty dinner!... And there, look at
this.... Well, my boy,’ the old prince went on, addressing
his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. ‘A fine fellow-
your friend- I like him! He stirs me up. Another says
clever things and one doesn’t care to listen, but this one
talks rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get
along! Perhaps I’ll come and sit with you at supper. We’ll

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have another dispute. Make friends with my little fool,

Princess Mary,’ he shouted after Pierre, through the door.
Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully
realize the strength and charm of his friendship with
Prince Andrew. That charm was not expressed so much in
his relations with him as with all his family and with the
household. With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid
Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them,
Pierre at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of
him already. Not only Princess Mary, who had been won
by his gentleness with the pilgrims, gave him her most
radiant looks, but even the one-year-old ‘Prince Nicholas’
(as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and let
himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and
Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant
smiles when he talked to the old prince.
The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on
Pierre’s account. And during the two days of the young
man’s visit he was extremely kind to him and told him to
visit them again.
When Pierre had gone and the members of the
household met together, they began to express their
opinions of him as people always do after a new

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acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said

anything but what was good of him.

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Chapter XV

When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first
time, how close was the bond that united him to Denisov
and and the whole regiment.
On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when
approaching his home in Moscow. When he saw the first
hussar with the unbuttoned uniform of his regiment, when
he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the picket
ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully
shouted to his master, ‘The count has come!’ and
Denisov, who had been asleep on his bed, ran all
disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace him, and the
officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov
experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and
his sister had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him
so that he could not speak. The regiment was also a home,
and as unalterably dear and precious as his parents’ house.
When he had reported himself to the commander of the
regiment and had been reassigned to his former squadron,
had been on duty and had gone out foraging, when he had
again entered into all the little interests of the regiment
and felt himself deprived of liberty and bound in one

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narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense

of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at
home here in his own place, as he had felt under the
parental roof. But here was none of all that turmoil of the
world at large, where he did not know his right place and
took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya with whom
he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was
no possibility of going there or not going there; here there
were not twenty-four hours in the day which could be
spent in such a variety of ways; there was not that
innumerable crowd of people of whom not one was nearer
to him or farther from him than another; there were none
of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his
father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov.
Here, in the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole
world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our
Pavlograd regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest
was no concern of his. In the regiment, everything was
definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a
good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a
comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one’s pay
came every four months, there was nothing to think out or
decide, you had only to do nothing that was considered
bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order,

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to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered-

and all would be well.
Having once more entered into the definite conditions
of this regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired
man feels on lying down to rest. Life in the regiment,
during this campaign, was all the pleasanter for him,
because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for which, in spite of
all his family’s efforts to console him, he could not
forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his
fault by serving, not as he had done before, but really
well, and by being a perfectly first-rate comrade and
officer- in a word, a splendid man altogether, a thing
which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so possible
in the regiment.
After his losses, he had determined to pay back his
debt to his parents in five years. He received ten thousand
rubles a year, but now resolved to take only two thousand
and leave the rest to repay the debt to his parents.
Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and
battles at Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated
near Bartenstein. It was awaiting the Emperor’s arrival
and the beginning of a new campaign.
The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the
army which had served in the 1805 campaign, had been

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recruiting up to strength in Russia, and arrived too late to

take part in the first actions of the campaign. It had been
neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and, when it
joined the army in the field in the second half of the
campaign, was attached to Platov’s division.
Platov’s division was acting independently of the main
army. Several times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had
exchanged shots with the enemy, had taken prisoners, and
once had even captured Marshal Oudinot’s carriages. In
April the Pavlograds were stationed immovably for some
weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German village.
A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on
the river broke, and the roads became impassable. For
days neither provisions for the men nor fodder for the
horses had been issued. As no transports could arrive, the
men dispersed about the abandoned and deserted villages,
searching for potatoes, but found few even of these.
Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had
all fled- if any remained, they were worse than beggars
and nothing more could be taken from them; even the
soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of taking
anything from them, often gave them the last of their
rations.

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The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men

wounded in action, but had lost nearly half its men from
hunger and sickness. In the hospitals, death was so certain
that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling that
came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and
hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than
to the hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found
a plant just showing out of the ground that looked like
asparagus, which, for some reason, they called ‘Mashka’s
sweet root.’ It was very bitter, but they wandered about
the fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers and
ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as it was a
noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke out broke
out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and
face, which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But
in spite of all this, the soldiers of Denisov’s squadron fed
chiefly on ‘Mashka’s sweet root,’ because it was the
second week that the last of the biscuits were being doled
out at the rate of half a pound a man and the last potatoes
received had sprouted and frozen.
The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw
from the thatched roofs and had become terribly thin,
though still covered with tufts of felty winter hair.

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Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went

on living just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces
and tattered uniforms, the hussars formed line for roll call,
kept things in order, groomed their horses, polished their
arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs in place of
fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from
which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food
and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit
bonfires, steamed themselves before them naked; smoked,
picked out and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told and
listened to stories of Potemkin’s and Suvorov’s
campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest’s
laborer Mikolka.
The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the
roofless, half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect
straw and potatoes and, in general, food for the men. The
younger ones occupied themselves as before, some
playing cards (there was plenty of money, though there
was no food), some with more innocent games, such as
quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was
rarely spoken of, partly because nothing certain was
known about it, partly because there was a vague feeling
that in the main it was going badly.

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Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their

furlough they had become more friendly than ever.
Denisov never spoke of Rostov’s family, but by the tender
friendship his commander showed him, Rostov felt that
the elder hussar’s luckless love for Natasha played a part
in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried
to expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and
after an action greeted his safe return with evident joy. On
one of his foraging expeditions, in a deserted and ruined
village to which he had come in search of provisions,
Rostov found a family consisting of an old Pole and his
daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad,
hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means
of obtaining a conveyance. Rostov brought them to his
quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and kept them
for some weeks while the old man was recovering. One of
his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing Rostov,
saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it
would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the
pretty Polish girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an
insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things to the
officer that it was all Denisov could do to prevent a duel.
When the officer had gone away, Denisov, who did not
himself know what Rostov’s relations with the Polish girl

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might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of

temper, and Rostov replied:
‘Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I
can’t tell you how it offended me... because... well, for
that reason...’
Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly
pacing the room without looking at Rostov, as was his
way at moments of deep feeling.
‘Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!’ he
muttered, and Rostov noticed tears in his eyes.

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Chapter XVI

In April the troops were enlivened by news of the

Emperor’s arrival, but Rostov had no chance of being
present at the review he held at Bartenstein, as the
Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that place.
They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were
living in an earth hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and
roofed with branches and turf. The hut was made in the
following manner, which had then come into vogue. A
trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight
inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench,
steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and
vestibule. The trench itself was the room, in which the
lucky ones, such as the squadron commander, had a
board, lying on piles at the end opposite the entrance, to
serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the earth was
cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and this
did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so
constructed that one could stand up in the middle of the
trench and could even sit up on the beds if one drew close
to the table. Denisov, who was living luxuriously because
the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a board in

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the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but

mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold,
embers from the soldiers’ campfire were placed on a bent
sheet of iron on the steps in the ‘reception room’- as
Denisov called that part of the hut- and it was then so
warm that the officers, of whom there were always some
with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.
In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning,
between seven and eight, returning after a sleepless night,
he sent for embers, changed his rain-soaked underclothes,
said his prayers, drank tea, got warm, then tidied up the
things on the table and in his own corner, and, his face
glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on
but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under
his head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of
being promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering
expedition, and was awaiting Denisov, who had gone out
somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.
Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating
voice behind the hut, evidently much excited. Rostov
moved to the window to see whom he was speaking to,
and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.

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‘I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!’

Denisov was shouting. ‘And I saw with my own eyes how
Lazarchuk bwought some fwom the fields.’
‘I have given the order again and again, your honor,
but they don’t obey,’ answered the quartermaster.
Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought
complacently: ‘Let him fuss and bustle now, my job’s
done and I’m lying down- capitally!’ He could hear that
Lavrushka- that sly, bold orderly of Denisov’s- was
talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was
saying something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and
oxen he had seen when he had gone out for provisions.
Then Denisov’s voice was heard shouting farther and
farther away. ‘Saddle! Second platoon!’
‘Where are they off to now?’ thought Rostov.
Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed
with muddy boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously
scattered his things about, took his leaded whip, buckled
on his saber, and went out again. In answer to Rostov’s
inquiry where he was going, he answered vaguely and
crossly that he had some business.
‘Let God and our gweat monarch judge me
afterwards!’ said Denisov going out, and Rostov heard the
hoofs of several horses splashing through the mud. He did

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not even trouble to find out where Denisov had gone.

Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not
leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet
returned. The weather had cleared up, and near the next
hut two officers and a cadet were playing svayka,
laughing as they threw their missiles which buried
themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the
middle of the game, the officers saw some wagons
approaching with fifteen hussars on their skinny horses
behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up
to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars surrounded
them.
‘There now, Denisov has been worrying,’ said Rostov,
‘and here are the provisions.’
‘So they are!’ said the officers. ‘Won’t the soldiers be
glad!’
A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied
by two infantry officers with whom he was talking.
Rostov went to meet them.
‘I warn you, Captain,’ one of the officers, a short thin
man, evidently very angry, was saying.
‘Haven’t I told you I won’t give them up?’ replied
Denisov.

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‘You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny- seizing

the transport of one’s own army. Our men have had
nothing to eat for two days.’
‘And mine have had nothing for two weeks,’ said
Denisov.
‘It is robbery! You’ll answer for it, sir!’ said the
infantry officer, raising his voice.
‘Now, what are you pestewing me for?’ cried Denisov,
suddenly losing his temper. ‘I shall answer for it and not
you, and you’d better not buzz about here till you get hurt.
Be off! Go!’ he shouted at the officers.
‘Very well, then!’ shouted the little officer, undaunted
and not riding away. ‘If you are determined to rob, I’ll..’
‘Go to the devil! quick ma’ch, while you’re safe and
sound!’ and Denisov turned his horse on the officer.
‘Very well, very well!’ muttered the officer,
threateningly, and turning his horse he trotted away,
jolting in his saddle.
‘A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!’
shouted Denisov after him (the most insulting expression
a cavalryman can address to a mounted infantryman) and
riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.
‘I’ve taken twansports from the infantwy by force!’ he
said. ‘After all, can’t let our men starve.’

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The wagons that had reached the hussars had been

consigned to an infantry regiment, but learning from
Lavrushka that the transport was unescorted, Denisov
with his hussars had seized it by force. The soldiers had
biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
them with the other squadrons.
The next day the regimental commander sent for
Denisov, and holding his fingers spread out before his
eyes said:
‘This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about
it and won’t begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride
over to the staff and settle the business there in the
commissariat department and if possible sign a receipt for
such and such stores received. If not, as the demand was
booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a row
and the affair may end badly.’
From the regimental commander’s, Denisov rode
straight to the staff with a sincere desire to act on this
advice. In the evening he came back to his dugout in a
state such as Rostov had never yet seen him in. Denisov
could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov
asked what was the matter, he only uttered some
incoherent oaths and threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.

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Alarmed at Denisov’s condition, Rostov suggested that

he should undress, drink some water, and send for the
doctor.
‘Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let
them twy me, but I’ll always thwash scoundwels... and
I’ll tell the Empewo’... Ice...’ he muttered.
The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was
absolutely necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of
black blood was taken from his hairy arm and only then
was he able to relate what had happened to him.
‘I get there,’ began Denisov. ‘‘Now then, where’s your
chief’s quarters?’ They were pointed out. ‘Please to wait.’
‘I’ve widden twenty miles and have duties to attend to
and no time to wait. Announce me.’ Vewy well, so out
comes their head chief- also took it into his head to
lecture me: ‘It’s wobbewy!’- ‘Wobbewy,’ I say, ‘is not
done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers,
but by him who takes them to fill his own pockets!’ ‘Will
you please be silent?’ ‘Vewy good!’ Then he says: ‘Go
and give a weceipt to the commissioner, but your affair
will be passed on to headquarters.’ I go to the
commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you
think? No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that’s starving us?’
shouted Denisov, hitting the table with the fist of his

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newly bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke

down and the tumblers on it jumped about. ‘Telyanin!
‘What? So it’s you who’s starving us to death! Is it? Take
this and this!’ and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his snout...
‘Ah, what a... what...!’ and I sta’ted fwashing him... Well,
I’ve had a bit of fun I can tell you!’ cried Denisov, gleeful
and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. ‘I’d
have killed him if they hadn’t taken him away!’
‘But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself,’ said
Rostov. ‘You’ve set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we
must tie it up again.’
Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next
day he woke calm and cheerful.
But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into
Rostov’s and Denisov’s dugout with a grave and serious
face and regretfully showed them a paper addressed to
Major Denisov from the regimental commander in which
inquiries were made about yesterday’s occurrence. The
adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very
bad turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that
in view of the severity with which marauding and
insubordination were now regarded, degradation to the
ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.

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The case, as represented by the offended parties, was

that, after seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being
drunk, went to the chief quartermaster and without any
provocation called him a thief, threatened to strike him,
and on being led out had rushed into the office and given
two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm of one of
them.
In answer to Rostov’s renewed questions, Denisov
said, laughing, that he thought he remembered that some
other fellow had got mixed up in it, but that it was all
nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the least fear any
kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack him
he would give them an answer that they would not easily
forget.
Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter,
but Rostov knew him too well not to detect that (while
hiding it from others) at heart he feared a court-martial
and was worried over the affair, which was evidently
taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov
was ordered to hand the squadron over to the next in
seniority and appear before the staff of his division to
explain his violence at the commissariat office. On the
previous day Platov reconnoitered with two Cossack

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regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was

his wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his
courage. A bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him
in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at another time
Denisov would not have left the regiment for so slight a
wound, but now he took advantage of it to excuse himself
from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.

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Chapter XVII

In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the

Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice
was proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend’s absence
very much, having no news of him since he left and
feeling very anxious about his wound and the progress of
his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get leave to
visit Denisov in hospital.
The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had
been twice devastated by Russian and French troops.
Because it was summer, when it is so beautiful out in the
fields, the little town presented a particularly dismal
appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its foul
streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken
soldiers wandering about.
The hospital was in a brick building with some of the
window frames and panes broken and a courtyard
surrounded by the remains of a wooden fence that had
been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with
pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in the
sunshine in the yard.

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Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by

a smell of putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he
met a Russian army doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor
was followed by a Russian assistant.
‘I can’t tear myself to pieces,’ the doctor was saying.
‘Come to Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be
there.’
The assistant asked some further questions.
‘Oh, do the best you can! Isn’t it all the same?’ The
doctor noticed Rostov coming upstairs.
‘What do you want, sir?’ said the doctor. ‘What do you
want? The bullets having spared you, do you want to try
typhus? This is a pesthouse, sir.’
‘How so?’ asked Rostov.
‘Typhus, sir. It’s death to go in. Only we two, Makeev
and I’ (he pointed to the assistant), ‘keep on here. Some
five of us doctors have died in this place.... When a new
one comes he is done for in a week,’ said the doctor with
evident satisfaction. ‘Prussian doctors have been invited
here, but our allies don’t like it at all.’
Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov
of the hussars, who was wounded.
‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you, sir. Only think! I am
alone in charge of three hospitals with more than four

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hundred patients! It’s well that the charitable Prussian

ladies send us two pounds of coffee and some lint each
month or we should be lost!’ he laughed. ‘Four hundred,
sir, and they’re always sending me fresh ones. There are
four hundred? Eh?’ he asked, turning to the assistant.
The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently
vexed and impatient for the talkative doctor to go.
‘Major Denisov,’ Rostov said again. ‘He was wounded
at Molliten.’
‘Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?’ queried the doctor, in a
tone of indifference.
The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor’s
words.
‘Is he tall and with reddish hair?’ asked the doctor.
Rostov described Denisov’s appearance.
‘There was one like that,’ said the doctor, as if pleased.
‘That one is dead, I fancy. However, I’ll look up our list.
We had a list. Have you got it, Makeev?’
‘Makar Alexeevich has the list,’ answered the
assistant. ‘But if you’ll step into the officers’ wards you’ll
see for yourself,’ he added, turning to Rostov.
‘Ah, you’d better not go, sir,’ said the doctor, ‘or you
may have to stay here yourself.’

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But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and

asked the assistant to show him the way.
‘Only don’t blame me!’ the doctor shouted up after
him.
Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor.
The smell was so strong there that Rostov held his nose
and had to pause and collect his strength before he could
go on. A door opened to the right, and an emaciated
sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in underclothing,
limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked with
glittering envious eyes at those who were passing.
Glancing in at the door, Rostov saw that the sick and
wounded were lying on the floor on straw and overcoats.
‘May I go in and look?’
‘What is there to see?’ said the assistant.
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want
him to go in, Rostov entered the soldiers’ ward. The foul
air, to which he had already begun to get used in the
corridor, was still stronger here. It was a little different,
more pungent, and one felt that this was where it
originated.
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the
large windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows
with their heads to the walls, and leaving a passage in the

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middle. Most of them were unconscious and paid no

attention to the newcomers. Those who were conscious
raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all
looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of
hope, of relief, reproach, and envy of another’s health.
Rostov went to the middle of the room and looking
through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw
the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently
around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just
before him, almost across the middle of the passage on
the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to
judge by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his
huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was purple, his
eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen,
and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the
veins stood out like cords. He was knocking the back of
his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word
which he kept repeating. Rostov listened and made out the
word. It was ‘drink, drink, a drink!’ Rostov glanced
round, looking for someone who would put this man back
in his place and bring him water.
‘Who looks after the sick here?’ he asked the assistant.

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Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly,

came in from the next room, marching stiffly, and drew
up in front of Rostov.
‘Good day, your honor!’ he shouted, rolling his eyes at
Rostov and evidently mistaking him for one of the
hospital authorities.
‘Get him to his place and give him some water,’ said
Rostov, pointing to the Cossack.
‘Yes, your honor,’ the soldier replied complacently,
and rolling his eyes more than ever he drew himself up
still straighter, but did not move.
‘No, it’s impossible to do anything here,’ thought
Rostov, lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but
became aware of an intense look fixed on him on his
right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on an overcoat,
sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a
skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed
on Rostov. The man’s neighbor on one side whispered
something to him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that
the old man wanted to speak to him. He drew nearer and
saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the
other had been amputated above the knee. His neighbor
on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from
him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with

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a snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled and
his eyes were rolled back. Rostov looked at the young
soldier and a cold chill ran down his back.
‘Why, this one seems...’ he began, turning to the
assistant.
‘And how we’ve been begging, your honor,’ said the
old soldier, his jaw quivering. ‘He’s been dead since
morning. After all we’re men, not dogs.’
‘I’ll send someone at once. He shall be taken away-
taken away at once,’ said the assistant hurriedly. ‘Let us
go, your honor.’
‘Yes, yes, let us go,’ said Rostov hastily, and lowering
his eyes and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between
the rows of reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon
him, and went out of the room.

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Chapter XVIII

Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to

the officers’ wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors
of which stood open. There were beds in these rooms and
the sick and wounded officers were lying or sitting on
them. Some were walking about the rooms in hospital
dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the
officers’ ward was a thin little man with one arm, who
was walking about the first room in a nightcap and
hospital dressing gown, with a pipe between his teeth.
Rostov looked at him, trying to remember where he had
seen him before.
‘See where we’ve met again!’ said the little man.
‘Tushin, Tushin, don’t you remember, who gave you a lift
at Schon Grabern? And I’ve had a bit cut off, you see...’
he went on with a smile, pointing to the empty sleeve of
his dressing gown. ‘Looking for Vasili Dmitrich Denisov?
My neighbor,’ he added, when he heard who Rostov
wanted. ‘Here, here,’ and Tushin led him into the next
room, from whence came sounds of several laughing
voices.

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‘How can they laugh, or even live at all here?’ thought

Rostov, still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that
had been so strong in the soldiers’ ward, and still seeming
to see fixed on him those envious looks which had
followed him out from both sides, and the face of that
young soldier with eyes rolled back.
Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the
blanket, though it was nearly noon.
‘Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?’ he called
out, still in the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov
noticed sadly that under this habitual ease and animation
some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed itself in the
expression of Denisov’s face and the intonations of his
voice.
His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed
even now, six weeks after he had been hit. His face had
the same swollen pallor as the faces of the other hospital
patients, but it was not this that struck Rostov. What
struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to see him,
and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the
regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when
Rostov spoke of these matters did not listen.
Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be
reminded of the regiment, or in general of that other free

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life which was going on outside the hospital. He seemed

to try to forget that old life and was only interested in the
affair with the commissariat officers. On Rostov’s inquiry
as to how the matter stood, he at once produced from
under his pillow a paper he had received from the
commission and the rough draft of his answer to it. He
became animated when he began reading his paper and
specially drew Rostov’s attention to the stinging
rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital
companions, who had gathered round Rostov- a fresh
arrival from the world outside- gradually began to
disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his answer.
Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had
already heard that story more than once and were tired of
it. Only the man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan,
continued to sit on his bed, gloomily frowning and
smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin still listened,
shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of the
reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.
‘But what I say is,’ he said, turning to Rostov, ‘it
would be best simply to petition the Emperor for pardon.
They say great rewards will now be distributed, and
surely a pardon would be granted...’

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‘Me petition the Empewo’!’ exclaimed Denisov, in a

voice to which he tried hard to give the old energy and
fire, but which sounded like an expression of irritable
impotence. ‘What for? If I were a wobber I would ask
mercy, but I’m being court-martialed for bwinging
wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I’m not afwaid of
anyone. I’ve served the Tsar and my countwy honowably
and have not stolen! And am I to be degwaded?... Listen,
I’m w’iting to them stwaight. This is what I say: ‘If I had
wobbed the Tweasuwy...’’
‘It’s certainly well written,’ said Tushin, ‘but that’s not
the point, Vasili Dmitrich,’ and he also turned to Rostov.
‘One has to submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn’t want to.
You know the auditor told you it was a bad business.
‘Well, let it be bad,’ said Denisov.
‘The auditor wrote out a petition for you,’ continued
Tushin, ‘and you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman
to take it. No doubt he’ (indicating Rostov) ‘has
connections on the staff. You won’t find a better
opportunity.’
‘Haven’t I said I’m not going to gwovel?’ Denisov
interrupted him, went on reading his paper.
Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov,
though he instinctively felt that the way advised by

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Tushin and the other officers was the safest, and though
he would have been glad to be of service to Denisov. He
knew his stubborn will and straightforward hasty temper.
When the reading of Denisov’s virulent reply, which
took more than an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing,
and he spent the rest of the day in a most dejected state of
mind amid Denisov’s hospital comrades, who had round
him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.
Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave,
he asked Denisov whether he had no commission for him.
‘Yes, wait a bit,’ said Denisov, glancing round at the
officers, and taking his papers from under his pillow he
went to the window, where he had an inkpot, and sat
down to write.
‘It seems it’s no use knocking one’s head against a
wall!’ he said, coming from the window and giving
Rostov a large envelope. In it was the petition to the
Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which Denisov,
without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat
officials, simply asked for pardon.
‘Hand it in. It seems..’
He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.

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Chapter XIX

Having returned to the regiment and told the

commander the state of Denisov’s affairs, Rostov rode to
Tilsit with the letter to the Emperor.
On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian
Emperors arrived in Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked
the important personage on whom he was in attendance,
to include him in the suite appointed for the stay at Tilsit.
‘I should like to see the great man,’ he said, alluding to
Napoleon, whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had
always called Buonaparte.
‘You are speaking of Buonaparte?’ asked the general,
smiling.
Boris looked at his general inquiringly and
immediately saw that he was being tested.
‘I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon,’ he
replied. The general patted him on the shoulder, with a
smile.
‘You will go far,’ he said, and took him to Tilsit with
him.
Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the
day the two Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated

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with monograms, saw Napoleon pass before the French

Guards on the farther bank of the river, saw the pensive
face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a
tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon’s
arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how
Napoleon- reaching the raft first- stepped quickly forward
to meet Alexander and held out his hand to him, and how
they both retired into the pavilion. Since he had begun to
move in the highest circles Boris had made it his habit to
watch attentively all that went on around him and to note
it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the
names of those who had come with Napoleon and about
the uniforms they wore, and listened attentively to words
spoken by important personages. At the moment the
Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch,
and did not forget to look at it again when Alexander
came out. The interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three
minutes. He noted this down that same evening, among
other facts he felt to be of historic importance. As the
Emperor’s suite was a very small one, it was a matter of
great importance, for a man who valued his success in the
service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview
between the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this,
Boris felt that henceforth his position was fully assured.

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He had not only become known, but people had grown

accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had
executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the
latter knew his face, and all those at court, far from cold-
shouldering him as at first when they considered him a
newcomer, would now have been surprised had he been
absent.
Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count
Zhilinski. Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich,
and passionately fond of the French, and almost every day
of the stay at Tilsit, French officers of the Guard and from
French headquarters were dining and lunching with him
and Boris.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count
Zhilinski arranged a supper for his French friends. The
guest of honor was an aide-de-camp of Napoleon’s, there
were also several French officers of the Guard, and a page
of Napoleon’s, a young lad of an old aristocratic French
family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the darkness
to avoid being recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit
and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.
Rostov, in common with the whole army from which
he came, was far from having experienced the change of
feeling toward Napoleon and the French- who from being

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foes had suddenly become friends- that had taken place at

headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte and the
French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,
contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of
Platov’s Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if
Napoleon were taken prisoner he would be treated not as
a sovereign, but as a criminal. Quite lately, happening to
meet a wounded French colonel on the road, Rostov had
maintained with heat that peace was impossible between a
legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov
was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of
French officers in Boris’ lodging, dressed in uniforms he
had been accustomed to see from quite a different point of
view from the outposts of the flank. As soon as he noticed
a French officer, who thrust his head out of the door, that
warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced
at the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped
at the threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy
lived there. Boris, hearing a strange voice in the
anteroom, came out to meet him. An expression of
annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face on first
recognizing Rostov.

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‘Ah, it’s you? Very glad, very glad to see you,’ he said,
however, coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov
had noticed his first impulse.
‘I’ve come at a bad time I think. I should not have
come, but I have business,’ he said coldly.
‘No, I only wonder how you managed to get away
from your regiment. Dans un moment je suis a vous,’* he
said, answering someone who called him.
*"In a minute I shall be at your disposal.’
‘I see I’m intruding,’ Rostov repeated.
The look of annoyance had already disappeared from
Boris’ face: having evidently reflected and decided how
to act, he very quietly took both Rostov’s hands and led
him into the next room. His eyes, looking serenely and
steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by something, as
if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it
seemed to Rostov.
‘Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong
time!’ said Boris, and he led him into the room where the
supper table was laid and introduced him to his guests,
explaining that he was not a civilian, but an hussar officer,
and an old friend of his.

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‘Count Zhilinski- le Comte N. N.- le Capitaine S. S.,’

said he, naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at
the Frenchmen, bowed reluctantly, and remained silent.
Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian
person very willingly into his circle and did not speak to
Rostov. Boris did not appear to notice the constraint the
newcomer produced and, with the same pleasant
composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with
which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the
conversation. One of the Frenchmen, with the politeness
characteristic of his countrymen, addressed the
obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter had
probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.
‘No, I came on business,’ replied Rostov, briefly.
Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he
noticed the look of dissatisfaction on Boris’ face, and as
always happens to those in a bad humor, it seemed to him
that everyone regarded him with aversion and that he was
in everybody’s way. He really was in their way, for he
alone took no part in the conversation which again
became general. The looks the visitors cast on him
seemed to say: ‘And what is he sitting here for?’ He rose
and went up to Boris.

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‘Anyhow, I’m in your way,’ he said in a low tone.

‘Come and talk over my business and I’ll go away.’
‘Oh, no, not at all,’ said Boris. ‘But if you are tired,
come and lie down in my room and have a rest.’
‘Yes, really..’
They went into the little room where Boris slept.
Rostov, without sitting down, began at once, irritably (as
if Boris were to blame in some way) telling him about
Denisov’s affair, asking him whether, through his general,
he could and would intercede with the Emperor on
Denisov’s behalf and get Denisov’s petition handed in.
When he and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first
time that he could not look Boris in the face without a
sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one leg crossed over
the other and stroking his left hand with the slender
fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens
to the report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now
gazing straight into Rostov’s eyes with the same veiled
look. Each time this happened Rostov felt uncomfortable
and cast down his eyes.
‘I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty
is very severe in such affairs. I think it would be best not
to bring it before the Emperor, but to apply to the
commander of the corps.... But in general, I think..’

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‘So you don’t want to do anything? Well then, say so!’

Rostov almost shouted, not looking Boris in the face.
Boris smiled.
‘On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..’
At that moment Zhilinski’s voice was heard calling
Boris.
‘Well then, go, go, go...’ said Rostov, and refusing
supper and remaining alone in the little room, he walked
up and down for a long time, hearing the lighthearted
French conversation from the next room.
CHAPTER XX
Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a
petition on Denisov’s behalf. He could not himself go to
the general in attendance as he was in mufti and had come
to Tilsit without permission to do so, and Boris, even had
he wished to, could not have done so on the following
day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander
received the Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon
the Order of St. Andrew of the First Degree, and a dinner
had been arranged for the evening, given by a battalion of
the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk battalion. The
Emperors were to be present at that banquet.

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Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris

that, when the latter looked in after supper, he pretended
to be asleep, and early next morning went away, avoiding
Boris. In his civilian clothes and a round hat, he wandered
about the town, staring at the French and their uniforms
and at the streets and houses where the Russian and
French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables
being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw
the Russian and French colors draped from side to side of
the streets, with hugh monograms A and N. In the
windows of the houses also flags and bunting were
displayed.
‘Boris doesn’t want to help me and I don’t want to ask
him. That’s settled,’ thought Nicholas. ‘All is over
between us, but I won’t leave here without having done
all I can for Denisov and certainly not without getting his
letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is here!’
thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the
house where Alexander lodged.
Saddled horses were standing before the house and the
suite were assembling, evidently preparing for the
Emperor to come out.
‘I may see him at any moment,’ thought Rostov. ‘If
only I were to hand the letter direct to him and tell him

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all... could they really arrest me for my civilian clothes?

Surely not! He would understand on whose side justice
lies. He understands everything, knows everything. Who
can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even
if they did arrest me for being here, what would it
matter?’ thought he, looking at an officer who was
entering the house the Emperor occupied. ‘After all,
people do go in.... It’s all nonsense! I’ll go in and hand the
letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for
Drubetskoy who drives me to it!’ And suddenly with a
determination he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for
the letter in his pocket and went straight to the house.
‘No, I won’t miss my opportunity now, as I did after
Austerlitz,’ he thought, expecting every moment to meet
the monarch, and conscious of the blood that rushed to his
heart at the thought. ‘I will fall at his feet and beseech
him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will even thank
me. ‘I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy
injustice is the greatest happiness,’’ Rostov fancied the
sovereign saying. And passing people who looked after
him with curiosity, he entered the porch of the Emperor’s
house.

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A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to

the right he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase,
was a door leading to the lower floor.
‘Whom do you want?’ someone inquired.
‘To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty,’ said
Nicholas, with a tremor in his voice.
‘A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on
duty’ (he was shown the door leading downstairs), ‘only it
won’t be accepted.’
On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew
frightened at what he was doing; the thought of meeting
the Emperor at any moment was so fascinating and
consequently so alarming that he was ready to run away,
but the official who had questioned him opened the door,
and Rostov entered.
A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches
and high boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently
only just put on, standing in that room, and his valet was
buttoning on to the back of his breeches a new pair of
handsome silk-embroidered braces that, for some reason,
attracted Rostov’s attention. This man was was speaking
to someone in the adjoining room.
‘A good figure and in her first bloom,’ he was saying,
but on seeing Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.

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‘What is it? A petition?’

‘What is it?’ asked the person in the other room.
‘Another petitioner,’ answered the man with the
braces.
‘Tell him to come later. He’ll be coming out directly,
we must go.’
‘Later... later! Tomorrow. It’s too late..’
Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the
braces stopped him.
‘Whom have you come from? Who are you?’
‘I come from Major Denisov,’ answered Rostov.
‘Are you an officer?’
‘Lieutenant Count Rostov.’
‘What audacity! Hand it in through your commander.
And go along with you... go,’ and he continued to put on
the uniform the valet handed him.
Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the
porch there were many officers and generals in full parade
uniform, whom he had to pass.
Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of
finding himself at any moment face to face with the
Emperor and being put to shame and arrested in his
presence, fully alive now to the impropriety of his
conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes,

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was making his way out of the house through the brilliant
suite when a familiar voice called him and a hand
detained him.
‘What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?’ asked
a deep voice.
It was a cavalry general who had obtained the
Emperor’s special favor during this campaign, and who
had formerly commanded the division in which Rostov
was serving.
Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing
the kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside
and in an excited voice told him the whole affair, asking
him to intercede for Denisov, whom the general knew.
Having heard Rostov to the end, the general shook his
head gravely.
‘I’m sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the
letter.’
Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished
explaining Denisov’s case, when hasty steps and the
jingling of spurs were heard on the stairs, and the general,
leaving him, went to the porch. The gentlemen of the
Emperor’s suite ran down the stairs and went to their
horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at
Austerlitz, led up the Emperor’s horse, and the faint creak

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of a footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs.

Forgetting the danger of being recognized, Rostov went
close to the porch, together with some inquisitive
civilians, and again, after two years, saw those features he
adored: that same face and same look and step, and the
same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of
enthusiasm and love for his sovereign rose again in
Rostov’s soul in all its old force. In the uniform of the
Preobrazhensk regiment- white chamois-leather breeches
and high boots- and wearing a star Rostov did not know
(it was that of the Legion d’honneur), the monarch came
out into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his
hat under his arm. He stopped and looked about him,
brightening everything around by his glance. He spoke a
few words to some of the generals, and, recognizing the
former commander of Rostov’s division, smiled and
beckoned to him.
All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general
talking for some time to the Emperor.
The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step
toward his horse. Again the crowd of members of the
suite and street gazers (among whom was Rostov) moved
nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside his horse, with his
hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the cavalry

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general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be

heard by all:
‘I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is
stronger than I,’ and he raised his foot to the stirrup.
The general bowed his head respectfully, and the
monarch mounted and rode down the street at a gallop.
Beside himself with enthusiasm, Rostov ran after him
with the crowd.

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Chapter XXI

The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one

another, a battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood
on the right and a battalion of the French Guards in their
bearskin caps on the left.
As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions,
which presented arms, another group of horsemen
galloped up to the opposite flank, and at the head of them
Rostov recognized Napoleon. It could be no one else. He
came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue uniform
open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over
his shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray
Arab horse with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth.
On approaching Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did
so, Rostov, with his cavalryman’s eye, could not help
noticing that Napoleon did not sit well or firmly in the
saddle. The battalions shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Vive
l’Empereur!’ Napoleon said something to Alexander, and
both Emperors dismounted and took each other’s hands.
Napoleon’s face wore an unpleasant and artificial smile.
Alexander was saying something affable to him.

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In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes’

horses, which were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept
his eyes on every movement of Alexander and Bonaparte.
It struck him as a surprise that Alexander treated
Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease
with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were
an everyday matter to him.
Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their
suites, approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk
battalion and came straight up to the crowd standing
there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close to the
Emperors that Rostov, standing in the front row, was
afraid he might be recognized.
‘Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of
Honor to the bravest of your soldiers,’ said a sharp,
precise voice, articulating every letter.
This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up
straight into Alexander’s eyes. Alexander listened
attentively to what was said to him and, bending his head,
smiled pleasantly.
‘To him who has borne himself most bravely in this
last war,’ added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as
with a composure and assurance exasperating to Rostov,
he ran his eyes over the Russian ranks drawn up before

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him, who all presented arms with their eyes fixed on their
Emperor.
‘Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?’
said Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince
Kozlovski, the commander of the battalion.
Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his
small white hand, tore it in doing so, and threw it away.
An aide-de-camp behind him rushed forward and picked
it up.
‘To whom shall it be given?’ the Emperor Alexander
asked Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.
‘To whomever Your Majesty commands.’
The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and,
glancing back, remarked:
‘But we must give him an answer.’
Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included
Rostov in his scrutiny.
‘Can it be me?’ thought Rostov.
‘Lazarev!’ the colonel called, with a frown, and
Lazarev, the first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly
forward.
‘Where are you off to? Stop here!’ voices whispered to
Lazarev who did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped,
casting a sidelong look at his colonel in alarm. His face

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twitched, as often happens to soldiers called before the

ranks.
Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump
little hand out behind him as if to take something. The
members of his suite, guessing at once what he wanted,
moved about and whispered as they passed something
from one to another, and a page- the same one Rostov had
seen the previous evening at Boris’- ran forward and,
bowing respectfully over the outstretched hand and not
keeping it waiting a moment, laid in it an Order on a red
ribbon. Napoleon, without looking, pressed two fingers
together and the badge was between them. Then he
approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently
gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor
Alexander to imply that what he was now doing was done
for the sake of his ally, and the small white hand holding
the Order touched one of Lazarev’s buttons. It was as if
Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to
deign to touch that soldier’s breast for the soldier to be
forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from
everyone else in the world. Napoleon merely laid the
cross on Lazarev’s breast and, dropping his hand, turned
toward Alexander as though sure that the cross would
adhere there. And it really did.

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Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately

seized the cross and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev
glanced morosely at the little man with white hands who
was doing something to him and, still standing motionless
presenting arms, looked again straight into Alexander’s
eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go
away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he
remained for some time in that rigid position.
The Emperors remounted and rode away. The
Preobrazhensk battalion, breaking rank, mingled with the
French Guards and sat down at the tables prepared for
them.
Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French
officers embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his
hands. Crowds of officers and civilians drew near merely
to see him. A rumble of Russian and French voices and
laughter filled the air round the tables in the square. Two
officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy,
passed by Rostov.
‘What d’you think of the treat? All on silver plate,’ one
of them was saying. ‘Have you seen Lazarev?’
‘I have.’
‘Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them
a dinner.’

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‘Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred

francs’ pension for life.’
‘Here’s a cap, lads!’ shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier,
donning a shaggy French cap.
‘It’s a fine thing! First-rate!’
‘Have you heard the password?’ asked one Guards’
officer of another. ‘The day before yesterday it was
‘Napoleon, France, bravoure’; yesterday, ‘Alexandre,
Russie, grandeur.’ One day our Emperor gives it and next
day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St.
George’s Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has
to be done. He must respond in kind.’
Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the
Preobrazhensk banquet. On his way back, he noticed
Rostov standing by the corner of a house.
‘Rostov! How d’you do? We missed one another,’ he
said, and could not refrain from asking what was the
matter, so strangely dismal and troubled was Rostov’s
face.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ replied Rostov.
‘You’ll call round?’
‘Yes, I will.’
Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching
the feast from a distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful

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process was going on which he could not bring to a

conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he
remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his
submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs
torn off and its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall
that hospital stench of dead flesh that he looked round to
see where the smell came from. Next he thought of that
self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who
was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander.
Then why those severed arms and legs and those dead
men?... Then again he thought of Lazarev rewarded and
Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself
harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.
The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating
and a sense of hunger recalled him from these reflections;
he had to get something to eat before going away. He
went to a hotel he had noticed that morning. There he
found so many people, among them officers who, like
himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had
difficulty in getting a dinner. Two officers of his own
division joined him. The conversation naturally turned on
the peace. The officers, his comrades, like most of the
army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after the
battle of Friedland. They said that had we held out a little

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longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops

had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and
drank (chiefly the latter) in silence. He finished a couple
of bottles of wine by himself. The process in his mind
went on tormenting him without reaching a conclusion.
He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet could not get
rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers’ saying that
it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began
shouting with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to
the surprise of the officers:
‘How can you judge what’s best?’ he cried, the blood
suddenly rushing to his face. ‘How can you judge the
Emperor’s actions? What right have we to argue? We
cannot comprehend either the Emperor’s or his actions!’
‘But I never said a word about the Emperor!’ said the
officer, justifying himself, and unable to understand
Rostov’s outburst, except on the supposition that he was
drunk.
But Rostov did not listen to him.
‘We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and
nothing more,’ he went on. ‘If we are ordered to die, we
must die. If we’re punished, it means that we have
deserved it, it’s not for us to judge. If the Emperor pleases
to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an

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alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to

do. If once we begin judging and arguing about
everything, nothing sacred will be left! That way we shall
be saying there is no God- nothing!’ shouted Nicholas,
banging the table- very little to the point as it seemed to
his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own
thoughts.
‘Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to
think! That’s all....’ said he.
‘And to drink,’ said one of the officers, not wishing to
quarrel.
‘Yes, and to drink,’ assented Nicholas. ‘Hullo there!
Another bottle!’ he shouted.
In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a
fresh interview with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the
upper circles of Petersburg there was much talk of the
grandeur of this important meeting.

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Chapter XXII

In 1809 the intimacy between ‘the world’s two

arbiters,’ as Napoleon and Alexander were called, was
such that when Napoleon declared war on Austria a
Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our
old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of
Austria, and in court circles the possibility of marriage
between Napoleon and one of Alexander’s sisters was
spoken of. But besides considerations of foreign policy,
the attention of Russian society was at that time keenly
directed on the internal changes that were being
undertaken in all the departments of government.
Life meanwhile- real life, with its essential interests of
health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual
interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love,
friendship, hatred, and passions- went on as usual,
independently of and apart from political friendship or
enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the
schemes of reconstruction.

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BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10

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Chapter I

Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the

country.
All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates- and
constantly changing from one thing to another had never
accomplished- were carried out by Prince Andrew
without display and without perceptible difficulty.
He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which
Pierre lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this
set things going.
On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were
liberated and became free agricultural laborers- this being
one of the first examples of the kind in Russia. On other
estates the serfs’ compulsory labor was commuted for a
quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for Bogucharovo
at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and
writing to the children of the peasants and household
serfs.
Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with
his father and his son, who was still in the care of nurses.
The other half he spent in ‘Bogucharovo Cloister,’ as his
father called Prince Andrew’s estate. Despite the
indifference to the affairs of the world he had expressed to

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Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received

many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or
his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of
life, these people lagged behind himself- who never left
the country- in knowledge of what was happening in
home and foreign affairs.
Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a
great variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time
busy with a critical of survey our last two unfortunate
campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for a reform
of the army rules and regulations.
In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan
estates which had been inherited by his son, whose
guardian he was.
Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche
looking at the new grass, the first leaves on the birches,
and the first puffs of white spring clouds floating across
the clear blue sky. He was not thinking of anything, but
looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to side.
They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre
the year before. They went through the muddy village,
past threshing floors and green fields of winter rye,
downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge, uphill
where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips

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of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and

there, and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the
road. In the forest it was almost hot, no wind could be
felt. The birches with their sticky green leaves were
motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades
of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year’s
leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees
scattered here and there among the birches was an
unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the forest the
horses began to snort and sweated visibly.
Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman;
the latter assented. But apparently the coachman’s
sympathy was not enough for Peter, and he turned on the
box toward his master.
‘How pleasant it is, your excellency!’ he said with a
respectful smile.
‘What?’
‘It’s pleasant, your excellency!’
‘What is he talking about?’ thought Prince Andrew.
‘Oh, the spring, I suppose,’ he thought as he turned round.
‘Yes, really everything is green already.... How early! The
birches and cherry and alders too are coming out.... But
the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is one oak!’

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At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten

times the age of the birches that formed the forest, it was
ten times as thick and twice as tall as they. It was an
enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a man could
embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had
been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge
ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its
gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and
scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the
dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and
this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice
either the spring or the sunshine.
‘Spring, love, happiness!’ this oak seemed to say. ‘Are
you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly
repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud?
There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those
cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking
out my broken and barked fingers just where they have
grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have
grown so I stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and
your lies.’
As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned
several times to look at that oak, as if expecting
something from it. Under the oak, too, were flowers and

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grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,

misshapen, and grim as ever.
‘Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right,’ thought
Prince Andrew. ‘Let others- the young- yield afresh to
that fraud, but we know life, our life is finished!’
A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but
mournfully pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with
that tree. During this journey he, as it were, considered his
life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion, restful in its
hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything
anew- but that he must live out his life, content to do no
harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring anything.

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Chapter II

Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility

for the district in connection with the affairs of the
Ryazan estate of which he was trustee. This Marshal was
Count Ilya Rostov, and in the middle of May Prince
Andrew went to visit him.
It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was
already clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on
passing near water one longed to bathe.
Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the
business about which he had to speak to the Marshal, was
driving up the avenue in the grounds of the Rostovs’
house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish cries behind
some trees on the right and saw group of girls running to
cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer
to him ran a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a
yellow chintz dress, with a white handkerchief on her
head from under which loose locks of hair escaped. The
girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a
stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.
Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The
day was so beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around

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so gay, but that slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to
know, of his existence and was contented and cheerful in
her own separate- probably foolish- but bright and happy
life. ‘What is she so glad about? What is she thinking of?
Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement of
the Ryazan serfs’ quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why
is she so happy?’ Prince Andrew asked himself with
instinctive curiosity.
In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just
as he had done in former years, that is, entertaining almost
the whole province with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and
music. He was glad to see Prince Andrew, as he was to
see any new visitor, and insisted on his staying the night.
During the dull day, in the course of which he was
entertained by his elderly hosts and by the more important
of the visitors (the old count’s house was crowded on
account of an approaching name day), Prince Andrew
repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among
the younger members of the company, and asked himself
each time, ‘What is she thinking about? Why is she so
glad?’
That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long
unable to sleep. He read awhile and then put out his
candle, but relit it. It was hot in the room, the inside

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shutters of which were closed. He was cross with the

stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had made him
stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had
not yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself
for having stayed.
He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon
as he opened the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long
been watching for this, burst into the room. He opened the
casement. The night was fresh, bright, and very still. Just
before the window was a row of pollard trees, looking
black on one side and with a silvery light on the other.
Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy
vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there.
Farther back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with
dew, to the right was a leafy tree with brilliantly white
trunk and branches, and above it shone the moon, nearly
at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring sky. Prince
Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his
eyes rested on that sky.
His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms
above were also awake. He heard female voices overhead.
‘Just once more,’ said a girlish voice above him which
Prince Andrew recognized at once.

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‘But when are you coming to bed?’ replied another

voice.
‘I won’t, I can’t sleep, what’s the use? Come now for
the last time.’
Two girlish voices sang a musical passage- the end of
some song.
‘Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there’s an end
of it.’
‘You go to sleep, but I can’t,’ said the first voice,
coming nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning
right out, for the rustle of her dress and even her breathing
could be heard. Everything was stone-still, like the moon
and its light and the shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared
not stir, for fear of betraying his unintentional presence.
‘Sonya! Sonya!’ he again heard the first speaker. ‘Oh,
how can you sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how
glorious! Do wake up, Sonya!’ she said almost with tears
in her voice. ‘There never, never was such a lovely night
before!’
Sonya made some reluctant reply.
‘Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely!
Come here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you
see? I feel like sitting down on my heels, putting my arms

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round my knees like this, straining tight, as tight as

possible, and flying away! Like this...’
‘Take care, you’ll fall out.’
He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya’s
disapproving voice: ‘It’s past one o’clock.’
‘Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!’
Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was
still sitting there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle
and at times a sigh.
‘O God, O God! What does it mean?’ she suddenly
exclaimed. ‘To bed then, if it must be!’ and she slammed
the casement.
‘For her I might as well not exist!’ thought Prince
Andrew while he listened to her voice, for some reason
expecting yet fearing that she might say something about
him. ‘There she is again! As if it were on purpose,’
thought he.
In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected
turmoil of youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the
whole tenor of his life, that unable to explain his
condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep at once.

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Chapter III

Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the

count, and not waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince
Andrew set off for home.
It was already the beginning of June when on his
return journey he drove into the birch forest where the
gnarled old oak had made so strange and memorable an
impression on him. In the forest the harness bells sounded
yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before,
for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young
firs dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general
beauty but, lending themselves to the mood around, were
delicately green with fluffy young shoots.
The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was
gathering, but only a small cloud had scattered some
raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road and the sappy
leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in the shade,
the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and
scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in
blossom, the nightingales trilled, and their voices
reverberated now near, now far away.

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‘Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I

agreed,’ thought Prince Andrew. ‘But where is it?’ he
again wondered, gazing at the left side of the road, and
without recognizing it he looked with admiration at the
very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,
spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood
rapt and slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun.
Neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and
sorrows were any of them in evidence now. Through the
hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs,
leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the
old veteran could have produced.
‘Yes, it is the same oak,’ thought Prince Andrew, and
all at once he was seized by an unreasoning springtime
feeling of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his
life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz with the lofty
heavens, his wife’s dead reproachful face, Pierre at the
ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that
night itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly
to his mind.
‘No, life is not over at thirty-one!’ Prince Andrew
suddenly decided finally and decisively. ‘It is not enough
for me to know what I have in me- everyone must know
it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to fly away into

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the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not
be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from
it, but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and
I may live in harmony!’
On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to
Petersburg that autumn and found all sorts of reasons for
this decision. A whole serics of sensible and logical
considerations showing it to be essential for him to go to
Petersburg, and even to re-enter the service, kept
springing up in his mind. He could not now understand
how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of
taking an active share in life, just as a month before he
had not understood how the idea of leaving the quiet
country could ever enter his head. It now seemed clear to
him that all his experience of life must be senselessly
wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and
again played an active part in life. He did not even
remember how formerly, on the strength of similar
wretched logical arguments, it had seemed obvious that
he would be degrading himself if he now, after the lessons
he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the
possibility of being useful and in the possibility of
happiness or love. Now reason suggested quite the
opposite. After that journey to Ryazan he found the

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country dull; his former pursuits no longer interested him,

and often when sitting alone in his study he got up, went
to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then
he would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who
with hair curled a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at
him out of the gilt frame. She did not now say those
former terrible words to him, but looked simply, merrily,
and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing his
arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning,
now smiling, as he reflected on those irrational,
inexpressible thoughts, secret as a crime, which altered
his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with fame,
with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman’s beauty
and love. And if anyone came into his room at such
moments he was particularly cold, stern, and above all
unpleasantly logical.
‘My dear,’ Princess Mary entering at such a moment
would say, ‘little Nicholas can’t go out today, it’s very
cold.’
‘If it were hot,’ Prince Andrew would reply at such
times very dryly to his sister, ‘he could go out in his
smock, but as it is cold he must wear warm clothes, which
were designed for that purpose. That is what follows from
the fact that it is cold; and not that a child who needs fresh

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air should remain at home,’ he would add with extreme

logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical
emotions that stirred within him.
At such moments Princess Mary would think how
intellectual work dries men up.

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Chapter IV

Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809.

It was the time when the youthful Speranski was at the
zenith of his fame and his reforms were being pushed
forward with the greatest energy. That same August the
Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his leg,
and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving
Speranski every day and no one else. At that time the two
famous decrees were being prepared that so agitated
society- abolishing court ranks and introducing
examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate
Assessor and State Councilor- and not merely these but a
whole state constitution, intended to change the existing
order of government in Russia: legal, administrative, and
financial, from the Council of State down to the district
tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams with which the
Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which
he had tried to put into effect with the aid of his
associates, Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and
Strogonov- whom he himself in jest had called his Comite
de salut public- were taking shape and being realized.

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Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the

civil side, and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his
arrival Prince Andrew, as a gentleman of the chamber,
presented himself at court and at a levee. The Emperor,
though he met him twice, did not favor him with a single
word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that
he was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter
disliked his face and personality generally, and in the
cold, repellent glance the Emperor gave him, he now
found further confirmation of this surmise. The courtiers
explained the Emperor’s neglect of him by His Majesty’s
displeasure at Bolkonski’s not having served since 1805.
‘I know myself that one cannot help one’s sympathies
and antipathies,’ thought Prince Andrew, ‘so it will not do
to present my proposal for the reform of the army
regulations to the Emperor personally, but the project will
speak for itself.’
He mentioned what he had written to an old field
marshal, a friend of his father’s. The field marshal made
an appointment to see him, received him graciously, and
promised to inform the Emperor. A few days later Prince
Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the
Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.

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On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count

Arakcheev’s waiting room at nine in the morning.
He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen
him, and all he had heard of him inspired him with but
little respect for the man.
‘He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor,
and I need not concern myself about his personal
qualities: he has been commissioned to consider my
project, so he alone can get it adopted,’ thought Prince
Andrew as he waited among a number of important and
unimportant people in Count Arakcheev’s waiting room.
During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince
Andrew had seen the anterooms of many important men,
and the different types of such rooms were well known to
him. Count Arakcheev’s anteroom had quite a special
character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting
their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and
servility; the faces of those of higher rank expressed a
common feeling of awkwardness, covered by a mask of
unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and
the person for whom they were waiting. Some walked
thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and laughed.
Prince Andrew heard the nickname ‘Sila Andreevich’ and
the words, ‘Uncle will give it to us hot,’ in reference to

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Count Arakcheev. One general (an important personage),

evidently feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat
crossing and uncrossing his legs and smiling
contemptuously to himself.
But the moment the door opened one feeling alone
appeared on all faces- that of fear. Prince Andrew for the
second time asked the adjutant on duty to take in his
name, but received an ironical look and was told that his
turn would come in due course. After some others had
been shown in and out of the minister’s room by the
adjutant on duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by
his humiliated and frightened air was admitted at that
terrible door. This officer’s audience lasted a long time.
Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was
heard from the other side of the door, and the officer- with
pale face and trembling lips- came out and passed through
the waiting room, clutching his head.
After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door
and the officer on duty said in a whisper, ‘To the right, at
the window.’
Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at
the table a man of forty with a long waist, a long closely
cropped head, deep wrinkles, scowling brows above dull
greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red nose.

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Arakcheev turned his head toward him without looking at

him.
‘What is your petition?’ asked Arakcheev.
‘I am not petitioning, your excellency,’ returned Prince
Andrew quietly.
Arakcheev’s eyes turned toward him.
‘Sit down,’ said he. ‘Prince Bolkonski?’
‘I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the
Emperor has deigned to send your excellency a project
submitted by me..’
‘You see, my dear sir, I have read your project,’
interrupted Arakcheev, uttering only the first words
amiably and then- again without looking at Prince
Andrew- relapsing gradually into a tone of grumbling
contempt. ‘You are proposing new military laws? There
are many laws but no one to carry out the old ones.
Nowadays everybody designs laws, it is easier writing
than doing.’
‘I came at His Majesty the Emperor’s wish to learn
from your excellency how you propose to deal with the
memorandum I have presented,’ said Prince Andrew
politely.
‘I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum
and sent it to the committee. I do not approve of it,’ said

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Arakcheev, rising and taking a paper from his writing

table. ‘Here!’ and he handed it to Prince Andrew.
Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without
capital letters, misspelled, and without punctuation:
‘Unsoundly constructed because resembles an imitation of
the French military code and from the Articles of War
needlessly deviating.’
‘To what committee has the memorandum been
referred?’ inquired Prince Andrew.
‘To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have
recommended that your honor should be appointed a
member, but without a salary.’
Prince Andrew smiled.
‘I don’t want one.’
‘A member without salary,’ repeated Arakcheev. ‘I
have the honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is
there?’ he shouted, bowing to Prince Andrew.

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Chapter V

While waiting for the announcement of his

appointment to the committee Prince Andrew looked up
his former acquaintances, particularly those he knew to be
in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he
now experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve
of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and
irresistibly attracted to the ruling circles where the future,
on which the fate of millions depended, was being
shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity
of the uninitiated. the reserve of the initiated, the hurry
and preoccupation of everyone, and the innumerable
committees and commissions of whose existence he
learned every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in
Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the
commander in chief of which was a mysterious person he
did not know, but who was supposed to be a man of
genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction
of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski
its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the
question of the army regulations quickly receded to a
secondary place in his consciousness.

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Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure

good reception in the highest and most diverse Petersburg
circles of the day. The reforming party cordially
welcomed and courted him, the first place because he was
reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly
because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the
reputation of being a liberal. The party of the old and
dissatisfied, who censured the innovations, turned to him
expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the
reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The
feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he
was rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a
newcomer, with a halo of romance on account of his
supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides
this the general opinion of all who had known him
previously was that he had greatly improved during these
last five years, having softened and grown more manly,
lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony,
and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People
talked about him, were interested in him, and wanted to
meet him.
The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev,
Prince Andrew spent the evening at Count Kochubey’s.
He told the count of his interview with Sila Andreevich

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(Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that nickname with the

same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the
Minister of War’s anteroom).
‘Mon cher, even in this case you can’t do without
Michael Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages
everything. I’ll speak to him. He has promised to come
this evening.’
‘What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?’
asked Prince Andrew.
Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at
Bolkonski’s simplicity.
‘We were talking to him about you a few days ago,’
Kochubey continued, ‘and about your freed plowmen.’
‘Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?’ said
an old man of Catherine’s day, turning contemptuously
toward Bolkonski.
‘It was a small estate that brought in no profit,’ replied
Prince Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to
irritate the old man uselessly.
‘Afraid of being late...’ said the old man, looking at
Kochubey.
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ he continued.
‘Who will plow the land if they are set free? It is easy to
write laws, but difficult to rule.... Just the same as now- I

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ask you, Count- who will be heads of the departments

when everybody has to pass examinations?’
‘Those who pass the examinations, I suppose,’ replied
Kochubey, crossing his legs and glancing round.
‘Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a
splendid man, a priceless man, but he’s sixty. Is he to go
up for examination?’
‘Yes, that’s a difficulty, as education is not at all
general, but..’
Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince
Andrew by the arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair
man of about forty with a large open forehead and a long
face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, who was just
entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat
with a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left
breast. It was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him
at once, and felt a throb within him, as happens at critical
moments of life. Whether it was from respect, envy, or
anticipation, he did not know. Speranski’s whole figure
was of a peculiar type that made him easily recognizable.
In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never
seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy
gestures possessed such calmness and self-assurance; he
had never seen so resolute yet gentle an expression as that

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in those half-closed, rather humid eyes, or so firm a smile

that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such a refined,
smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such
delicate whiteness of face or hands- hands which were
broad, but very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness
and softness Prince Andrew had only seen on the faces of
soldiers who had been long in hospital. This was
Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the Emperor and
his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once
met and talked with Napoleon.
Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to
another as people involuntarily do on entering a large
company and was in no hurry to speak. He spoke slowly,
with assurance that he would be listened to, and he looked
only at the person with whom he was conversing.
Prince Andrew followed Speranski’s every word and
movement with particular attention. As happens to some
people, especially to men who judge those near to them
severely, he always on meeting anyone new- especially
anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation-
expected to discover in him the perfection of human
qualities.
Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been
unable to come sooner as he had been detained at the

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palace. He did not say that the Emperor had kept him, and
Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty. When
Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly
turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and
looked at him in silence.
‘I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard
of you, as everyone has,’ he said after a pause.
Kochubey said a few words about the reception
Arakcheev had given Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more
markedly.
‘The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations
is my good friend Monsieur Magnitski,’ he said, fully
articulating every word and syllable, ‘and if you like I can
put you in touch with him.’ He paused at the full stop. ‘I
hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to co-
operate in promoting all that is reasonable.’
A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man
who had talked about his subordinate Pryanichnikov
addressed a question to him.
Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation
watched every movement of Speranski’s: this man, not
long since an insignificant divinity student, who now,
Bolkonski thought, held in his hands- those plump white
hands- the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by

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the extraordinarily disdainful composure with which

Speranski answered the old man. He appeared to address
condescending words to him from an immeasurable
height. When the old man began to speak too loud,
Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the
advantage or disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.
Having talked for a little while in the general circle,
Speranski rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him
along to the other end of the room. It was clear that he
thought it necessary to interest himself in Bolkonski.
‘I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the
animated conversation in which that venerable gentleman
involved me,’ he said with a mildly contemptuous smile,
as if intimating by that smile that he and Prince Andrew
understood the insignificance of the people with whom he
had just been talking. This flattered Prince Andrew. ‘I
have known of you for a long time: first from your action
with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is
very desirable that there should be more imitators; and
secondly because you are one of those gentlemen of the
chamber who have not considered themselves offended
by the new decree concerning the ranks allotted to
courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and tittle-
tattle.’

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‘No,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘my father did not wish me

to take advantage of the privilege. I began the service
from the lower grade.’
‘Your father, a man of the last century, evidently
stands above our contemporaries who so condemn this
measure which merely reestablishes natural justice.’
‘I think, however, that these condemnations have some
ground,’ returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist
Speranski’s influence, of which he began to be conscious.
He did not like to agree with him in everything and felt a
wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke easily and
well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now while
talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in
observing the famous man’s personality.
‘Grounds of personal ambition maybe,’ Speranski put
in quietly.
‘And of state interest to some extent,’ said Prince
Andrew.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Speranski quietly,
lowering his eyes.
‘I am an admirer of Montesquieu,’ replied Prince
Andrew, ‘and his idea that le principe des monarchies est
l’honneur me parait incontestable. Certains droits et

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privileges de la noblesse me paraissent etre des moyens

de soutenir ce sentiment.’*
*"The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me
incontestable. Certain rights and privileges for the
aristocracy appear to me a means of maintaining that
sentiment.’
The smile vanished from Speranski’s white face,
which was much improved by the change. Probably
Prince Andrew’s thought interested him.
‘Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,’*
he began, pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and
speaking even slower than in Russian but quite calmly.
*"If you regard the question from that point of view.’
Speranski went on to say that honor, l’honeur, cannot
be upheld by privileges harmful to the service; that honor,
l’honneur, is either a negative concept of not doing what
is blameworthy or it is a source of emulation in pursuit of
commendation and rewards, which recognize it. His
arguments were concise, simple, and clear.
‘An institution upholding honor, the source of
emulation, is one similar to the Legion d’honneur of the
great Emperor Napoleon, not harmful but helpful to the
success of the service, but not a class or court privilege.’

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‘I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court

privileges have attained the same end,’ returned Prince
Andrew. ‘Every courtier considers himself bound to
maintain his position worthily.’
‘Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege,
Prince,’ said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he
wished to finish amiably an argument which was
embarrassing for his companion. ‘If you will do me the
honor of calling on me on Wednesday,’ he added, ‘I will,
after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may
interest you, and shall also have the pleasure of a more
detailed chat with you.’
Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without
taking leave, and trying to attract as little attention as
possible, he left the room.

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Chapter VI

During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince

Andrew felt the whole trend of thought he had formed
during his life of seclusion quite overshadowed by the
trifling cares that engrossed him in that city.
On returning home in the evening he would jot down
in his notebook four or five necessary calls or
appointments for certain hours. The mechanism of life,
the arrangement of the day so as to be in time everywhere,
absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did
nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only
talked, and talked successfully, of what he had thought
while in the country.
He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he
repeated the same remark on the same day in different
circles. But he was so busy for whole days together that
he had no time to notice that he was thinking of nothing.
As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey’s,
Speranski produced a strong impression on Prince
Andrew on the Wednesday, when he received him tete-a-
tate at his own house and talked to him long and
confidentially.

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To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible

and insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in
someone the living ideal of that perfection toward which
he strove, that he readily believed that in Speranski he had
found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous man.
Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and
possessed the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski
would soon have discovered his weak, human, unheroic
sides; but as it was, Speranski’s strange and logical turn
of mind inspired him with respect all the more because he
did not quite understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either
because he appreciated the other’s capacity or because he
considered it necessary to win him to his side, showed off
his dispassionate calm reasonableness before Prince
Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which
goes hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a
tacit assumption that one’s companion is the only man
besides oneself capable of understanding the folly of the
rest of mankind and the reasonableness and profundity of
one’s own ideas.
During their long conversation on Wednesday evening,
Speranski more than once remarked: ‘We regard
everything that is above the common level of rooted
custom...’ or, with a smile: ‘But we want the wolves to be

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fed and the sheep to be safe...’ or: ‘They cannot

understand this...’ and all in a way that seemed to say:
‘We, you and I, understand what they are and who we
are.’
This first long conversation with Speranski only
strengthened in Prince Andrew the feeling he had
experienced toward him at their first meeting. He saw in
him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast intellect
who by his energy and persistence had attained power,
which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In
Prince Andrew’s eyes Speranski was the man he would
himself have wished to be- one who explained all the
facts of life reasonably, considered important only what
was rational, and was capable of applying the standard of
reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and
clear in Speranski’s exposition that Prince Andrew
involuntarily agreed with him about everything. If he
replied and argued, it was only because he wished to
maintain his independence and not submit to Speranski’s
opinions entirely. Everything was right and everything
was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
Andrew. This was Speranski’s cold, mirrorlike look,
which did not allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his
delicate white hands, which Prince Andrew involuntarily

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watched as one does watch the hands of those who

possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those delicate
hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was
unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for
others that he observed in Speranski, and by the diversity
of lines of argument he used to support his opinions. He
made use of every kind of mental device, except analogy,
and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince Andrew, from
one to another. Now he would take up the position of a
practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a
satirist, and laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow
severely logical, or suddenly rise to the realm of
metaphysics. (This last resource was one he very
frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to
metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space,
time, and thought, and, having deduced the refutation he
needed, would again descend to the level of the original
discussion.
In general the trait of Speranski’s mentality which
struck Prince Andrew most was his absolute and
unshakable belief in the power and authority of reason. It
was evident that the thought could never occur to him
which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that
it is after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that

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he had never felt the doubt, ‘Is not all I think and believe
nonsense?’ And it was just this peculiarity of Speranski’s
mind that particularly attracted Prince Andrew.
During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski
felt a passionate admiration for him similar to that which
he had once felt for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski
was the son of a village priest, and that stupid people
might meanly despise him on account of his humble
origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to
cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously
to strengthen it.
On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having
mentioned the Commission for the Revision of the Code
of Laws, Speranski told him sarcastically that the
Commission had existed for a hundred and fifty years,
had cost millions, and had done nothing except that
Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding
paragraphs of the different codes.
‘And that is all the state has for the millions it has
spent,’ said he. ‘We want to give the Senate new juridical
powers, but we have no laws. That is why it is a sin for
men like you, Prince, not to serve in these times!’
Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in
jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.

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‘But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It

is a vicious circle from which we must break a way out.’
A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the
Committee on Army Regulations and- what he had not at
all expected- was chairman of a section of the committee
for the revision of the laws. At Speranski’s request he
took the first part of the Civil Code that was being drawn
up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the
Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the
section on Personal Rights.

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Chapter VII

Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on

returning to Petersburg after visiting his estates had
involuntarily found himself in a leading position among
the Petersburg Freemasons. He arranged dining and
funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members, and
busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring
authentic charters. He gave money for the erection of
temples and supplemented as far as he could the
collection of alms, in regard to which the majority of
members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost
singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in
Petersburg.
His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same
infatuations and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink
well, and though he considered it immoral and
humiliating could not resist the temptations of the
bachelor circles in which he moved.
Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions,
however, Pierre at the end of a year began to feel that the
more firmly he tried to rest upon it, the more Masonic
ground on which he stood gave way under him. At the

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same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under
him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the
order. When he had joined the Freemasons he had
experienced the feeling of one who confidently steps onto
the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his foot down it
sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground, he
put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became
stuck in it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.
Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg- he had of
late stood aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges,
and lived almost entirely in Moscow. All the members of
the lodges were men Pierre knew in ordinary life, and it
was difficult for him to regard them merely as Brothers in
Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D.,
whom he knew in society mostly as weak and
insignificant men. Under the Masonic aprons and insignia
he saw the uniforms and decorations at which they aimed
in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and reckoning
up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in
promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as
well able to pay as himself, Pierre remembered the
Masonic vow in which each Brother promised to devote
all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on which he
tried not to dwell arose in his soul.

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He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories.

In the first he put those who did not take an active part in
the affairs of the lodges or in human affairs, but were
exclusively occupied with the mystical science of the
order: with questions of the threefold designation of God,
the three primordial elements- sulphur, mercury, and salt-
or the meaning of the square and all the various figures of
the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of
Brothers to which the elder ones chiefly belonged,
including, Pierre thought, Joseph Alexeevich himself, but
he did not share their interests. His heart was not in the
mystical aspect of Freemasonry.
In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and
others like him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet
found in Freemasonry a straight and comprehensible path,
but hoped to do so.
In the third category he included those Brothers (the
majority) who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the
external forms and ceremonies, and prized the strict
performance of these forms without troubling about their
purport or significance. Such were Willarski and even the
Grand Master of the principal lodge.
Finally, to the fourth category also a great many
Brothers belonged, particularly those who had lately

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joined. These according to Pierre’s observations were

men who had no belief in anything, nor desire for
anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate
with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential
through their connections or rank, and of whom there
were very many in the lodge.
Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was
doing. Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here,
sometimes seemed to him based merely on externals. He
did not think of doubting Freemasonry itself, but
suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path
and deviated from its original principles. And so toward
the end of the year he went abroad to be initiated into the
higher secrets of the order.
In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg.
Our Freemasons knew from correspondence with those
abroad that Bezukhov had obtained the confidence of
many highly placed persons, had been initiated into many
mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, and was
bringing back with him much that might conduce to the
advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg
Freemasons all came to see him, tried to ingratiate
themselves with him, and it seemed to them all that he
was preparing something for them and concealing it.

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A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree

was convened, at which Pierre promised to communicate
to the Petersburg Brothers what he had to deliver to them
from the highest leaders of their order. The meeting was a
full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre rose and began
his address.
‘Dear Brothers,’ he began, blushing and stammering,
with a written speech in his hand, ‘it is not sufficient to
observe our mysteries in the seclusion of our lodge- we
must act- act! We are drowsing, but we must act.’ Pierre
raised his notebook and began to read.
‘For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the
triumph of virtue,’ he read, ‘we must cleanse men from
prejudice, diffuse principles in harmony with the spirit of
the times, undertake the education of the young, unite
ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the wisest men,
boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,
and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked
together by unity of purpose and possessed of authority
and power.
‘To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of
virtue over vice and must endeavor to secure that the
honest man may, even in this world, receive a lasting
reward for his virtue. But in these great endeavors we are

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gravely hampered by the political institutions of today.

What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor
revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?...
No! We are very far from that. Every violent reform
deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while
men remain what they are, and also because wisdom
needs no violence.
‘The whole plan of our order should be based on the
idea of preparing men of firmness and virtue bound
together by unity of conviction- aiming at the punishment
of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and virtue: raising
worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our
Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the power
unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of
disorder and to control them without their being aware of
it. In a word, we must found a form of government
holding universal sway, which should be diffused over the
whole world without destroying the bonds of citizenship,
and beside which all other governments can continue in
their customary course and do everything except what
impedes the great aim of our order, which is to obtain for
virtue the victory over vice. This aim was that of
Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and good and

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for their own benefit to follow the example and

instruction of the best and wisest men.
‘At that time, when everything was plunged in
darkness, preaching alone was of course sufficient. The
novelty of Truth endowed her with special strength, but
now we need much more powerful methods. It is now
necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in
virtue a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to
eradicate the passions; but we must strive to direct them
to a noble aim, and it is therefore necessary that everyone
should be able to satisfy his passions within the limits of
virtue. Our order should provide means to that end.
‘As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men
in every state, each of them again training two others and
all being closely united, everything will be possible for
our order, which has already in secret accomplished much
for the welfare of mankind.’
This speech not only made a strong impression, but
created excitement in the lodge. The majority of the
Brothers, seeing in it dangerous designs of Illuminism,*
met it with a coldness that surprised Pierre. The Grand
Master began answering him, and Pierre began
developing his views with more and more warmth. It was
long since there had been so stormy a meeting. Parties

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were formed, some accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others

supporting him. At that meeting he was struck for the first
time by the endless variety of men’s minds, which
prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to
two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on
his side understood him in their own way with limitations
and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always
wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as
he himself understood it.
*The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for
monarchical institutions.
At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony
and ill-will reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and
said it was not love of virtue alone, but also a love of
strife that had moved him in the dispute. Pierre did not
answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without
waiting for the usual formalities he left the lodge and
went home.

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Chapter VIII

Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so

dreaded. For three days after the delivery of his speech at
the lodge he lay on a sofa at home receiving no one and
going nowhere.
It was just then that he received a letter from his wife,
who implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she
was about him and how she wished to devote her whole
life to him.
At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few
days she would return to Petersburg from abroad.
Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers
whom Pierre respected less than the others forced his way
in to see him and, turning the conversation upon Pierre’s
matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal advice expressed
the opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong and
that he was neglecting one of the first rules of
Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.
At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili’s
wife, sent to him imploring him to come if only for a few
minutes to discuss a most important matter. Pierre saw
that there was a conspiracy against him and that they

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wanted to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he

then was, this was not even unpleasant to him. Nothing
mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much
importance, and under the influence of the depression that
possessed him he valued neither his liberty nor his
resolution to punish his wife.
‘No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is
not to blame,’ he thought.
If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with
his wife, it was only because in his state of depression he
did not feel able to take any step. Had his wife come to
him, he would not have turned her away. Compared to
what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of indifference
whether he lived with his wife or not?
Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-
law, Pierre late one night prepared for a journey and
started for Moscow to see Joseph Alexeevich. This is
what he noted in his diary:
Moscow, 17th November
I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to
write down what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich
is living poorly and has for three years been suffering
from a painful disease of the bladder. No one has ever
heard him utter a groan or a word of complaint. From

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morning till late at night, except when he eats his very

plain food, he is working at science. He received me
graciously and made me sit down on the bed on which he
lay. I made the sign of the Knights of the East and of
Jerusalem, and he responded in the same manner, asking
me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in the
Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best
I could, and told him what I had proposed to our
Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had encountered,
and of my rupture with the Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich,
having remained silent and thoughtful for a good while,
told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for me
my whole past and the future path I should follow. He
surprised me by asking whether I remembered the
threefold aim of the order: (1) The preservation and study
of the mystery. (2) The purification and reformation of
oneself for its reception, and (3) The improvement of the
human race by striving for such purification. Which is the
principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation
and self-purification. Only to this aim can we always
strive independently of circumstances. But at the same
time just this aim demands the greatest efforts of us; and
so, led astray by pride, losing sight of this aim, we occupy
ourselves either with the mystery which in our impurity

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we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the

human race while ourselves setting an example of
baseness and profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine,
just because it is attracted by social activity and puffed up
by pride. On this ground Joseph Alexeevich condemned
my speech and my whole activity, and in the depth of my
soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs he
said to me, ‘the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told
you, lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by
removing all the difficulties of our life we shall more
quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary, my dear sir, it
is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain our
three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge- for man can only
know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which
can only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of
the chief virtue- love of death. Only the vicissitudes of
life can show us its vanity and develop our innate love of
death or of rebirth to a new life.’ These words are all the
more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical
sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of life
though he loves death, for which- in spite of the purity
and loftiness of his inner man- he does not yet feel
himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then
explained to me fully the meaning of the Great Square of

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creation and pointed out to me that the numbers three and

seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not to
avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take
up only second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while
diverting the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the
true path self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this
he advised me for myself personally above all to keep a
watch over myself, and to that end he gave me a
notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which I will
in future note down all my actions.
Petersburg, 23rd November
I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law
came to me in tears and said that Helene was here and that
she implored me to hear her; that she was innocent and
unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew that if I
once let myself see her I should not have strength to go on
refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not
know whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor
been here he would have told me what to do. I went to my
room and reread Joseph Alexeevich’s letters and recalled
my conversations with him, and deduced from it all that I
ought not to refuse a suppliant, and ought to reach a
helping hand to everyone- especially to one so closely
bound to me- and that I must bear my cross. But if I

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forgive her for the sake of doing right, then let union with
her have only a spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and
what I wrote to Joseph Alexeevich. I told my wife that I
begged her to forget the past, to forgive me whatever
wrong I may have done her, and that I had nothing to
forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know
how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on
the upper floor of this big house and am experiencing a
happy feeling of regeneration.

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Chapter IX

At that time, as always happens, the highest society

that met at court and at the grand balls was divided into
several circles, each with its own particular tone. The
largest of these was the French circle of the Napoleonic
alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev and
Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had
settled in Petersburg with her husband, took a very
prominent place. She was visited by the members of the
French embassy and by many belonging to that circle and
noted for their intellect and polished manners.
Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting
of the Emperors and had brought from there these
connections with the Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt
her success had been brilliant. Napoleon himself had
noticed her in the theater and said of her: ‘C’est un
superbe animal.’* Her success as a beautiful and elegant
woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even
handsomer than before. What did surprise him was that
during these last two years his wife had succeeded in
gaining the reputation ‘d’ une femme charmante, aussi
spirituelle que belle.’*[2] The distinguished Prince de

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Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his

epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova’s
presence. To be received in the Countess Bezukhova’s
salon was regarded as a diploma of intellect. Young men
read books before attending Helene’s evenings, to have
something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the
embassy, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic
secrets to her, so that in a way Helene was a power.
Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes
attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her
evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and
philosophy were discussed. At these parties his feelings
were like those of a conjuror who always expects his trick
to be found out at any moment. But whether because
stupidity was just what was needed to run such a salon, or
because those who were deceived found pleasure in the
deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene
Bezukhova’s reputation as a lovely and clever woman
became so firmly established that she could say the
emptiest and stupidest things and everybody would go
into raptures over every word of hers and look for a
profound meaning in it of which she herself had no
conception.
*"That’s a superb animal.’

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*[2] ‘Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely.’

Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant
society woman. He was that absent-minded crank, a grand
seigneur husband who was in no one’s way, and far from
spoiling the high tone and general impression of the
drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to
her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and
tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of
his continual absorption in abstract interests and his
sincere contempt for all else, had acquired in his wife’s
circle, which did not interest him, that air of unconcern,
indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be
acquired artificially and therefore inspires involuntary
respect. He entered his wife’s drawing room as one enters
a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased
to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all.
Sometimes he joined in a conversation which interested
him and, regardless of whether any ‘gentlemen of the
embassy’ were present or not, lispingly expressed his
views, which were sometimes not at all in accord with the
accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion
concerning the queer husband of ‘the most distinguished
woman in Petersburg’ was so well established that no one
took his freaks seriously.

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Among the many young men who frequented her

house every day, Boris Drubetskoy, who had already
achieved great success in the service, was the most
intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene’s
return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as ‘mon page’
and treated him like a child. Her smile for him was the
same as for everybody, but sometimes that smile made
Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris behaved with a
particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of
deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so
painfully three years before from the mortification to
which his wife had subjected him that he now protected
himself from the danger of its repetition, first by not being
a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing
himself to suspect.
‘No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has
finally renounced her former infatuations,’ he told
himself. ‘There has never been an instance of a
bluestocking being carried away by affairs of the heart’- a
statement which, though gathered from an unknown
source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris’
presence in his wife’s drawing room (and he was almost
always there) had a physical effect upon Pierre; it

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constricted his limbs and destroyed the unconsciousness

and freedom of his movements.
‘What a strange antipathy,’ thought Pierre, ‘yet I used
to like him very much.’
In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman,
the rather blind and absurd husband of a distinguished
wife, a clever crank who did nothing but harmed nobody
and was a first-rate, good-natured fellow. But a complex
and difficult process of internal development was taking
place all this time in Pierre’s soul, revealing much to him
and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys.

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Chapter X

Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote

in it during that time:
24th November
Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my
duties. [By Joseph Alexeevich’s advice Pierre had entered
the service of the state and served on one of the
committees.] Returned home for dinner and dined alone-
the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and
drank moderately and after dinner copied out some
passages for the Brothers. In the evening I went down to
the countess and told a funny story about B., and only
remembered that I ought not to have done so when
everybody laughed loudly at it.
I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind.
Great God, help me to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer
anger by calmness and deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust
by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw from
worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the state, (b)
family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the
management of my affairs.
27th November

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I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to

sloth. O God, help and strengthen me that I may walk in
Thy ways! Read the Scriptures, but without proper
feeling. Brother Urusov came and we talked about
worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor’s new
projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my
rules and my benefactor’s words- that a true Freemason
should be a zealous worker for the state when his aid is
required and a quiet onlooker when not called on to assist.
My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O. visited
me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a
new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel
myself weak and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the
interpretation of the seven pillars and steps of the Temple,
the seven sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and
the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Brother O. was very
eloquent. In the evening the admission took place. The
new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the
magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy
who was admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor.
A strange feeling agitated me all the time I was alone with
him in the dark chamber. I caught myself harboring a
feeling of hatred toward him which I vainly tried to
overcome. That is why I should really like to save him

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from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil
thoughts of him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his
object in entering the Brotherhood was merely to be
intimate and in favor with members of our lodge. Apart
from the fact that he had asked me several times whether
N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which
I could not reply) and that according to my observation he
is incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is
too preoccupied and satisfied with the outer man to desire
spiritual improvement, I had no cause to doubt him, but
he seemed to me insincere, and all the time I stood alone
with him in the dark temple it seemed to me that he was
smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really
to stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could
not be eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to
the Brothers and to the Grand Master. Great Architect of
Nature, help me to find the true path out of the labyrinth
of lies!
After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and
then the following was written:
I have had a long and instructive talk alone with
Brother V., who advised me to hold fast by brother A.
Though I am unworthy, much was revealed to me. Adonai
is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim is the

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name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name

unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V.
strengthen, refresh, and support me in the path of virtue.
In his presence doubt has no place. The distinction
between the poor teachings of mundane science and our
sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human
sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill
everything to examine it. In the holy science of our order
all is one, all is known in its entirety and life. The Trinity-
the three elements of matter- are sulphur, mercury, and
salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination
with salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the latter
by means of which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it,
and in combination produces other bodies. Mercury is a
fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the Holy Spirit,
Him!...
3rd December
Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic.
Afterwards went and paced up and down the large hall. I
wished to meditate, but instead my imagination pictured
an occurrence of four years ago, when Dolokhov, meeting
me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was
enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife’s
absence. At the time I gave him no answer. Now I

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recalled every detail of that meeting and in my mind gave

him the most malevolent and bitter replies. I recollected
myself and drove away that thought only when I found
myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently
repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began
relating various adventures. His coming vexed me from
the first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He
replied. I flared up and said much that was unpleasant and
even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected
myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on
with him at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set
myself above him and so become much worse than he, for
he is lenient to my rudeness while I on the contrary
nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his
presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so
that he too may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I
was drowsing off I clearly heard a voice saying in my left
ear, ‘Thy day!’
I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was
suddenly surrounded by dogs, but I went on undismayed.
Suddenly a smallish dog seized my left thigh with its teeth
and would not let go. I began to throttle it with my hands.
Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger one,
began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the

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bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A.

came and, taking my arm, led me to a building to enter
which we had to pass along a narrow plank. I stepped on
it, but it bent and gave way and I began to clamber up a
fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After
much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung
down on one side and my body on the other. I looked
round and saw Brother A. standing on the fence and
pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in the
garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O
Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from
myself these dogs- my passions especially the last, which
unites in itself the strength of all the former ones, and aid
me to enter that temple of virtue to a vision of which I
attained in my dream.
7th December
I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my
house, and that I was very glad and wished to entertain
him. It seemed as if I chattered incessantly with other
people and suddenly remembered that this could not
please him, and I wished to come close to him and
embrace him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his
face had changed and grown young, and he was quietly
telling me something about the teaching of our order, but

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so softly that I could not hear it. Then it seemed that we

all left the room and something strange happened. We
were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me
something, and I wished to show him my sensibility, and
not listening to what he was saying I began picturing to
myself the condition of my inner man and the grace of
God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I
was glad he noticed this. But be looked at me with
vexation and jumped up, breaking off his remarks. I felt
abashed and asked whether what he had been saying did
not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a kind look,
and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom
where there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it
and I burned with longing to caress him and lie down too.
And he said, ‘Tell me frankly what is your chief
temptation? Do you know it? I think you know it already.’
Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was my
chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and
even more abashed, I said that though I was living with
my wife as he advised, I was not living with her as her
husband. To this he replied that one should not deprive a
wife of one’s embraces and gave me to understand that
that was my duty. But I replied that I should be ashamed
to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke

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and found in my mind the text from the Gospel: ‘The life
was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness;
and the darkness comprehended it not.’ Joseph
Alexeevich’s face had looked young and bright. That day
I received a letter from my benefactor in which he wrote
about ‘conjugal duties.’
9th December
I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing
heart. I saw that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big
sitting room, and Joseph Alexeevich came in from the
drawing room. I seemed to know at once that the process
of regeneration had already taken place in him, and I
rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands,
and he said, ‘Hast thou noticed that my face is different?’
I looked at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw
that his face was young, but that he had no hair on his
head and his features were quite changed. And I said, ‘I
should have known you had I met you by chance,’ and I
thought to myself, ‘Am I telling the truth?’ And suddenly
I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually
recovered and went with me into my study carrying a
large book of sheets of drawing paper; I said, ‘I drew
that,’ and he answered by bowing his head. I opened the
book, and on all the pages there were excellent drawings.

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And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented

the love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on
its pages I saw a beautiful representation of a maiden in
transparent garments and with a transparent body, flying
up to the clouds. And I seemed to know that this maiden
was nothing else than a representation of the Song of
Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt
that I was doing wrong, but could not tear myself away
from them. Lord, help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me
is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am myself the
cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my
debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!

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Chapter XI

The Rostovs’ monetary affairs had not improved

during the two years they had spent in the country.
Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his
resolution and was still serving modestly in an obscure
regiment, spending comparatively little, the way of life at
Otradnoe- Mitenka’s management of affairs, in particular-
was such that the debts inevitably increased every year.
The only resource obviously presenting itself to the old
count was to apply for an official post, so he had come to
Petersburg to look for one and also, as he said, to let the
lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.
Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to
Vera and was accepted.
Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best
society without themselves giving it a thought, yet in
Petersburg their circle of acquaintances was a mixed and
indefinite one. In Petersburg they were provincials, and
the very people they had entertained in Moscow without
inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on
them.

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The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in

Petersburg as in Moscow, and the most diverse people
met at their suppers. Country neighbors from Otradnoe,
impoverished old squires and their daughters, Peronskaya
a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their
district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg.
Among the men who very soon became frequent visitors
at the Rostovs’ house in Petersburg were Boris, Pierre
whom the count had met in the street and dragged home
with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs’
and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the
attentions a young man pays when he intends to propose.
Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand
wounded at Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary
sword in his left. He narrated that episode so persistently
and with so important an air that everyone believed in the
merit and usefulness of his deed, and he had obtained two
decorations for Austerlitz.
In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish
himself. He had picked up the scrap of a grenade that had
killed an aide-de-camp standing near the commander in
chief and had taken it to his commander. Just as he had
done after Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at such
length and so insistently that everyone again believed it

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had been necessary to do this, and he received two

decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a
captain in the Guards, wore medals, and held some
special lucrative posts in Petersburg.
Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg’s
merits, it could not be denied that he was a painstaking
and brave officer, on excellent terms with his superiors,
and a moral young man with a brilliant career before him
and an assured position in society.
Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the
stalls of a Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera
Rostova to him and had said in German, ‘das soll mein
Weib werden,’* and from that moment had made up his
mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered
the Rostovs’ position and his own, he decided that the
time had come to propose.
*"That girl shall be my wife.’
Berg’s proposal was at first received with a perplexity
that was not flattering to him. At first it seemed strange
that the son of an obscure Livonian gentleman should
propose marriage to a Countess Rostova; but Berg’s chief
characteristic was such a naive and good natured egotism
that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it would be a
good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that

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it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs’

affairs were seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not
but know; and above all, Vera was twenty-four, had been
taken out everywhere, and though she was certainly good-
looking and sensible, no one up to now had proposed to
her. So they gave their consent.
‘You see,’ said Berg to his comrade, whom he called
‘friend’ only because he knew that everyone has friends,
‘you see, I have considered it all, and should not marry if
I had not thought it all out or if it were in any way
unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and mamma are
now provided for- I have arranged that rent for them in
the Baltic Provinces- and I can live in Petersburg on my
pay, and with her fortune and my good management we
can get along nicely. I am not marrying for money- I
consider that dishonorable- but a wife should bring her
share and a husband his. I have my position in the service,
she has connections and some means. In our times that is
worth something, isn’t it? But above all, she is a
handsome, estimable girl, and she loves me..’
Berg blushed and smiled.
‘And I love her, because her character is sensible and
very good. Now the other sister, though they are the same
family, is quite different- an unpleasant character and has

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not the same intelligence. She is so... you know?...

Unpleasant... But my fiancee!... Well, you will be
coming,’ he was going to say, ‘to dine,’ but changed his
mind and said ‘to take tea with us,’ and quickly doubling
up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco
smoke, perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.
After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the
parents by Berg’s proposal, the holiday tone of
joyousness usual at such times took possession of the
family, but the rejoicing was external and insincere. In the
family’s feeling toward this wedding a certain
awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were
ashamed of not having loved Vera sufficiently and of
being so ready to get her off their hands. The old count
felt this most. He would probably have been unable to
state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from
the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much
he had, what his debts amounted to, or what dowry he
could give Vera. When his daughters were born he had
assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with
three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already
been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so
much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it
was impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.

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Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a

week remained before the wedding, but the count had not
yet decided in his own mind the question of the dowry,
nor spoken to his wife about it. At one time the count
thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of selling a
forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of
hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the
count’s study early one morning and, with a pleasant
smile, respectfully asked his future father-in-law to let
him know what Vera’s dowry would be. The count was so
disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without
consideration he gave the first reply that came into his
head. ‘I like your being businesslike about it.... I like it.
You shall be satisfied...’
And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to
end the conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly,
explained that if he did not know for certain how much
Vera would have and did not receive at least part of the
dowry in advance, he would have to break matters off.
‘Because, consider, Count- if I allowed myself to
marry now without having definite means to maintain my
wife, I should be acting badly...’
The conversation ended by the count, who wished to
be generous and to avoid further importunity, saying that

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he would give a note of hand for eighty thousand rubles.

Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on the shoulder, and
said that he was very grateful, but that it was impossible
for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty
thousand in ready money. ‘Or at least twenty thousand,
Count,’ he added, ‘and then a note of hand for only sixty
thousand.’
‘Yes, yes, all right!’ said the count hurriedly. ‘Only
excuse me, my dear fellow, I’ll give you twenty thousand
and a note of hand for eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes!
Kiss me.’

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Chapter XII

Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very
year to which she had counted on her fingers with Boris
after they had kissed four years ago. Since then she had
not seen him. Before Sonya and her mother, if Boris
happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of that
episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that
was not worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her
soul the question whether her engagement to Boris was a
jest or an important, binding promise tormented her.
Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he
had had not seen the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow
several times, and had passed near Otradnoe, but had
never been to see them.
Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to
see her, and this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone
in which her elders spoke of him.
‘Nowadays old friends are not remembered,’ the
countess would say when Boris was mentioned.
Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less
frequently, seemed to hold herself with particular dignity,
and always spoke rapturously and gratefully of the merits

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of her son and the brilliant career on which he had

entered. When the Rostovs came to Petersburg Boris
called on them.
He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory
of Natasha was his most poetic recollection. But he went
with the firm intention of letting her and her parents feel
that the childish relations between himself and Natasha
could not be binding either on her or on him. He had a
brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with
Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service
thanks to the patronage of an important personage whose
complete confidence he enjoyed, and he was beginning to
make plans for marrying one of the richest heiresses in
Petersburg, plans which might very easily be realized.
When he entered the Rostovs’ drawing room Natasha was
in her own room. When she heard of his arrival she
almost ran into the drawing room, flushed and beaming
with a more than cordial smile.
Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark
eyes shining from under her curls and boisterous, childish
laughter, as he had known her four years before; and so he
was taken aback when quite a different Natasha entered,
and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This
expression on his face pleased Natasha.

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‘Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?’

asked the countess.
Boris kissed Natasha’s hand and said that he was
astonished at the change in her.
‘How handsome you have grown!’
‘I should think so!’ replied Natasha’s laughing eyes.
‘And is Papa older?’ she asked.
Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris’
conversation with the countess, silently and minutely
studied her childhood’s suitor. He felt the weight of that
resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced at her
occasionally.
Boris’ uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was
brushed were all comme il faut and in the latest fashion.
This Natasha noticed at once. He sat rather sideways in
the armchair next to the countess, arranging with his right
hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand like a
skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression
of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg
society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow
and Moscow acquaintances. It was not accidentally,
Natasha felt, that he alluded, when speaking of the highest
aristocracy, to an ambassador’s ball he had attended, and
to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.

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All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him

from under her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused
Boris more and more. He looked round more frequently
toward her, and broke off in what he was saying. He did
not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and took his
leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather
mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris
said to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as
ever, but that he must not yield to that feeling, because to
marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would mean ruin
to his career, while to renew their former relations without
intending to marry her would be dishonorable. Boris
made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite
that resolution he called again a few days later and began
calling often and spending whole days at the Rostovs’. It
seemed to him that he ought to have an explanation with
Natasha and tell her that the old times must be forgotten,
that in spite of everything... she could not be his wife, that
he had no means, and they would never let her marry him.
But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on
such an explanation. From day to day he became more
and more entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya
that Natasha was in love with Boris as of old. She sang
him his favorite songs, showed him her album, making

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him write in it, did not allow him to allude to the past,
letting it be understood how was the present; and every
day he went away in a fog, without having said what he
meant to, and not knowing what he was doing or why he
came, or how it would all end. He left off visiting Helene
and received reproachful notes from her every day, and
yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.

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Chapter XIII

One night when the old countess, in nightcap and

dressing jacket, without her false curls, and with her poor
little knob of hair showing under her white cotton cap,
knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and bowing to the
ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also in a
dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair
in curlpapers, ran in. The countess- her prayerful mood
dispelled- looked round and frowned. She was finishing
her last prayer: ‘Can it be that this couch will be my
grave?’ Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing her mother in
prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and
unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself.
Seeing that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe
to the bed and, rapidly slipping one little foot against the
other, pushed off her slippers and jumped onto the bed the
countess had feared might become her grave. This couch
was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller
than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank into the
feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling
up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to
her chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now

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covering herself up head and all, and now peeping at her

mother. The countess finished her prayers and came to the
bed with a stern face, but seeing, that Natasha’s head was
covered, she smiled in her kind, weak way.
‘Now then, now then!’ said she.
‘Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?’ said Natasha.
‘Now, just one on your throat and another... that’ll do!’
And seizing her mother round the neck, she kissed her on
the throat. In her behavior to her mother Natasha seemed
rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that however
she clasped her mother she always managed to do it
without hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or
displeased.
‘Well, what is it tonight?’ said the mother, having
arranged her pillows and waited until Natasha, after
turning over a couple of times, had settled down beside
her under the quilt, spread out her arms, and assumed a
serious expression.
These visits of Natasha’s at night before the count
returned from his club were one of the greatest pleasures
of both mother, and daughter.
‘What is it tonight?- But I have to tell you..’
Natasha put her hand on her mother’s mouth.

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‘About Boris... I know,’ she said seriously; ‘that’s

what I have come about. Don’t say it- I know. No, do tell
me!’ and she removed her hand. ‘Tell me, Mamma! He’s
nice?’
‘Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married.
You say Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like
a son. But what then?... What are you thinking about?
You have quite turned his head, I can see that...’
As she said this the countess looked round at her
daughter. Natasha was lying looking steadily straight
before her at one of the mahogany sphinxes carved on the
corners of the bedstead, so that the countess only saw her
daughter’s face in profile. That face struck her by its
peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.
Natasha was listening and considering.
‘Well, what then?’ said she.
‘You have quite turned his head, and why? What do
you want of him? You know you can’t marry him.’
‘Why not?’ said Natasha, without changing her
position.
‘Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is
a relation... and because you yourself don’t love him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know. It is not right, darling!’

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‘But if I want to...’ said Natasha.

‘Leave off talking nonsense,’ said the countess.
‘But if I want to..’
‘Natasha, I am in earnest..’
Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess’
large hand to her, kissed it on the back and then on the
palm, then again turned it over and began kissing first one
knuckle, then the space between the knuckles, then the
next knuckle, whispering, ‘January, February, March,
April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don’t you say anything?
Speak!’ said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly
gazing at her daughter and in that contemplation seemed
to have forgotten all she had wished to say.
‘It won’t do, my love! Not everyone will understand
this friendship dating from your childish days, and to see
him so intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of
other young men who visit us, and above all it torments
him for nothing. He may already have found a suitable
and wealthy match, and now he’s half crazy.’
‘Crazy?’ repeated Natasha.
‘I’ll tell you some things about myself. I had a
cousin..’
‘I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old.’

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‘He was not always old. But this is what I’ll do,
Natasha, I’ll have a talk with Boris. He need not come so
often...’
‘Why not, if he likes to?’
‘Because I know it will end in nothing...’
‘How can you know? No, Mamma, don’t speak to him!
What nonsense!’ said Natasha in the tone of one being
deprived of her property. ‘Well, I won’t marry, but let
him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it.’ Natasha smiled
and looked at her mother. ‘Not to marry, but just so,’ she
added.
‘How so, my pet?’
‘Just so. There’s no need for me to marry him. But...
just so.’
‘Just so, just so,’ repeated the countess, and shaking all
over, she went off into a good humored, unexpected,
elderly laugh.
‘Don’t laugh, stop!’ cried Natasha. ‘You’re shaking the
whole bed! You’re awfully like me, just such another
giggler.... Wait...’ and she seized the countess’ hands and
kissed a knuckle of the little finger, saying, ‘June,’ and
continued, kissing, ‘July, August,’ on the other hand.
‘But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you
think? Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And

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he’s very nice, very, very nice. Only not quite my taste-
he is so narrow, like the dining-room clock.... Don’t you
understand? Narrow, you know- gray, light gray..’
‘What rubbish you’re talking!’ said the countess.
Natasha continued: ‘Don’t you really understand?
Nicholas would understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue,
dark-blue and red, and he is square.’
‘You flirt with him too,’ said the countess, laughing.
‘No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine,
dark-blue and red.... How can I explain it to you?’
‘Little countess!’ the count’s voice called from behind
the door. ‘You’re not asleep?’ Natasha jumped up,
snatched up her slippers, and ran barefoot to her own
room.
It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept
thinking that no one could understand all that she
understood and all there was in her.
‘Sonya?’ she thought, glancing at that curled-up,
sleeping little kitten with her enormous plait of hair. ‘No,
how could she? She’s virtuous. She fell in love with
Nicholas and does not wish to know anything more. Even
Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how clever I
am and how... charming she is,’ she went on, speaking of
herself in the third person, and imagining it was some

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very wise man- the wisest and best of men- who was
saying it of her. ‘There is everything, everything in her,’
continued this man. ‘She is unusually intelligent,
charming... and then she is pretty, uncommonly pretty,
and agile- she swims and rides splendidly... and her voice!
One can really say it’s a wonderful voice!’
She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by
Cherubini, threw herself on her bed, laughed at the
pleasant thought that she would immediately fall asleep,
called Dunyasha the maid to put out the candle, and
before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed
into yet another happier world of dreams, where
everything was as light and beautiful as in reality, and
even more so because it was different.
Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk
with him, after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs’.

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Chapter XIV

On the thirty-first of December, New Year’s Eve, 1809

- 10 an old grandee of Catherine’s day was giving a ball
and midnight supper. The diplomatic corps and the
Emperor himself were to be present.
The grandee’s well-known mansion on the English
Quay glittered with innumerable lights. Police were
stationed at the brightly lit entrance which was carpeted
with red baize, and not only gendarmes but dozens of
police officers and even the police master himself stood at
the porch. Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones
arriving, with red-liveried footmen and footmen in
plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men wearing
uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and
ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps which
were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked
hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance.
Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper
ran through the crowd and caps were doffed.
‘The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince...
ambassador. Don’t you see the plumes?...’ was whispered
among the crowd.

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One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to

know everyone and mentioned by name the greatest
dignitaries of the day.
A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the
Rostovs, who were to be present, were still hurrying to get
dressed.
There had been many discussions and preparations for
this ball in the Rostov family, many fears that the
invitation would not arrive, that the dresses would not be
ready, or that something would not be arranged as it
should be.
Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid
of honor at the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a
friend and relation of the countess and piloted the
provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high society, was to
accompany them to the ball.
They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida
Gardens at ten o’clock, but it was already five minutes to
ten, and the girls were not yet dressed.
Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got
up at eight that morning and had been in a fever of
excitement and activity all day. All her powers since
morning had been concentrated on ensuring that they all-
she herself, Mamma, and Sonya- should be as well

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dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves

entirely in her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-
colored velvet dress, and the two girls white gauze over
pink silk slips, with roses on their bodices and their hair
dressed a la grecque.
Everything essential had already been done; feet,
hands, necks, and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered,
as befits a ball; the openwork silk stockings and white
satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the hairdressing
was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so
was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about
helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting
before a looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over
her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the
middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it
hurt her dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that
squeaked as the pin went through it.
‘That’s not the way, that’s not the way, Sonya!’ cried
Natasha turning her head and clutching with both hands at
her hair which the maid who was dressing it had not time
to release. ‘That bow is not right. Come here!’
Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on
differently.

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‘Allow me, Miss! I can’t do it like that,’ said the maid

who was holding Natasha’s hair.
‘Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That’s right, Sonya.’
‘Aren’t you ready? It is nearly ten,’ came the countess’
voice.
‘Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?’
‘I have only my cap to pin on.’
‘Don’t do it without me!’ called Natasha. ‘You won’t
do it right.’
‘But it’s already ten.’
They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and
Natasha had still to get dressed and they had to call at the
Taurida Gardens.
When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat
from under which her dancing shoes showed, and in her
mother’s dressing jacket, ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her,
and then ran to her mother. Turning her mother’s head
this way and that, she fastened on the cap and, hurriedly
kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were
turning up the hem of her skirt.
The cause of the delay was Natasha’s skirt, which was
too long. Two maids were turning up the hem and
hurriedly biting off the ends of thread. A third with pins in
her mouth was running about between the countess and

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Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer

garment up high on one uplifted hand.
‘Mavra, quicker, darling!’
‘Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..’
‘Whenever will you be ready?’ asked the count coming
to the door. ‘Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must
be tired of waiting.’
‘It’s ready, Miss,’ said the maid, holding up the
shortened gauze dress with two fingers, and blowing and
shaking something off it, as if by this to express a
consciousness of the airiness and purity of what she held.
Natasha began putting on the dress.
‘In a minute! In a minute! Don’t come in, Papa!’ she
cried to her father as he opened the door- speaking from
under the filmy skirt which still covered her whole face.
Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the
count in. He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes
and stockings, and was perfumed and his hair pomaded.
‘Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!’ cried
Natasha, as she stood in the middle of the room
smoothing out the folds of the gauze.
‘If you please, Miss! allow me,’ said the maid, who on
her knees was pulling the skirt straight and shifting the

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pins from one side of her mouth to the other with her
tongue.
‘Say what you like,’ exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing
voice as she looked at Natasha, ‘say what you like, it’s
still too long.’
Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier
glass. The dress was too long.
‘Really, madam, it is not at all too long,’ said Mavra,
crawling on her knees after her young lady.
‘Well, if it’s too long we’ll take it up... we’ll tack it up
in one minute,’ said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle
that was stuck on the front of her little shawl and, still
kneeling on the floor, set to work once more.
At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in
shyly, in her cap and velvet gown.
‘Oo-oo, my beauty!’ exclaimed the count, ‘she looks
better than any of you!’
He would have embraced her but, blushing, she
stepped aside fearing to be rumpled.
‘Mamma, your cap, more to this side,’ said Natasha.
‘I’ll arrange it,’ and she rushed forward so that the maids
who were tacking up her skirt could not move fast enough
and a piece of gauze was torn off.

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‘Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not

my fault!’
‘Never mind, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,’ said
Dunyasha.
‘What a beauty- a very queen!’ said the nurse as she
came to the door. ‘And Sonya! They are lovely!’
At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages
and started. But they had still to call at the Taurida
Gardens.
Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and
plainness she had gone through the same process as the
Rostovs, but with less flurry- for to her it was a matter of
routine. Her ugly old body was washed, perfumed, and
powdered in just the same way. She had washed behind
her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her
drawing room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as
maid of honor, her old lady’s maid was as full of
rapturous admiration as the Rostovs’ servants had been.
She praised the Rostovs’ toilets. They praised her taste
and toilet, and at eleven o’clock, careful of their coiffures
and dresses, they settled themselves in their carriages and
drove off.

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Chapter XV

Natasha had not had a moment free since early

morning and had not once had time to think of what lay
before her.
In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the
swaying carriage, she for the first time vividly imagined
what was in store for her there at the ball, in those
brightly lighted rooms- with music, flowers, dances, the
Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of Petersburg.
The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it
would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill
darkness and closeness of the carriage. She understood all
that awaited her only when, after stepping over the red
baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took off her fur
cloak, and, beside Sonya and in front of her mother,
mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between the
flowers. Only then did she remember how she must
behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic air she
considered indispensable for a girl on such an occasion.
But, fortunately for her, she felt her eyes growing misty,
she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the
minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She could not

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assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous,

and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and
trying with all her might to conceal it. And this was the
very attitude that became her best. Before and behind
them other visitors were entering, also talking in low
tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the landing
reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.
Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not
distinguish her reflection from the others. All was blended
into one brilliant procession. On entering the ballroom the
regular hum of voices, footsteps, and greetings deafened
Natasha, and the light and glitter dazzled her still more.
The host and hostess, who had already been standing at
the door for half an hour repeating the same words to the
various arrivals, ‘Charme de vous voir,’* greeted the
Rostovs and Peronskaya in the same manner.
*"Delighted to see you.’
The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in
her black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the
hostess’ eye involuntarily rested longer on the slim
Natasha. She looked at her and gave her alone a special
smile in addition to her usual smile as hostess. Looking at
her she may have recalled the golden, irrecoverable days

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of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The host also
followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which
was his daughter.
‘Charming!’ said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance
doors awaiting the Emperor. The countess took up a
position in one of the front rows of that crowd. Natasha
heard and felt that several people were asking about her
and looking at her. She realized that those noticing her
liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.
‘There are some like ourselves and some worse,’ she
thought.
Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most
important people at the ball.
‘That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-
haired man,’ she said, indicating an old man with a
profusion of silver-gray curly hair, who was surrounded
by ladies laughing at something he said.
‘Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess
Bezukhova,’ said Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had
just entered. ‘How lovely! She is quite equal to Marya
Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay court to
her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince- is quite mad

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about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking,

are even more run after.’
She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room
followed by a very plain daughter.
‘She is a splendid match, a millionairess,’ said
Peronskaya. ‘And look, here come her suitors.’
‘That is Bezukhova’s brother, Anatole Kuragin,’ she
said, indicating a handsome officer of the Horse Guards
who passed by them with head erect, looking at
something over the heads of the ladies. ‘He’s handsome,
isn’t he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl. But
your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her.
They say she has millions. Oh yes, that’s the French
ambassador himself!’ she replied to the countess’ inquiry
about Caulaincourt. ‘Looks as if he were a king! All the
same, the French are charming, very charming. No one
more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still
the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna!
And how simply she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout
one in spectacles is the universal Freemason,’ she went
on, indicating Pierre. ‘Put him beside his wife and he
looks a regular buffoon!’
Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way
through the crowd and nodding to right and left as

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casually and good-naturedly as if he were passing through

a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently looking
for someone.
Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre,
‘the buffoon,’ as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he
was looking for them, and for her in particular. He had
promised to be at the ball and introduce partners to her.
But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a
very handsome, dark man of middle height, and in a white
uniform, who stood by a window talking to a tall man
wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at once recognized
the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was
Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much
younger, happier, and better-looking.
‘There’s someone else we know- Bolkonski, do you
see, Mamma?’ said Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew.
‘You remember, he stayed a night with us at Otradnoe.’
‘Oh, you know him?’ said Peronskaya. ‘I can’t bear
him. Il fait a present la pluie et le beau temps.’* He’s too
proud for anything. Takes after his father. And he’s hand
in glove with Speranski, writing some project or other.
Just look how he treats the ladies! There’s one talking to
him and he has turned away,’ she said, pointing at him.

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‘I’d give it to him if he treated me as he does those

ladies.’
*"He is all the rage just now.

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Chapter XVI

Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed

forward and then back, and between the two rows, which
separated, the Emperor entered to the sounds of music
that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked his
host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right
and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the
reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at
that time on account of the words that had been set to it,
beginning: ‘Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish
quite...’ The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the
crowd made a rush for the doors, and several persons with
excited faces hurried there and back again. Then the
crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at
which the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A
young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the
ladies, asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with
faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the rules of
decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets.
The men began to choose partners and take their places
for the polonaise.

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Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling

out of the drawing room leading his hostess by the hand
but not keeping time to the music. The host followed with
Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came ambassadors,
ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya
diligently named. More than half the ladies already had
partners and were taking up, or preparing to take up, their
positions for the polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be
left with her mother and Sonya among a minority of
women who crowded near the wall, not having been
invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms hanging
down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling
regularly, and with bated breath and glittering, frightened
eyes gazed straight before her, evidently prepared for the
height of joy or misery. She was not concerned about the
Emperor or any of those great people whom Peronskaya
was pointing out- she had but one thought: ‘Is it possible
no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to
dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will
notice me? They do not even seem to see me, or if they do
they look as if they were saying, ‘Ah, she’s not the one
I’m after, so it’s not worth looking at her!’ No, it’s
impossible,’ she thought. ‘They must know how I long to

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dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would enjoy

dancing with me.’
The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a
considerable time, had begun to sound like a sad
reminiscence to Natasha’s ears. She wanted to cry.
Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the other end
of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were
standing by themselves as in the depths of a forest amid
that crowd of strangers, with no one interested in them
and not wanted by anyone. Prince Andrew with a lady
passed by, evidently not recognizing them. The handsome
Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and
looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed
them twice and each time turned away. Berg and his wife,
who were not dancing, came up to them.
This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha-
as if there were nowhere else for the family to talk but
here at the ball. She did not listen to or look at Vera, who
was telling her something about her own green dress.
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he
had danced with three) and the music ceased. A worried
aide-de-camp ran up to the Rostovs requesting them to
stand farther back, though as it was they were already
close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the

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distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz.

The Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute
passed but no one had yet begun dancing. An aide-de-
camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess
Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised
her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at
him. The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his
partner firmly round her waist, with confident deliberation
started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of the circle,
then at the corner of the room he caught Helene’s left
hand and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from
the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of
the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat
his partner’s velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash
as she whirled round. Natasha gazed at them and was
ready to cry because it was not she who was dancing that
first turn of the waltz.
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry
colonel, wearing stockings and dancing shoes, stood
looking animated and bright in the front row of the circle
not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was talking to
him about the first sitting of the Council of State to be
held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected
with Speranski and participating in the work of the

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legislative commission, could give reliable information

about that sitting, concerning which various rumors were
current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he
was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men
intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to
enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by
the Emperor’s presence, and the women who were
breathlessly longing to be asked to dance.
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
‘You always dance. I have a protegee, the young
Rostova, here. Ask her,’ he said.
‘Where is she?’ asked Bolkonski. ‘Excuse me!’ he
added, turning to the baron, ‘we will finish this
conversation elsewhere- at a ball one must dance.’ He
stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated. The
despairing, dejected expression of Natasha’s face caught
his eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that
it was her debut, remembered her conversation at the
window, and with an expression of pleasure on his face
approached Countess Rostova.
‘Allow me to introduce you to my daughter,’ said the
countess, with heightened color.

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‘I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the

countess remembers me,’ said Prince Andrew with a low
and courteous bow quite belying Peronskaya’s remarks
about his rudeness, and approaching Natasha he held out
his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed his
invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous
expression on Natasha’s face, prepared either for despair
or rapture, suddenly brightened into a happy, grateful,
childlike smile.
‘I have long been waiting for you,’ that frightened
happy little girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced
the threatened tears, as she raised her hand to Prince
Andrew’s shoulder. They were the second couple to enter
the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of
his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in
their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly,
lightly, and independently of herself, while her face
beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender bare arms
and neck were not beautiful- compared to Helene’s her
shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But
Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by
the thousands of looks that had scanned her person, while
Natasha was like a girl exposed for the first time, who

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would have felt very much ashamed had she not been
assured that this was absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as
quickly as possible from the political and clever talk
which everyone addressed to him, wishing also to break
up the circle of restraint he disliked, caused by the
Emperor’s presence, he danced, and had chosen Natasha
because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she
was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely
had he embraced that slender supple figure and felt her
stirring so close to him and smiling so near him than the
wine of her charm rose to his head, and he felt himself
revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.

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Chapter XVII

After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for

dance, and then the aide-de-camp who had opened the
ball, and several other young men, so that, flushed and
happy, and passing on her superfluous partners to Sonya,
she did not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and
saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did
she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with
the French ambassador, and how particularly gracious he
was to a certain lady, or that Prince So-and-so and So-
and-so did and said this and that, and that Helene had
great success and was honored was by the special
attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the
Emperor, and only noticed that he had gone because the
ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the
merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew was again
her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the
Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep
that moonlight night, and told her how he had
involuntarily overheard her. Natasha blushed at that
recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if there had

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been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew

had overheard.
Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince
Andrew liked meeting someone there not of the
conventional society stamp. And such was Natasha, with
her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her
mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with
special care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking
of the simplest and most unimportant matters; he admired
her shy grace. In the middle of the cotillion, having
completed one of the figures, Natasha, still out of breath,
was returning to her seat when another dancer chose her.
She was tired and panting and evidently thought of
declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the
man’s shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.
‘I’d be glad to sit beside you and rest: I’m tired; but
you see how they keep asking me, and I’m glad of it, I’m
happy and I love everybody, and you and I understand it
all,’ and much, much more was said in her smile. When
her partner left her Natasha ran across the room to choose
two ladies for the figure.
‘If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady,
she will be my wife,’ said Prince Andrew to himself quite

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to his own surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to

her cousin.
‘What rubbish sometimes enters one’s head!’ thought
Prince Andrew, ‘but what is certain is that that girl is so
charming, so original, that she won’t be dancing here a
month before she will be married.... Such as she are rare
here,’ he thought, as Natasha, readjusting a rose that was
slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue
coat came up to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to
come and see them, and asked his daughter whether she
was enjoying herself. Natasha did not answer at once but
only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: ‘How
can you ask such a question?’
‘I have never enjoyed myself so much before!’ she
said, and Prince Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose
quickly as if to embrace her father and instantly dropped
again. Natasha was happier than she had ever been in her
life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes
completely kind and good and does not believe in the
possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by
the position his wife occupied in court circles. He was
gloomy and absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his

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forehead, and standing by a window he stared over his

spectacles seeing no one.
On her way to supper Natasha passed him.
Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped
in front of him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him
the superabundance of her own happiness.
‘How delightful it is, Count!’ said she. ‘Isn’t it?’
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping
what she said.
‘Yes, I am very glad,’ he said.
‘How can people be dissatisfied with anything?’
thought Natasha. ‘Especially such a capital fellow as
Bezukhov!’ In Natasha’s eyes all the people at the ball
alike were good, kind, and splendid people, loving one
another; none of them capable of injuring another- and so
they ought all to be happy.

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Chapter XVIII

Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his

mind did not dwell on it long. ‘Yes, it was a very brilliant
ball,’ and then... ‘Yes, that little Rostova is very
charming. There’s something fresh, original, un-
Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her.’ That was
all he thought about yesterday’s ball, and after his
morning tea he set to work.
But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-
disposed for work and could get nothing done. He kept
criticizing his own work, as he often did, and was glad
when he heard someone coming.
The visitor was Bitski, who served on various
committees, frequented all the societies in Petersburg, and
a passionate devotee of the new ideas and of Speranski,
and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger- one of those men
who choose their opinions like their clothes according to
the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the
warmest partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before
he ran into Prince Andrew’s room with a preoccupied air
and at once began talking. He had just heard particulars of
that morning’s sitting of the Council of State opened by

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the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The

Emperor’s speech had been extraordinary. It had been a
speech such as only constitutional monarchs deliver. ‘The
Sovereign plainly said that the Council and Senate are
estates of the realm, he said that the government must rest
not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor said
that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the
accounts published,’ recounted Bitski, emphasizing
certain words and opening his eyes significantly.
‘Ah, yes! Today’s events mark an epoch, the greatest
epoch in our history,’ he concluded.
Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening
of the Council of State, which he had so impatiently
awaited and to which he had attached such importance,
and was surprised that this event, now that it had taken
place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite
insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski’s
enthusiastic account of it. A very simple thought occurred
to him: ‘What does it matter to me or to Bitski what the
Emperor was pleased to say at the Council? Can all that
make me any happier or better?’
And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the
interest Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms.
He was going to dine that evening at Speranski’s, ‘with

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only a few friends,’ as the host had said when inviting

him. The prospect of that dinner in the intimate home
circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested
Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen
Speranski in his domestic surroundings, but now he felt
disinclined to go to it.
At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest
house Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the
parqueted dining room this small house, remarkable for
its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a monastery),
Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
gathering of Speranski’s intimate acquaintances already
assembled at five o’clock. There were no ladies present
except Speranski’s little daughter (long-faced like her
father) and her governess. The other guests were Gervais,
Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the anteroom
Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato
laugh- a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone- it
sounded like Speranski- was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-
ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski’s
famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from
a statesman made a strange impression on him.
He entered the dining room. The whole company were
standing between two windows at a small table laid with

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hors-d’oeuvres. Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail

coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still the same
waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the
meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a
beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him.
Magnitski, addressing himself to Speranski, was relating
an anecdote, and Speranski was laughing in advance at
what Magnitski was going to say. When Prince Andrew
entered the room Magnitski’s words were again crowned
by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he
munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed
softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-
pitched staccato manner.
Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand
to Prince Andrew.
‘Very pleased to see you, Prince,’ he said. ‘One
moment...’ he went on, turning to Magnitski and
interrupting his story. ‘We have agreed that this is a
dinner for recreation, with not a word about business!’
and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.
Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with
astonishment, regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to
him that this was not Speranski but someone else.
Everything that had formerly appeared mysterious and

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fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and

unattractive.
At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment
and seemed to consist of the contents of a book of funny
anecdotes. Before Magnitski had finished his story
someone else was anxious to relate something still
funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the state
service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in
this company the insignificance of those people was so
definitely accepted that the only possible attitude toward
them was one of good humored ridicule. Speranski related
how at the Council that morning a deaf dignitary, when
asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too. Gervais
gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for
the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering,
broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of
the abuses that existed under the former order of things-
threatening to give a serious turn to the conversation.
Magnitski starting quizzing Stolypin about his
vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk
reverted to its former lively tone.
Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and
find amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests,
understanding his wish, tried to enliven him and amuse

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themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince Andrew

mirthless and tiresome. Speranski’s high-pitched voice
struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated
on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and
feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the
company, but no one took any notice of his being out of
harmony with the general mood. They all seemed very
gay.
He tried several times to join in the conversation, but
his remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork
thrown out of the water, and he could not jest with them.
There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they
said, it was witty and might have been funny, but it lacked
just that something which is the salt of mirth, and they
were not even aware that such a thing existed.
After dinner Speranski’s daughter and her governess
rose. He patted the little girl with his white hand and
kissed her. And that gesture, too, seemed unnatural to
Prince Andrew.
The men remained at table over their port- English
fashion. In the midst of a conversation that was started
about Napoleon’s Spanish affairs, which they all agreed
in approving, Prince Andrew began to express a contrary
opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish to

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prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant

course, told a story that had no connection with the
previous conversation. For a few moments all were silent.
Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a
bottle of wine and, remarking, ‘Nowadays good wine
rides in a carriage and pair,’ passed it to the servant and
got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly went into
the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier were
handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As
soon as he had left the room the general merriment
stopped and the guests began to converse sensibly and
quietly with one another.
‘Now for the recitation!’ said Speranski on returning
from his study. ‘A wonderful talent!’ he said to Prince
Andrew, and Magnitski immediately assumed a pose and
began reciting some humorous verses in French which he
had composed about various well-known Petersburg
people. He was interrupted several times by applause.
When the verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to
Speranski and took his leave.
‘Where are you off to so early?’ asked Speranski.
‘I promised to go to a reception.’
They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into
those mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had

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been ridiculous of him to have expected anything from

Speranski and from any of his own activities connected
with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter
rang in Prince Andrew’s ears long after he had left the
house.
When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking
of his life in Petersburg during those last four months as if
it were something new. He recalled his exertions and
solicitations, and the history of his project of army
reform, which had been accepted for consideration and
which they were trying to pass over in silence simply
because another, a very poor one, had already been
prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the
meetings of a committee of which Berg was a member.
He remembered how carefully and at what length
everything relating to form and procedure was discussed
at those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all
that related to the gist of the business was evaded. He
recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how
painstakingly he had translated the articles of the Roman
and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of
himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself
Bogucharovo, his occupations in the country, his journey

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to Ryazan; he remembered the peasants and Dron the

village elder, and mentally applying to them the Personal
Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished
that he could have spent so much time on such useless
work.

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Chapter XIX

Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had

not visited before, and among them at the Rostovs’ with
whom he had renewed acquaintance at the ball. Apart
from considerations of politeness which demanded the
call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl who had left
such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was
wearing a dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew
thought her even prettier than in her ball dress. She and all
the Rostov family welcomed him as an old friend, simply
and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly
judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of
excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count’s
hospitality and good nature, which struck one especially
in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such that Prince
Andrew could not refuse to stay to dinner. ‘Yes,’ he
thought, ‘they are capital people, who of course have not
the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in Natasha;
but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting
for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with
life!’

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In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange

world completely alien to him and brimful of joys
unknown to him, a different world, that in the Otradnoe
avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world
disconcerted him no longer and was no longer alien to
him, but he himself having entered it found in it a new
enjoyment.
After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew’s request, went
to the clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood
by a window talking to the ladies and listened to her. In
the midst of a phrase he ceased speaking and suddenly felt
tears choking him, a thing he had thought impossible for
him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something
new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the
same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about
yet he was ready to weep. What about? His former love?
The little princess? His disillusionments?... His hopes for
the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden,
vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something
infinitely great and illimitable within him and that limited
and material something that he, and even she, was. This
contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.

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As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him

and asked how he liked her voice. She asked this and then
became confused, feeling that she ought not to have asked
it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he liked her singing
as he liked everything she did.
Prince Andrew left the Rostovs’ late in the evening. He
went to bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not
sleep. Having lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up,
then lay down again not at all troubled by his
sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had
stepped out of a stuffy room into God’s own fresh air. It
did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha; he
was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to
himself, and in consequence all life appeared in a new
light. ‘Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow,
confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open
to me?’ said he to himself. And for the first time for a
very long while he began making happy plans for the
future. He decided that he must attend to his son’s
education by finding a tutor and putting the boy in his
charge, then he ought to retire from the service and go
abroad, and see England, Switzerland and Italy. ‘I must
use my freedom while I feel so much strength and youth
in me,’ he said to himself. ‘Pierre was right when he said

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one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to

be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury
their dead, but while one has life one must live and be
happy!’ thought he.
CHAPTER XX
One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he
knew everybody in Moscow and Petersburg, came to see
him. Berg arrived in an immaculate brand-new uniform,
with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his
temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
‘I have just been to see the countess, your wife.
Unfortunately she could not grant my request, but I hope,
Count, I shall be more fortunate with you,’ he said with a
smile.
‘What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service.’
‘I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count’
(Berg said this with perfect conviction that this
information could not but be agreeable), ‘and so I wish to
arrange just a small party for my own and my wife’s
friends.’ (He smiled still more pleasantly.) ‘I wished to
ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to
tea and to supper.’
Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such
people as the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to

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refuse such an invitation. Berg explained so clearly why

he wanted to collect at his house a small but select
company, and why this would give him pleasure, and why
though he grudged spending money on cards or anything
harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the
sake of good society- that Pierre could not refuse, and
promised to come.
‘But don’t be late, Count, if I may venture to ask;
about ten minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a
rubber. Our general is coming. He is very good to me. We
shall have supper, Count. So you will do me the favor.’
Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day
arrived at the Bergs’ house, not at ten but at fifteen
minutes to eight.
Having prepared everything necessary for the party,
the Bergs were really for their guests’ arrival.
In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts
and pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife.
Berg, closely buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside
his wife explaining to her that one always could and
should be acquainted with people above one, because
only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.
‘You can get to know something, you can ask for
something. See how I managed from my first promotion.’

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(Berg measured his life not by years but by promotions.)

‘My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only waiting
for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the
happiness to be your husband.’ (He rose and kissed
Vera’s hand, and on the way to her straightened out a
turned-up corner of the carpet.) ‘And how have I obtained
all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my
aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be
conscientious and methodical.’
Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak
woman, and paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his
was after all but a weak woman who could not understand
all that constitutes a man’s dignity, what it was ein Mann
zu sein.* Vera at the same time smiling with a sense of
superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all
the same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all
men did. Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women
weak and foolish. Vera, judging only by her husband and
generalizing from that observation, supposed that all men,
though they understand nothing and are conceited and
selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
*To be a man.

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Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to

crush her lace fichu for which he had paid a good price,
kissing her straight on the lips.
‘The only thing is, we mustn’t have children too soon,’
he continued, following an unconscious sequence of
ideas.
‘Yes,’ answered Vera, ‘I don’t at all want that. We
must live for society.’
‘Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this,’ said
Berg, pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband
and wife glanced at one another, both smiling with self-
satisfaction, and each mentally claiming the honor of this
visit.
‘This is what what comes of knowing how to make
acquaintances,’ thought Berg. ‘This is what comes of
knowing how to conduct oneself.’
‘But please don’t interrupt me when I am entertaining
the guests,’ said Vera, ‘because I know what interests
each of them and what to say to different people.’
Berg smiled again.
‘It can’t be helped: men must sometimes have
masculine conversation,’ said he.

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They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-

room, where it was impossible to sit down anywhere
without disturbing its symmetry, neatness, and order; so it
was quite comprehensible and not strange that Berg,
having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an
armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being
apparently painfully undecided on the matter himself,
eventually left the visitor to settle the question of
selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry by moving a
chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began
their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts
to entertain their guest.
Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre
ought to be entertained with conversation about the
French embassy, at once began accordingly. Berg, having
decided that masculine conversation was required,
interrupted his wife’s remarks and touched on the
question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously
jumped from the general subject to personal
considerations as to the proposals made him to take part
in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had
declined them. Though the conversation was very
incoherent and Vera was angry at the intrusion of the
masculine element, both husband and wife felt with

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satisfaction that, even if only one guest was present, their

evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas
to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted
candles.
Before long Boris, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There
was a shade of condescension and patronage in his
treatment of Berg and Vera. After Boris came a lady with
the colonel, then the general himself, then the Rostovs,
and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their
smiles of satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in
their drawing room, at the sound of the disconnected talk,
the rustling of dresses, and the bowing and scraping.
Everything was just as everybody always has it,
especially so the general, who admired the apartment,
patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority
superintended the setting out of the table for boston. The
general sat down by Count Ilya Rostov, who was next to
himself the most important guest. The old people sat with
the old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the
tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes
in a silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party.
Everything was just as it was everywhere else.

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Chapter XXI

Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to

boston with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel.
At the card table he happened to be directly facing
Natasha, and was struck by a curious change that had
come over her since the ball, She was silent, and not only
less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from
plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything
around.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ thought Pierre, glancing
at her. She was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and
reluctantly, without looking at him, made some reply to
Boris who sat down beside her. After playing out a whole
suit and to his partner’s delight taking five tricks, Pierre,
hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had
entered the room while he was picking up his tricks,
glanced again at Natasha.
‘What has happened to her?’ he asked himself with
still greater surprise.
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying
something to her with a look of tender solicitude. She,
having raised her head, was looking up at him, flushed

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and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And

the bright glow of some inner fire that had been
suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely
transformed and from a plain girl had again become what
she had been at the ball.
Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed
a new and youthful expression in his friend’s face.
Pierre changed places several times during the game,
sitting now with his back to Natasha and now facing her,
but during the whole of the six rubbers he watched her
and his friend.
‘Something very important is happening between
them,’ thought Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful
and painful agitated him and made him neglect the game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was
no use playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha
on one side was talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera
with a subtle smile was saying something to Prince
Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking whether
they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Vera,
having noticed Prince Andrew’s attentions to Natasha,
decided that at a party, a real evening party, subtle
allusions to the tender passion were absolutely necessary
and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone,

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began a conversation with him about feelings in general

and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest as she
considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to
employ her diplomatic tact.
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was
being carried away by her self-satisfied talk, but that
Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a thing that rarely
happened with him.
‘What do you think?’ Vera was saying with an arch
smile. ‘You are so discerning, Prince, and understand
people’s characters so well at a glance. What do you think
of Natalie? Could she be constant in her attachments?
Could she, like other women’ (Vera meant herself), ‘love
a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is
what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?’
‘I know your sister too little,’ replied Prince Andrew,
with a sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his
embarrassment, ‘to be able to solve so delicate a question,
and then I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is
the more constant she is likely to be,’ he added, and
looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.
‘Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,’ continued Vera-
mentioning ‘our days’ as people of limited intelligence
are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered

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and appraised the peculiarities of ‘our days’ and that

human characteristics change with the times- ‘in our days
a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being
courted often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be
confessed that Natalie is very susceptible.’ This return to
the subject of Natalie caused Prince Andrew to knit his
brows with discomfort: he was about to rise, but Vera
continued with a still more subtle smile:
‘I think no one has been more courted than she,’ she
went on, ‘but till quite lately she never cared seriously for
anyone. Now you know, Count,’ she said to Pierre, ‘even
our dear cousin Boris, who, between ourselves, was very
far gone in the land of tenderness...’ (alluding to a map of
love much in vogue at that time).
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
‘You are friendly with Boris, aren’t you?’ asked Vera.
‘Yes, I know him..’
‘I expect he has told you of his childish love for
Natasha?’
‘Oh, there was childish love?’ suddenly asked Prince
Andrew, blushing unexpectedly.
‘Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads
to love. Le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don’t
you think so?’

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*"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.’

‘Oh, undoubtedly!’ said Prince Andrew, and with
sudden and unnatural liveliness he began chaffing Pierre
about the need to be very careful with his fifty-year-old
Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these jesting remarks
he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
‘Well?’ asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange
animation with surprise, and noticing the glance he turned
on Natasha as he rose.
‘I must... I must have a talk with you,’ said Prince
Andrew. ‘You know that pair of women’s gloves?’ (He
referred to the Masonic gloves given to a newly initiated
Brother to present to the woman he loved.) ‘I... but no, I
will talk to you later on,’ and with a strange light in his
eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew
approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw
how Prince Andrew asked her something and how she
flushed as she replied.
But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began
insisting that he should take part in an argument between
the general and the colonel on the affairs in Spain.
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure
never left his face. The party was very successful and
quite like other parties he had seen. Everything was

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similar: the ladies’ subtle talk, the cards, the general

raising his voice at the card table, and the samovar and the
tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had always
seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had
not yet had a loud conversation among the men and a
dispute about something important and clever. Now the
general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew
Pierre to it.

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Chapter XXII

Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince

Andrew dined with the Rostovs and spent the rest of the
day there.
Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince
Andrew came, and without concealing it he tried to be
with Natasha all day. Not only in the soul of the
frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha, but in the
whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something
important that was bound to happen. The countess looked
with sad and sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when
he talked to Natasha and timidly started some artificial
conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way.
Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid of being in
the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a
panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him
for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her by his
timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her
but could not bring himself to do so.
In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the
countess went up to Natasha and whispered: ‘Well,
what?’

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‘Mamma! For heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything

now! One can’t talk about that,’ said Natasha.
But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and
now frightened, lay long time in her mother’s bed gazing
straight before her. She told her how he had
complimented her, how he told her he was going abroad,
asked her where they were going to spend the summer,
and then how he had asked her about Boris.
‘But such a... such a... never happened to me before!’
she said. ‘Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always
afraid when I’m with him. What does that mean? Does it
mean that it’s the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are you
asleep?’
‘No, my love; I am frightened myself,’ answered her
mother. ‘Now go!’
‘All the same I shan’t sleep. What silliness, to sleep!
Mummy! Mummy! such a thing never happened to me
before,’ she said, surprised and alarmed at the feeling she
was aware of in herself. ‘And could we ever have
thought!..’
It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw
Prince Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with
him. It was as if she feared this strange, unexpected
happiness of meeting again the very man she had then

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chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of
finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.
‘And it had to happen that he should come specially to
Petersburg while we are here. And it had to happen that
we should meet at that ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that
everything led up to this! Already then, directly I saw him
I felt something peculiar.’
‘What else did he say to you? What are those verses?
Read them...’ said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to
some verses Prince Andrew had written in Natasha’s
album.
‘Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a
widower?’
‘Don’t, Natasha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in
heaven,’’ said her mother.
‘Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!’
cried Natasha, shedding tears of joy and excitement and
embracing her mother.
At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with
Pierre and telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm
resolve to make her his wife.
That day Countess Helene had a reception at her
house. The French ambassador was there, and a foreign
prince of the blood who had of late become a frequent

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visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and gentlemen.

Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the
rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-
minded, and morose air.
Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of
nervous depression and had made desperate efforts to
combat it. Since the intimacy of his wife with the royal
prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a gentleman
of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to
feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark
thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him
oftener than before. At the same time the feeling he had
noticed between his protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew
accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own
position and his friend’s. He tried equally to avoid
thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince
Andrew; and again everything seemed to him
insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the
question: for what? presented itself; and he forced himself
to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to drive
away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight,
after he had left the countess’ apartments, he was sitting
upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the
original transaction of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at

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a table in his low room cloudy with tobacco smoke, when

someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.
‘Ah, it’s you!’ said Pierre with a preoccupied,
dissatisfied air. ‘And I, you see, am hard at it.’ He pointed
to his manuscript book with that air of escaping from the
ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work.
Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of
renewed life on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not
noticing his sad look, smiled at him with the egotism of
joy.
‘Well, dear heart,’ said he, ‘I wanted to tell you about
it yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never
experienced anything like it before. I am in love, my
friend!’
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his
heavy person down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
‘With Natasha Rostova, yes?’ said he.
‘Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have
believed it, but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I
tormented myself and suffered, but I would not exchange
even that torment for anything in the world, I have not
lived till now. At last I live, but I can’t live without her!
But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why don’t
you speak?’

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‘I? I? What did I tell you?’ said Pierre suddenly, rising

and beginning to pace up and down the room. ‘I always
thought it.... That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare
girl.... My dear friend, I entreat you, don’t philosophize,
don’t doubt, marry, marry, marry.... And I am sure there
will not be a happier man than you.’
‘But what of her?’
‘She loves you.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish...’ said Prince Andrew, smiling and
looking into Pierre’s eyes.
‘She does, I know,’ Pierre cried fiercely.
‘But do listen,’ returned Prince Andrew, holding him
by the arm. ‘Do you know the condition I am in? I must
talk about it to someone.’
‘Well, go on, go on. I am very glad,’ said Pierre, and
his face really changed, his brow became smooth, and he
listened gladly to Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed,
and really was, quite a different, quite a new man. Where
was his spleen, his contempt for life, his disillusionment?
Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his
soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an
extended future, said he could not sacrifice his own
happiness to his father’s caprice, and spoke of how he

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would either make his father consent to this marriage and

love her, or would do without his consent; then he
marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at
something strange, apart from and independent of
himself.
‘I should not have believed anyone who told me that I
was capable of such love,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘It is not
at all the same feeling that I knew in the past. The whole
world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is
she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is
everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and
darkness...’
‘Darkness and gloom,’ reiterated Pierre: ‘yes, yes, I
understand that.’
‘I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I
am very happy! You understand me? I know you are glad
for my sake.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a
touched and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter
Prince Andrew’s lot appeared to him, the gloomier
seemed his own.

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Chapter XXIII

Prince Andrew needed his father’s consent to his

marriage, and to obtain this he started for the country next
day.
His father received his son’s communication with
external composure, but inward wrath. He could not
comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life or
introduce anything new into it, when his own life was
already ending. ‘If only they would let me end my days as
I want to,’ thought the old man, ‘then they might do as
they please.’ With his son, however, he employed the
diplomacy he reserved for important occasions and,
adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole matter.
In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as
regards birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew
was no longer as young as he had been and his health was
poor (the old man laid special stress on this), while she
was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would be
a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. ‘Fourthly and finally,’
the father said, looking ironically at his son, ‘I beg you to
put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as
you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas.

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Then if your love or passion or obstinacy- as you please-

is still as great, marry! And that’s my last word on it.
Mind, the last...’ concluded the prince, in a tone which
showed that nothing would make him alter his decision.
Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that
his feelings, or his fiancee’s, would not stand a year’s test,
or that he (the old prince himself) would die before then,
and he decided to conform to his father’s wish- to
propose, and postpone the wedding for a year.
Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with
the Rostovs, Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha
expected Bolkonski all day, but he did not come. On the
second and third day it was the same. Pierre did not come
either and Natasha, not knowing that Prince Andrew had
gone to see his father, could not explain his absence to
herself.
Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire
to go out anywhere and wandered from room to room like
a shadow, idle and listless; she wept secretly at night and
did not go to her mother in the evenings. She blushed
continually and was irritable. It seemed to her that
everybody knew about her disappointment and was

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laughing at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward

grief, this wound to her vanity intensified her misery.
Once she came to her mother, tried to say something,
and suddenly began to cry. Her tears were those of an
offended child who does not know why it is being
punished.
The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first
listening to her mother’s words, suddenly interrupted her:
‘Leave off, Mamma! I don’t think, and don’t want to
think about it! He just came and then left off, left off..’
Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but
recovered and went on quietly:
‘And I don’t at all want to get married. And I am afraid
of him; I have now become quite calm, quite calm.’
The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old
dress which she knew had the peculiar property of
conducing to cheerfulness in the mornings, and that day
she returned to the old way of life which she had
abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea
she went to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for
its loud resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When
she had finished her first exercise she stood still in the
middle of the room and sang a musical phrase that
particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as though

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she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes

reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and
slowly dying away; and all at once she felt cheerful.
‘What’s the good of making so much of it? Things are
nice as it is,’ she said to herself, and she began walking up
and down the room, not stepping simply on the
resounding parquet but treading with each step from the
heel to the toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of
shoes) and listening to the regular tap of the heel and
creak of the toe as gladly as she had to the sounds of her
own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it. ‘There,
that’s me!’ the expression of her face seemed to say as
she caught sight of herself. ‘Well, and very nice too! I
need nobody.’
A footman wanted to come in to clear away something
in the room but she would not let him, and having closed
the door behind him continued her walk. That morning
she had returned to her favorite mood- love of, and
delight in, herself. ‘How charming that Natasha is!’ she
said again, speaking as some third, collective, male
person. ‘Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody’s way
if only they leave her in peace.’ But however much they
left her in peace she could not now be at peace, and
immediately felt this.

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In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked,

‘At home?’ and then footsteps were heard. Natasha was
looking at the mirror, but did not see herself. She listened
to the sounds in the hall. When she saw herself, her face
was pale. It was he. She knew this for certain, though she
hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.
Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.
‘Mamma! Bolkonski has come!’ she said. ‘Mamma, it
is awful, it is unbearable! I don’t want... to be tormented?
What am I to do?..’
Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew
entered the room with an agitated and serious face. As
soon as he saw Natasha his face brightened. He kissed the
countess’ hand and Natasha’s, and sat down beside the
sofa.
‘It is long since we had the pleasure...’ began the
countess, but Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering
her intended question, obviously in haste to say what he
had to.
‘I have not been to see all this time because I have
been at my father’s. I had to talk over a very important
matter with him. I only got back last night,’ he said
glancing at Natasha; ‘I want to have a talk with you,
Countess,’ he added after a moment’s pause.

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The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.

‘I am at your disposal,’ she murmured.
Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was
unable to do so: something gripped her throat, and
regardless of manners she stared straight at Prince
Andrew with wide-open eyes.
‘At once? This instant!... No, it can’t be!’ she thought.
Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her
that she was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant,
her fate would be decided.
‘Go, Natasha! I will call you,’ said the countess in a
whisper.
Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at
Prince Andrew and at her mother and went out.
‘I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter’s
hand,’ said Prince Andrew.
The countess’ face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
‘Your offer...’ she began at last sedately. He remained
silent, looking into her eyes. ‘Your offer...’ (she grew
confused) ‘is agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am
glad. And my husband... I hope... but it will depend on
her...’
‘I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do
you give it to me?’ said Prince Andrew.

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‘Yes,’ replied the countess. She held out her hand to

him, and with a mixed feeling of estrangement and
tenderness pressed her lips to his forehead as he stooped
to kiss her hand. She wished to love him as a son, but felt
that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man. ‘I am
sure my husband will consent,’ said the countess, ‘but
your father..’
‘My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it
an express condition of his consent that the wedding is not
to take place for a year. And I wished to tell you of that,’
said Prince Andrew.
‘It is true that Natasha is still young, but- so long as
that?..’
‘It is unavoidable,’ said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
‘I will send her to you,’ said the countess, and left the
room.
‘Lord have mercy upon us!’ she repeated while
seeking her daughter.
Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha
was sitting on the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing
at the icons and whispering something as she rapidly
crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped up and
flew to her.
‘Well, Mamma?... Well?..’

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‘Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand,’ said the

countess, coldly it seemed to Natasha. ‘Go... go,’ said the
mother, sadly and reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her
daughter ran away.
Natasha never remembered how she entered the
drawing room. When she came in and saw him she
paused. ‘Is it possible that this stranger has now become
everything to me?’ she asked herself, and immediately
answered, ‘Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me
than everything in the world.’ Prince Andrew came up to
her with downcast eyes.
‘I have loved you from the very first moment I saw
you. May I hope?’
He looked at her and was struck by the serious
impassioned expression of her face. Her face said: ‘Why
ask? Why doubt what you cannot but know? Why speak,
when words cannot express what one feels?’
She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand
and kissed it.
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then
she sighed loudly and, catching her breath more and more
quickly, began to sob.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

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‘Oh, I am so happy!’ she replied, smiled through her

tears, bent over closer to him, paused for an instant as if
asking herself whether she might, and then kissed him.
Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes,
and did not find in his heart his former love for her.
Something in him had suddenly changed; there was no
longer the former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but
there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness,
fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive
yet joyful sense of the duty that now bound him to her
forever. The present feeling, though not so bright and
poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious.
‘Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?’
asked Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.
‘Is it possible that I- the ‘chit of a girl,’ as everybody
called me,’ thought Natasha- ‘is it possible that I am now
to be the wife and the equal of this strange, dear, clever
man whom even my father looks up to? Can it be true?
Can it be true that there can be no more playing with life,
that now I am grown up, that on me now lies a
responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what
did he ask me?’
‘No,’ she replied, but she had not understood his
question.

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‘Forgive me!’ he said. ‘But you are so young, and I

have already been through so much in life. I am afraid for
you, you do not yet know yourself.’
Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but
failing to take in the meaning of his words.
‘Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be,’
continued Prince Andrew, ‘it will give you time to be sure
of yourself. I ask you to make me happy in a year, but you
are free: our engagement shall remain a secret, and should
you find that you do not love me, or should you come to
love...’ said Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.
‘Why do you say that?’ Natasha interrupted him. ‘You
know that from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I
have loved you,’ she cried, quite convinced that she spoke
the truth.
‘In a year you will learn to know yourself...’
‘A whole year!’ Natasha repeated suddenly, only now
realizing that the marriage was to be postponed for a year.
‘But why a year? Why a year?..’
Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for
this delay. Natasha did not hear him.
‘And can’t it be helped?’ she asked. Prince Andrew did
not reply, but his face expressed the impossibility of
altering that decision.

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‘It’s awful! Oh, it’s awful! awful!’ Natasha suddenly

cried, and again burst into sobs. ‘I shall die, waiting a
year: it’s impossible, it’s awful!’ She looked into her
lover’s face and saw in it a look of commiseration and
perplexity.
‘No, no! I’ll do anything!’ she said, suddenly checking
her tears. ‘I am so happy.’
The father and mother came into the room and gave
the betrothed couple their blessing.
From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the
Rostovs’ as Natasha’s affianced lover.

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Chapter XXIV

No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha’s

engagement to Bolkonski was not announced; Prince
Andrew insisted on that. He said that as he was
responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole
burden of it; that he had given his word and bound
himself forever, but that he did not wish to bind Natasha
and gave her perfect freedom. If after six months she felt
that she did not love him she would have full right to
reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her parents
wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He
came every day to the Rostovs’, but did not behave to
Natasha as an affianced lover: he did not use the familiar
thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her hand. After
their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural
relations sprang up between them. It was as if they had
not known each other till now. Both liked to recall how
they had regarded each other when as yet they were
nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite
different beings: then they were artificial, now natural and
sincere. At first the family felt some constraint in
intercourse with Prince Andrew; he seemed a man from

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another world, and for a long time Natasha trained the

family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all that
he only appeared to be different, but was really just like
all of them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one
else ought to be. After a few days they grew accustomed
to him, and without restraint in his presence pursued their
usual way of life, in which he took his part. He could talk
about rural economy with the count, fashions with the
countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork
with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among
themselves and in his presence expressed their wonder at
how it had all happened, and at the evident omens there
had been of it: Prince Andrew’s coming to Otradnoe and
their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between
Natasha and Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed
on his first visit, and Andrew’s encounter with Nicholas
in 1805, and many other incidents betokening that it had
to be.
In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned
which always accompanies the presence of a betrothed
couple. Often when all sitting together everyone kept
silent. Sometimes the others would get up and go away
and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They
rarely spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid

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and ashamed to speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did

all his feelings, which she constantly divined. Once she
began questioning him about his son. Prince Andrew
blushed, as he often did now- Natasha particularly liked it
in him- and said that his son would not live with them.
‘Why not?’ asked Natasha in a frightened tone.
‘I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and
besides..’
‘How I should have loved him!’ said Natasha,
immediately guessing his thought; ‘but I know you wish
to avoid any pretext for finding fault with us.’
Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince
Andrew, and ask his advice about Petya’s education or
Nicholas’ service. The old countess sighed as she looked
at them; Sonya was always getting frightened lest she
should be in the way and tried to find excuses for leaving
them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince
Andrew spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha
listened to him with pride; when she spoke she noticed
with fear and joy that he gazed attentively and
scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity:
‘What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover
something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me
is not there?’ Sometimes she fell into one of the mad,

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merry moods characteristic of her, and then she

particularly loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew
laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he
abandoned himself entirely to his laughter, and after such
a laugh she always felt nearer to him. Natasha would have
been completely happy if the thought of the separation
awaiting her and drawing near had not terrified her, just
as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and cold.
On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince
Andrew brought with him Pierre, who had not been to the
Rostovs’ once since the ball. Pierre seemed disconcerted
and embarrassed. He was talking to the countess, and
Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,
thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
‘You have known Bezukhov a long time?’ he asked.
‘Do you like him?’
‘Yes, he’s a dear, but very absurd.’
And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell
anecdotes of his absent-mindedness, some of which had
even been invented about him.
‘Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I
have known him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I
beg you, Natalie,’ Prince Andrew said with sudden
seriousness- ‘I am going away and heaven knows what

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may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am

not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to
you when I am not here..’
‘What can happen?’
‘Whatever trouble may come,’ Prince Andrew
continued, ‘I beg you, Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever
may happen, to turn to him alone for advice and help! He
is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he has a
heart of gold.’
Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor
Prince Andrew himself could have foreseen how the
separation from her lover would act on Natasha. Flushed
and agitated she went about the house all that day, dry-
eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not
understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry
when, on taking leave, he kissed her hand for the last
time. ‘Don’t go!’ she said in a tone that made him wonder
whether he really ought not to stay and which he
remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he
was gone; but for several days she sat in her room dry-
eyed, taking no interest in anything and only saying now
and then, ‘Oh, why did he go away?’
But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of
those around her, she recovered from her mental sickness

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just as suddenly and became her old self again, but with a
change in her moral physiognomy, as a child gets up after
a long illness with a changed expression of face.

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Chapter XXV

During that year after his son’s departure, Prince

Nicholas Bolkonski’s health and temper became much
worse. He grew still more irritable, and it was Princess
Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits of
unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her
tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as
possible. Princess Mary had two passions and
consequently two joys- her nephew, little Nicholas, and
religion- and these were the favorite subjects of the
prince’s attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he
would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids,
or the petting and spoiling of children. ‘You want to make
him’- little Nicholas- ‘into an old maid like yourself! A
pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid,’ he
would say. Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he
would ask her in Princess Mary’s presence how she liked
our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
He continually hurt Princess Mary’s feelings and
tormented her, but it cost her no effort to forgive him.
Could he be to blame toward her, or could her father,
whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be unjust? And

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what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud

word ‘justice.’ All the complex laws of man centered for
her in one clear and simple law- the law of love and self-
sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for
mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to
do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to
endure and love, and that she did.
During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald
Hills and had been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than
Princess Mary had known him for a long time past. She
felt that something had happened to him, but he said
nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a long
talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary
noticed that before his departure they were dissatisfied
with one another.
Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary
wrote to her friend Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom
she had dreamed (as all girls dream) of marrying to her
brother, and who was at that time in mourning for her
own brother, killed in Turkey.
Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender
friend Julie.
Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to
myself as a special providence of God who, loving you,

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wishes to try you and your excellent mother. Oh, my

friend! Religion, and religion alone, can- I will not say
comfort us- but save us from despair. Religion alone can
explain to us what without its help man cannot
comprehend: why, for what cause, kind and noble beings
able to find happiness in life- not merely harming no one
but necessary to the happiness of others- are called away
to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or such as
are a burden to themselves and to others, are left living.
The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget- that of
my dear sister-in-law- left that impression on me. Just as
you ask destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I
asked why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged
anyone, but in whose soul there were never any unkind
thoughts, had to die. And what do you think, dear friend?
Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my
petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to
die, and in what way that death was but an expression of
the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose every action,
though generally incomprehensible to us, is but a
manifestation of His infinite love for His creatures.
Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically innocent to
have the strength to perform all a mother’s duties. As a
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not

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have been so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us,
and particularly Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets
and memories, but probably she will there receive a place
I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak of her alone,
that early and terrible death has had the most beneficent
influence on me and on my brother in spite of all our
grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts
could not occur to me; I should then have dismissed them
with horror, but now they are very clear and certain. I
write all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you of
the Gospel truth which has become for me a principle of
life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without His
will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us,
and so whatever befalls us is for our good.
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in
Moscow. In spite of my wish to see you, I do not think so
and do not want to do so. You will be surprised to hear
that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case is this: my
father’s health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot
stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This
irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political
questions. He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is
negotiating on equal terms with all the sovereigns of
Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the

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Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to

politics, but from my father’s remarks and his talks with
Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world
and especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte,
who only at Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not
accepted as a great man, still less as Emperor of France.
And my father cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is
chiefly because of his political views that my father is
reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he foresees the
encounters that would result from his way of expressing
his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might
derive from a course of treatment he would lose as a
result of the disputes about Buonaparte which would be
inevitable. In any case it will be decided very shortly.
Our family life goes on in the old way except for my
brother Andrew’s absence. He, as I wrote you before, has
changed very much of late. After his sorrow he only this
year quite recovered his spirits. He has again become as I
used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with
that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has
realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But
together with this mental change he has grown physically
much weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I
am anxious about him and glad he is taking this trip

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abroad which the doctors recommended long ago. I hope

it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he is spoken
of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the
young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never
doubted it. The good he has done to everybody here, from
his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On his
arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always
wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to
Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write
about- I mean the report of my brother’s betrothal to the
little Rostova. I do not think my brother will ever marry
again, and certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know
that though he rarely speaks about the wife he has lost, the
grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for him
ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a
stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl
is not the kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I
do not think he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I
do not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the
end of my second sheet. Good-by, my dear friend. May
God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My dear
friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
MARY

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Chapter XXVI

In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an

unexpected letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in
which he gave her strange and surprising news. He
informed her of his engagement to Natasha Rostova. The
whole letter breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and
tender and confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that
he had never loved as he did now and that only now did
he understand and know what life was. He asked his sister
to forgive him for not having told her of his resolve when
he had last visited Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it
to his father. He had not done so for fear Princess Mary
should ask her father to give his consent, irritating him
and having to bear the brunt of his displeasure without
attaining her object. ‘Besides,’ he wrote, ‘the matter was
not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then
insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months,
half of that period, have passed, and my resolution is
firmer than ever. If the doctors did not keep me here at the
spas I should be back in Russia, but as it is I have to
postpone my return for three months. You know me and
my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have

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been and always shall be independent; but to go against

his will and arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps
remain with us such a short time, would destroy half my
happiness. I am now writing to him about the same
question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand
him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the
whole matter and whether there is hope that he may
consent to reduce the term by four months.’
After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess
Mary gave the letter to her father. The next day the old
prince said to her quietly:
‘Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It
won’t be long- I shall soon set him free.’
The princess was about to reply, but her father would
not let her speak and, raising his voice more and more,
cried:
‘Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever
people, eh? Rich, eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little
Nicholas will have! Write and tell him that he may marry
tomorrow if he likes. She will be little Nicholas’
stepmother and I’ll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He
mustn’t be without a stepmother either! Only one thing,
no more women are wanted in my house- let him marry
and live by himself. Perhaps you will go and live with

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him too?’ he added, turning to Princess Mary. ‘Go in

heavens name! Go out into the frost... the frost... the frost!
After this outburst the prince did not speak any more
about the matter. But repressed vexation at his son’s poor-
spirited behavior found expression in his treatment of his
daughter. To his former pretexts for irony a fresh one was
now added- allusions to stepmothers and amiabilities to
Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘Why shouldn’t I marry her?’ he asked his daughter.
‘She’ll make a splendid princess!’
And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment,
Princess Mary noticed that her father was really
associating more and more with the Frenchwoman. She
wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his letter,
but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father
to the idea.
Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew,
and religion were Princess Mary’s joys and consolations;
but besides that, since everyone must have personal
hopes, Princess Mary in the profoundest depths of her
heart had a hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief
consolation of her life. This comforting dream and hope
were given her by God’s folk- the half-witted and other
pilgrims who visited her without the prince’s knowledge.

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The longer she lived, the more experience and

observation she had of life, the greater was her wonder at
the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and
happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and
harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary,
sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she
died, but that was not enough: he wanted to bind his
happiness to another woman. Her father objected to this
because he wanted a more distinguished and wealthier
match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered
and tormented one another and injured their souls, their
eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure
but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves,
but Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told
us that this life is but for a moment and is a probation; yet
we cling to it and think to find happiness in it. ‘How is it
that no one realizes this?’ thought Princess Mary. ‘No one
except these despised God’s folk who, wallet on back,
come to me by the back door, afraid of being seen by the
prince, not for fear of ill-usage by him but for fear of
causing him to sin. To leave family, home, and all the
cares of worldly welfare, in order without clinging to
anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place
under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but

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praying for all- for those who drive one away as well as
for those who protect one: higher than that life and truth
there is no life or truth!’
There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little
woman of fifty called Theodosia, who for over thirty
years had gone about barefoot and worn heavy chains.
Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. Once, when
in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia
was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone
had found the true path of life suddenly came to Princess
Mary with such force that she resolved to become a
pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone to sleep
Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at
last made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she
must go on a pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no
one but to her confessor, Father Akinfi, the monk, and he
approved of her intention. Under guise of a present for the
pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim’s complete
costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough
coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of
drawers containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary
paused, uncertain whether the time had not already come
to put her project into execution.

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Often, listening to the pilgrims’ tales, she was so

stimulated by their simple speech, mechanical to them but
to her so full of deep meaning, that several times she was
on the point of abandoning everything and running away
from home. In imagination she already pictured herself by
Theodosia’s side, dressed in coarse rags, walking with a
staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road, directing
her wanderings from one saint’s shrine to another, free
from envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the
place where there is no more sorrow or sighing, but
eternal joy and bliss.
‘I shall come to a place and pray there, and before
having time to get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go
farther. I will go on till my legs fail, and I’ll lie down and
die somewhere, and shall at last reach that eternal, quiet
haven, where there is neither sorrow nor sighing...’
thought Princess Mary.
But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially
little Koko (Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept
quietly, and felt that she was a sinner who loved her father
and little nephew more than God.

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BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11

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Chapter I

The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor-

idleness- was a condition of the first man’s blessedness
before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness,
but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have
to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because
our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at
ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are
idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though
idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one
of the conditions of man’s primitive blessedness. And
such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is
the lot of a whole class- the military. The chief attraction
of military service has consisted and will consist in this
compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to
the full when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the
Pavlograd regiment, in which he already commanded the
squadron he had taken over from Denisov.
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow,
whom his Moscow acquaintances would have considered
rather bad form, but who was liked and respected by his
comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well

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contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in

letters from home more frequent complaints from his
mother that their affairs were falling into greater and
greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come
back to gladden and comfort his old parents.
Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their
wanting to take him away from surroundings in which,
protected from all the entanglements of life, he was living
so calmly and quietly. He felt that sooner or later he
would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with its
embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its
accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties,
society, and with Sonya’s love and his promise to her. It
was all dreadfully difficult and complicated; and he
replied to his mother in cold, formal letters in French,
beginning: ‘My dear Mamma,’ and ending: ‘Your
obedient son,’ which said nothing of when he would
return. In 1810 he received letters from his parents, in
which they told him of Natasha’s engagement to
Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year’s time
because the old prince made difficulties. This letter
grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was
sorry that Natasha, for whom he cared more than for
anyone else in the family, should be lost to the home; and

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secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not

to have been there to show that fellow Bolkonski that
connection with him was no such great honor after all,
and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with
permission from his dotard father. For a moment he
hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to
see Natasha before she was married, but then came the
maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and about the
confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off.
But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his
mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that
letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not
come and take matters in hand, their whole property
would be sold by auction and they would all have to go
begging. The count was so weak, and trusted Mitenka so
much, and was so good-natured, that everybody took
advantage of him and things were going from bad to
worse. ‘For God’s sake, I implore you, come at once if
you do not wish to make me and the whole family
wretched,’ wrote the countess.
This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common
sense of a matter-of-fact man which showed him what he
ought to do.

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The right thing now was, if not to retire from the

service, at any rate to go home on leave. Why he had to
go he did not know; but after his after-dinner nap he gave
orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious gray stallion
that had not been ridden for a long time, and when he
returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed
Lavrushka (Denisov’s servant who had remained with
him) and his comrades who turned up in the evening that
he was applying for leave and was going home. Difficult
and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would go
away without having heard from the staff- and this
interested him extremely- whether he was promoted to a
captaincy or would receive the Order of St. Anne for the
last maneuvers; strange as it was to think that he would go
away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses
Rostov had betted he would sell for two thousand rubles;
incomprehensible as it seemed that the ball the hussars
were giving in honor of the Polish Mademoiselle
Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given
one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska)
would take place without him- he knew he must go away
from this good, bright world to somewhere where
everything was stupid and confused. A week later he

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obtained his leave. His hussar comrades- not only those of

his own regiment, but the whole brigade- gave Rostov a
dinner to which the subscription was fifteen rubles a head,
and at which there were two bands and two choirs of
singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with Major Basov; the
tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostov; the
soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted
‘hurrah!’ and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted
him as far as the first post station.
During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug
to Kiev- all Rostov’s thoughts, as is usual in such cases,
were behind him, with the squadron; but when he had
gone more than halfway he began to forget his three roans
and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder
anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he
would find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the
nearer he approached it- far stronger, as though this
feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of
attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the
distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he gave
the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran
breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling
of unsatisfied expectation- the feeling that ‘everything is

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just the same, so why did I hurry?’- Nicholas began to

settle down in his old home world. His father and mother
were much the same, only a little older. What was new in
them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord,
which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon
found out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya
was nearly twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and
promised nothing more than she was already, but that was
enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time
Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of
this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and
Natasha surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big
handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous,
with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natasha,
for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed
whenever he looked at her.
‘You’re not the same at all,’ he said.
‘How? Am I uglier?’
‘On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!’ he
whispered to her.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ cried Natasha, joyfully.
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew
and of his visit to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.

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‘Well, are you glad?’ Natasha asked. ‘I am so tranquil

and happy now.’
‘Very glad,’ answered Nicholas. ‘He is an excellent
fellow.... And are you very much in love?’
‘How shall I put it?’ replied Natasha. ‘I was in love
with Boris, with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is
quite different. I feel at peace and settled. I know that no
better man than he exists, and I am calm and contented
now. Not at all as before.’
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the
postponement of the marriage for a year; but Natasha
attacked her brother with exasperation, proving to him
that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad
thing to enter a family against the father’s will, and that
she herself wished it so.
‘You don’t at all understand,’ she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She
did not seem at all like a girl in love and parted from her
affianced husband. She was even-tempered and calm and
quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed Nicholas and
even made him regard Bolkonski’s courtship skeptically.
He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially
as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always

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seemed to him that there was something not quite right

about this intended marriage.
‘Why this delay? Why no betrothal?’ he thought.
Once, when he had touched on this topic with his mother,
he discovered, to his surprise and somewhat to his
satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too had
doubts about this marriage.
‘You see he writes,’ said she, showing her son a letter
of Prince Andrew’s, with that latent grudge a mother
always has in regard to a daughter’s future married
happiness, ‘he writes that he won’t come before
December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably!
His health is very delicate. Don’t tell Natasha. And don’t
attach importance to her being so bright: that’s because
she’s living through the last days of her girlhood, but I
know what she is like every time we receive a letter from
him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!’
(She always ended with these words.) ‘He is an excellent
man!’

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Chapter II

After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and

even dull. He was worried by the impending necessity of
interfering in the stupid business matters for which his
mother had called him home. To throw off this burden as
quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival he
went, angry and scowling and without answering
questions as to where he was going, to Mitenka’s lodge
and demanded an account of everything. But what an
account of everything might be Nicholas knew even less
than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The
conversation and the examination of the accounts with
Mitenka did not last long. The village elder, a peasant
delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in the
passage, heard with fear and delight first the young
count’s voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and
louder, and then words of abuse, dreadful words,
ejaculated one after the other.
‘Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I’ll hack the dog to
pieces! I’m not my father!... Robbing us!...’ and so on.
Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the
young count, red in the face and with bloodshot eyes,

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dragged Mitenka out by the scruff of the neck and applied

his foot and knee to him behind with great agility at
convenient moments between the words, shouting, ‘Be
off! Never let me see your face here again, you villain!’
Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran
away into the shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-
known haven of refuge for culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka
himself, returning tipsy from the town, used to hide there,
and many of the residents at Otradnoe, hiding from
Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
Mitenka’s wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads
and frightened faces out of the door of a room where a
bright samovar was boiling and where the steward’s high
bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.
The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing
hard, passed by with resolute strides and went into the
house.
The countess, who heard at once from the maids what
had happened at the lodge, was calmed by the thought
that now their affairs would certainly improve, but on the
other hand felt anxious as to the effect this excitement
might have on her son. She went several times to his door
on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.

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Next day the old count called his son aside and, with
an embarrassed smile, said to him:
‘But you know, my dear boy, it’s a pity you got
excited! Mitenka has told me all about it.’
‘I knew,’ thought Nicholas, ‘that I should never
understand anything in this crazy world.’
‘You were angry that he had not entered those 700
rubles. But they were carried forward- and you did not
look at the other page.’
‘Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is!
And what I have done, I have done; but, if you like, I
won’t speak to him again.’
‘No, my dear boy’ (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He
knew he had mismanaged his wife’s property and was to
blame toward his children, but he did not know how to
remedy it). ‘No, I beg you to attend to the business. I am
old. I..’
‘No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you
unpleasantness. I understand it all less than you do.’
‘Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and
carryings forward from page to page,’ he thought. ‘I used
to understand what a ‘corner’ and the stakes at cards
meant, but carrying forward to another page I don’t
understand at all,’ said he to himself, and after that he did

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not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess

called her son and informed him that she had a
promissory note from Anna Mikhaylovna for two
thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of doing
with it.
‘This,’ answered Nicholas. ‘You say it rests with me.
Well, I don’t like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don’t like
Boris, but they were our friends and poor. Well then,
this!’ and he tore up the note, and by so doing caused the
old countess to weep tears of joy. After that, young
Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but
devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was
to him a new pursuit- the chase- for which his father kept
a large establishment.

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Chapter III

The weather was already growing wintry and morning

frosts congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The
verdure had thickened and its bright green stood out
sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye trodden
down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of
the spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the
copses, which at the end of August had still been green
islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden
and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The
hares had already half changed their summer coats, the
fox cubs were beginning to scatter, and the young wolves
were bigger than dogs. It was the best time of the year for
the chase. The hounds of that ardent young sportsman
Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but
were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was
decided to give them a three days’ rest and then, on the
sixteenth of September, to go on a distant expedition,
starting from the oak grove where there was an
undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was
frosty and the air was sharp, but toward evening the sky

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became overcast and it began to thaw. On the fifteenth,

when young Rostov, in his dressing gown, looked out of
the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for
hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to
the earth without any wind. The only motion in the air
was that of the dripping, microscopic particles of
drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung
with transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen
leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and
black and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance
merged into the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out
into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of
decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted,
broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got up
on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down
like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him
right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog,
catching sight of his master from the garden path, arched
his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch with
lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.
‘O-hoy!’ came at that moment, that inimitable
huntsman’s call which unites the deepest bass with the
shrillest tenor, and round the corner came Daniel the head
huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old man

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with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian

fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of
independence and scorn of everything that is only seen in
huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap to his master and
looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not offensive to
his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, disdainful of
everybody and who considered himself above them, was
all the same his serf and huntsman.
‘Daniel!’ Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight
of the weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was
being carried away by that irresistible passion for sport
which makes a man forget all his previous resolutions, as
a lover forgets in the presence of his mistress.
‘What orders, your excellency?’ said the huntsman in
his deep bass, deep as a proto-deacon’s and hoarse with
hallooing- and two flashing black eyes gazed from under
his brows at his master, who was silent. ‘Can you resist
it?’ those eyes seemed to be asking.
‘It’s a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?’
asked Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.
Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
‘I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen,’ his bass boomed out
after a minute’s pause. ‘He says she’s moved them into
the Otradnoe enclosure. They were howling there.’ (This

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meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both knew, had
moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place
a mile and a half from the house.)
‘We ought to go, don’t you think so?’ said Nicholas.
‘Come to me with Uvarka.’
‘As you please.’
‘Then put off feeding them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in
Nicholas’ big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to
see him in a room was like seeing a horse or a bear on the
floor among the furniture and surroundings of human life.
Daniel himself felt this, and as usual stood just inside the
door, trying to speak softly and not move, for fear of
breaking something in the master’s apartment, and he
hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from
under that ceiling, out into the open under the sky once
more.
Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel
an opinion that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself
wished to go hunting), Nicholas ordered the horses to be
saddled. But just as Daniel was about to go Natasha came
in with rapid steps, not having done up her hair or

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finished dressing and with her old nurse’s big shawl

wrapped round her. Petya ran in at the same time.
‘You are going?’ asked Natasha. ‘I knew you would!
Sonya said you wouldn’t go, but I knew that today is the
sort of day when you couldn’t help going.’
‘Yes, we are going,’ replied Nicholas reluctantly, for
today, as he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to
take Natasha and Petya. ‘We are going, but only wolf
hunting: it would be dull for you.’
‘You know it is my greatest pleasure,’ said Natasha.
‘It’s not fair; you are going by yourself, are having the
horses saddled and said nothing to us about it.’
‘‘No barrier bars a Russian’s path’- we’ll go!’ shouted
Petya.
‘But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,’ said
Nicholas to Natasha.
‘Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,’ said Natasha
decisively. ‘Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and
Michael must come with my dogs,’ she added to the
huntsman.
It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a
room at all, but to have anything to do with a young lady
seemed to him impossible. He cast down his eyes and
hurried out as if it were none of his business, careful as he

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went not to inflict any accidental injury on the young

lady.

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Chapter IV

The old count, who had always kept up an enormous

hunting establishment but had now handed it all
completely over to his son’s care, being in very good
spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out
with the others.
In an hour’s time the whole hunting party was at the
porch. Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which
showed that now was no time for attending to trifles, went
past Natasha and Petya who were trying to tell him
something. He had a look at all the details of the hunt,
sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the
quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his
own leash of borzois, set off across the threshing ground
to a field leading to the Otradnoe wood. The old count’s
horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyanka, was led by the
groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was
to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved for him.
They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt
attendants and whippers-in. Besides the family, there
were eight borzoi kennelmen and more than forty borzois,
so that, with the borzois on the leash belonging to

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members of the family, there were about a hundred and

thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.
Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the
hunt knew his business. his place, what he had to do. As
soon as they had passed the fence they all spread out
evenly and quietly, without noise or talk, along the road
and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.
The horses stepped over the field as over a thick
carpet, now and then splashing into puddles as they
crossed a road. The misty sky still seemed to descend
evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air was
still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a
huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the
whine of a straggling hound could be heard.
When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more
riders with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the
Rostovs. In front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man
with a large gray mustache.
‘Good morning, Uncle!’ said Nicholas, when the old
man drew near.
‘That’s it. Come on!... I was sure of it,’ began ‘Uncle.’
(He was a distant relative of the Rostovs’, a man of small
means, and their neighbor.) ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able
to resist it and it’s a good thing you’re going. That’s it!

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Come on! (This was ‘Uncle’s’ favorite expression.) ‘Take

the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins are at
Korniki with their hounds. That’s it. Come on!... They’ll
take the cubs from under your very nose.’
‘That’s where I’m going. Shall we join up our packs?’
asked Nicholas.
The hounds were joined into one pack, and ‘Uncle’
and Nicholas rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in
shawls which did not hide her eager face and shining
eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by Petya
who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman,
and by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who
was laughing, whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha
sat easily and confidently on her black Arabchik and
reined him in without effort with a firm hand.
‘Uncle’ looked round disapprovingly at Petya and
Natasha. He did not like to combine frivolity with the
serious business of hunting.
‘Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!’ shouted
Petya.
‘Good morning, good morning! But don’t go
overriding the hounds,’ said ‘Uncle’ sternly.
‘Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me,’
said Natasha, referring to her favorite hound.

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‘In the first place, Trunila is not a ‘dog,’ but a harrier,’

thought Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying
to make her feel the distance that ought to separate them
at that moment. Natasha understood it.
‘You mustn’t think we’ll be in anyone’s way, Uncle,’
she said. ‘We’ll go to our places and won’t budge.’
‘A good thing too, little countess,’ said ‘Uncle,’ ‘only
mind you don’t fall off your horse,’ he added, ‘because-
that’s it, come on!- you’ve nothing to hold on to.’
The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few
hundred yards off, the huntsmen were already nearing it.
Rostov, having finally settled with ‘Uncle’ where they
should set on the hounds, and having shown Natasha
where she was to stand- a spot where nothing could
possibly run out- went round above the ravine.
‘Well, nephew, you’re going for a big wolf,’ said
‘Uncle.’ ‘Mind and don’t let her slip!’
‘That’s as may happen,’ answered Rostov. ‘Karay,
here!’ he shouted, answering ‘Uncle’s’ remark by this call
to his borzoi. Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging
jowl, famous for having tackled a big wolf unaided. They
all took up their places.
The old count, knowing his son’s ardor in the hunt,
hurried so as not to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet

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reached their places when Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful,

flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove up with his
black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for
him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened
his coat and fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he
mounted his good, sleek, well-fed, and comfortable horse,
Viflyanka, which was turning gray, like himself. His
horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,
though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of
the hunt well, and rode to the bushy edge of the road
where he was to stand, arranged his reins, settled himself
in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked about
with a smile.
Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal
attendant, an old horseman now somewhat stiff in the
saddle. Chekmar held in leash three formidable
wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their
master and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down
unleashed. Some hundred paces farther along the edge of
the wood stood Mitka, the count’s other groom, a daring
horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the hunt, by
old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled
brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a
bottle of his favorite Bordeaux.

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He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive.

His eyes were rather moist and glittered more than usual,
and as he sat in his saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he
looked like a child taken out for an outing.
The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got
everything ready, kept glancing at his master with whom
he had lived on the best of terms for thirty years, and
understanding the mood he was in expected a pleasant
chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through the
wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped
behind the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man
in a woman’s cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head.
He was the buffoon, who went by a woman’s name,
Nastasya Ivanovna.
‘Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!’ whispered the count,
winking at him. ‘If you scare away the beast, Daniel’ll
give it you!’
‘I know a thing or two myself!’ said Nastasya
Ivanovna.
‘Hush!’ whispered the count and turned to Simon.
‘Have you seen the young countess?’ he asked. ‘Where is
she?’

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‘With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass,’

answered Simon, smiling. ‘Though she’s a lady, she’s
very fond of hunting.’
‘And you’re surprised at the way she rides, Simon,
eh?’ said the count. ‘She’s as good as many a man!’
‘Of course! It’s marvelous. So bold, so easy!’
‘And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland,
isn’t he?’
‘Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the
matter so well that Daniel and I are often quite
astounded,’ said Simon, well knowing what would please
his master.
‘Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on
his horse, eh?’
‘A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank
grass by the Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a
fearful place; what a sight when they rushed from the
covert... the horse worth a thousand rubles and the rider
beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search far to
find another as smart.’
‘To search far...’ repeated the count, evidently sorry
Simon had not said more. ‘To search far,’ he said, turning
back the skirt of his coat to get at his snuffbox.

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‘The other day when he came out from Mass in full

uniform, Michael Sidorych...’ Simon did not finish, for on
the still air he had distinctly caught the music of the hunt
with only two or three hounds giving tongue. He bent
down his head and listened, shaking a warning finger at
his master. ‘They are on the scent of the cubs... ‘ he
whispered, ‘straight to the Lyadov uplands.’
The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his
face, looked into the distance straight before him, down
the narrow open space, holding the snuffbox in his hand
but not taking any. After the cry of the hounds came the
deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel’s hunting horn;
the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be
heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that
indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no
longer set on the hounds, but changed to the cry of
ulyulyu, and above the others rose Daniel’s voice, now a
deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice seemed to fill
the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open
field.
After listening a few moments in silence, the count and
his attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had
separated into two packs: the sound of the larger pack,
eagerly giving tongue, began to die away in the distance,

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the other pack rushed by the wood past the count, and it
was with this that Daniel’s voice was heard calling
ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke
apart again, but both were becoming more distant.
Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a
young borzoi had entangled; the count too sighed and,
noticing the snuffbox in his hand, opened it and took a
pinch. ‘Back!’ cried Simon to a borzoi that was pushing
forward out of the wood. The count started and dropped
the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up.
The count and Simon were looking at him.
Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the
hunt suddenly approached, as if the hounds in full cry and
Daniel ulyulyuing were just in front of them.
The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at
him with eyes starting out of his head, raising his cap and
pointing before him to the other side.
‘Look out!’ he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that
he had long fretted to utter that word, and letting the
borzois slip he galloped toward the count.
The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and
saw on their left a wolf which, softly swaying from side to
side, was coming at a quiet lope farther to the left to the
very place where they were standing. The angry borzois

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whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the

horses’ feet at the wolf.
The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the
dogs awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy,
and, still slightly swaying from side to side, gave a couple
of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the
skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a
wail, first one hound, then another, and then another,
sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the
whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot
where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted
behind the hounds and Daniel’s chestnut horse appeared,
dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched
forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging over
his flushed, perspiring face.
‘Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!...’ he cried. When he caught
sight of the count his eyes flashed lightning.
‘Blast you!’ he shouted, holding up his whip
threateningly at the count.
‘You’ve let the wolf go!... What sportsmen! and as if
scorning to say more to the frightened and shamefaced
count, he lashed the heaving flanks of his sweating
chestnut gelding with all the anger the count had aroused
and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a punished

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schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win

Simon’s sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no
longer there. He was galloping round by the bushes while
the field was coming up on both sides, all trying to head
the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before they could
do so.

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Chapter V

Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post,

waiting for the wolf. By the way the hunt approached and
receded, by the cries of the dogs whose notes were
familiar to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen
approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was
happening at the copse. He knew that young and old
wolves were there, that the hounds had separated into two
packs, that somewhere a wolf was being chased, and that
something had gone wrong. He expected the wolf to come
his way any moment. He made thousands of different
conjectures as to where and from what side the beast
would come and how he would set upon it. Hope
alternated with despair. Several times he addressed a
prayer to God that the wolf should come his way. He
prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with
which men pray at moments of great excitement arising
from trivial causes. ‘What would it be to Thee to do this
for me?’ he said to God. ‘I know Thou art great, and that
it is a sin to ask this of Thee, but for God’s sake do let the
old wolf come my way and let Karay spring at it- in sight
of ‘Uncle’ who is watching from over there- and seize it

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by the throat in a death grip!’ A thousand times during

that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over
the edge of the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising
above the aspen undergrowth and the gully with its water-
worn side and ‘Uncle’s’ cap just visible above the bush on
his right.
‘No, I shan’t have such luck,’ thought Rostov, ‘yet
what wouldn’t it be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at
cards and in war, I am always unlucky.’ Memories of
Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed rapidly and clearly
through his mind. ‘Only once in my life to get an old
wolf, I want only that!’ thought he, straining eyes and ears
and looking to the left and then to the right and listening
to the slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.
Again he looked to the right and saw something
running toward him across the deserted field. ‘No, it can’t
be!’ thought Rostov, taking a deep breath, as a man does
at the coming of something long hoped for. The height of
happiness was reached- and so simply, without warning,
or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his eyes
and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran
forward and jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her
path. She was an old animal with a gray back and big
reddish belly. She ran without hurry, evidently feeling

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sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his breath,

looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing
the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had
turned his head and was angrily searching for fleas, baring
his yellow teeth and snapping at his hind legs.
‘Ulyulyulyu!’ whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The
borzois jumped up, jerking the rings of the leashes and
pricking their ears. Karay finished scratching his
hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up with quivering
tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.
‘Shall I loose them or not?’ Nicholas asked himself as
the wolf approached him coming from the copse.
Suddenly the wolf’s whole physiognomy changed: she
shuddered, seeing what she had probably never seen
before- human eyes fixed upon her- and turning her head
a little toward Rostov, she paused.
‘Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward...’ the wolf
seemed to say to herself, and she moved forward without
again looking round and with a quiet, long, easy yet
resolute lope.
‘Ulyulyu!’ cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and
of its own accord his good horse darted headlong
downhill, leaping over gullies to head off the wolf, and
the borzois passed it, running faster still. Nicholas did not

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hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping, nor see
the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw
only the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in
the same direction along the hollow. The first to come
into view was Milka, with her black markings and
powerful quarters, gaining upon the wolf. Nearer and
nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf turned its
head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she
usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened
her forelegs.
‘Ulyulyulyulyu!’ shouted Nicholas.
The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind
Milka, sprang impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its
hindquarters, but immediately jumped aside in terror. The
wolf crouched, gnashed her teeth, and again rose and
bounded forward, followed at the distance of a couple of
feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to her.
‘She’ll get away! No, it’s impossible!’ thought
Nicholas, still shouting with a hoarse voice.
‘Karay, ulyulyu!...’ he shouted, looking round for the
old borzoi who was now his only hope. Karay, with all
the strength age had left him, stretched himself to the
utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped heavily aside to
intercept it. But the quickness of the wolf’s lope and the

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borzoi’s slower pace made it plain that Karay had

miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front
of him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape
should she reach it. But, coming toward him, he saw
hounds and a huntsman galloping almost straight at the
wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish young
borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash,
rushed impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost
knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up more quickly
than anyone could have expected and, gnashing her teeth,
flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing yelp,
fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a gash in
its side.
‘Karay? Old fellow!...’ wailed Nicholas.
Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the
wolf’s path, the old dog with its felted hair hanging from
its thigh was within five paces of it. As if aware of her
danger, the wolf turned her eyes on Karay, tucked her tail
yet further between her legs, and increased her speed. But
here Nicholas only saw that something happened to
Karay- the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they
rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.
That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in
the gully with the dogs, while from under them could be

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seen her gray hair and outstretched hind leg and her
frightened choking head, with her ears laid back (Karay
was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest moment
of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready
to dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust
her head up from among that mass of dogs, and then her
forepaws were on the edge of the gully. She clicked her
teeth (Karay no longer had her by the throat), leaped with
a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and having
disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in
again, went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and
probably bruised or wounded, climbed with difficulty out
of the gully.
‘Oh my God! Why?’ Nicholas cried in despair.
‘Uncle’s’ huntsman was galloping from the other side
across the wolf’s path and his borzois once more stopped
the animal’s advance. She was again hemmed in.
Nicholas and his attendant, with ‘Uncle’ and his
huntsman, were all riding round the wolf, crying
‘ulyulyu!’ shouting and preparing to dismount each
moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the
wood where she would be safe.

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Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing

the ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw
Karay seize the wolf, and checked his horse, supposing
the affair to be over. But when he saw that the horsemen
did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran
for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the
wolf but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run
to cut the animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to
the wolf just when she had been stopped a second time by
‘Uncle’s’ borzois.
Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in
his left hand and thrashing the laboring sides of his
chestnut horse with his whip as if it were a flail.
Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the
chestnut, breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard
the fall of a body and saw Daniel lying on the wolf’s back
among the dogs, trying to seize her by the ears. It was
evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself
that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her
ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel
rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if
lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the
ears. Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel
whispered, ‘Don’t! We’ll gag her!’ and, changing his

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position, set his foot on the wolf’s neck. A stick was

thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a
leash, as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and
Daniel rolled her over once or twice from side to side.
With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf,
alive, on a shying and snorting horse and, accompanied
by the dogs yelping at her, took her to the place where
they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of the
cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with
their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the
wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down
and the bitten stick between her jaws, gazed with great
glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men surrounding
her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and
looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostov
also rode up and touched the wolf.
‘Oh, what a formidable one!’ said he. ‘A formidable
one, eh?’ he asked Daniel, who was standing near.
‘Yes, your excellency,’ answered Daniel, quickly
doffing his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his
encounter with Daniel.
‘Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!’ said the
count.

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For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek,

and amiable smile.

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Chapter VI

The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya

promised to return very soon, but as it was still early the
hunt went farther. At midday they put the hounds into a
ravine thickly overgrown with young trees. Nicholas
standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own
huntsman stood alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush.
The hounds had scarcely been loosed before Nicholas
heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at intervals;
other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again
giving tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the
wooded ravine that a fox had been found, and the whole
pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine toward the
ryefield and away from Nicholas.
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the
edge of the ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was
expecting a fox to show itself at any moment on the
ryefield opposite.
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and
loosed his borzois, and Nicholas saw a queer, short-
legged red fox with a fine brush going hard across the

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field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close
to the fox which began to dodge between the field in
sharper and sharper curves, trailing its brush, when
suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed in followed by a
black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois
formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies
and with tails turned away from the center of the group.
Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap,
the other, a stranger, in a green coat.
‘What’s this?’ thought Nicholas. ‘Where’s that
huntsman from? He is not ‘Uncle’s’ man.’
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time
without strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled
and with high saddles, stood near them and there too the
dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their arms and did
something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound
of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.
‘That’s Ilagin’s huntsman having a row with our Ivan,’
said Nicholas’ groom.
Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to
him, and rode at a footpace to the place where the whips
were getting the hounds together. Several of the field
galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.

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Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya,

who had ridden up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to
see how the matter would end. Out of the bushes came the
huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward his
young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still
at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak
respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face
was angry. One of his eyes was black, but he probably
was not even aware of it.
‘What has happened?’ asked Nicholas.
‘A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And
it was my gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!...
He snatches at the fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here
it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste of this?...’ said the
huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably imagining
himself still speaking to his foe.
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his
sister and Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where
the enemy’s, Ilagin’s, hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and
there, surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted
his exploits.
The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had
a quarrel and were at law, hunted over places that

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belonged by custom to the Rostovs, and had now, as if

purposely, sent his men to the very woods the Rostovs
were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had
chased.
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his
usual absence of moderation in judgment, hated him
cordially from reports of his arbitrariness and violence,
and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He rode in angry
agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to
punish his enemy.
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a
stout gentleman in a beaver cap came riding toward him
on a handsome raven-black horse, accompanied by two
hunt servants.
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately
and courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to
make the young count’s acquaintance. Having ridden up
to Nicholas, Ilagin raised his beaver cap and said he much
regretted what had occurred and would have the man
punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted
by someone else’s borzois. He hoped to become better
acquainted with the count and invited him to draw his
covert.

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Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something

dreadful, had followed him in some excitement. Seeing
the enemies exchanging friendly greetings, she rode up to
them. Ilagin lifted his beaver cap still higher to Natasha
and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young countess
resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in
her beauty, of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman’s offense, Ilagin pressed the
Rostovs to come to an upland of his about a mile away
which he usually kept for himself and which, he said,
swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now
doubled, moved on.
The way to Iligin’s upland was across the fields. The
hunt servants fell into line. The masters rode together.
‘Uncle,’ Rostov, and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one
another’s dogs, trying not to be observed by their
companions and searching uneasily for rivals to their own
borzois.
Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a
small, pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin’s leash,
slender but with muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and
prominent black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness of
Ilagin’s borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival to
his own Milka.

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In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin

about the year’s harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-
spotted bitch.
‘A fine little bitch, that!’ said he in a careless tone. ‘Is
she swift?’
‘That one? Yes, she’s a good dog, gets what she’s
after,’ answered Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted
bitch Erza, for which, a year before, he had given a
neighbor three families of house serfs. ‘So in your parts,
too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?’ he went
on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And
considering it polite to return the young count’s
compliment, Ilagin looked at his borzois and picked out
Milka who attracted his attention by her breadth. ‘That
black-spotted one of yours is fine- well shaped!’ said he.
‘Yes, she’s fast enough,’ replied Nicholas, and
thought: ‘If only a full-grown hare would cross the field
now I’d show you what sort of borzoi she is,’ and turning
to his groom, he said he would give a ruble to anyone
who found a hare.
‘I don’t understand,’ continued Ilagin, ‘how some
sportsmen can be so jealous about game and dogs. For
myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy riding in company
such as this... what could be better?’ (he again raised his

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cap to Natasha) ‘but as for counting skins and what one

takes, I don’t care about that.’
‘Of course not!’
‘Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not
mine catches something. All I care about is to enjoy
seeing the chase, is it not so, Count? For I consider that..’
‘A-tu!’ came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi
whippers-in, who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the
stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his
long-drawn cry, ‘A-tu!’ (This call and the uplifted whip
meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
‘Ah, he has found one, I think,’ said Ilagin carelessly.
‘Yes, we must ride up.... Shall we both course it?’
answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza and ‘Uncle’s’ red
Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting
against his own borzois. ‘And suppose they outdo my
Milka at once!’ he thought as he rode with ‘Uncle’ and
Ilagin toward the hare.
‘A full-grown one?’ asked Ilagin as he approached the
whip who had sighted the hare- and not without agitation
he looked round and whistled to Erza.
‘And you, Michael Nikanorovich?’ he said, addressing
‘Uncle.’

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The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his

face.
‘How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for
each of your borzois! That’s it, come on! Yours are worth
thousands. Try yours against one another, you two, and
I’ll look on!’
‘Rugay, hey, hey!’ he shouted. ‘Rugayushka!’ he
added, involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his
affection and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi.
Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men
and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself
excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up
his whip and the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace;
the hounds that were far off on the horizon turned away
from the hare, and the whips, but not the gentlefolk, also
moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.
‘How is it pointing?’ asked Nicholas, riding a hundred
paces toward the whip who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the
frost coming next morning, was unable to rest and leaped
up. The pack on leash rushed downhill in full cry after the
hare, and from all sides the borzois that were not on leash
darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt, who

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had been moving slowly, shouted, ‘Stop!’ calling in the

hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of ‘A-
tu!’galloped across the field setting the borzois on the
hare. The tranquil Ilagin, Nicholas, Natasha, and ‘Uncle’
flew, reckless of where and how they went, seeing only
the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight
even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started
was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did
not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to the
shouting and trampling that resounded from all sides at
once. He took a dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting
the borzois gain on him, and, finally having chosen his
direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and
rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but
in front of him was the autumn sowing where the ground
was soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had
sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first to see
and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin’s
red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at
the hare with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and,
thinking she had seized him, rolled over like a ball. The
hare arched his back and bounded off yet more swiftly.
From behind Erza rushed the broad-haunched, black-
spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.

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‘Milashka, dear!’ rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It

looked as if Milka would immediately pounce on the hare,
but she overtook him and flew past. The hare had
squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached him, but when
close to the hare’s scut paused as if measuring the
distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize
his hind leg.
‘Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own.
Erza did not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment
when she would have seized her prey, the hare moved and
darted along the balk between the winter rye and the
stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like
a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare,
but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the
borzois did not overtake him so quickly.
‘Rugay, Rugayushka! That’s it, come on!’ came a third
voice just then, and ‘Uncle’s’ red borzoi, straining and
curving its back, caught up with the two foremost borzois,
pushed ahead of them regardless of the terrible strain, put
on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk onto the
ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, sinking
to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was
how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A
ring of borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone

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had drawn up round the crowd of dogs. Only the

delighted ‘Uncle’ dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking
the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing
round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched.
He spoke without himself knowing whom to or what
about. ‘That’s it, come on! That’s a dog!... There, it has
beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-
ruble borzois. That’s it, come on!’ said he, panting and
looking wrathfully around as if he were abusing someone,
as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him, and
only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself.
‘There are your thousand-ruble ones.... That’s it, come
on!..’
‘Rugay, here’s a pad for you!’ he said, throwing down
the hare’s muddy pad. ‘You’ve deserved it, that’s it, come
on!’
‘She’d tired herself out, she’d run it down three times
by herself,’ said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone
and regardless of whether he were heard or not.
‘But what is there in running across it like that?’ said
Ilagin’s groom.
‘Once she had missed it and turned it away, any
mongrel could take it,’ Ilagin was saying at the same time,
breathless from his gallop and his excitement. At the same

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moment Natasha, without drawing breath, screamed

joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
everyone’s ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what
the others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so
strange that she must herself have been ashamed of so
wild a cry and everyone else would have been amazed at
it at any other time. ‘Uncle’ himself twisted up the hare,
threw it neatly and smartly across his horse’s back as if by
that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an
air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay
and rode off. The others all followed, dispirited and
shamefaced, and only much later were they able to regain
their former affectation of indifference. For a long time
they continued to look at red Rugay who, his arched back
spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,
walked along just behind ‘Uncle’s’ horse with the serene
air of a conqueror.
‘Well, I am like any other dog as long as it’s not a
question of coursing. But when it is, then look out!’ his
appearance seem to Nicholas to be saying.
When, much later, ‘Uncle’ rode up to Nicholas and
began talking to him, he felt flattered that, after what had
happened, ‘Uncle’ deigned to speak to him.

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Chapter VII

Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who

found that they were so far from home that he accepted
‘Uncle’s’ offer that the hunting party should spend the
night in his little village of Mikhaylovna.
‘And if you put up at my house that will be better still.
That’s it, come on!’ said ‘Uncle.’ ‘You see it’s damp
weather, and you could rest, and the little countess could
be driven home in a trap.’
‘Uncle’s’ offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to
Otradnoe for a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and
Petya to ‘Uncle’s’ house.
Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed
out to the front porch to meet their master. A score of
women serfs, old and young, as well as children, popped
out from the back entrance to have a look at the hunters
who were arriving. The presence of Natasha- a woman, a
lady, and on horseback- raised the curiosity of the serfs to
such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared
her in the face, and unabashed by her presence made
remarks about her as though she were some prodigy on

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show and not a human being able to hear or understand

what was said about her.
‘Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and
her skirt dangles.... See, she’s got a little hunting horn!’
‘Goodness gracious! See her knife?..’
‘Isn’t she a Tartar!’
‘How is it you didn’t go head over heels?’ asked the
boldest of all, addressing Natasha directly.
‘Uncle’ dismounted at the porch of his little wooden
house which stood in the midst of an overgrown garden
and, after a glance at his retainers, shouted authoritatively
that the superfluous ones should take themselves off and
that all necessary preparations should be made to receive
the guests and the visitors.
The serfs all dispersed. ‘Uncle’ lifted Natasha off her
horse and taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden
steps of the porch. The house, with its bare, unplastered
log walls, was not overclean- it did not seem that those
living in it aimed at keeping it spotless- but neither was it
noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of
fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.
‘Uncle’ led the visitors through the anteroom into a
small hall with a folding table and red chairs, then into the
drawing room with a round birchwood table and a sofa,

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and finally into his private room where there was a

tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of
the host’s father and mother, and of himself in military
uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs.
‘Uncle’ asked his visitors to sit down and make
themselves at home, and then went out of the room.
Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and lay
down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and
teeth. Leading from the study was a passage in which a
partition with ragged curtains could be seen. From behind
this came women’s laughter and whispers. Natasha,
Nicholas, and Petya took off their wraps and sat down on
the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell asleep at once.
Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces glowed,
they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one
another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the
house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show
his manly superiority over his sister), Natasha gave him a
wink, and neither refrained long from bursting into a peal
of ringing laughter even before they had a pretext ready to
account for it.
After a while ‘Uncle’ came in, in a Cossack coat, blue
trousers, and small top boots. And Natasha felt that this
costume, the very one she had regarded with surprise and

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amusement at Otradnoe, was just the right thing and not at

all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat. ‘Uncle’ too
was in high spirits and far from being offended by the
brother’s and sister’s laughter (it could never enter his
head that they might be laughing at his way of life) he
himself joined in the merriment.
‘That’s right, young countess, that’s it, come on! I
never saw anyone like her!’ said he, offering Nicholas a
pipe with a long stem and, with a practiced motion of
three fingers, taking down another that had been cut short.
‘She’s ridden all day like a man, and is as fresh as ever!
Soon after ‘Uncle’s’ reappearance the door was
opened, evidently from the sound by a barefooted girl,
and a stout, rosy, good-looking woman of about forty,
with a double chin and full red lips, entered carrying a
large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality
in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the
visitors and, with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In
spite of her exceptional stoutness, which caused her to
protrude her chest and stomach and throw back her head,
this woman (who was ‘Uncle’s’ housekeeper) trod very
lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with
her plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and
various hors d’oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on

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the table. When she had finished, she stepped aside and
stopped at the door with a smile on her face. ‘Here I am. I
am she! Now do you understand ‘Uncle’?’ her expression
said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not
only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning
of his puckered brow and the happy complacent smile that
slightly puckered his lips when Anisya Fedorovna
entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb wine, different
kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with
buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling
mead, apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey
sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted chicken,
ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves made
with sugar.
All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna’s
housekeeping, gathered and prepared by her. The smell
and taste of it all had a smack of Anisya Fedorovna
herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and
pleasant smiles.
‘Take this, little Lady-Countess!’ she kept saying, as
she offered Natasha first one thing and then another.
Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never
seen or eaten such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam,

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such honey-and-nut sweets, or such a chicken anywhere.

Anisya Fedorovna left the room.
After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and
‘Uncle’ talked of past and future hunts, of Rugay and
Ilagin’s dogs, while Natasha sat upright on the sofa and
listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to
wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only
muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha
felt so lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings
that she only feared the trap would come for her too soon.
After a casual pause, such as often occurs when receiving
friends for the first time in one’s own house, ‘Uncle,’
answering a thought that was in his visitors’ mind, said:
‘This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death
will come. That’s it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then
why harm anyone?’
‘Uncle’s’ face was very significant and even handsome
as he said this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good
he had heard about him from his father and the neighbors.
Throughout the whole province ‘Uncle’ had the
reputation of being the most honorable and disinterested
of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,
chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected
him to be a justice and to other posts; but he always

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persistently refused public appointments, passing the

autumn and spring in the fields on his bay gelding, sitting
at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in
summer.
‘Why don’t you enter the service, Uncle?’
‘I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That’s it,
come on! I can’t make head or tail of it. That’s for you- I
haven’t brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter-
that’s it, come on! Open the door, there!’ he shouted.
‘Why have you shut it?’
The door at the end of the passage led to the
huntsmen’s room, as they called the room for the hunt
servants.
There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen
hand opened the door into the huntsmen’s room, from
which came the clear sounds of a balalayka on which
someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for
some time and now went out into the passage to hear
better.
‘That’s Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good
balalayka. I’m fond of it,’ said ‘Uncle.’

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It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the

huntsmen’s room when ‘Uncle’ returned from the chase.
‘Uncle’ was fond of such music.
‘How good! Really very good!’ said Nicholas with
some unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to
confess that the sounds pleased him very much.
‘Very good?’ said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her
brother’s tone. ‘Not ‘very good’ it’s simply delicious!’
Just as ‘Uncle’s’ pickled mushrooms, honey, and
cherry brandy had seemed to her the best in the world, so
also that song, at that moment, seemed to her the acme of
musical delight.
‘More, please, more!’ cried Natasha at the door as soon
as the balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and
recommenced thrumming the balalayka to the air of My
Lady, with trills and variations. ‘Uncle’ sat listening,
slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was
repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned
several times and the same notes were thrummed again,
but the listeners did not grow weary of it and wished to
hear it again and again. Anisya Fedorovna came in and
leaned her portly person against the doorpost.

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‘You like listening?’ she said to Natasha, with a smile

extremely like ‘Uncle’s.’ ‘That’s a good player of ours,’
she added.
‘He doesn’t play that part right!’ said ‘Uncle’
suddenly, with an energetic gesture. ‘Here he ought to
burst out- that’s it, come on!- ought to burst out.’
‘Do you play then?’ asked Natasha.
‘Uncle’ did not answer, but smiled.
‘Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all
right. I haven’t touched it for a long time. That’s it- come
on! I’ve given it up.’
Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went
to fulfill her errand and brought back the guitar.
Without looking at anyone, ‘Uncle’ blew the dust off it
and, tapping the case with his bony fingers, tuned the
guitar and settled himself in his armchair. He took the
guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching his left elbow
with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at
Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and
sonorous, and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently
began playing in very slow time, not My Lady, but the
well-known song: Came a maiden down the street. The
tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to
thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in

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them the same kind of sober mirth as radiated from

Anisya Fedorovna’s whole being. Anisya Fedorovna
flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went
laughing out of the room. ‘Uncle’ continued to play
correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with
a changed and inspired expression at the spot where
Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something seemed to
be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray
mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the
time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his
fingers over the strings, something seemed to snap.
‘Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!’ shouted
Natasha as soon as he had finished. She jumped up and
hugged and kissed him. ‘Nicholas, Nicholas!’ she said,
turning to her brother, as if asking him: ‘What is it moves
me so?’
Nicholas too was greatly pleased by ‘Uncle’s’ playing,
and ‘Uncle’ played the piece over again. Anisya
Fedorovna’s smiling face reappeared in the doorway and
behind hers other faces...
Fetching water clear and sweet,
Stop, dear maiden, I entreat-

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played ‘Uncle’ once more, running his fingers

skillfully over the strings, and then he stopped short and
jerked his shoulders.
‘Go on, Uncle dear,’ Natasha wailed in an imploring
tone as if her life depended on it.
‘Uncle’ rose, and it was as if there were two men in
him: one of them smiled seriously at the merry fellow,
while the merry fellow struck a naive and precise attitude
preparatory to a folk dance.
‘Now then, niece!’ he exclaimed, waving to Natasha
the hand that had just struck a chord.
Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran
forward to face ‘Uncle,’ and setting her arms akimbo also
made a motion with her shoulders and struck an attitude.
Where, how, and when had this young countess,
educated by an emigree French governess, imbibed from
the Russian air she breathed that spirit and obtained that
manner which the pas de chale* would, one would have
supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the
movements were those inimitable and unteachable
Russian ones that ‘Uncle’ had expected of her. As soon as
she had struck her pose, and smiled triumphantly,
proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that had at first
seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do the

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right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring

her.
*The French shawl dance.
She did the right thing with such precision, such
complete precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at
once handed her the handkerchief she needed for the
dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she
watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and
velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to
understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya’s father
and mother and aunt, and in every Russian man and
woman.
‘Well, little countess; that’s it- come on!’ cried
‘Uncle,’ with a joyous laugh, having finished the dance.
‘Well done, niece! Now a fine young fellow must be
found as husband for you. That’s it- come on!’
‘He’s chosen already,’ said Nicholas smiling.
‘Oh?’ said ‘Uncle’ in surprise, looking inquiringly at
Natasha, who nodded her head with a happy smile.
‘And such a one!’ she said. But as soon as she had said
it a new train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. ‘What
did Nicholas’ smile mean when he said ‘chosen already’?
Is he glad of it or not? It is as if he thought my Bolkonski
would not approve of or understand our gaiety. But he

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would understand it all. Where is he now?’ she thought,

and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only
a second. ‘Don’t dare to think about it,’ she said to
herself, and sat down again smilingly beside ‘Uncle,’
begging him to play something more.
‘Uncle’ played another song and a valse; then after a
pause he cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting
song:
As ‘twas growing dark last night
Fell the snow so soft and light...
‘Uncle’ sang as peasants sing, with full and naive
conviction that the whole meaning of a song lies in the
words and that the tune comes of itself, and that apart
from the words there is no tune, which exists only to give
measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered
tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good.
Natasha was in ecstasies over ‘Uncle’s’ singing. She
resolved to give up learning the harp and to play only the
guitar. She asked ‘Uncle’ for his guitar and at once found
the chords of the song.
After nine o’clock two traps and three mounted men,
who had been sent to look for them, arrived to fetch
Natasha and Petya. The count and countess did not know

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where they were and were very anxious, said one of the
men.
Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of
the two traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other.
‘Uncle’ wrapped Natasha up warmly and took leave of
her with quite a new tenderness. He accompanied them on
foot as far as the bridge that could not be crossed, so that
they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to
ride in front with lanterns.
‘Good-by, dear niece,’ his voice called out of the
darkness- not the voice Natasha had known previously,
but the one that had sung As ‘twas growing dark last
night.
In the village through which they passed there were red
lights and a cheerful smell of smoke.
‘What a darling Uncle is!’ said Natasha, when they had
come out onto the highroad.
‘Yes,’ returned Nicholas. ‘You’re not cold?’
‘No. I’m quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!’
answered Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They
remained silent a long while. The night was dark and
damp. They could not see the horses, but only heard them
splashing through the unseen mud.

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What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that

so eagerly caught and assimilated all the diverse
impressions of life? How did they all find place in her?
But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she
suddenly struck up the air of As ‘twas growing dark last
night- the tune of which she had all the way been trying to
get and had at last caught.
‘Got it?’ said Nicholas.
‘What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?’
inquired Natasha.
They were fond of asking one another that question.
‘I?’ said Nicholas, trying to remember. ‘Well, you see,
first I thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle,
and that if he were a man he would always keep Uncle
near him, if not for his riding, then for his manner. What a
good fellow Uncle is! Don’t you think so?... Well, and
you?’
‘I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are
driving along and imagining that we are going home, but
that heaven knows where we are really going in the
darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly find that
we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I
thought... No, nothing else.’

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‘I know, I expect you thought of him,’ said Nicholas,

smiling as Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.
‘No,’ said Natasha, though she had in reality been
thinking about Prince Andrew at the same time as of the
rest, and of how he would have liked ‘Uncle.’ ‘And then I
was saying to myself all the way, ‘How well Anisya
carried herself, how well!’’ And Nicholas heard her
spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. ‘And do you
know,’ she suddenly said, ‘I know that I shall never again
be as happy and tranquil as I am now.’
‘Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!’ exclaimed Nicholas,
and he thought: ‘How charming this Natasha of mine is! I
have no other friend like her and never shall have. Why
should she marry? We might always drive about together!
‘What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!’ thought
Natasha.
‘Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!’ she
said, pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed
invitingly in the moist velvety darkness of the night.

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Chapter VIII

Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of

Marshal of the Nobility because it involved him in too
much expense, but still his affairs did not improve.
Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their parents
conferring together anxiously and privately and heard
suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and
estate near Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so
freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at
Otradnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the
enormous house and its lodges were full of people and
more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were
all their own people who had settled down in the house
almost as members of the family, or persons who were, it
seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. Such were
Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing
master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady, an
inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya’s
tutors, the girls’ former governess, and other people who
simply found it preferable and more advantageous to live
in the count’s house than at home. They had not as many
visitors as before, but the old habits of life without which

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the count and countess could not conceive of existence

remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the
same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the
same expensive presents and dinner parties to the whole
district on name days; there were still the count’s games
of whist and boston, at which- spreading out his cards so
that everybody could see them- he let himself be
plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his
neighbors, who looked upon an opportunity to play a
rubber with Count Rostov as a most profitable source of
income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying
not to believe that he was entangled but becoming more
and more so at every step, and feeling too feeble to break
the meshes or to set to work carefully and patiently to
disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt
that her children were being ruined, that it was not the
count’s fault for he could not help being what he was- that
(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the
consciousness of his own and his children’s ruin, and she
tried to find means of remedying the position. From her
feminine point of view she could see only one solution,
namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this

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to be their last hope and that if Nicholas refused the match

she had found for him, she would have to abandon the
hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with
Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous
parents, a girl the Rostovs had known from childhood,
and who had now become a wealthy heiress through the
death of the last of her brothers.
The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in
Moscow suggesting a marriage between their children and
had received a favorable answer from her. Karagina had
replied that for her part she was agreeable, and everything
depend on her daughter’s inclination. She invited
Nicholas to come to Moscow.
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told
her son that now both her daughters were settled, her only
wish was to see him married. She said she could lie down
in her grave peacefully if that were accomplished. Then
she told him that she knew of a splendid girl and tried to
discover what he thought about marriage.
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised
him to go to Moscow during the holidays to amuse
himself. Nicholas guessed what his mother’s remarks
were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her

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only hope of getting their affairs disentangled now lay in

his marrying Julie Karagina.
‘But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no
fortune, would you expect me to sacrifice my feelings and
my honor for the sake of money?’ he asked his mother,
not realizing the cruelty of his question and only wishing
to show his noble-mindedness.
‘No, you have not understood me,’ said his mother, not
knowing how to justify herself. ‘You have not understood
me, Nikolenka. It is your happiness I wish for,’ she added,
feeling that she was telling an untruth and was becoming
entangled. She began to cry.
‘Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and
you know I will give my life, anything, to put you at
ease,’ said Nicholas. ‘I would sacrifice anything for you-
even my feelings.’
But the countess did not want the question put like
that: she did not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself
wished to make a sacrifice for him.
‘No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk
about it,’ she replied, wiping away her tears.
‘Maybe I do love a poor girl,’ said Nicholas to himself.
‘Am I to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I
wonder how Mamma could speak so to me. Because

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Sonya is poor I must not love her,’ he thought, ‘must not

respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like
Julie. I can always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s
welfare,’ he said to himself, ‘but I can’t coerce my
feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me stronger
and higher than all else.’
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did
not renew the conversation with him about marriage. She
saw with sorrow, and sometimes with exasperation,
symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself for it,
she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying
Sonya, often pulling her up without reason, addressing her
stiffly as ‘my dear,’ and using the formal ‘you’ instead of
the intimate ‘thou’ in speaking to her. The kindhearted
countess was the more vexed with Sonya because that
poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so
devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,
unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that
there were no grounds for finding fault with her.
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A
fourth letter had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome,
in which he wrote that he would have been on his way

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back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly

reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer
his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was
still as much in love with her betrothed, found the same
comfort in that love, and was still as ready to throw
herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at the
end of the fourth month of their separation she began to
have fits of depression which she could not master. She
felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted all
this time and of no use to anyone- while she felt herself so
capable of loving and being loved.
Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs’ home.

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Chapter IX

Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass,

the solemn and wearisome Christmas congratulations
from neighbors and servants, and the new dresses
everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though
the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling
sunshine by day, and the starlight of the winter nights
seemed to call for some special celebration of the season.
On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday
dinner, all the inmates of the house dispersed to various
rooms. It was the dullest time of the day. Nicholas, who
had been visiting some neighbors that morning, was
asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting
in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round
table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was
playing patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with
a sad face at the window with two old ladies. Natasha
came into the room, went up to Sonya, glanced at what
she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood
without speaking.
‘Why are you wandering about like an outcast?’ asked
her mother. ‘What do you want?’

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‘Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!’

said Natasha, with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at
her daughter.
‘Don’t look at me, Mamma! Don’t look; I shall cry
directly.’
‘Sit down with me a little,’ said the countess.
‘Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like
this, Mamma?’
Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she
turned quickly to hide them and left the room.
She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking
awhile, and then went into the maids’ room. There an old
maidservant was grumbling at a young girl who stood
panting, having just run in through the cold from the
serfs’ quarters.
‘Stop playing- there’s a time for everything,’ said the
old woman.
‘Let her alone, Kondratevna,’ said Natasha. ‘Go,
Mavrushka, go.’
Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the
dancing hall and went to the vestibule. There an old
footman and two young ones were playing cards. They
broke off and rose as she entered.

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‘What can I do with them?’ thought Natasha.

‘Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes,
go to the yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you,
Misha, bring me some oats.’
‘Just a few oats?’ said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
‘Go, go quickly,’ the old man urged him.
‘And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.’
On her way past the butler’s pantry she told them to set
a samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.
Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in
the house. Natasha liked to test her power over him. He
distrusted the order and asked whether the samovar was
really wanted.
‘Oh dear, what a young lady!’ said Foka, pretending to
frown at Natasha.
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as
much trouble as Natasha did. She could not see people
unconcernedly, but had to send them on some errand. She
seemed to be trying whether any of them would get angry
or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders so
readily as they did hers. ‘What can I do, where can I go?’
thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.

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‘Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I

have?’ she asked the buffoon, who was coming toward
her in a woman’s jacket.
‘Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,’ answered the
buffoon.
‘O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I
to go? What am I to do with myself?’ And tapping with
her heels, she ran quickly upstairs to see Vogel and his
wife who lived on the upper story.
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a
table, on which were plates of raisins, walnuts, and
almonds. The governesses were discussing whether it was
cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down,
listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and
then got up again.
‘The island of Madagascar,’ she said, ‘Ma-da-gas-car,’
she repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not
replying to Madame Schoss who asked her what she was
saying, she went out of the room.
Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in
attendance on him he was preparing fireworks to let off
that night.
‘Petya! Petya!’ she called to him. ‘Carry me
downstairs.’

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Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on

it, putting her arms round his neck, and he pranced along
with her.
‘No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!’ she said, and
jumping off his back she went downstairs.
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her
power, and made sure that everyone was submissive, but
that all the same it was dull, Natasha betook herself to the
ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark corner
behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the
strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled
from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince
Andrew. What she drew from the guitar would have had
no meaning for other listeners, but in her imagination a
whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds.
She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a
streak of light escaping from the pantry door and listened
to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding
on the past.
Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand.
Natasha glanced at her and at the crack in the pantry door,
and it seemed to her that she remembered the light failing
through that crack once before and Sonya passing with a

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glass in her hand. ‘Yes it was exactly the same,’ thought

Natasha.
‘Sonya, what is this?’ she cried, twanging a thick
string.
‘Oh, you are there!’ said Sonya with a start, and came
near and listened. ‘I don’t know. A storm?’ she ventured
timidly, afraid of being wrong.
‘There! That’s just how she started and just how she
came up smiling timidly when all this happened before,’
thought Natasha, ‘and in just the same way I thought there
was something lacking in her.’
‘No, it’s the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! ‘
and Natasha sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya
should catch it. ‘Where were you going?’ she asked.
‘To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing
the design.’
‘You always find something to do, but I can’t,’ said
Natasha. ‘And where’s Nicholas?’
‘Asleep, I think.’
‘Sonya, go and wake him,’ said Natasha. ‘Tell him I
want him to come and sing.’
She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all
having happened before could be, and without solving
this problem, or at all regretting not having done so, she

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again passed in fancy to the time when she was with him
and he was looking at her with a lover’s eyes.
‘Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it
will never be! And, worst of all, I am growing old- that’s
the thing! There won’t then be in me what there is now.
But perhaps he’ll come today, will come immediately.
Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room.
Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it.’ She
rose, put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests,
were already at the tea table. The servants stood round the
table- but Prince Andrew was not there and life was going
on as before.
‘Ah, here she is!’ said the old count, when he saw
Natasha enter. ‘Well, sit down by me.’ But Natasha
stayed by her mother and glanced round as if looking for
something.
‘Mamma!’ she muttered, ‘give him to me, give him,
Mamma, quickly, quickly!’ and she again had difficulty in
repressing her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the
conversation between the elders and Nicholas, who had
also come to the table. ‘My God, my God! The same
faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in

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the same way!’ thought Natasha, feeling with horror a

sense of repulsion rising up in her for the whole
household, because they were always the same.
After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the
sitting room, to their favorite corner where their most
intimate talks always began.

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Chapter X

Does it ever happen to you,’ said Natasha to her

brother, when they settled down in the sitting room, ‘does
it ever happen to you to feel as if there were nothing more
to come- nothing; that everything good is past? And to
feel not exactly dull, but sad?’
‘I should think so!’ he replied. ‘I have felt like that
when everything was all right and everyone was cheerful.
The thought has come into my mind that I was already
tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once in the
regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where
there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..’
‘Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!’ Natasha interrupted
him. ‘When I was quite little that used to be so with me.
Do you remember when I was punished once about some
plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing in the
schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for
everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was
innocent- that was the chief thing,’ said Natasha. ‘Do you
remember?’
‘I remember,’ answered Nicholas. ‘I remember that I
came to you afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but

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do you know, I felt ashamed to. We were terribly absurd.

I had a funny doll then and wanted to give it to you. Do
you remember?’
‘And do you remember,’ Natasha asked with a pensive
smile, ‘how once, long, long ago, when we were quite
little, Uncle called us into the study- that was in the old
house- and it was dark- we went in and suddenly there
stood..’
‘A Negro,’ chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight.
‘Of course I remember. Even now I don’t know whether
there really was a Negro, or if we only dreamed it or were
told about him.’
‘He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and
stood and looked at us..’
‘Sonya, do you remember?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Yes, yes, I do remember something too,’ Sonya
answered timidly.
‘You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that
Negro,’ said Natasha, ‘and they say there was no Negro at
all. But you see, you remember!’
‘Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just
seen them.’
‘How strange it is! It’s as if it were a dream! I like
that.’

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‘And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled

eggs in the ballroom, and suddenly two old women began
spinning round on the carpet? Was that real or not? Do
you remember what fun it was?’
‘Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat
fired a gun in the porch?’
So they went through their memories, smiling with
pleasure: not the sad memories of old age, but poetic,
youthful ones- those impressions of one’s most distant
past in which dreams and realities blend- and they
laughed with quiet enjoyment.
Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them,
though they shared the same reminiscences.
Much that they remembered had slipped from her
mind, and what she recalled did not arouse the same
poetic feeling as they experienced. She simply enjoyed
their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.
She only really took part when they recalled Sonya’s
first arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of
Nicholas because he had on a corded jacket and her nurse
had told her that she, too, would be sewn up with cords.
‘And I remember their telling me that you had been
born under a cabbage,’ said Natasha, and I remember that

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I dared not disbelieve it then, but knew that it was not

true, and I felt so uncomfortable.’
While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at
the other door of the sitting room.
‘They have brought the cock, Miss,’ she said in a
whisper.
‘It isn’t wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away,’
replied Natasha.
In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler
came in and went up to the harp that stood there in a
corner. He took off its cloth covering, and the harp gave
out a jarring sound.
‘Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by
Field,’ came the old countess’ voice from the drawing
room.
Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha,
Nicholas, and Sonya, remarked: ‘How quiet you young
people are!’
‘Yes, we’re philosophizing,’ said Natasha, glancing
round for a moment and then continuing the conversation.
They were now discussing dreams.
Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe
noiselessly to the table, took up a candle, carried it out,
and returned, seating herself quietly in her former place. It

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was dark in the room especially where they were sitting

on the sofa, but through the big windows the silvery light
of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished
the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the
strings, evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play
something else.
‘Do you know,’ said Natasha in a whisper, moving
closer to Nicholas and Sonya, ‘that when one goes on and
on recalling memories, one at last begins to remember
what happened before one was in the world..’
‘That is metempsychosis,’ said Sonya, who had always
learned well, and remembered everything. ‘The Egyptians
believed that our souls have lived in animals, and will go
back into animals again.’
‘No, I don’t believe we ever were in animals,’ said
Natasha, still in a whisper though the music had ceased.
‘But I am certain that we were angels somewhere there,
and have been here, and that is why we remember...’
‘May I join you?’ said Dimmler who had come up
quietly, and he sat down by them.
‘If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?’
said Nicholas. ‘No, that can’t be!’
‘Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I
know what I was before?’ Natasha rejoined with

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conviction. ‘The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall

always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole
eternity.’
‘Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity,’
remarked Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a
mildly condescending smile but now spoke as quietly and
seriously as they.
‘Why is it hard to imagine eternity?’ said Natasha. ‘It
is now today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and
there was yesterday, and the day before..’
‘Natasha! Now it’s your turn. Sing me something,’
they heard the countess say. ‘Why are you sitting there
like conspirators?’
‘Mamma, I don’t at all want to,’ replied Natasha, but
all the same she rose.
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler,
wanted to break off their conversation and quit that corner
in the sitting room, but Natasha got up and Nicholas sat
down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the middle of
the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was
best, Natasha began to sing her mother’s favorite song.
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long
since she had sung, and long before she again sang, as she
did that evening. The count, from his study where he was

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talking to Mitenka, heard her and, like a schoolboy in a

hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk while giving
orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mitenka
stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas
did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in time
with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense
difference there was between herself and her friend, and
how impossible it was for her to be anything like as
bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a
blissful yet sad smile and with tears in her eyes,
occasionally shaking her head. She thought of Natasha
and of her own youth, and of how there was something
unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage of
Natasha and Prince Andrew.
Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess,
listened with closed eyes.
‘Ah, Countess,’ he said at last, ‘that’s a European
talent, she has nothing to learn- what softness, tenderness,
and strength...’
‘Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!’ said
the countess, not realizing to whom she was speaking.
Her maternal instinct told her that Natasha had too much
of something, and that because of this she would not be
happy. Before Natasha had finished singing, fourteen-

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year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some

mummers had arrived.
Natasha stopped abruptly.
‘Idiot!’ she screamed at her brother and, running to a
chair, threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she
could not stop for a long time.
‘It’s nothing, Mamma, really it’s nothing; only Petya
startled me,’ she said, trying to smile, but her tears still
flowed and sobs still choked her.
The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as
bears, Turks, innkeepers, and ladies- frightening and
funny- bringing in with them the cold from outside and a
feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly, into the
anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and
more merrily and heartily, they started singing, dancing,
and playing Christmas games. The countess, when she
had identified them and laughed at their costumes, went
into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young
people had disappeared.
Half an hour later there appeared among the other
mummers in the ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt-
this was Nicholas. A Turkish girl was Petya. A clown was

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Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a Circassian was

Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and
praise, from those who were not themselves dressed up,
the young people decided that their costumes were so
good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.
Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition,
wanted to take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed
to take with them about a dozen of the serf mummers and
drive to ‘Uncle’s.’
‘No, why disturb the old fellow?’ said the countess.
‘Besides, you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If
you must go, go to the Melyukovs’’
Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and
their tutors and governesses, lived three miles from the
Rostovs.
‘That’s right, my dear,’ chimed in the old count,
thoroughly aroused. ‘I’ll dress up at once and go with
them. I’ll make Pashette open her eyes.’
But the countess would not agree to his going; he had
had a bad leg all these last days. It was decided that the
count must not go, but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame
Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might go to
the Melyukovs’, Sonya, generally so timid and shy, more

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urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to

refuse.
Sonya’s costume was the best of all. Her mustache and
eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told
her she looked very handsome, and she was in a spirited
and energetic mood unusual with her. Some inner voice
told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and
in her male attire she seemed quite a different person.
Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four
troyka sleighs with large and small bells, their runners
squeaking and whistling over the frozen snow, drove up
to the porch.
Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone,
which, passing from one to another, grew stronger and
stronger and reached its climax when they all came out
into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to
one another, laughing, and shouting.
Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs,
the third was the old count’s with a trotter from the Orlov
stud as shaft horse, the fourth was Nicholas’ own with a
short shaggy black shaft horse. Nicholas, in his old lady’s
dress over which he had belted his hussar overcoat, stood
in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.

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It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected

from the metal harness disks and from the eyes of the
horses, who looked round in alarm at the noisy party
under the shadow of the porch roof.
Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got
into Nicholas’ sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into
the old count’s, and the rest of the mummers seated
themselves in the other two sleighs.
‘You go ahead, Zakhar!’ shouted Nicholas to his
father’s coachman, wishing for a chance to race past him.
The old count’s troyka, with Dimmler and his party,
started forward, squeaking on its runners as though
freezing to the snow, its deep-toned bell clanging. The
side horses, pressing against the shafts of the middle
horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like
sugar, and threw it up.
Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him
the others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first
they drove at a steady trot along the narrow road. While
they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees
often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight,
but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain
bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before
them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish

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shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle

hole in the snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs
jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking the frost-
bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road,
one after the other.
‘A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!’ rang out Natasha’s
voice through the frost-bound air.
‘How light it is, Nicholas!’ came Sonya’s voice.
Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see
her face closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black
eyebrows and mustaches peeped up at him from her sable
furs- so close and yet so distant- in the moonlight.
‘That used to be Sonya,’ thought he, and looked at her
closer and smiled.
‘What is it, Nicholas?’
‘Nothing,’ said he and turned again to the horses.
When they came out onto the beaten highroad-
polished by sleigh runners and cut up by rough-shod
hoofs, the marks of which were visible in the moonlight-
the horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord
and increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his
head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his traces.
The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears
as if asking: ‘Isn’t it time to begin now?’ In front, already

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far ahead the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and
farther off, the black horses driven by Zakhar could be
clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh one
could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices of the
mummers.
‘Gee up, my darlings!’ shouted Nicholas, pulling the
reins to one side and flourishing the whip.
It was only by the keener wind that met them and the
jerks given by the side horses who pulled harder- ever
increasing their gallop- that one noticed how fast the
troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With screams
squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft
horses to gallop- the other sleighs followed. The shaft
horse swung steadily beneath the bow over its head, with
no thought of slackening pace and ready to put on speed
when required.
Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving
downhill and coming out upon a broad trodden track
across a meadow, near a river.
‘Where are we?’ thought he. ‘It’s the Kosoy meadow, I
suppose. But no- this is something new I’ve never seen
before. This isn’t the Kosoy meadow nor the Demkin hill,
and heaven only knows what it is! It is something new

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and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be...’ And shouting

to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.
Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which
was already covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar,
stretching out his arms, clucked his tongue and let his
horses go.
‘Now, look out, master!’ he cried.
Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster
moved the feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas
began to draw ahead. Zakhar, while still keeping his arms
extended, raised one hand with the reins.
‘No you won’t, master!’ he shouted.
Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed
Zakhar. The horses showered the fine dry snow on the
faces of those in the sleigh- beside them sounded quick
ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of swiftly
moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were
passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow
and the voices of girls shrieking were heard from different
sides.
Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around
him. They were still surrounded by the magic plain bathed
in moonlight and spangled with stars.

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‘Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but

why to the left?’ thought Nicholas. ‘Are we getting to the
Melyukovs’? Is this Melyukovka? Heaven only knows
where we are going, and heaven knows what is happening
to us- but it is very strange and pleasant whatever it is.’
And he looked round in the sleigh.
‘Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!’ said
one of the strange, pretty, unfamiliar people- the one with
fine eyebrows and mustache.
‘I think this used to be Natasha,’ thought Nicholas,
‘and that was Madame Schoss, but perhaps it’s not, and
this Circassian with the mustache I don’t know, but I love
her.’
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked.
They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from
the sleigh behind shouted something- probably something
funny- but they could not make out what he said.
‘Yes, yes!’ some voices answered, laughing.
‘But here was a fairy forest with black moving
shadows, and a glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble
steps and the silver roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill
yells of some animals. And if this is really Melyukovka, it
is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and
have come to Melyukovka,’ thought Nicholas.

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It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with

merry faces came running, out to the porch carrying
candles.
‘Who is it?’ asked someone in the porch.
‘The mummers from the count’s. I know by the
horses,’ replied some voices.

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Chapter XI

Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built,

energetic woman wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing
room in a loose dress, surrounded by her daughters whom
she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They were
quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the
shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when
they heard the steps and voices of new arrivals in the
vestibule.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after
clearing their throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their
faces in the vestibule, came into the ballroom where
candles were hurriedly lighted. The clown- Dimmler- and
the lady- Nicholas- started a dance. Surrounded by the
screaming children the mummers, covering their faces
and disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and
arranged themselves about the room.
‘Dear me! there’s no recognizing them! And Natasha!
See whom she looks like! She really reminds me of
somebody. But Herr Dimmler- isn’t he good! I didn’t
know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there’s a
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And

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who is that? Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and

Vanya- clear away the tables! And we were sitting so
quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar! Just like a
boy! And the legs!... I can’t look at him...’ different
voices were saying.
Natasha, the young Melyukovs’ favorite, disappeared
with them into the back rooms where a cork and various
dressing gowns and male garments were called for and
received from the footman by bare girlish arms from
behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young
Melyukovs joined the mummers.
Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the
rooms for the visitors and arranged about refreshments for
the gentry and the serfs, went about among the mummers
without removing her spectacles, peering into their faces
with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of
them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she
failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own
daughters, or her late husband’s, dressing gowns and
uniforms, which they had put on.
‘And who is is this?’ she asked her governess, peering
into the face of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-
Tartar. ‘I suppose it is one of the Rostovs! Well, Mr.
Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?’ she asked

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Natasha. ‘Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!’ she

ordered the butler who was handing things round. ‘That’s
not forbidden by his law.’
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing
capers cut by the dancers, who- having decided once for
all that being disguised, no one would recognize them-
were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna hid her face in her
handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with
irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
‘My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!’ she said.
After Russian country dances and chorus dances,
Pelageya Danilovna made the serfs and gentry join in one
large circle: a ring, a string, and a silver ruble were
fetched and they all played games together.
In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and
disordered. The corked eyebrows and mustaches were
smeared over the perspiring, flushed, and merry faces.
Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers,
admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and
particularly how they suited the young ladies, and she
thanked them all for having entertained her so well. The
visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room, and
the serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.

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‘Now to tell one’s fortune in the empty bathhouse is

frightening!’ said an old maid who lived with the
Melyukovs, during supper.
‘Why?’ said the eldest Melyukov girl.
‘You wouldn’t go, it takes courage..’
‘I’ll go,’ said Sonya.
‘Tell what happened to the young lady!’ said the
second Melyukov girl.
‘Well,’ began the old maid, ‘a young lady once went
out, took a cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and
sat down. After sitting a while, she suddenly hears
someone coming... a sleigh drives up with harness bells;
she hears him coming! He comes in, just in the shape of a
man, like an officer- comes in and sits down to table with
her.’
‘Ah! ah!’ screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with
horror.
‘Yes? And how... did he speak?’
‘Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he
began persuading her; and she should have kept him
talking till cockcrow, but she got frightened, just got
frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he caught
her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just then..’
‘Now, why frighten them?’ said Pelageya Danilovna.

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‘Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself...’ said her

daughter.
‘And how does one do it in a barn?’ inquired Sonya.
‘Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It
depends on what you hear; hammering and knocking-
that’s bad; but a sound of shifting grain is good and one
sometimes hears that, too.’
‘Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn.’
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
‘Oh, I’ve forgotten...’ she replied. ‘But none of you
would go?’
‘Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I’ll go,’ said
Sonya.
‘Well, why not, if you’re not afraid?’
‘Louisa Ivanovna, may I?’ asked Sonya.
Whether they were playing the ring and string game or
the ruble game or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave
Sonya’s side, and gazed at her with quite new eyes. It
seemed to him that it was only today, thanks to that burnt-
cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And
really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated,
and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before.
‘So that’s what she is like; what a fool I have been!’ he
thought gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the

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mustache a happy rapturous smile dimpled her cheeks, a

smile he had never seen before.
‘I’m not afraid of anything,’ said Sonya. ‘May I go at
once?’ She got up.
They told her where the barn was and how she should
stand and listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She
threw this over her head and shoulders and glanced at
Nicholas.
‘What a darling that girl is!’ thought he. ‘And what
have I been thinking of till now?’
Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn.
Nicholas went hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too
hot. The crowd of people really had made the house
stuffy.
Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same
moon, but even brighter than before. The light was so
strong and the snow sparkled with so many stars that one
did not wish to look up at the sky and the real stars were
unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth
was gay.
‘I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?’
thought Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went
round the corner of the house and along the path that led
to the back porch. He knew Sonya would pass that way.

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Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and

across and along them a network of shadows from the
bare old lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This
path led to the barn. The log walls of the barn and its
snow-covered roof, that looked as if hewn out of some
precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree in the
garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again
perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but
the strength of eternal youth and gladness.
From the back porch came the sound of feet
descending the steps, the bottom step upon which snow
had fallen gave a ringing creak and he heard the voice of
an old maidservant saying, ‘Straight, straight, along the
path, Miss. Only, don’t look back.’
‘I am not afraid,’ answered Sonya’s voice, and along
the path toward Nicholas came the crunching, whistling
sound of Sonya’s feet in her thin shoes.
Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only
a couple of paces away when she saw him, and to her too
he was not the Nicholas she had known and always
slightly feared. He was in a woman’s dress, with tousled
hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly
toward him.

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‘Quite different and yet the same,’ thought Nicholas,

looking at her face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped
his arms under the cloak that covered her head, embraced
her, pressed her to him, and kissed her on the lips that
wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sonya
kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little
hands pressed them to his cheeks.
‘Sonya!... Nicholas!’... was all they said. They ran to
the barn and then back again, re-entering, he by the front
and she by the back porch.

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Chapter XII

When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna’s,

Natasha, who always saw and noticed everything,
arranged that she and Madame Schoss should go back in
the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and
the maids.
On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace
instead of racing and kept peering by that fantastic all-
transforming light into Sonya’s face and searching
beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his
present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be
parted again. He looked and recognizing in her both the
old and the new Sonya, and being reminded by the smell
of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss, inhaled the
frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground
flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself
again in fairyland.
‘Sonya, is it well with thee?’ he asked from time to
time.
‘Yes!’ she replied. ‘And with thee?’

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When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the

coachman and ran for a moment to Natasha’s sleigh and
stood on its wing.
‘Natasha!’ he whispered in French, ‘do you know I
have made up my mind about Sonya?’
‘Have you told her?’ asked Natasha, suddenly beaming
all over with joy.
‘Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those
eyebrows!... Natasha- are you glad?’
‘I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed
with you. I did not tell you, but you have been treating her
badly. What a heart she has, Nicholas! I am horrid
sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while Sonya
was not,’ continued Natasha. ‘Now I am so glad! Well,
run back to her.’
‘No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!’ cried
Nicholas, peering into her face and finding in his sister
too something new, unusual, and bewitchingly tender that
he had not seen in her before. ‘Natasha, it’s magical, isn’t
it?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘You have done splendidly.’
‘Had I seen her before as she is now,’ thought
Nicholas, ‘I should long ago have asked her what to do

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and have done whatever she told me, and all would have
been well.’
‘So you are glad and I have done right?’
‘Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some
time ago about it. Mamma said she was angling for you.
How could she say such a thing! I nearly stormed at
Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her.’
‘Then it’s all right?’ said Nicholas, again scrutinizing
the expression of his sister’s face to see if she was in
earnest. Then he jumped down and, his boots scrunching
the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same happy, smiling
Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes looking up
from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that
Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his
future happy and loving wife.
When they reached home and had told their mother
how they had spent the evening at the Melyukovs’, the
girls went to their bedroom. When they had undressed,
but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a
long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how
they would live when they were married, how their
husbands would be friends, and how happy they would

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be. On Natasha’s table stood two looking glasses which

Dunyasha had prepared beforehand.
‘Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It
would be too good!’ said Natasha, rising and going to the
looking glasses.
‘Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you’ll see him,’ said
Sonya.
Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the
looking glasses, and sat down.
‘I see someone with a mustache,’ said Natasha, seeing
her own face.
‘You mustn’t laugh, Miss,’ said Dunyasha.
With Sonya’s help and the maid’s, Natasha got the
glass she held into the right position opposite the other;
her face assumed a serious expression and she sat silent.
She sat a long time looking at the receding line of candles
reflected in the glasses and expecting (from tales she had
heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that last
dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to
take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a
coffin, she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and
moved away from the looking glasses.

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‘Why is it others see things and I don’t?’ she said.

‘You sit down now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight!
Do it for me.... Today I feel so frightened!’
Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right
position, and began looking.
‘Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something,’
whispered Dunyasha; ‘while you do nothing but laugh.’
Sonya heard this and Natasha’s whisper:
‘I know she will. She saw something last year.’
For about three minutes all were silent.
‘Of course she will!’ whispered Natasha, but did not
finish... suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was
holding and covered her eyes with her hand.
‘Oh, Natasha!’ she cried.
‘Did you see? Did you? What was it?’ exclaimed
Natasha, holding up the looking glass.
Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to
blink and to get up when she heard Natasha say, ‘Of
course she will!’ She did not wish to disappoint either
Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to sit still. She did
not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped her
when she covered her eyes.
‘You saw him?’ urged Natasha, seizing her hand.

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‘Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him,’ Sonya could not help
saying, not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him,
Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
‘But why shouldn’t I say I saw something? Others do
see! Besides who can tell whether I saw anything or not?’
flashed through Sonya’s mind.
‘Yes, I saw him,’ she said.
‘How? Standing or lying?’
‘No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him
lying down.’
‘Andrew lying? Is he ill?’ asked Natasha, her
frightened eyes fixed on her friend.
‘No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was
cheerful, and he turned to me.’ And when saying this she
herself fancied she had really seen what she described.
‘Well, and then, Sonya?..’
‘After that, I could not make out what there was;
something blue and red..’
‘Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see
him! O, God, how afraid I am for him and for myself and
about everything!...’ Natasha began, and without replying
to Sonya’s words of comfort she got into bed, and long
after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,
gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.

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Chapter XIII

Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his

mother of his love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to
marry her. The countess, who had long noticed what was
going on between them and was expecting this
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her
son that he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither
she nor his father would give their blessing to such a
marriage. Nicholas, for the first time, felt that his mother
was displeased with him and that, despite her love for
him, she would not give way. Coldly, without looking at
her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came, tried
briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son’s
presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears
of vexation and left the room. The old count began
irresolutely to admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon
his purpose. Nicholas replied that he could not go back on
his word, and his father, sighing and evidently
disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the
countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was
always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having
wasted the family fortune, and so he could not be angry

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with him for refusing to marry an heiress and choosing

the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he was only more
vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had not
been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya
could have been wished for, and that no one but himself
with his Mitenka and his uncomfortable habits was to
blame for the condition of the family finances.
The father and mother did not speak of the matter to
their son again, but a few days later the countess sent for
Sonya and, with a cruelty neither of them expected,
reproached her niece for trying to catch Nicholas and for
ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with downcast eyes to
the countess’ cruel words, without understanding what
was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything
for her benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished
idea but in this case she could not see what she ought to
sacrifice, or for whom. She could not help loving the
countess and the whole Rostov family, but neither could
she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his happiness
depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not
reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and
went to have an explanation with his mother. He first
implored her to forgive him and Sonya and consent to

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their marriage, then he threatened that if she molested

Sonya he would at once marry her secretly.
The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen
in her before, replied that he was of age, that Prince
Andrew was marrying without his father’s consent, and
he could do the same, but that she would never receive
that intriguer as her daughter.
Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his
voice, told his mother he had never expected her to try to
force him to sell his feelings, but if that were so, he would
say for the last time.... But he had no time to utter the
decisive word which the expression of his face caused his
mother to await with terror, and which would perhaps
have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He
had not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set
face, entered the room from the door at which she had
been listening.
‘Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet,
be quiet, I tell you!...’ she almost screamed, so as to
drown his voice.
‘Mamma darling, it’s not at all so... my poor, sweet
darling,’ she said to her mother, who conscious that they
had been on the brink of a rupture gazed at her son with

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terror, but in the obstinacy and excitement of the conflict

could not and would not give way.
‘Nicholas, I’ll explain to you. Go away! Listen,
Mamma darling,’ said Natasha.
Her words were incoherent, but they attained the
purpose at which she was aiming.
The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her
daughter’s breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head,
and left the room.
Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so
far succeeded that Nicholas received a promise from his
mother that Sonya should not be troubled, while he on his
side promised not to undertake anything without his
parents’ knowledge.
Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the
regiment, to retire from the army and return and marry
Sonya, Nicholas, serious, sorrowful, and at variance with
his parents, but, as it seemed to him, passionately in love,
left at the beginning of January to rejoin his regiment.
After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov
household were more depressing than ever, and the
countess fell ill from mental agitation.
Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas
and still more so on account of the hostile tone the

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countess could not help adopting toward her. The count

was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his
affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town
house and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold,
and for this they had to go to Moscow. But the countess’
health obliged them to delay their departure from day to
day.
Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation
from her betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew
more agitated and impatient every day. The thought that
her best days, which she would have employed in loving
him, were being vainly wasted, with no advantage to
anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the most
part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived
only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing
new places and new people that interested him. The more
interesting his letters were the more vexed she felt. Her
letters to him, far from giving her any comfort, seemed to
her a wearisome and artificial obligation. She could not
write, because she could not conceive the possibility of
expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part of
what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote
to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she

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attached no importance herself, and in the rough copies of

which the countess corrected her mistakes in spelling.
There was still no improvement in the countess’ health,
but it was impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any
longer. Natasha’s trousseau had to be ordered and the
house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending the
winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.
So the countess remained in the country, and the count,
taking Sonya and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at
the end of January.

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BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12

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Chapter I

After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre

without any apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to
go on living as before. Firmly convinced as he was of the
truths revealed to him by his benefactor, and happy as he
had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had
devoted himself with such ardor- all the zest of such a life
vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha
and the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which
reached him almost at the same time. Only the skeleton of
life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who now enjoyed
the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance
with all Petersburg, and his court service with its dull
formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre
unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary,
avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to the
Club again, drank a great deal, and came once more in
touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a life that the
Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely to
him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid
compromising her went away to Moscow.
In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in
which the faded and fading princesses still lived, with its

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enormous retinue; as soon as, driving through the town,

he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable tapers burning
before the golden covers of the icons, the Kremlin Square
with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers
and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites
who desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending
their days leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow
ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he felt
himself at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at
peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing
gown.
Moscow society, from the old women down to the
children, received Pierre like a long-expected guest whose
place was always ready awaiting him. For Moscow
society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual,
merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless,
genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was
always empty because it was open to everyone.
Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues,
benevolent societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription
dinners, sprees, Freemasons, churches, and books- no one
and nothing met with a refusal from him, and had it not
been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from
him and taken him under their protection, he would have

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given everything away. There was never a dinner or

soiree at the Club without him. As soon as he sank into
his place on the sofa after two bottles of Margaux he was
surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began.
When there were quarrels, his kindly smile and well-
timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic
dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there.
When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable
and kindly smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive
company to drive off somewhere with them, shouts of
delight and triumph arose among the young men. At balls
he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married
and unmarried, liked him because without making love to
any of them, he was equally amiable to all, especially
after supper. ‘Il est charmant; il n’a pas de sexe,’* they
said of him.
*"He is charming; he has no sex.’
Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of
whom there were hundreds good-humoredly ending their
days in Moscow.
How horrified he would have been seven years before,
when he first arrived from abroad, had he been told that
there was no need for him to seek or plan anything, that
his rut had long been shaped, eternally predetermined, and

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that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his

position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not
at one time longed with all his heart to establish a republic
in Russia; then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a
philosopher; and then a strategist and the conqueror of
Napoleon? Had he not seen the possibility of, and
passionately desired, the regeneration of the sinful human
race, and his own progress to the highest degree of
perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals
and liberated his serfs?
But instead of all that- here he was, the wealthy
husband of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-
waiting, fond of eating and drinking and, as he
unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the government a bit,
a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal
favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not
reconcile himself to the idea that he was one of those
same retired Moscow gentlemen-in-waiting he had so
despised seven years before.
Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that
he was only living this life temporarily; but then he was
shocked by the thought of how many, like himself, had
entered that life and that Club temporarily, with all their

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teeth and hair, and had only left it when not a single tooth
or hair remained.
In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it
seemed to him that he was quite different and distinct
from those other retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had
formerly despised: they were empty, stupid, contented
fellows, satisfied with their position, ‘while I am still
discontented and want to do something for mankind. But
perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me
and sought something new, a path in life of their own, and
like me were brought by force of circumstances, society,
and race- by that elemental force against which man is
powerless- to the condition I am in,’ said he to himself in
moments of humility; and after living some time in
Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond
of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he
pitied himself.
Pierre longer suffered moments of despair,
hypochondria, and disgust with life, but the malady that
had formerly found expression in such acute attacks was
driven inwards and never left him for a moment. ‘What
for? Why? What is going on in the world?’ he would ask
himself in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily
beginning to reflect anew on the meaning of the

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phenomena of life; but knowing by experience that there

were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn
away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the
Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich’s, to exchange the gossip
of the town.
‘Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own
body and is one of the stupidest women in the world,’
thought Pierre, ‘is regarded by people as the acme of
intelligence and refinement, and they pay homage to her.
Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he
was great, but now that he has become a wretched
comedian the Emperor Francis wants to offer him his
daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards, through
the Catholic clergy, offer praise to God for their victory
over the French on the fourteenth of June, and the French,
also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because on
that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards.
My brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready
to sacrifice everything for their neighbor, but they do not
give a ruble each to the collections for the poor, and they
intrigue, the Astraea Lodge against the Manna Seekers,
and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet and a charter
that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very
man who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the

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Christian law of forgiveness of injuries and love of our

neighbors, the law in honor of which we have built in
Moscow forty times forty churches- but yesterday a
deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that same
law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a
cross to kiss before his execution.’ So thought Pierre, and
the whole of this general deception which everyone
accepts, accustomed as he was to it, astonished him each
time as if it were something new. ‘I understand the
deception and confusion,’ he thought, ‘but how am I to
tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always
found that they too in the depths of their souls understand
it as I do, and only try not to see it. So it appears that it
must be so! But I- what is to become of me?’ thought he.
He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially
Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility
of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood
of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.
Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with
evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he
engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him and
blocked every path of activity. Yet he had to live and to
find occupation. It was too dreadful to be under the
burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned

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himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He

frequented every kind of society, drank much, bought
pictures, engaged in building, and above all- read.
He read, and read everything that came to hand. On
coming home, while his valets were still taking off his
things, he picked up a book and began to read. From
reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping to gossip in
drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and
women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine.
Drinking became more and more a physical and also a
moral necessity. Though the doctors warned him that with
his corpulence wine was dangerous for him, he drank a
great deal. He was only quite at ease when having poured
several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth
he felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability
toward all his fellows, and a readiness to respond
superficially to every idea without probing it deeply. Only
after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the
terribly tangled skein of life which previously had
terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He
was always conscious of some aspect of that skein, as
with a buzzing in his head after dinner or supper he
chatted or listened to conversation or read. But under the
influence of wine he said to himself: ‘It doesn’t matter.

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I’ll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no

time now- I’ll think it all out later on!’ But the later on
never came.
In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old
questions appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and
Pierre hastily picked up a book, and if anyone came to see
him he was glad.
Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that
soldiers in war when entrenched under the enemy’s fire, if
they have nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation
the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men
seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some
in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in
women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics,
some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental
affairs. ‘Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it’s
all the same- only to save oneself from it as best one can,’
thought Pierre. ‘Only not to see it, that dreadful it!’

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Chapter II

At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski

and his daughter moved to Moscow. At that time
enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander’s regime had
weakened and a patriotic and anti-French tendency
prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his
intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the
Moscovites and the center of the Moscow opposition to
the government.
The prince had aged very much that year. He showed
marked signs of senility by a tendency to fall asleep,
forgetfulness of quite recent events, remembrance of
remote ones, and the childish vanity with which he
accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In
spite of this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a
feeling of respectful veneration- especially of an evening
when he came in to tea in his old-fashioned coat and
powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his abrupt
stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and scathing
criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned
house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture,

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powdered footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself

a relic of the past century) with his gentle daughter and
the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently devoted to
him presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the
visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of hours
during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-
two hours in the day during which the private and
intimate life of the house continued.
Latterly that private life had become very trying for
Princess Mary. There in Moscow she was deprived of her
greatest pleasures- talks with the pilgrims and the solitude
which refreshed her at Bald Hills- and she had none of the
advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not go out
into society; everyone knew that her father would not let
her go anywhere without him, and his failing health
prevented his going out himself, so that she was not
invited to dinners and evening parties. She had quite
abandoned the hope of getting married. She saw the
coldness and malevolence with which the old prince
received and dismissed the young men, possible suitors,
who sometimes appeared at their house. She had no
friends: during this visit to Moscow she had been
disappointed in the two who had been nearest to her.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been

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able to be quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her,

and for various reasons Princess Mary avoided her. Julie,
with whom she had corresponded for the last five years,
was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to her when
they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers
had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was
in the full whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded
by young men who, she fancied, had suddenly learned to
appreciate her worth. Julie was at that stage in the life of a
society woman when she feels that her last chance of
marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now
or never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with
a mournful smile that she now had no one to write to,
since Julie- whose presence gave her no pleasure was here
and they met every week. Like the old emigre who
declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
evenings for years, she regretted Julie’s presence and
having no one to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had
no one to talk to, no one to whom to confide her sorrow,
and much sorrow fell to her lot just then. The time for
Prince Andrew’s return and marriage was approaching,
but his request to her to prepare his father for it had not
been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite
hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess

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Rostova the old prince (who apart from that was usually
in a bad temper) lost control of himself. Another lately
added sorrow arose from the lessons she gave her six
year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in
herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her
father’s irritability. However often she told herself that
she must not get irritable when teaching her nephew,
almost every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to
show him the French alphabet, she so longed to pour her
own knowledge quickly and easily into the child- who
was already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get
angry- that at his slightest inattention she trembled,
became flustered and heated, raised her voice, and
sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in the
corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself
begin to cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little
Nicholas, following her example, would sob, and without
permission would leave his corner, come to her, pull her
wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But what
distressed the princess most of all was her father’s
irritability, which was always directed against her and had
of late amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate
herself to the ground all night, had he beaten her or made
her fetch wood or water, it would never have entered her

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mind to think her position hard; but this loving despot- the
more cruel because he loved her and for that reason
tormented himself and her- knew how not merely to hurt
and humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she
was always to blame for everything. Of late he had
exhibited a new trait that tormented Princess Mary more
than anything else; this was his ever-increasing intimacy
with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at the first
moment of receiving the news of his son’s intentions had
occurred to him in jest- that if Andrew got married he
himself would marry Bourienne- had evidently pleased
him, and latterly he had persistently, and as it seemed to
Princess Mary merely to offend her, shown special
endearments to the companion and expressed his
dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of
love of Bourienne.
One day in Moscow in Princess Mary’s presence (she
thought her father did it purposely when she was there)
the old prince kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand
and, drawing her to him, embraced her affectionately.
Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few
minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess
Mary’s room smiling and making cheerful remarks in her
agreeable voice. Princess Mary hastily wiped away her

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tears, went resolutely up to Mademoiselle Bourienne, and

evidently unconscious of what she was doing began
shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice
breaking: ‘It’s horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage
of the weakness...’ She did not finish. ‘Leave my room,’
she exclaimed, and burst into sobs.
Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter,
but she noticed that at dinner he gave orders that
Mademoiselle Bourienne should be served first. After
dinner, when the footman handed coffee and from habit
began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew furious,
threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to
have him conscripted for the army.
‘He doesn’t obey... I said it twice... and he doesn’t
obey! She is the first person in this house; she’s my best
friend,’ cried the prince. ‘And if you allow yourself,’ he
screamed in a fury, addressing Princess Mary for the first
time, ‘to forget yourself again before her as you dared to
do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this house.
Go! Don’t let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!’
Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
pardon, and also her father’s pardon for herself and for
Philip the footman, who had begged for her intervention.

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At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice

gathered in her soul. And suddenly that father whom she
had judged would look for his spectacles in her presence,
fumbling near them and not seeing them, or would forget
something that had just occurred, or take a false step with
his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had noticed his
feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no
visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting
his napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate.
‘He is old and feeble, and I dare to condemn him!’ she
thought at such moments, with a feeling of revulsion
against herself.

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Chapter III

In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor-

Metivier- who had rapidly become the fashion. He was
enormously tall, handsome, amiable as Frenchmen are,
and was, as all Moscow said, an extraordinarily clever
doctor. He was received in the best houses not merely as a
doctor, but as an equal.
Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but
latterly on Mademoiselle Bourienne’s advice had allowed
this doctor to visit him and had grown accustomed to him.
Metivier came to see the prince about twice a week.
On December 6- St. Nicholas’ Day and the prince’s
name day- all Moscow came to the prince’s front door but
he gave orders to admit no one and to invite to dinner
only a small number, a list of whom he gave to Princess
Mary.
Metivier, who came in the morning with his
felicitations, considered it proper in his quality of doctor
de forcer la consigne,* as he told Princess Mary, and went
in to see the prince. It happened that on that morning of
his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.
He had been going about the house all the morning

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finding fault with everyone and pretending not to

understand what was said to him and not to be understood
himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet
absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a
burst of rage, and she went about all that morning as
though facing a cocked and loaded gun and awaited the
inevitable explosion. Until the doctor’s arrival the
morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,
Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room
near the door through which she could hear all that passed
in the study.
*To force the guard.
At first she heard only Metivier’s voice, then her
father’s, then both voices began speaking at the same
time, the door was flung open, and on the threshold
appeared the handsome figure of the terrified Metivier
with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his dressing
gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils
of his eyes rolled downwards.
‘You don’t understand?’ shouted the prince, ‘but I do!
French spy, slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my
house! Be off, I tell you..’

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Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to

Mademoiselle Bourienne who at the sound of shouting
had run in from an adjoining room.
‘The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to
the head. Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow,’ said
Metivier; and putting his fingers to his lips he hastened
away.
Through the study door came the sound of slippered
feet and the cry: ‘Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not
a moment’s peace in my own house!’
After Metivier’s departure the old prince called his
daughter in, and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her.
She was to blame that a spy had been admitted. Had he
not told her, yes, told her to make a list, and not to admit
anyone who was not on that list? Then why was that
scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her,
he said, he could not have a moment’s peace and could
not die quietly.
‘No, ma’am! We must part, we must part! Understand
that, understand it! I cannot endure any more,’ he said,
and left the room. Then, as if afraid she might find some
means of consolation, he returned and trying to appear
calm added: ‘And don’t imagine I have said this in a
moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and it

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will be carried out- we must part; so find some place for

yourself....’ But he could not restrain himself and with the
virulence of which only one who loves is capable,
evidently suffering himself, he shook his fists at her and
screamed:
‘If only some fool would marry her!’ Then he slammed
the door, sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided
into his study.
At two o’clock the six chosen guests assembled for
dinner.
These guests- the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince
Lopukhin with his nephew, General Chatrov an old war
comrade of the prince’s, and of the younger generation
Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy- awaited the prince in the
drawing room.
Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days
before, had been anxious to be presented to Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski, and had contrived to ingratiate
himself so well that the old prince in his case made an
exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his
house.
The prince’s house did not belong to what is known as
fashionable society, but his little circle- though not much
talked about in town- was one it was more flattering to be

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received in than any other. Boris had realized this the

week before when the commander in chief in his presence
invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas’ Day, and
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:
‘On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the
relics of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski.’
‘Oh, yes, yes!’ replied the commander in chief. ‘How
is he?..’
The small group that assembled before dinner in the
lofty old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture
resembled the solemn gathering of a court of justice. All
were silent or talked in low tones. Prince Nicholas came
in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even
quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were
reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood
for their conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the
conversation going, now relating the latest town news,
and now the latest political gossip.
Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in
the conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding
judge receives a report, only now and then, silently or by
a brief word, showing that he took heed of what was
being reported to him. The tone of the conversation was
such as indicated that no one approved of what was being

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done in the political world. Incidents were related

evidently confirming the opinion that everything was
going from bad to worse, but whether telling a story or
giving an opinion the speaker always stopped, or was
stopped, at the point beyond which his criticism might
touch the sovereign himself.
At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news:
Napoleon’s seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg’s territory,
and the Russian Note, hostile to Napoleon, which had
been sent to all the European courts.
‘Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured
vessel,’ said Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had
uttered several times before. ‘One only wonders at the
long-suffering or blindness of the crowned heads. Now
the Pope’s turn has come and Bonaparte doesn’t scruple
to depose the head of the Catholic Church- yet all keep
silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg’s territory, and even...’
Count Rostopchin paused, feeling that he had reached the
limit beyond which censure was impossible.
‘Other territories have been offered in exchange for the
Duchy of Oldenburg,’ said Prince Bolkonski. ‘He shifts
the Dukes about as I might move my serfs from Bald
Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan estates.’

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‘The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with

admirable strength of character and resignation,’
remarked Boris, joining in respectfully.
He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he
had had the honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince
Bolkonski glanced at the young man as if about to say
something in reply, but changed his mind, evidently
considering him too young.
‘I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair
and was surprised how badly the Note was worded,’
remarked Count Rostopchin in the casual tone of a man
dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment,
not understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad
composition of the Note.
‘Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded,’ he
asked, ‘so long as its substance is forcible?’
‘My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand
troops it should be easy to have a good style,’ returned
Count Rostopchin.
Pierre now understood the count’s dissatisfaction with
the wording of the Note.
‘One would have thought quill drivers enough had
sprung up,’ remarked the old prince. ‘There in Petersburg

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they are always writing- not notes only but even new
laws. My Andrew there has written a whole volume of
laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!’ and
he laughed unnaturally.
There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the
old general cleared his throat to draw attention.
‘Did you hear of the last event at the review in
Petersburg? The figure cut by the new French
ambassador.’
‘Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something
awkward in His Majesty’s presence.’
‘His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division
and to the march past,’ continued the general, ‘and it
seems the ambassador took no notice and allowed himself
to reply that: ‘We in France pay no attention to such
trifles!’ The Emperor did not condescend to reply. At the
next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to
address him.’
All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor
personally, it was impossible to pass any judgment.
‘Impudent fellows!’ said the prince. ‘You know
Metivier? I turned him out of my house this morning. He
was here; they admitted him spite of my request that they

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should let no one in,’ he went on, glancing angrily at his

daughter.
And he narrated his whole conversation with the
French doctor and the reasons that convinced him that
Metivier was a spy. Though these reasons were very
insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
After the roast, champagne was served. The guests
rose to congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too,
went round to him.
He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his
wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole
expression of his face told her that he had not forgotten
the morning’s talk, that his decision remained in force,
and only the presence of visitors hindered his speaking of
it to her now.
When they went into the drawing room where coffee
was served, the old men sat together.
Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his
views on the impending war.
He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be
disastrous so long as we sought alliances with the
Germans and thrust ourselves into European affairs, into
which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. ‘We
ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our

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political interests are all in the East, and in regard to

Bonaparte the only thing is to have an armed frontier and
a firm policy, and he will never dare to cross the Russian
frontier, as was the case in 1807!’
‘How can we fight the French, Prince?’ said Count
Rostopchin. ‘Can we arm ourselves against our teachers
and divinities? Look at our youths, look at our ladies! The
French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.’
He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by
everyone.
‘French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There
now, you turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck
because he is a Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies
crawl after him on their knees. I went to a party last night,
and there out of five ladies three were Roman Catholics
and had the Pope’s indulgence for doing woolwork on
Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like
the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah,
when one looks at our young people, Prince, one would
like to take Peter the Great’s old cudgel out of the
museum and belabor them in the Russian way till all the
nonsense jumps out of them.’
All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin
with a smile and wagged his head approvingly.

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‘Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!’ said

Rostopchin, getting up with characteristic briskness and
holding out his hand to the prince.
‘Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I
never tire of hearing him!’ said the old prince, keeping
hold of the hand and offering his cheek to be kissed.
Following Rostopchin’s example the others also rose.

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Chapter IV

Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men’s talk

and faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard;
she only wondered whether the guests had all observed
her father’s hostile attitude toward her. She did not even
notice the special attentions and amiabilities shown her
during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who was visiting
them for the third time already.
Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning
look to Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his
face was the last of the guests to approach her after the
old prince had gone out and they were left alone in the
drawing room.
‘May I stay a little longer?’ he said, letting his stout
body sink into an armchair beside her.
‘Oh yes,’ she answered. ‘You noticed nothing?’ her
look asked.
Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He
looked straight before him and smiled quietly.
‘Have you known that young man long, Princess?’ he
asked.
‘Who?’

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‘Drubetskoy.’
‘No, not long..’
‘Do you like him?’
‘Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask
me that?’ said Princess Mary, still thinking of that
morning’s conversation with her father.
‘Because I have noticed that when a young man comes
on leave from Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the
object of marrying an heiress.’
‘You have observed that?’ said Princess Mary.
‘Yes,’ returned Pierre with a smile, ‘and this young
man now manages matters so that where there is a
wealthy heiress there he is too. I can read him like a book.
At present he is hesitating whom to lay siege to- you or
Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive to her.’
‘He visits them?’
‘Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of
courting?’ said Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in
that cheerful mood of good humored raillery for which he
so often reproached himself in his diary.
‘No,’ replied Princess Mary.
‘To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be
melancholy. He is very melancholy with Mademoiselle
Karagina,’ said Pierre.

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‘Really?’ asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre’s

kindly face and still thinking of her own sorrow. ‘It would
be a relief,’ thought she, ‘if I ventured to confide what I
am feeling to someone. I should like to tell everything to
Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would be a relief. He
would give me advice.’
‘Would you marry him?’
‘Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would
marry anybody!’ she cried suddenly to her own surprise
and with tears in her voice. ‘Ah, how bitter it is to love
someone near to you and to feel that...’ she went on in a
trembling voice, ‘that you can do nothing for him but
grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then
there is only one thing left- to go away, but where could I
go?’
‘What is wrong? What is it, Princess?’
But without finishing what she was saying, Princess
Mary burst into tears.
‘I don’t know what is the matter with me today. Don’t
take any notice- forget what I have said!’
Pierre’s gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously
questioned the princess, asked her to speak out fully and
confide her grief to him; but she only repeated that she
begged him to forget what she had said, that she did not

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remember what she had said, and that she had no trouble
except the one he knew of- that Prince Andrew’s marriage
threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.
‘Have you any news of the Rostovs?’ she asked, to
change the subject. ‘I was told they are coming soon. I am
also expecting Andrew any day. I should like them to
meet here.’
‘And how does he now regard the matter?’ asked
Pierre, referring to the old prince.
Princess Mary shook her head.
‘What is to be done? In a few months the year will be
up. The thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my
brother the first moments. I wish they would come
sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have known
them a long time,’ said Princess Mary. ‘Tell me honestly
the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you
think of her?- The real truth, because you know Andrew
is risking so much doing this against his father’s will that
I should like to know..’
An undefined instinct told Pierre that these
explanations, and repeated requests to be told the whole
truth, expressed ill-will on the princess’ part toward her
future sister-in-law and a wish that he should disapprove

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of Andrew’s choice; but in reply he said what he felt

rather than what he thought.
‘I don’t know how to answer your question,’ he said,
blushing without knowing why. ‘I really don’t know what
sort of girl she is; I can’t analyze her at all. She is
enchanting, but what makes her so I don’t know. That is
all one can say about her.’
Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face
said: ‘Yes, that’s what I expected and feared.’
‘Is she clever?’ she asked.
Pierre considered.
‘I think not,’ he said, ‘and yet- yes. She does not deign
to be clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is
all.’
Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
‘Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her
before I do.’
‘I hear they are expected very soon,’ said Pierre.
Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become
intimate with her future sister-in-law as soon as the
Rostovs arrived and to try to accustom the old prince to
her.

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Chapter V

Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in

Petersburg, so with the same object in view he came to
Moscow. There he wavered between the two richest
heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though Princess Mary
despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than
Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about
paying court to her. When they had last met on the old
prince’s name day, she had answered at random all his
attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not listening to
what he was saying.
Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily,
though in a manner peculiar to herself.
She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers
she had become very wealthy. She was by now decidedly
plain, but thought herself not merely as good-looking as
before but even far more attractive. She was confirmed in
this delusion by the fact that she had become a very
wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she
grew the less dangerous she became to men, and the more
freely they could associate with her and avail themselves
of her suppers, soirees, and the animated company that

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assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation.

A man who would have been afraid ten years before of
going every day to the house when there was a girl of
seventeen there, for fear of compromising her and
committing himself, would now go boldly every day and
treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless
acquaintance.
That winter the Karagins’ house was the most
agreeable and hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the
formal evening and dinner parties, a large company,
chiefly of men, gathered there every day, supping at
midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never
missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were
always of the latest fashion. But in spite of that she
seemed to be disillusioned about everything and told
everyone that she did not believe either in friendship or in
love, or any of the joys of life, and expected peace only
‘yonder.’ She adopted the tone of one who has suffered a
great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost the
man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though
nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded
in that light, and had even herself come to believe that she
had suffered much in life. This melancholy, which did not
prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder the young

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people who came to her house from passing the time

pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his
tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then
amused himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual
games, and bouts rimes, which were in vogue at the
Karagins’. Only a few of these young men, among them
Boris, entered more deeply into Julie’s melancholy, and
with these she had prolonged conversations in private on
the vanity of all worldly things, and to them she showed
her albums filled with mournful sketches, maxims, and
verses.
To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted
his early disillusionment with life, offered him such
consolation of friendship as she who had herself suffered
so much could render, and showed him her album. Boris
sketched two trees in the album and wrote: ‘Rustic trees,
your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon
me.’
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n’y a pas d’autre asile.*
*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
Julia said this was charming

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‘There is something so enchanting in the smile of

melancholy,’ she said to Boris, repeating word for word a
passage she had copied from a book. ‘It is a ray of light in
the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair,
showing the possibility of consolation.’
In reply Boris wrote these lines:
Aliment de poison d’une ame trop sensible,
Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
Et mele une douceur secrete
A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*
*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be
impossible,
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
And mingle a secret sweetness
With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her
harp. Boris read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than
once interrupted the reading because of the emotions that
choked him. Meeting at large gatherings Julie and Boris

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looked on one another as the only souls who understood

one another in a world of indifferent people.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins,
while playing cards with the mother made careful
inquiries as to Julie’s dowry (she was to have two estates
in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests). Anna Mikhaylovna
regarded the refined sadness that united her son to the
wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine
will.
‘You are always charming and melancholy, my dear
Julie,’ she said to the daughter. ‘Boris says his soul finds
repose at your house. He has suffered so many
disappointments and is so sensitive,’ said she to the
mother. ‘Ah, my dear, I can’t tell you how fond I have
grown of Julie latterly,’ she said to her son. ‘But who
could help loving her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris,
Boris!’- she paused. ‘And how I pity her mother,’ she
went on; ‘today she showed me her accounts and letters
from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she,
poor thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her
so!’
Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to
his mother. He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy
but listened to what she had to say, and sometimes

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questioned her carefully about the Penza and Nizhegorod

estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her
melancholy adorer and was ready to accept it; but some
secret feeling of repulsion for her, for her passionate
desire to get married, for her artificiality, and a feeling of
horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still
restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He spent every
day and whole days at the Karagins’, and every day on
thinking the matter over told himself that he would
propose tomorrow. But in Julie’s presence, looking at her
red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist
eyes, and her expression of continual readiness to pass at
once from melancholy to an unnatural rapture of married
bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words, though in
imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor
of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had
apportioned the use of the income from them. Julie saw
Boris’ indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to
her that she was repulsive to him, but her feminine self-
deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and
she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her
melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability, and not
long before Boris’ departure she formed a definite plan of

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action. Just as Boris’ leave of absence was expiring,

Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in Moscow, and of
course in the Karagins’ drawing room, and Julie, suddenly
abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very
attentive to Kuragin.
‘My dear,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, ‘I know
from a reliable source that Prince Vasili has sent his son
to Moscow to get him married to Julie. I am so fond of
Julie that I should be sorry for her. What do you think of
it, my dear?’
The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown
away that whole month of arduous melancholy service to
Julie, and of seeing all the revenue from the Penza estates
which he had already mentally apportioned and put to
proper use fall into the hands of another, and especially
into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris. He
drove to the Karagins’ with the firm intention of
proposing. Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke
casually of how she had enjoyed yesterday’s ball, and
asked when he was leaving. Though Boris had come
intentionally to speak of his love and therefore meant to
be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine
inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness
to joy, and how their moods depend solely on who

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happens to be paying court to them. Julie was offended

and replied that it was true that a woman needs variety,
and the same thing over and over again would weary
anyone.
‘Then I should advise you...’ Boris began, wishing to
sting her; but at that instant the galling thought occurred
to him that he might have to leave Moscow without
having accomplished his aim, and have vainly wasted his
efforts- which was a thing he never allowed to happen.
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence,
lowered his eyes to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated
and irresolute face, and said:
‘I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the
contrary..’
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on.
Her irritability had suddenly quite vanished, and her
anxious, imploring eyes were fixed on him with greedy
expectation. ‘I can always arrange so as not to see her
often,’ thought Boris. ‘The affair has been begun and
must be finished!’ He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to
hers, and said:
‘You know my feelings for you!’
There was no need to say more: Julie’s face shone with
triumph and self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say

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all that is said on such occasions- that he loved her and

had never loved any other woman more than her. She
knew that for the Penza estates and Nizhegorod forests
she could demand this, and she received what she
demanded.
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that
shed gloom and melancholy upon them, planned the
arrangements of a splendid house in Petersburg, paid
calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.

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Chapter VI

At the end of January old Count Rostov went to

Moscow with Natasha and Sonya. The countess was still
unwell and unable to travel but it was impossible to wait
for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in Moscow
any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate
near Moscow had to be sold, besides which the
opportunity of presenting his future daughter-in-law to
old Prince Bolkonski while he was in Moscow could not
be missed. The Rostovs’ Moscow house had not been
heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short
time and the countess was not with them, the count
decided to stay with Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova,
who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.
Late one evening the Rostovs’ four sleighs drove into
Marya Dmitrievna’s courtyard in the old Konyusheny
street. Marya Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already
married off her daughter, and her sons were all in the
service.
She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as
candidly, loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole
bearing seemed a reproach to others for any weakness,

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passion, or temptation- the possibility of which she did

not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she
drove out: on holy days to church and after the service to
jails and prisons on affairs of which she never spoke to
anyone. On ordinary days, after dressing, she received
petitioners of various classes, of whom there were always
some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing
meal at which there were always three or four guests;
after dinner she played a game of boston, and at night she
had the newspapers or a new book read to her while she
knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to pay
visits, and then only to the most important persons in the
town.
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived
and the pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as
it let in the Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna,
with her spectacles hanging down on her nose and her
head flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with a
stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might have
thought she was angry with the travelers and would
immediately turn them out, had she not at the same time
been giving careful instructions to the servants for the
accommodation of the visitors and their belongings.

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‘The count’s things? Bring them here,’ she said,

pointing to the portmanteaus and not greeting anyone.
‘The young ladies’? There to the left. Now what are you
dawdling for?’ she cried to the maids. ‘Get the samovar
ready!... You’ve grown plumper and prettier,’ she
remarked, drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing
from the cold) to her by the hood. ‘Foo! You are cold!
Now take off your things, quick!’ she shouted to the count
who was going to kiss her hand. ‘You’re half frozen, I’m
sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!’
she added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French
greeting her slightly contemptuous though affectionate
attitude toward her.
When they came in to tea, having taken off their
outdoor things and tidied themselves up after their
journey, Marya Dmitrievna kissed them all in due order.
‘I’m heartily glad you have come and are staying with
me. It was high time,’ she said, giving Natasha a
significant look. ‘The old man is here and his son’s
expected any day. You’ll have to make his aquaintance.
But we’ll speak of that later on,’ she added, glancing at
Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak
of it in her presence. ‘Now listen,’ she said to the count.
‘What do you want tomorrow? Whom will you send for?

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Shinshin?’ she crooked one of her fingers. ‘The sniveling

Anna Mikhaylovna? That’s two. She’s here with her son.
The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is
here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she
came galloping after him. He dined with me on
Wednesday. As for them’- and she pointed to the girls-
‘tomorrow I’ll take them first to the Iberian shrine of the
Mother of God, and then we’ll drive to the Super-
Rogue’s. I suppose you’ll have everything new. Don’t
judge by me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other
day young Princess Irina Vasilevna came to see me; she
was an awful sight- looked as if she had put two barrels
on her arms. You know not a day passes now without
some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?’
she asked the count sternly.
‘One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy,
and now a purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate
and for the house. If you will be so kind, I’ll fix a time
and go down to the estate just for a day, and leave my
lassies with you.’
‘All right. All right. They’ll be safe with me, as safe as
in Chancery! I’ll take them where they must go, scold
them a bit, and pet them a bit,’ said Marya Dmitrievna,

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touching her goddaughter and favorite, Natasha, on the

cheek with her large hand.
Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies
to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame
Suppert-Roguet, who was so afraid of Marya Dmitrievna
that she always let her have costumes at a loss merely to
get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the
whole trousseau. When they got home she turned
everybody out of the room except Nataisha, and then
called her pet to her armchair.
‘Well, now we’ll talk. I congratulate you on your
betrothed. You’ve hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for
your sake and I’ve known him since he was so high.’ She
held her hand a couple of feet from the ground. Natasha
blushed happily. ‘I like him and all his family. Now
listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes
his son’s marrying. The old fellow’s crotchety! Of course
Prince Andrew is not a child and can shift without him,
but it’s not nice to enter a family against a father’s will.
One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You’re a
clever girl and you’ll know how to manage. Be kind, and
use your wits. Then all will be well.’
Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya
Dmitrievna supposed, but really because she disliked

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anyone interfering in what touched her love of Prince

Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human
affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and
knew Prince Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come
one of these days and take her. She wanted nothing more.
‘You see I have known him a long time and am also
fond of Mary, your future sister-in-law. ‘Husbands’
sisters bring up blisters,’ but this one wouldn’t hurt a fly.
She has asked me to bring you two together. Tomorrow
you’ll go with your father to see her. Be very nice and
affectionate to her: you’re younger than she. When he
comes, he’ll find you already know his sister and father
and are liked by them. Am I right or not? Won’t that be
best?’
‘Yes, it will,’ Natasha answered reluctantly.

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Chapter VII

Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna’s advice, Count

Rostov took Natasha to call on Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski. The count did not set out cheerfully on this
visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well remembered the last
interview he had had with the old prince at the time of the
enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he had
had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having
provided his full quota of men. Natasha, on the other
hand, having put on her best gown, was in the highest
spirits. ‘They can’t help liking me,’ she thought.
‘Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to
do anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him- for
being his father- and of her- for being his sister- that there
is no reason for them not to like me..’
They drove up to the gloomy old house on the
Vozdvizhenka and entered the vestibule.
‘Well, the Lord have mercy on us!’ said the count, half
in jest, half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father
was flurried on entering the anteroom and inquired
timidly and softly whether the prince and princess were at
home.

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When they had been announced a perturbation was

noticeable among the servants. The footman who had
gone to announce them was stopped by another in the
large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said
something, mentioning the princess. At last an old, cross
looking footman came and announced to the Rostovs that
the prince was not receiving, but that the princess begged
them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the
visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the
father and daughter with special politeness and showed
them to the princess’ room. The princess, looking excited
and nervous, her face flushed in patches, ran in to meet
the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly trying to appear
cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess Mary
did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably
dressed, frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all
realize that before having seen her future sister-in-law she
was prejudiced against her by involuntary envy of her
beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by jealousy of
her brother’s love for her. Apart from this insuperable
antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then
because on the Rostovs’ being announced, the old prince
had shouted that he did not wish to see them, that Princess

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Mary might do so if she chose, but they were not to be

admitted to him. She had decided to receive them, but
feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in
some freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs’
visit.
‘There, my dear princess, I’ve brought you my
songstress,’ said the count, bowing and looking round
uneasily as if afraid the old prince might appear. ‘I am so
glad you should get to know one another... very sorry the
prince is still ailing,’ and after a few more commonplace
remarks he rose. ‘If you’ll allow me to leave my Natasha
in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I’ll drive
round to see Anna Semenovna, it’s quite near in the
Dogs’ Square, and then I’ll come back for her.’
The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he
afterwards told his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-
law an opportunity to talk to one another freely, but
another motive was to avoid the danger of encountering
the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not
mention this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her
father’s nervousness and anxiety and felt mortified by it.
She blushed for him, grew still angrier at having blushed,
and looked at the princess with a bold and defiant
expression which said that she was not afraid of anybody.

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The princess told the count that she would be delighted,

and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna’s,
and he departed.
Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess
Mary- who wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha-
Mademoiselle Bourienne remained in the room and
persistently talked about Moscow amusements and
theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had
noticed in the anteroom, by her father’s nervousness, and
by the unnatural manner of the princess who- she thought-
was making a favor of receiving her, and so everything
displeased her. She did not like Princess Mary, whom she
thought very plain, affected, and dry. Natasha suddenly
shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an offhand
air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five
minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard
the sound of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess
Mary looked frightened.
The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing
gown and a white nightcap, came in.
‘Ah, madam!’ he began. ‘Madam, Countess...
Countess Rostova, if I am not mistaken... I beg you to
excuse me, to excuse me... I did not know, madam. God is
my witness, I did not know you had honored us with a

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visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my

daughter. I beg you to excuse me... God is my witness, I
didn’t know-’ he repeated, stressing the word ‘God’ so
unnaturally and so unpleasantly that Princess Mary stood
with downcast eyes not daring to look either at her father
or at Natasha.
Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know
what to do. Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled
agreeably.
‘I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my
witness, I did not know,’ muttered the old man, and after
looking Natasha over from head to foot he went out.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover
herself after this apparition and began speaking about the
prince’s indisposition. Natasha and Princess Mary looked
at one another in silence, and the longer they did so
without saying what they wanted to say, the greater grew
their antipathy to one another.
When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely
pleased and hastened to get away: at that moment she
hated the stiff, elderly princess, who could place her in
such an embarrassing position and had spent half an hour
with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. ‘I
couldn’t begin talking about him in the presence of that

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Frenchwoman,’ thought Natasha. The same thought was

meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She knew what she
ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been unable to
say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way,
and because, without knowing why, she felt it very
difficult to speak of the marriage. When the count was
already leaving the room, Princess Mary went up
hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with
a deep sigh:
‘Wait, I must..’
Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing
why.
‘Dear Natalie,’ said Princess Mary, ‘I want you to
know that I am glad my brother has found happiness...’
She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth.
Natasha noticed this and guessed its reason.
‘I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that
now,’ she said with external dignity and coldness, though
she felt the tears choking her.
‘What have I said and what have I done?’ thought she,
as soon as she was out of the room.
They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner
that day. She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing

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her nose and sobbing. Sonya stood beside her, kissing her
hair.
‘Natasha, what is it about?’ she asked. ‘What do they
matter to you? It will all pass, Natasha.’
‘But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..’
‘Don’t talk about it, Natasha. It wasn’t your fault so
why should you mind? Kiss me,’ said Sonya.
Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the
lips, pressed her wet face against her.
‘I can’t tell you, I don’t know. No one’s to blame,’ said
Natasha- ‘It’s my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why
doesn’t he come?..’
She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya
Dmitrievna, who knew how the prince had received the
Rostovs, pretended not to notice how upset Natasha was
and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count
and the other guests.

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Chapter VIII

That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which

Marya Dmitrievna had taken a box.
Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
Dmitrievna’s kind offer which was intended expressly for
her. When she came ready dressed into the ballroom to
await her father, and looking in the large mirror there saw
that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more sad,
but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
‘O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I
did then, but differently. I would not be silly and afraid of
things, I would simply embrace him, cling to him, and
make him look at me with those searching inquiring eyes
with which he has so often looked at me, and then I would
make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how I
see those eyes!’ thought Natasha. ‘And what do his father
and sister matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with
that face and those eyes, with his smile, manly and yet
childlike.... No, I had better not think of him; not think of
him but forget him, quite forget him for the present. I
can’t bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!’ and
she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to

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cry. ‘And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and

quietly and wait so long and so patiently?’ thought she,
looking at Sonya, who also came in quite ready, with a
fan in her hand. ‘No, she’s altogether different. I can’t!’
Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that
it was not enough for her to love and know she was
beloved, she wanted now, at once, to embrace the man
she loved, to speak and hear from him words of love such
as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps
flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and
more in love, and forgot where she was going and with
whom. Having fallen into the line of carriages, the
Rostovs’ carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya, holding up
their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out
helped by the footmen, and, passing among men and
women who were entering and the program sellers, they
all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.
Through the closed doors the music was already audible.
‘Natasha, your hair!...’ whispered Sonya.
An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before
the ladies and opened the door of their box. The music
sounded louder and through the door rows of brightly lit

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boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and shoulders,

and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before
their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of
feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen
and the overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing
her gown, went in with Sonya and sat down, scanning the
brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not
experienced for a long time- that of hundreds of eyes
looking at her bare arms and neck- suddenly affected her
both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole
crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with
that feeling.
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya,
with Count Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for
a long time, attracted general attention. Moreover,
everybody knew vaguely of Natasha’s engagement to
Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in
the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a
fiancee who was making one of the best matches in
Russia.
Natasha’s looks, as everyone told her, had improved in
the country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she
was particularly pretty. She struck those who saw her by
her fullness of life and beauty, combined with her

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indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes

looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her
delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet
edge of the box, while, evidently unconsciously, she
opened and closed her hand in time to the music,
crumpling her program. ‘Look, there’s Alenina,’ said
Sonya, ‘with her mother, isn’t it?’
‘Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!’
remarked the count.
‘Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she
has on!’
‘The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see
at once that they’re engaged...’
‘Drubetskoy has proposed?’
‘Oh yes, I heard it today,’ said Shinshin, coming into
the Rostovs’ box.
Natasha looked in the direction in which her father’s
eyes were turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother
with a happy look on her face and a string of pearls round
her thick red neck- which Natasha knew was covered with
powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over
with an ear to Julie’s mouth, was Boris’ handsome
smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from

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under his brows and said something, smiling, to his

betrothed.
‘They are talking about us, about me and him!’ thought
Natasha. ‘And he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me.
They needn’t trouble themselves! If only they knew how
little I am concerned about any of them.’
Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green
headdress and with a happy look of resignation to the will
of God on her face. Their box was pervaded by that
atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natasha knew
so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly
remembered all that had been so humiliating in her
morning’s visit.
‘What right has he not to wish to receive me into his
family? Oh, better not think of it- not till he comes back!’
she told herself, and began looking at the faces, some
strange and some familiar, in the stalls. In the front, in the
very center, leaning back against the orchestra rail, stood
Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair brushed up
into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
well aware that he was attracting everyone’s attention, yet
as much at ease as though he were in his own room.
Around him thronged Moscow’s most brilliant young
men, whom he evidently dominated.

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The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and

pointed to her former adorer.
‘Do you recognize him?’ said he. ‘And where has he
sprung from?’ he asked, turning to Shinshin. ‘Didn’t he
vanish somewhere?’
‘He did,’ replied Shinshin. ‘He was in the Caucasus
and ran away from there. They say he has been acting as
minister to some ruling prince in Persia, where he killed
the Shah’s brother. Now all the Moscow ladies are mad
about him! It’s ‘Dolokhov the Persian’ that does it! We
never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They
swear by him, they offer him to you as they would a dish
of choice sterlet. Dolokhov and Anatole Kuragin have
turned all our ladies’ heads.’
A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and
much exposed plump white shoulders and neck, round
which she wore a double string of large pearls, entered the
adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress and took a
long time settling into her place.
Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those
shoulders, and pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty
of the shoulders and the pearls. While Natasha was fixing
her gaze on her for the second time the lady looked round
and, meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled.

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She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre’s wife, and the

count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and
spoke to her.
‘Have you been here long, Countess?’ he inquired. ‘I’ll
call, I’ll call to kiss your hand. I’m here on business and
have brought my girls with me. They say Semenova acts
marvelously. Count Pierre never used to forget us. Is he
here?’
‘Yes, he meant to look in,’ answered Helene, and
glanced attentively at Natasha.
Count Rostov resumed his seat.
‘Handsome, isn’t she?’ he whispered to Natasha.
‘Wonderful!’ answered Natasha. ‘She’s a woman one
could easily fall in love with.’
Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and
the conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took
their seats in the stalls, and the curtain rose.
As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls
became silent, and all the men, old and young, in uniform
and evening dress, and all the women with gems on their
bare flesh, turned their whole attention with eager
curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.

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Chapter IX

The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at

the sides was some painted cardboard representing trees,
and at the back was a cloth stretched over boards. In the
center of the stage sat some girls in red bodices and white
skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat apart on a
low bench, to the back of which a piece of green
cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When
they had finished their song the girl in white went up to
the prompter’s box and a man with tight silk trousers over
his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger, went up
to her and began singing, waving his arms about.
First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she
sang, then they both paused while the orchestra played
and the man fingered the hand of the girl in white,
obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with her. They
sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping
and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage-
who represented lovers- began smiling, spreading out
their arms, and bowing.
After her life in the country, and in her present serious
mood, all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha.

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She could not follow the opera nor even listen to the
music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the
queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and
sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it
was all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously
false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the
actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of
the audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule
and perplexity she herself experienced, but they all
seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and
expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. ‘I
suppose it has to be like this!’ she thought. She kept
looking round in turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the
stalls and then at the seminude women in the boxes,
especially at Helene in the next box, who- apparently
quite unclothed- sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking
her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that
flooded the whole place and the warm air heated by the
crowd, Natasha little by little began to pass into a state of
intoxication she had not experienced for a long while. She
did not realize who and where she was, nor what was
going on before her. As she looked and thought, the
strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed
through her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping

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onto the edge of the box and singing the air the actress
was singing, then she wished to touch with her fan an old
gentleman sitting not far from her, then to lean over to
Helene and tickle her.
At a moment when all was quiet before the
commencement of a song, a door leading to the stalls on
the side nearest the Rostovs’ box creaked, and the steps of
a belated arrival were heard. ‘There’s Kuragin!’
whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling
to the newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of
that look, saw an exceptionally handsome adjutant
approaching their box with a self-assured yet courteous
bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she had seen
and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was
now in an adjutant’s uniform with one epaulet and a
shoulder knot. He moved with a restrained swagger which
would have been ridiculous had he not been so good-
looking and had his handsome face not worn such an
expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety.
Though the performance was proceeding, he walked
deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword and
spurs slightly jingling and his handsome perfumed head
held high. Having looked at Natasha he approached his
sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her box,

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nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with

a motion toward Natasha.
‘Mais charmante!’ said he, evidently referring to
Natasha, who did not exactly hear his words but
understood them from the movement of his lips. Then he
took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat down
beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly
and offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so
fawningly. He winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his
foot against the orchestra screen.
‘How like the brother is to the sister,’ remarked the
count. ‘And how handsome they both are!’
Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of
some intrigue of Kuragin’s in Moscow, and Natasha tried
to overhear it just because he had said she was
‘charmante.’
The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began
moving about, going out and coming in.
Boris came to the Rostovs’ box, received their
congratulations very simply, and raising his eyebrows
with an absent-minded smile conveyed to Natasha and
Sonya his fiancee’s invitation to her wedding, and went
away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him,
and congratulated on his approaching wedding that same

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Boris with whom she had formerly been in love. In the

state of intoxication she was in, everything seemed simple
and natural.
The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the
same way, and Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.
Helene’s box was filled and surrounded from the stalls
by the most distinguished and intellectual men, who
seemed to vie with one another in their wish to let
everyone see that they knew her.
During the whole of that entr’acte Kuragin stood with
Dolokhov in front of the orchestra partition, looking at the
Rostovs’ box. Natasha knew he was talking about her and
this afforded her pleasure. She even turned so that he
should see her profile in what she thought was its most
becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act
Pierre appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen
him since their arrival. His face looked sad, and he had
grown still stouter since Natasha last saw him. He passed
up to the front rows, not noticing anyone. Anatole went
up to him and began speaking to him, looking at and
indicating the Rostovs’ box. On seeing Natasha Pierre
grew animated and, hastily passing between the rows,
came toward their box. When he got there he leaned on
his elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a long time.

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While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a man’s

voice in Countess Bezukhova’s box and something told
her it was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost
smiling, he gazed straight into her eyes with such an
enraptured caressing look that it seemed strange to be so
near him, to look at him like that, to be so sure he admired
her, and not to be acquainted with him.
In the second act there was scenery representing
tombstones, there was a round hole in the canvas to
represent the moon, shades were raised over the
footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep
notes while many people appeared from right and left
wearing black cloaks and holding things like daggers in
their hands. They began waving their arms. Then some
other people ran in and began dragging away the maiden
who had been in white and was now in light blue. They
did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long
time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the
scenes something metallic was struck three times and
everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All these things
were repeatedly interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of
the audience.
During this act every time Natasha looked toward the
stalls she saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across

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the back of his chair, staring at her. She was pleased to

see that he was captivated by her and it did not occur to
her that there was anything wrong in it.
When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova
rose, turned to the Rostovs’ box- her whole bosom
completely exposed- beckoned the old count with a
gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
entered her box began talking to him with an amiable
smile.
‘Do make me acquainted with your charming
daughters,’ said she. ‘The whole town is singing their
praises and I don’t even know then!’
Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She
was so pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she
blushed with pleasure.
‘I want to become a Moscovite too, now,’ said Helene.
‘How is it you’re not ashamed to bury such pearls in the
country?’
Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of
being a fascinating woman. She could say what she did
not think- especially what was flattering- quite simply and
naturally.
‘Dear count, you must let me look after your
daughters! Though I am not staying here long this time-

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nor are you- I will try to amuse them. I have already heard
much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get to know
you,’ said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely
smile. ‘I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy.
Have you heard he is getting married? And also from my
husband’s friend Bolkonski, Prince Andrew Bolkonski,’
she went on with special emphasis, implying that she
knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better acquainted
she asked that one of the young ladies should come into
her box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha
moved over to it.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in
which many candles were burning and pictures of knights
with short beards hung on the walls. In the middle stood
what were probably a king and a queen. The king waved
his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something
badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who
had been first in white and then in light blue, now wore
only a smock, and stood beside the throne with her hair
down. She sang something mournfully, addressing the
queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and
women with bare legs came in from both sides and began
dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly
and merrily and one of the women with thick bare legs

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and thin arms, separating from the others, went behind the
wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the
stage, and began jumping and striking one foot rapidly
against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and
shouted ‘bravo!’ Then one of the men went into a corner
of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra
struck up more loudly, and this man with bare legs
jumped very high and waved his feet about very rapidly.
(He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles a
year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and
galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might,
and the man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all
sides. Then other men and women danced with bare legs.
Then the king again shouted to the sound of music, and
they all began singing. But suddenly a storm came on,
chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in
the orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of
their number away, and the curtain dropped. Once more
there was a terrible noise and clatter among the audience,
and with rapturous faces everyone began shouting:
‘Duport! Duport! Duport!’ Natasha no longer thought this
strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
‘Isn’t Duport delightful?’ Helene asked her.
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Natasha.

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Chapter X

During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into

Helene’s box, the door opened, and Anatole entered,
stooping and trying not to brush against anyone.
‘Let me introduce my brother to you,’ said Helene, her
eyes shifting uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.
Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant
young officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder.
Anatole, who was as handsome at close quarters as at a
distance, sat down beside her and told her he had long
wished to have this happiness- ever since the Naryshkins’
ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered
pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible
and simple with women than among men. He talked
boldly and naturally, and Natasha was strangely and
agreeably struck by the fact that there was nothing
formidable in this man about whom there was so much
talk, but that on the contrary his smile was most naive,
cheerful, and good-natured.
Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told
her how at a previous performance Semenova had fallen
down on the stage.

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‘And do you know, Countess,’ he said, suddenly

addressing her as an old, familiar acquaintance, ‘we are
getting up a costume tournament; you ought to take part
in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at the
Karagins’! Please come! No! Really, eh?’ said he.
While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes
from her face, her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew
for certain that he was enraptured by her. This pleased
her, yet his presence made her feel constrained and
oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that
he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily
caught his eye so that he should look into hers rather than
this. But looking into his eyes she was frightened,
realizing that there was not that barrier of modesty she
had always felt between herself and other men. She did
not know how it was that within five minutes she had
come to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she
turned away she feared he might seize her from behind by
her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They spoke of most
ordinary things, yet she felt that they were closer to one
another than she had ever been to any man. Natasha kept
turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it all
meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a
general and did not answer her look, and her father’s eyes

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said nothing but what they always said: ‘Having a good

time? Well, I’m glad of it!’
During one of these moments of awkward silence
when Anatole’s prominent eyes were gazing calmly and
fixedly at her, Natasha, to break the silence, asked him
how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she
was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though
to encourage her.
‘At first I did not like it much, because what makes a
town pleasant ce sont les jolies femmes,* isn’t that so?
But now I like it very much indeed,’ he said, looking at
her significantly. ‘You’ll come to the costume
tournament, Countess? Do come!’ and putting out his
hand to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added,
‘You will be the prettiest there. Do come, dear countess,
and give me this flower as a pledge!’
*Are the pretty women.
Natasha did not understand what he was saying any
more than he did himself, but she felt that his
incomprehensible words had an improper intention. She
did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away
she felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her.

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‘How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it

right?’ she asked herself, and she could not refrain from
turning round. She looked straight into his eyes, and his
nearness, self-assurance, and the good-natured tenderness
of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just as he was
doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt
with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and
gay. Natasha went back to her father in the other box,
now quite submissive to the world she found herself in.
All that was going on before her now seemed quite
natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of
her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country
did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to
a remote past.
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang
waving his arm about, till the boards were withdrawn
from under him and he disappeared down below. That
was the only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw. She
felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was
Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were
leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their
carriage, and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha
in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and

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flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with

glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.
Only after she had reached home was Natasha able
clearly to think over what had happened to her, and
suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she was horrified,
and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she
gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.
‘O God! I am lost!’ she said to herself. ‘How could I
let him?’ She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in
her hands trying to realize what had happened to her, but
was unable either to understand what had happened or
what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure, and
terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater
where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated
jacket, jumped about to the music on wet boards, and
young girls and old men, and the nearly naked Helene
with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried ‘bravo!’-
there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear
and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was
incomprehensible. ‘What is it? What was that terror I felt
of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling
now?’ she thought.
Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha
have told all she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with

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her severe and simple views would either not understand

it at all or would be horrified at such a confession. So
Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by herself.
‘Am I spoiled for Andrew’s love or not?’ she asked
herself, and with soothing irony replied: ‘What a fool I
am to ask that! What did happen to me? Nothing! I have
done nothing, I didn’t lead him on at all. Nobody will
know and I shall never see him again,’ she told herself.
‘So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is
nothing to repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But
why ‘still?’ O God, why isn’t he here?’ Natasha quieted
herself for a moment, but again some instinct told her that
though all this was true, and though nothing had
happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince
Andrew had perished. And again in imagination she went
over her whole conversation with Kuragin, and again saw
the face, gestures, and tender smile of that bold handsome
man when he pressed her arm.

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Chapter XI

Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his

father had sent him away from Petersburg, where he had
been spending twenty thousand rubles a year in cash,
besides running up debts for as much more, which his
creditors demanded from his father.
His father announced to him that he would now pay
half his debts for the last time, but only on condition that
he went to Moscow as adjutant to the commander in
chief- a post his father had procured for him- and would
at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to
him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.
Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put
up at Pierre’s house. Pierre received him unwillingly at
first, but got used to him after a while, sometimes even
accompanied him on his carousals, and gave him money
under the guise of loans.
As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival
Anatole had turned the heads of the Moscow ladies,
especially by the fact that he slighted them and plainly
preferred the gypsy girls and French actresses- with the
chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to be

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on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at

Danilov’s or other Moscow revelers’, drank whole nights
through, outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls
and parties of the best society. There was talk of his
intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted with a few
of them at the balls. But he did not run after the unmarried
girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most of them
plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got
married two years before- a fact known only to his most
intimate friends. At that time while with his regiment in
Poland, a Polish landowner of small means had forced
him to marry his daughter. Anatole had very soon
abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to
send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass
himself off as a bachelor.
Anatole was always content with his position, with
himself, and with others. He was instinctively and
thoroughly convinced that was impossible for him to live
otherwise than as he did and that he had never in his life
done anything base. He was incapable of considering how
his actions might affect others or what the consequences
of this or that action of his might be. He was convinced
that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so
God had made him such that he must spend thirty

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thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent

position in society. He believed this so firmly that others,
looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did not
refuse him either a leading place in society or money,
which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and
evidently would not repay.
He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about
winning. He was not vain. He did not mind what people
thought of him. Still less could he be accused of ambition.
More than once he had vexed his father by spoiling his
own career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He
was not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of
him. All he cared about was gaiety and women, and as
according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in
these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the
gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly
considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised
rogues and bad people, and with a tranquil conscience
carried his head high.
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of
innocence similar to that which female Magdalenes have,
based on the same hope of forgiveness. ‘All will be
forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will be forgiven
him, for he enjoyed much.’

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Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow

after his exile and his Persian adventures, and was leading
a life of luxury, gambling, and dissipation, associated
with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin and made use of
him for his own ends.
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his
cleverness and audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole
Kuragin’s name, position, and connections as a bait to
draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of
him and amused himself at his expense without letting the
other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from
Anatole, the very process of dominating another’s will
was in itself a pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to
Dolokhov.
Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At
supper after the opera he described to Dolokhov with the
air of a connoisseur the attractions of her arms, shoulders,
feet, and hair and expressed his intention of making love
to her. Anatole had no notion and was incapable of
considering what might come of such love-making, as he
never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
‘She’s first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us,’
replied Dolokhov.

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‘I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner,’ said Anatole.

‘Eh?’
‘You’d better wait till she’s married...’
‘You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at
once,’ pursued Anatole.
‘You have been caught once already by a ‘little girl,’’
said Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin’s marriage. ‘Take
care!’
‘Well, that can’t happen twice! Eh?’ said Anatole, with
a good-humored laugh.

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Chapter XII

The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and
nobody came to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the
count about something which they concealed from
Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking about the old
prince and planning something, and this disquieted and
offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any
moment and twice that day sent a manservant to the
Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had
not arrived. She suffered more now than during her first
days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him
were now added the unpleasant recollection of her
interview with Princess Mary and the old prince, and a
fear and anxiety of which she did not understand the
cause. She continually fancied that either he would never
come or that something would happen to her before he
came. She could no longer think of him by herself calmly
and continuously as she had done before. As soon as she
began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince,
of Princess Mary, of the theater, and of Kuragin mingled
with her thoughts. The question again presented itself
whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already

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broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found

herself recalling to the minutest detail every word, every
gesture, and every shade in the play of expression on the
face of the man who had been able to arouse in her such
an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To the family
Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less
tranquil and happy than before.
On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her
visitors to Mass at her parish church- the Church of the
Assumption built over the graves of victims of the plague.
‘I don’t like those fashionable churches,’ she said,
evidently priding herself on her independence of thought.
‘God is the same every where. We have an excellent
priest, he conducts the service decently and with dignity,
and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there in
giving concerts in the choir? I don’t like it, it’s just self-
indulgence!’
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to
keep them. Her whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on
Saturdays; neither she nor the servants worked, and they
all wore holiday dress and went to church. At her table
there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had
vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in
the house was the holiday so noticeable as in Marya

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Dmitrievna’s broad, stern face, which on that day wore an

invariable look of solemn festivity.
After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the
dining room where the loose covers had been removed
from the furniture, a servant announced that the carriage
was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna rose with a stern air.
She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and
announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about
Natasha.
After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame
Suppert-Roguet waited on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very
glad of this diversion, having shut herself into a room
adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying on
the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without
sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her
head to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in
the drawing room the animated sounds of her father’s
voice and another’s- a woman’s- that made her flush. It
was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off the bodice
before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed
in a purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the
room beaming with good-humored amiable smiles.

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‘Oh, my enchantress!’ she cried to the blushing

Natasha. ‘Charming! No, this is really beyond anything,
my dear count,’ said she to Count Rostov who had
followed her in. ‘How can you live in Moscow and go
nowhere? No, I won’t let you off! Mademoiselle George
will recite at my house tonight and there’ll be some
people, and if you don’t bring your lovely girls- who are
prettier than Mademoiselle George- I won’t know you!
My husband is away in Tver or I would send him to fetch
you. You must come. You positively must! Between eight
and nine.’
She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and
who had curtsied respectfully to her, and seated herself in
an armchair beside the looking glass, draping the folds of
her velvet dress picturesquely. She did not cease
chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising
Natasha’s beauty. She looked at Natasha’s dresses and
praised them, as well as a new dress of her own made of
‘metallic gauze,’ which she had received from Paris, and
advised Natasha to have one like it.
‘But anything suits you, my charmer!’ she remarked.
A smile of pleasure never left Natasha’s face. She felt
happy and as if she were blossoming under the praise of
this dear Countess Bezukhova who had formerly seemed

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to her so unapproachable and important and was now so

kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt almost in love
with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind.
Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha
and wished to give her a good time. Anatole had asked
her to bring him and Natasha together, and she was
calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The idea of
throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her.
Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been
annoyed with Natasha for drawing Boris away, she did
not think of that now, and in her own way heartily wished
Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs she called
her protegee aside.
‘My brother dined with me yesterday- we nearly died
of laughter- he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my
charmer! He is madly, quite madly, in love with you, my
dear.’
Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
‘How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!’ said
Helene. ‘You must certainly come. If you love somebody,
my charmer, that is not a reason to shut yourself up. Even
if you are engaged, I am sure your fiance would wish you
to go into society rather than be bored to death.’

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‘So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband

Pierre- that good Pierre- have talked and laughed about
this. So it’s all right.’ And again, under Helene’s
influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed simple
and natural. ‘And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and
evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?’
thought Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open,
wondering eyes.
Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and
serious, having evidently suffered a defeat at the old
prince’s. She was still too agitated by the encounter to be
able to talk of the affair calmly. In answer to the count’s
inquiries she replied that things were all right and that she
would tell about it next day. On hearing of Countess
Bezukhova’s visit and the invitation for that evening,
Marya Dmitrievna remarked:
‘I don’t care to have anything to do with Bezukhova
and don’t advise you to; however, if you’ve promised- go.
It will divert your thoughts,’ she added, addressing
Natasha.

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Chapter XIII

Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova’s.

There were a good many people there, but nearly all
strangers to Natasha. Count Rostov was displeased to see
that the company consisted almost entirely of men and
women known for the freedom of their conduct.
Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the
drawing room surrounded by young men. There were
several Frenchmen present, among them Metivier who
from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an
intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down
to cards or let his girls out of his sight and to get away as
soon as Mademoiselle George’s performance was over.
Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for
the Rostovs. Immediately after greeting the count he went
up to Natasha and followed her. As soon as she saw him
she was seized by the same feeling she had had at the
opera- gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at
the absence of a moral barrier between them.
Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in
admiration of her beauty and her dress. Soon after their
arrival Mademoiselle George went out of the room to

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change her costume. In the drawing room people began

arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved
a chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her,
but the count, who never lost sight of her, took the seat
himself. Anatole sat down behind her.
Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled
arms, and a red shawl draped over one shoulder, came
into the space left vacant for her, and assumed an
unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.
Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at
the audience and began reciting some French verses
describing her guilty love for her son. In some places she
raised her voice, in others she whispered, lifting her head
triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.
‘Adorable! divine! delicious!’ was heard from every
side.
Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor
heard nor understood anything of what went on before
her. She only felt herself again completely borne away
into this strange senseless world- so remote from her old
world- a world in which it was impossible to know what
was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat

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Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a

frightened sense of expectancy.
After the first monologue the whole company rose and
surrounded Mademoiselle George, expressing their
enthusiasm.
‘How beautiful she is!’ Natasha remarked to her father
who had also risen and was moving through the crowd
toward the actress.
‘I don’t think so when I look at you!’ said Anatole,
following Natasha. He said this at a moment when she
alone could hear him. ‘You are enchanting... from the
moment I saw you I have never ceased..’
‘Come, come, Natasha!’ said the count, as he turned
back for his daughter. ‘How beautiful she is!’ Natasha
without saying anything stepped up to her father and
looked at him with surprised inquiring eyes.
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George
left, and Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the
ballroom.
The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated
him not to spoil her improvised ball, and the Rostovs
stayed on. Anatole asked Natasha for a valse and as they
danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she
was bewitching and that he loved her. During the

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ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said

nothing when they happened to be by themselves, but
merely gazed at her. Natasha lifted her frightened eyes to
him, but there was such confident tenderness in his
affectionate look and smile that she could not, whilst
looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her
eyes.
‘Don’t say such things to me. I am betrothed and love
another,’ she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
‘Don’t speak to me of that! What can I do?’ said he. ‘I
tell you I am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my
fault that you are enchanting?... It’s our turn to begin.’
Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with
wide-open frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual.
She understood hardly anything that went on that evening.
They danced the ecossaise and the Grossvater. Her father
asked her to come home, but she begged to remain.
Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to,
she felt his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she
had asked her father to let her go to the dressing room to
rearrange her dress, that Helene had followed her and
spoken laughingly of her brother’s love, and that she
again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene had

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disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken

her hand and said in a tender voice:
‘I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall
never see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?’ and,
blocking her path, he brought his face close to hers.
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to
hers that she saw nothing but them.
‘Natalie?’ he whispered inquiringly while she felt her
hands being painfully pressed. ‘Natalie?’
‘I don’t understand. I have nothing to say,’ her eyes
replied.
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same
instant she felt herself released, and Helene’s footsteps
and the rustle of her dress were heard in the room.
Natasha looked round at her, and then, red and trembling,
threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved
toward the door.
‘One word, just one, for God’s sake!’ cried Anatole.
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that
would explain to her what had happened and to which she
could find no answer.
‘Natalie, just a word, only one!’ he kept repeating,
evidently not knowing what to say and he repeated it till
Helene came up to them.

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Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room.

The Rostovs went away without staying for supper.
After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night.
She was tormented by the insoluble question whether she
loved Anatole or Prince Andrew. She loved Prince
Andrew- she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved
him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no
doubt. ‘Else how could all this have happened?’ thought
she. ‘If, after that, I could return his smile when saying
good-by, if I was able to let it come to that, it means that I
loved him from the first. It means that he is kind, noble,
and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I
to do if I love him and the other one too?’ she asked
herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible
questions.

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Chapter XIV

Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got

up and began to move about and talk, dressmakers came
again. Marya Dmitrievna appeared, and they were called
to breakfast. Natasha kept looking uneasily at everybody
with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every
glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same
as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya
Dmitrievna sat down in her armchair and called Natasha
and the count to her.
‘Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter
over and this is my advice,’ she began. ‘Yesterday, as you
know, I went to see Prince Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk
with him.... He took it into his head to begin shouting, but
I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had to
say!’
‘Well, and he?’ asked the count.
‘He? He’s crazy... he did not want to listen. But what’s
the use of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl
out,’ said Marya Dmitrievna. ‘My advice to you is finish

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your business and go back home to Otradnoe... and wait

there.’
‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Natasha.
‘Yes, go back,’ said Marya Dmitrievna, ‘and wait
there. If your betrothed comes here now- there will be no
avoiding a quarrel; but alone with the old man he will talk
things over and then come on to you.’
Count Rostov approved of this suggestion,
appreciating its reasonableness. If the old man came
round it would be all the better to visit him in Moscow or
at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding, against his
wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.
‘That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see
him and took her,’ said the old count.
‘No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your
respects. But if he won’t- that’s his affair,’ said Marya
Dmitrievna, looking for something in her reticule.
‘Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there is nothing to
wait for; and what is not ready I’ll send after you. Though
I don’t like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with
God’s blessing!’
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule
she handed it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess
Mary.

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‘She has written to you. How she torments herself,

poor thing! She’s afraid you might think that she does not
like you.’
‘But she doesn’t like me,’ said Natasha.
‘Don’t talk nonsense!’ cried Marya Dmitrievna.
‘I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me,’
replied Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face
expressed a cold and angry resolution that caused Marya
Dmitrievna to look at her more intently and to frown.
‘Don’t answer like that, my good girl!’ she said. ‘What
I say is true! Write an answer!’ Natasha did not reply and
went to her own room to read Princess Mary’s letter.
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the
misunderstanding that had occurred between them.
Whatever her father’s feelings might be, she begged
Natasha to believe that she could not help loving her as
the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she
was ready to sacrifice everything.
‘Do not think, however,’ she wrote, ‘that my father is
ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man
who must be forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous
and will love her who makes his son happy.’ Princess
Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time when she could
see her again.

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After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing

table to answer it. ‘Dear Princess,’ she wrote in French
quickly and mechanically, and then paused. What more
could she write after all that had happened the evening
before? ‘Yes, yes! All that has happened, and now all is
changed,’ she thought as she sat with the letter she had
begun before her. ‘Must I break off with him? Must I
really? That’s awful... and to escape from these dreadful
thoughts she went to Sonya and began sorting patterns
with her.
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took
up Princess Mary’s letter. ‘Can it be that it is all over?’
she thought. ‘Can it be that all this has happened so
quickly and has destroyed all that went before?’ She
recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its former
strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin.
She vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew’s wife, and
the scenes of happiness with him she had so often
repeated in her imagination, and at the same time, aglow
with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday’s
interview with Anatole.
‘Why could that not be as well?’ she sometimes asked
herself in complete bewilderment. ‘Only so could I be
completely happy; but now I have to choose, and I can’t

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be happy without either of them. Only,’ she thought, ‘to

tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it from
him are both equally impossible. But with that one
nothing is spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the
joy of Prince Andrew’s love, in which I have lived so
long?’
‘Please, Miss!’ whispered a maid entering the room
with a mysterious air. ‘A man told me to give you this-’
and she handed Natasha a letter.
‘Only, for Christ’s sake...’ the girl went on, as Natasha,
without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a
love letter from Anatole, of which, without taking in a
word, she understood only that it was a letter from him-
from the man she loved. Yes, she loved him, or else how
could that have happened which had happened? And how
could she have a love letter from him in her hand?
With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate
love letter which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole,
and as she read it she found in it an echo of all that she
herself imagined she was feeling.
‘Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to
be loved by you or to die. There is no other way for me,’
the letter began. Then he went on to say that he knew her
parents would not give her to him- for this there were

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secret reasons he could reveal only to her- but that if she

loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human
power could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all.
He would steal her away and carry her off to the ends of
the earth.
‘Yes, yes! I love him!’ thought Natasha, reading the
letter for the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly
deep meaning in each word of it.
That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the
Akharovs’ and proposed to take the girls with her.
Natasha, pleading a headache, remained at home.

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Chapter XV

On returning late in the evening Sonya went to

Natasha’s room, and to her surprise found her still dressed
and asleep on the sofa. Open on the table, beside her lay
Anatole’s letter. Sonya picked it up and read it.
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying
to find in her face an explanation of what she was reading,
but did not find it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy.
Clutching her breast to keep herself from choking, Sonya,
pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat down in an
armchair and burst into tears.
‘How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far?
Can she have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how
could she let Kuragin go to such lengths? He is a deceiver
and a villain, that’s plain! What will Nicholas, dear noble
Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is the meaning
of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today,’ thought Sonya. ‘But it
can’t be that she loves him! She probably opened the
letter without knowing who it was from. Probably she is
offended by it. She could not do such a thing!’

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Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha,

again scanning her face.
‘Natasha!’ she said, just audibly.
Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.
‘Ah, you’re back?’
And with the decision and tenderness that often come
at the moment of awakening, she embraced her friend, but
noticing Sonya’s look of embarrassment, her own face
expressed confusion and suspicion.
‘Sonya, you’ve read that letter?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ answered Sonya softly.
Natasha smiled rapturously.
‘No, Sonya, I can’t any longer!’ she said. ‘I can’t hide
it from you any longer. You know, we love one another!
Sonya, darling, he writes... Sonya..’
Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe
her ears.
‘And Bolkonski?’ she asked.
‘Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!’ cried
Natasha. ‘You don’t know what love is...’
‘But, Natasha, can that be all over?’
Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she
could not grasp the question.

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‘Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?’ said

Sonya.
‘Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk
nonsense, just listen!’ said Natasha, with momentary
vexation.
‘But I can’t believe it,’ insisted Sonya. ‘I don’t
understand. How is it you have loved a man for a whole
year and suddenly... Why, you have only seen him three
times! Natasha, I don’t believe you, you’re joking! In
three days to forget everything and so..’
‘Three days?’ said Natasha. ‘It seems to me I’ve loved
him a hundred years. It seems to me that I have never
loved anyone before. You can’t understand it.... Sonya,
wait a bit, sit here,’ and Natasha embraced and kissed her.
‘I had heard that it happens like this, and you must
have heard it too, but it’s only now that I feel such love.
It’s not the same as before. As soon as I saw him I felt he
was my master and I his slave, and that I could not help
loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders I shall do.
You don’t understand that. What can I do? What can I do,
Sonya?’ cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened
expression.
‘But think what you are doing,’ cried Sonya. ‘I can’t
leave it like this. This secret correspondence... How could

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you let him go so far?’ she went on, with a horror and
disgust she could hardly conceal.
‘I told you that I have no will,’ Natasha replied. ‘Why
can’t you understand? I love him!’
‘Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!’ cried
Sonya, bursting into tears.
‘What do you mean? For God’s sake... If you tell, you
are my enemy!’ declared Natasha. ‘You want me to be
miserable, you want us to be separated...’
When she saw Natasha’s fright, Sonya shed tears of
shame and pity for her friend.
‘But what has happened between you?’ she asked.
‘What has he said to you? Why doesn’t he come to the
house?’
Natasha did not answer her questions.
‘For God’s sake, Sonya, don’t tell anyone, don’t
torture me,’ Natasha entreated. ‘Remember no one ought
to interfere in such matters! I have confided in you...’
‘But why this secrecy? Why doesn’t he come to the
house?’ asked Sonya. ‘Why doesn’t he openly ask for
your hand? You know Prince Andrew gave you complete
freedom- if it is really so; but I don’t believe it! Natasha,
have you considered what these secret reasons can be?’

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Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently

this question presented itself to her mind for the first time
and she did not know how to answer it.
‘I don’t know what the reasons are. But there must be
reasons!’
Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
‘If there were reasons...’ she began.
But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in
alarm.
‘Sonya, one can’t doubt him! One can’t, one can’t!
Don’t you understand?’ she cried.
‘Does he love you?’
‘Does he love me?’ Natasha repeated with a smile of
pity at her friend’s lack of comprehension. ‘Why, you
have read his letter and you have seen him.’
‘But if he is dishonorable?’
‘He! dishonorable? If you only knew!’ exclaimed
Natasha.
‘If he is an honorable man he should either declare his
intentions or cease seeing you; and if you won’t do this, I
will. I will write to him, and I will tell Papa!’ said Sonya
resolutely.
‘But I can’t live without him!’ cried Natasha.

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‘Natasha, I don’t understand you. And what are you

saying! Think of your father and of Nicholas.’
‘I don’t want anyone, I don’t love anyone but him.
How dare you say he is dishonorable? Don’t you know
that I love him?’ screamed Natasha. ‘Go away, Sonya! I
don’t want to quarrel with you, but go, for God’s sake go!
You see how I am suffering!’ Natasha cried angrily, in a
voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into
sobs and ran from the room.
Natasha went to the table and without a moment’s
reflection wrote that answer to Princess Mary which she
had been unable to write all the morning. In this letter she
said briefly that all their misunderstandings were at an
end; that availing herself of the magnanimity of Prince
Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her she
begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive
her if she had been to blame toward her, but that she
could not be his wife. At that moment this all seemed
quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.
On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country,
but on Wednesday the count went with the prospective
purchaser to his estate near Moscow.
On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were
invited to a big dinner party at the Karagins’, and Marya

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Dmitrievna took them there. At that party Natasha again

met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she spoke to him,
trying not to be overheard, and that all through dinner she
was more agitated than ever. When they got home
Natasha was the first to begin the explanation Sonya
expected.
‘There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense
about him,’ Natasha began in a mild voice such as
children use when they wish to be praised. ‘We have had
an explanation today.’
‘Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how
glad I am you’re not angry with me! Tell me everything-
the whole truth. What did he say?’
Natasha became thoughtful.
‘Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He
asked me what I had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I
was free to refuse him.’
Sonya sighed sorrowfully.
‘But you haven’t refused Bolkonski?’ said she.
‘Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and
Bolkonski. Why do you think so badly of me?’
‘I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this..’
‘Wait a bit, Sonya, you’ll understand everything.
You’ll see what a man he is! Now don’t think badly of me

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or of him. I don’t think badly of anyone: I love and pity

everybody. But what am I to do?’
Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used
toward her. The more emotional and ingratiating the
expression of Natasha’s face became, the more serious
and stern grew Sonya’s.
‘Natasha,’ said she, ‘you asked me not to speak to you,
and I haven’t spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I
don’t trust him, Natasha. Why this secrecy?’
‘Again, again!’ interrupted Natasha.
‘Natasha, I am afraid for you!’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,’ said Sonya
resolutely, and was herself horrified at what she had said.
Anger again showed in Natasha’s face.
‘And I’ll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It’s
not your business! It won’t be you, but I, who’ll suffer.
Leave me alone, leave me alone! I hate you!’
Natasha!’ moaned Sonya, aghast.
‘I hate you, I hate you! You’re my enemy forever!’
And Natasha ran out of the room.
Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her.
With the same expression of agitated surprise and guilt

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she went about the house, taking up now one occupation,

now another, and at once abandoning them.
Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and
did not let her out of her sight.
The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed
that Natasha sat by the drawingroom window all the
morning as if expecting something and that she made a
sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sonya took to be
Anatole.
Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively
and noticed that at dinner and all that evening Natasha
was in a strange and unnatural state. She answered
questions at random, began sentences she did not finish,
and laughed at everything.
After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha’s door
timidly waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and
then listening at the door learned that another letter had
been delivered.
Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha
had some dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked
at her door. Natasha did not let her in.
‘She will run away with him!’ thought Sonya. ‘She is
capable of anything. There was something particularly
pathetic and resolute in her face today. She cried as she

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said good-by to Uncle,’ Sonya remembered. ‘Yes, that’s

it, she means to elope with him, but what am I to do?’
thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated
that Natasha had some terrible intention. ‘The count is
away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an
explanation? But what is there to oblige him to reply?
Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of
some misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already
refused Bolkonski- she sent a letter to Princess Mary
yesterday. And Uncle is away....’ To tell Marya
Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed to
Sonya terrible. ‘Well, anyway,’ thought Sonya as she
stood in the dark passage, ‘now or never I must prove that
I remember the family’s goodness to me and that I love
Nicholas. Yes! If I don’t sleep for three nights I’ll not
leave this passage and will hold her back by force and
will and not let the family be disgraced,’ thought she.

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Chapter XVI

Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov’s. The plan for

Natalie Rostova’s abduction had been arranged and the
preparations made by Dolokhov a few days before, and on
the day that Sonya, after listening at Natasha’s door,
resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into
execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin
at the back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put
her into a troyka he would have ready and to drive her
forty miles to the village of Kamenka, where an
unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a marriage
ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was
to wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad,
and from there they would hasten abroad with post horses.
Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten
thousand rubles he had taken from his sister and another
ten thousand borrowed with Dolokhov’s help.
Two witnesses for the mock marriage- Khvostikov, a
retired petty official whom Dolokhov made use of in his
gambling transactions, and Makarin, a retired hussar, a
kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded affection for
Kuragin- were sitting at tea in Dolokhov’s front room.

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In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the

ceiling with Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat
Dolokhov in a traveling cloak and high boots, at an open
desk on which lay abacus and some bundles of paper
money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and
fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting,
through the study to the room behind, where his French
valet and others were packing the last of his things.
Dolokhov was counting the money and noting something
down.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Khvostikov must have two thousand.’
‘Give it to him, then,’ said Anatole.
‘Makarka’ (their name for Makarin) ‘will go through
fire and water for you for nothing. So here are our
accounts all settled,’ said Dolokhov, showing him the
memorandum. ‘Is that right?’
‘Yes, of course,’ returned Anatole, evidently not
listening to Dolokhov and looking straight before him
with a smile that did not leave his face.
Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to
Anatole with an ironic smile:
‘Do you know? You’d really better drop it all. There’s
still time!’

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‘Fool,’ retorted Anatole. ‘Don’t talk nonsense! If you

only knew... it’s the devil knows what!’
‘No, really, give it up!’ said Dolokhov. ‘I am speaking
seriously. It’s no joke, this plot you’ve hatched.’
‘What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?’ said
Anatole, making a grimace. ‘Really it’s no time for your
stupid jokes,’ and he left the room.
Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and
condescendingly when Anatole had gone out.
‘You wait a bit,’ he called after him. ‘I’m not joking,
I’m talking sense. Come here, come here!’
Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to
give him his attention and evidently submitting to him
involuntarily.
‘Now listen to me. I’m telling you this for the last time.
Why should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who
arranged everything for you? Who found the priest and
got the passport? Who raised the money? I did it all.’
‘Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not
grateful?’ And Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
‘I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth;
it is a dangerous business, and if you think about it- a
stupid business. Well, you’ll carry her off- all right! Will

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they let it stop at that? It will come out that you’re already
married. Why, they’ll have you in the criminal court...’
‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense!’ Anatole ejaculated and
again made a grimace. ‘Didn’t I explain to you? What?’
And Anatole, with the partiality dull-witted people have
for any conclusion they have reached by their own
reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to
Dolokhov a hundred times. ‘Didn’t I explain to you that I
have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid,’
he went on, crooking one finger, ‘then I have nothing to
answer for; but if it is valid, no matter! Abroad no one
will know anything about it. Isn’t that so? And don’t talk
to me, don’t, don’t.’
‘Seriously, you’d better drop it! You’ll only get
yourself into a mess!’
‘Go to the devil!’ cried Anatole and, clutching his hair,
left the room, but returned at once and dropped into an
armchair in front of Dolokhov with his feet turned under
him. ‘It’s the very devil! What? Feel how it beats!’ He
took Dolokhov’s hand and put it on his heart. ‘What a
foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!’ he
added in French. ‘What?’

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Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his

handsome insolent eyes looked at him- evidently wishing
to get some more amusement out of him.
‘Well and when the money’s gone, what then?’
‘What then? Eh?’ repeated Anatole, sincerely
perplexed by a thought of the future. ‘What then?... Then,
I don’t know.... But why talk nonsense!’ He glanced at his
watch. ‘It’s time!’
Anatole went into the back room.
‘Now then! Nearly ready? You’re dawdling!’ he
shouted to the servants.
Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman
whom he ordered to bring something for them to eat and
drink before the journey, and went into the room where
Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.
Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his
elbow and smiling pensively, while his handsome lips
muttered tenderly to himself.
‘Come and eat something. Have a drink!’ Dolokhov
shouted to him from the other room.
‘I don’t want to,’ answered Anatole continuing to
smile.
‘Come! Balaga is here.’

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Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga

was a famous troyka driver who had known Dolokhov
and Anatole some six years and had given them good
service with his troykas. More than once when Anatole’s
regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from
Tver in the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak,
and driven him back again the next night. More than once
he had enabled Dolokhov to escape when pursued. More
than once he had driven them through the town with
gypsies and ‘ladykins’ as he called the cocottes. More
than once in their service he had run over pedestrians and
upset vehicles in the streets of Moscow and had always
been protected from the consequences by ‘my gentlemen’
as he called them. He had ruined more than one horse in
their service. More than once they had beaten him, and
more than once they had made him drunk on champagne
and Madeira, which he loved; and he knew more than one
thing about each of them which would long ago have sent
an ordinary man to Siberia. They often called Balaga into
their orgies and made him drink and dance at the gypsies’,
and more than one thousand rubles of their money had
passed through his hands. In their service he risked his
skin and his life twenty times a year, and in their service
had lost more horses than the money he had from them

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would buy. But he liked them; liked that mad driving at

twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a driver or running
down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through the
Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts
behind him: ‘Get on! Get on!’ when it was impossible to
go any faster. He liked giving a painful lash on the neck
to some peasant who, more dead than alive, was already
hurrying out of his way. ‘Real gentlemen!’ he considered
them.
Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his
masterly driving and because he liked the things they
liked. With others Balaga bargained, charging twenty-five
rubles for a two hours’ drive, and rarely drove himself,
generally letting his young men do so. But with ‘his
gentlemen’ he always drove himself and never demanded
anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year-
when he knew from their valets that they had money in
hand- he would turn up of a morning quite sober and with
a deep bow would ask them to help him. The gentlemen
always made him sit down.
‘Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir,’ or ‘your
excellency,’ he would say. ‘I am quite out of horses. Let
me have what you can to go to the fair.’

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And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money,

would give him a thousand or a couple of thousand
rubles.
Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed
peasant of about twenty-seven; red-faced, with a
particularly red thick neck, glittering little eyes, and a
small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined cloth
coat over a sheepskin.
On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning
toward the front corner of the room, and went up to
Dolokhov, holding out a small, black hand.
‘Theodore Ivanych!’ he said, bowing.
‘How d’you do, friend? Well, here he is!’
‘Good day, your excellency!’ he said, again holding
out his hand to Anatole who had just come in.
‘I say, Balaga,’ said Anatole, putting his hands on the
man’s shoulders, ‘do you care for me or not? Eh? Now,
do me a service.... What horses have you come with? Eh?’
‘As your messenger ordered, your special beasts,’
replied Balaga.
‘Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get
me there in three hours. Eh?’
‘When they are dead, what shall I drive?’ said Balaga
with a wink.

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‘Mind, I’ll smash your face in! Don’t make jokes!’

cried Anatole, suddenly rolling his eyes.
‘Why joke?’ said the driver, laughing. ‘As if I’d
grudge my gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses
can gallop, so fast we’ll go!’
‘Ah!’ said Anatole. ‘Well, sit down.’
‘Yes, sit down!’ said Dolokhov.
‘I’ll stand, Theodore Ivanych.’
‘Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!’ said Anatole, and
filled a large glass of Madeira for him.
The driver’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine.
After refusing it for manners’ sake, he drank it and wiped
his mouth with a red silk handkerchief he took out of his
cap.
‘And when are we to start, your excellency?’
‘Well...’ Anatole looked at his watch. ‘We’ll start at
once. Mind, Balaga! You’ll get there in time? Eh?’
‘That depends on our luck in starting, else why
shouldn’t we be there in time?’ replied Balaga. ‘Didn’t we
get you to Tver in seven hours? I think you remember
that, your excellency?’
‘Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver,’ said
Anatole, smilingly at the recollection and turning to
Makarin who gazed rapturously at him with wide-open

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eyes. ‘Will you believe it, Makarka, it took one’s breath

away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of loaded
sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?’
‘Those were horses!’ Balaga continued the tale. ‘That
time I’d harnessed two young side horses with the bay in
the shafts,’ he went on, turning to Dolokhov. ‘Will you
believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those animals flew forty
miles? I couldn’t hold them in, my hands grew numb in
the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins- ‘Catch hold
yourself, your excellency!’ says I, and I just tumbled on
the bottom of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn’t a
case of urging them on, there was no holding them in till
we reached the place. The devils took us there in three
hours! Only the near one died of it.’

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Chapter XVII

Anatole went out of the room and returned a few

minutes later wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and
a sable cap jauntily set on one side and very becoming to
his handsome face. Having looked in a mirror, and
standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he had
assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.
‘Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything
and farewell!’ said Anatole. ‘Well, comrades and
friends...’ he considered for a moment ‘...of my youth,
farewell!’ he said, turning to Makarin and the others.
Though they were all going with him, Anatole
evidently wished to make something touching and solemn
out of this address to his comrades. He spoke slowly in a
loud voice and throwing out his chest slightly swayed one
leg.
‘All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and
friends of my youth, we’ve had our fling and lived and
reveled. Eh? And now, when shall we meet again? I am
going abroad. We have had a good time- now farewell,
lads! To our health! Hurrah!...’ he cried, and emptying his
glass flung it on the floor.

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‘To your health!’ said Balaga who also emptied his

glass, and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
‘Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!
‘Let’s go. Let’s go!’ cried Anatole.
Balaga was about to leave the room.
‘No, stop!’ said Anatole. ‘Shut the door; we have first
to sit down. That’s the way.’
They shut the door and all sat down.
‘Now, quick march, lads!’ said Anatole, rising.
Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber,
and they all went out into the vestibule.
‘And where’s the fur cloak?’ asked Dolokhov. ‘Hey,
Ignatka! Go to Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the
sable cloak. I have heard what elopements are like,’
continued Dolokhov with a wink. ‘Why, she’ll rush out
more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if
you delay at all there’ll be tears and ‘Papa’ and ‘Mamma,’
and she’s frozen in a minute and must go back- but you
wrap the fur cloak round her first thing and carry her to
the sleigh.’
The valet brought a woman’s fox-lined cloak.

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‘Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the

sable!’ he shouted so that his voice rang far through the
rooms.
A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with
glittering black eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a
red shawl, ran out with a sable mantle on her arm.
‘Here, I don’t grudge it- take it!’ she said, evidently
afraid of her master and yet regretful of her cloak.
Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it
over Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.
‘That’s the way,’ said Dolokhov, ‘and then so!’ and he
turned the collar up round her head, leaving only a little of
the face uncovered. ‘And then so, do you see?’ and he
pushed Anatole’s head forward to meet the gap left by the
collar, through which Matrena’s brilliant smile was seen.
‘Well, good-by, Matrena,’ said Anatole, kissing her.
‘Ah, my revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka.
There, good-by! Good-by, Matrena, wish me luck!’
‘Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!’ said
Matrena in her gypsy accent.
Two troykas were standing before the porch and two
young drivers were holding the horses. Balaga took his
seat in the front one and holding his elbows high arranged
the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dolokhov got in with

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him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated themselves

in the other sleigh.
‘Well, are you ready?’ asked Balaga.
‘Go!’ he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and
the troyka tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.
‘Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!...’ The
shouting of Balaga and of the sturdy young fellow seated
on the box was all that could be heard. On the Arbat
Square the troyka caught against a carriage; something
cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
Arbat Street.
After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard,
Balaga began to rein in, and turning back drew up at the
crossing of the old Konyusheny Street.
The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the
horses and Anatole and Dolokhov went along the
pavement. When they reached the gate Dolokhov
whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant
ran out.
‘Come into the courtyard or you’ll be seen; she’ll come
out directly,’ said she.
Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the
maid into the courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into
the porch.

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He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna’s gigantic

footman.
‘Come to the mistress, please,’ said the footman in his
deep bass, intercepting any retreat.
‘To what Mistress? Who are you?’ asked Anatole in a
breathless whisper.
‘Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in.’
‘Kuragin! Come back!’ shouted Dolokhov. ‘Betrayed!
Back!’
Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the
wicket gate and was struggling with the yard porter who
was trying to lock it. With a last desperate effort
Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when Anatole ran
back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the
wicket, and ran back with him to the troyka.

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Chapter XVIII

Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the

corridor, made her confess everything, and intercepting
the note to Natasha she read it and went into Natasha’s
room with it in her hand.
‘You shameless good-for-nothing!’ said she. ‘I won’t
hear a word.’
Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with
astonished but tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having
given orders to the yard porter to admit the persons who
would be coming that evening, but not to let them out
again, and having told the footman to bring them up to
her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the
abductors.
When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who
had come had run away again, she rose frowning, and
clasping her hands behind her paced through the rooms a
long time considering what she should do. Toward
midnight she went to Natasha’s room fingering the key in
her pocket. Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor.
‘Marya Dmitrievna, for God’s sake let me in to her!’ she
pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna unlocked the door and

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went in without giving her an answer.... ‘Disgusting,

abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I’m only
sorry for her father!’ thought she, trying to restrain her
wrath. ‘Hard as it may be, I’ll tell them all to hold their
tongues and will hide it from the count.’ She entered the
room with resolute steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her
head hidden in her hands, and she did not stir. She was in
just the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left
her.
‘A nice girl! Very nice!’ said Marya Dmitrievna.
‘Arranging meetings with lovers in my house! It’s no use
pretending: you listen when I speak to you!’ And Marya
Dmitrievna touched her arm. ‘Listen when when I speak!
You’ve disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I’d
treat you differently, but I’m sorry for your father, so I
will conceal it.’
Natasha did not change her position, but her whole
body heaved with noiseless, convulsive sobs which
choked her. Marya Dmitrievna glanced round at Sonya
and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.
‘It’s lucky for him that he escaped me; but I’ll find
him!’ she said in her rough voice. ‘Do you hear what I am
saying or not?’ she added.

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She put her large hand under Natasha’s face and turned
it toward her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were
amazed when they saw how Natasha looked. Her eyes
were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, her cheeks
sunken.
‘Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!’ she
muttered, wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna’s
hands with a vicious effort and sinking down again into
her former position.
‘Natalie!’ said Marya Dmitrievna. ‘I wish for your
good. Lie still, stay like that then, I won’t touch you. But
listen. I won’t tell you how guilty you are. You know that
yourself. But when your father comes back tomorrow
what am I to tell him? Eh?’
Again Natasha’s body shook with sobs.
‘Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your
betrothed?’
‘I have no betrothed: I have refused him!’ cried
Natasha.
‘That’s all the same,’ continued Dmitrievna. ‘If they
hear of this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know
him... if he challenges him to a duel will that be all right?
Eh?’

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‘Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why?

Why? Who asked you to?’ shouted Natasha, raising
herself on the sofa and looking malignantly at Marya
Dmitrievna.
‘But what did you want?’ cried Marya Dmitrievna,
growing angry again. ‘Were you kept under lock and key?
Who hindered his coming to the house? Why carry you
off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?... Well, if he
had carried you off... do you think they wouldn’t have
found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed?
And he’s a scoundrel, a wretch- that’s a fact!’
‘He is better than any of you!’ exclaimed Natasha
getting up. ‘If you hadn’t interfered... Oh, my God! What
is it all? What is it? Sonya, why?... Go away!’
And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence
with which people bewail disasters they feel they have
themselves occasioned. Marya Dmitrievna was to speak
again but Natasha cried out:
‘Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!’
and she threw herself back on the sofa.
Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some
time, enjoining on her that it must all be kept from her
father and assuring her that nobody would know anything
about it if only Natasha herself would undertake to forget

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it all and not let anyone see that something had happened.
Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she
grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a
pillow under her head, covered her with two quilts, and
herself brought her some lime-flower water, but Natasha
did not respond to her.
‘Well, let her sleep,’ said Marya Dmitrievna as she
went of the room supposing Natasha to be asleep.
But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed
wide-open eyes she looked straight before her. All that
night she did not sleep or weep and did not speak to
Sonya who got up and went to her several times.
Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near
Moscow in time for lunch as he had promised. He was in
very good spirits; the affair with the purchaser was going
on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep him any
longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he
missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that
Natasha had been very unwell the day before and that
they had sent for the doctor, but that she was better now.
Natasha had not left her room that morning. With
compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she sat at
the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past
and hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the

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room. She was evidently expecting news of him and that

he would come or would write to her.
When the count came to see her she turned anxiously
round at the sound of a man’s footstep, and then her face
resumed its cold and malevolent expression. She did not
even get up to greet him. ‘What is the matter with you,
my angel? Are you ill?’ asked the count.
After a moment’s silence Natasha answered: ‘Yes, ill.’
In reply to the count’s anxious inquiries as to why she
was so dejected and whether anything had happened to
her betrothed, she assured him that nothing had happened
and asked him not to worry. Marya Dmitrievna confirmed
Natasha’s assurances that nothing had happened. From
the pretense of illness, from his daughter’s distress, and
by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya
Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had
gone wrong during his absence, but it was so terrible for
him to think that anything disgraceful had happened to his
beloved daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful
tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to assure
himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he
was only dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their
return to the country.

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Chapter XIX

From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had

been intending to go away somewhere, so as not to be
near her. Soon after the Rostovs came to Moscow the
effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to carry out
his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich’s
widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him
some papers of her deceased husband’s.
When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a
letter from Marya Dmitrievna asking him to come and see
her on a matter of great importance relating to Andrew
Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre had been avoiding
Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her
was stronger than a married man’s should be for his
friend’s fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them
together.
‘What can have happened? And what can they want
with me?’ thought he as he dressed to go to Marya
Dmitrievna’s. ‘If only Prince Andrew would hurry up and
come and marry her!’ thought he on his way to the house.
On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to
him.

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‘Pierre! Been back long?’ someone shouted. Pierre

raised his head. In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-
horses that were bespattering the dashboard with snow,
Anatole and his constant companion Makarin dashed past.
Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of military
dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver
collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and
rosy, his white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed
his curled and pomaded hair besprinkled with powdery
snow.
‘Yes, indeed, that’s a true sage,’ thought Pierre. ‘He
sees nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing
troubles him and so he is always cheerful, satisfied, and
serene. What wouldn’t I give to be like him!’ he thought
enviously.
In Marya Dmitrievna’s anteroom the footman who
helped him off with his fur coat said that the mistress
asked him to come to her bedroom.
When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha
sitting at the window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face.
She glanced round at him, frowned, and left the room
with an expression of cold dignity.
‘What has happened?’ asked Pierre, entering Marya
Dmitrievna’s room.

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‘Fine doings!’ answered Dmitrievna. ‘For fifty-eight

years have I lived in this world and never known anything
so disgraceful!’
And having put him on his honor not to repeat
anything she told him, Marya Dmitrievna informed him
that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew without her
parents’ knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole
Kuragin into whose society Pierre’s wife had thrown her
and with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her
father’s absence, in order to be married secretly.
Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed
to what was told him, scarcely able to believe his own
ears. That Prince Andrew’s deeply loved affianced wife-
the same Natasha Rostova who used to be so charming-
should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole who was
already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be
so in love with him as to agree to run away with him, was
something Pierre could not conceive and could not
imagine.
He could not reconcile the charming impression he had
of Natasha, whom he had known from a child, with this
new conception of her baseness, folly, and cruelty. He
thought of his wife. ‘They are all alike!’ he said to
himself, reflecting that he was not the only man

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unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he

pitied Prince Andrew to the point of tears and
sympathized with his wounded pride, and the more he
pitied his friend the more did he think with contempt and
even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him
in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did
not know that Natasha’s soul was overflowing with
despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not her
fault that her face happened to assume an expression of
calm dignity and severity.
‘But how get married?’ said Pierre, in answer to Marya
Dmitrievna. ‘He could not marry- he is married!’
‘Things get worse from hour to hour!’ ejaculated
Marya Dmitrievna. ‘A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And
she’s expecting him- expecting him since yesterday. She
must be told! Then at least she won’t go on expecting
him.’
After hearing the details of Anatole’s marriage from
Pierre, and giving vent to her anger against Anatole in
words of abuse, Marya Dmitrievna told Pierre why she
had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew
of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might
challenge Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked

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Pierre to tell his brother-in-law in her name to leave

Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes on him again.
Pierre- only now realizing the danger to the old count,
Nicholas, and Prince Andrew- promised to do as she
wished. Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes
to him, she let him go to the drawing room.
‘Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you
know nothing either,’ she said. ‘And I will go and tell her
it is no use expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care
to!’ she called after Pierre.
Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and
upset. That morning Natasha had told him that she had
rejected Bolkonski.
‘Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!’ he said to Pierre.
‘What troubles one has with these girls without their
mother! I do so regret having come here.... I will be frank
with you. Have you heard she has broken off her
engagement without consulting anybody? It’s true this
engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is
an excellent man, but still, with his father’s disapproval
they wouldn’t have been happy, and Natasha won’t lack
suitors. Still, it has been going on so long, and to take
such a step without father’s or mother’s consent! And

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now she’s ill, and God knows what! It’s hard, Count, hard
to manage daughters in their mother’s absence...’
Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to
change the subject, but the count returned to his troubles.
Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.
‘Natasha is not quite well; she’s in her room and would
like to see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too
asks you to come.’
‘Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski’s, no doubt
she wants to send him a message,’ said the count. ‘Oh
dear! Oh dear! How happy it all was!’
And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the
count left the room.
When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole
was married, Natasha did not wish to believe it and
insisted on having it confirmed by Pierre himself. Sonya
told Pierre this as she led him along the corridor to
Natasha’s room.
Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya
Dmitrievna, and her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre
with a questioning look the moment he entered. She did
not smile or nod, but only gazed fixedly at him, and her
look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or like the

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others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he

evidently did not exist for her.
‘He knows all about it,’ said Marya Dmitrievna
pointing to Pierre and addressing Natasha. ‘Let him tell
you whether I have told the truth.’
Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and
wounded animal looks at the approaching dogs and
sportsmen.
‘Natalya Ilynichna,’ Pierre began, dropping his eyes
with a feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he
had to do, ‘whether it is true or not should make no
difference to you, because..’
‘Then it is not true that he’s married!’
‘Yes, it is true.’
‘Has he been married long?’ she asked. ‘On your
honor?..’
Pierre gave his word of honor.
‘Is he still here?’ she asked, quickly.
‘Yes, I have just seen him.’
She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign
with her hands that they should leave her alone.
CHAPTER XX
Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and
went away at once. He drove through the town seeking

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Anatole Kuragin, at the thought of whom now the blood

rushed to his heart and he felt a difficulty in breathing. He
was not at the ice hills, nor at the gypsies’, nor at
Komoneno’s. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all was
going on as usual. The members who were assembling for
dinner were sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre
and spoke of the town news. The footman having greeted
him, knowing his habits and his acquaintances, told him
there was a place left for him in the small dining room
and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library, but
Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre’s
acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather,
asked if he had heard of Kuragin’s abduction of Rostova
which was talked of in the town, and was it true? Pierre
laughed and said it was nonsense for he had just come
from the Rostovs’. He asked everyone about Anatole. One
man told him he had not come yet, and another that he
was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this
calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was
going on in his soul. He paced through the ballroom,
waited till everyone had come, and as Anatole had not
turned up did not stay for dinner but drove home.
Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day
with Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this

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unfortunate affair. It seemed to him essential to see

Natasha. In the evening he drove to his sister’s to discuss
with her how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre returned
home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his valet
informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess.
The countess’ drawing room was full of guests.
Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen
since his return- at that moment she was more repulsive to
him than ever- entered the drawing room and seeing
Anatole went up to him.
‘Ah, Pierre,’ said the countess going up to her
husband. ‘You don’t know what a plight our Anatole..’
She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her
husband’s head, in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait,
the terrible indications of that rage and strength which she
knew and had herself experienced after his duel with
Dolokhov.
‘Where you are, there is vice and evil!’ said Pierre to
his wife. ‘Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you,’
he added in French.
Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose
submissively, ready to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him
by the arm, pulled him toward himself and was leading
him from the room.

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‘If you allow yourself in my drawing room...’

whispered Helene, but Pierre did not reply and went out
of the room.
Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his
face betrayed anxiety.
Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and
addressed Anatole without looking at him.
‘You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and
were about to elope with her, is that so?’
‘Mon cher,’ answered Anatole (their whole
conversation was in French), ‘I don’t consider myself
bound to answer questions put to me in that tone.’
Pierre’s face, already pale, became distorted by fury.
He seized Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his
big hand and shook him from side to side till Anatole’s
face showed a sufficient degree of terror.
‘When I tell you that I must talk to you!...’ repeated
Pierre.
‘Come now, this is stupid. What?’ said Anatole,
fingering a button of his collar that had been wrenched
loose with a bit of the cloth.
‘You’re a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don’t
know what deprives me from the pleasure of smashing

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your head with this!’ said Pierre, expressing himself so

artificially because he was talking French.
He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it
threateningly, but at once put it back in its place.
‘Did you promise to marry her?’
‘I... I didn’t think of it. I never promised, because..’
Pierre interrupted him.
‘Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?’ he said,
moving toward Anatole.
Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his
hand into his pocket and drew out his pocketbook.
Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing
aside a table that stood in his way, threw himself on the
sofa.
‘I shan’t be violent, don’t be afraid!’ said Pierre in
answer to a frightened gesture of Anatole’s. ‘First, the
letters,’ said he, as if repeating a lesson to himself.
‘Secondly,’ he continued after a short pause, again rising
and again pacing the room, ‘tomorrow you must get out
of Moscow.’
‘But how can I?..’
‘Thirdly,’ Pierre continued without listening to him,
‘you must never breathe a word of what has passed
between you and Countess Rostova. I know I can’t

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prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of

conscience...’ Pierre paced the room several times in
silence.
Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
‘After all, you must understand that besides your
pleasure there is such a thing as other people’s happiness
and peace, and that you are ruining a whole life for the
sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women
like my wife- with them you are within your rights, for
they know what you want of them. They are armed
against you by the same experience of debauchery; but to
promise a maid to marry her... to deceive, to kidnap....
Don’t you understand that it is as mean as beating an old
man or a child?..’
Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an
angry but with a questioning look.
‘I don’t know about that, eh?’ said Anatole, growing
more confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. ‘I don’t
know that and don’t want to,’ he said, not looking at
Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw, ‘but you
have used such words to me- ‘mean’ and so on- which as
a man of honor I can’t allow anyone to use.’
Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to
understand what he wanted.

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‘Though it was tete-a-tete,’ Anatole continued, ‘still I

can’t..’
‘Is it satisfaction you want?’ said Pierre ironically.
‘You could at least take back your words. What? If you
want me to do as you wish, eh?’
‘I take them back, I take them back!’ said Pierre, ‘and I
ask you to forgive me.’ Pierre involuntarily glanced at the
loose button. ‘And if you require money for your
journey..’
Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and
cringing smile, which Pierre knew so well in his wife,
revolted him.
‘Oh, vile and heartless brood!’ he exclaimed, and left
the room.
Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.

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Chapter XXI

Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna’s to tell her of the

fulfillment of her wish that Kuragin should be banished
from Moscow. The whole house was in a state of alarm
and commotion. Natasha was very ill, having, as Marya
Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night
after she had been told that Anatole was married, with
some arsenic she had stealthily procured. After
swallowing a little she had been so frightened that she
woke Sonya and told her what she had done. The
necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she
was now out of danger, though still so weak that it was
out of the question to move her to the country, and so the
countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted
count, and Sonya, who had a tear-stained face, but he
could not see Natasha.
Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides
gossip about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He
resolutely denied these rumors, assuring everyone that
nothing had happened except that his brother-in-law had
proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to Pierre that

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it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and re-establish

Natasha’s reputation.
He was awaiting Prince Andrew’s return with dread
and went every day to the old prince’s for news of him.
Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in
the town from Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the
note to Princess Mary in which Natasha had broken off
her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than usual
and awaited his son with great impatience.
Some days after Anatole’s departure Pierre received a
note from Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival
and asking him to come to see him.
As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had
received from his father Natasha’s note to Princess Mary
breaking off her engagement (Mademoiselle Bourienne
had purloined it from Princess Mary and given it to the
old prince), and he heard from him the story of Natasha’s
elopement, with additions.
Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre
came to see him next morning. Pierre expected to find
Prince Andrew in almost the same state as Natasha and
was therefore surprised on entering the drawing room to
hear him in the study talking in a loud animated voice
about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old

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prince’s voice and another now and then interrupted him.

Princess Mary came out to meet Pierre. She sighed,
looking toward the door of the room where Prince
Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy
with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was
glad both at what had happened and at the way her
brother had taken the news of Natasha’s faithlessness.
‘He says he expected it,’ she remarked. ‘I know his
pride will not let him express his feelings, but still he has
taken it better, far better, than I expected. Evidently it had
to be...’
‘But is it possible that all is really ended?’ asked
Pierre.
Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She
did not understand how he could ask such a question.
Pierre went into the study. Prince Andrew, greatly
changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh
horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in civilian
dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly
disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation
was about Speranski- the news of whose sudden exile and
alleged treachery had just reached Moscow.
‘Now he is censured and accused by all who were
enthusiastic about him a month ago,’ Prince Andrew was

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saying, ‘and by those who were unable to understand his

aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on
him all the blame of other men’s mistakes is very easy,
but I maintain that if anything good has been
accomplished in this reign it was done by him, by him
alone.’
He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and
immediately assumed a vindictive expression.
‘Posterity will do him justice,’ he concluded, and at
once turned to Pierre.
‘Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?’ he said with
animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened.
‘Yes, I am well,’ he said in answer to Pierre’s question,
and smiled.
To Pierre that smile said plainly: ‘I am well, but my
health is now of no use to anyone.’
After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from
the Polish frontier, about people he had met in
Switzerland who knew Pierre, and about M. Dessalles,
whom he had brought from abroad to be his son’s tutor,
Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation
about Speranski which was still going on between the two
old men.

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‘If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with

Napoleon, they would have been made public,’ he said
with warmth and haste. ‘I do not, and never did, like
Speranski personally, but I like justice!’
Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which
he was only too familiar, to get excited and to have
arguments about extraneous matters in order to stifle
thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate. When
Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre’s
arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned
him. A bed had been made up there, and some open
portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince Andrew
went to one and took out a small casket, from which he
drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently and
very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was
gloomy and his lips compressed.
‘Forgive me for troubling you..’
Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of
Natasha, and his broad face expressed pity and sympathy.
This expression irritated Prince Andrew, and in a
determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:
‘I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and
have heard reports of your brother-in-law having sought
her hand, or something of that kind. Is that true?’

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‘Both true and untrue,’ Pierre began; but Prince

Andrew interrupted him.
‘Here are her letters and her portrait,’ said he.
He took the packet from the table and handed it to
Pierre.
‘Give this to the countess... if you see her.’
‘She is very ill,’ said Pierre.
‘Then she is here still?’ said Prince Andrew. ‘And
Prince Kuragin?’ he added quickly.
‘He left long ago. She has been at death’s door.’
‘I much regret her illness,’ said Prince Andrew; and he
smiled like his father, coldly, maliciously, and
unpleasantly.
‘So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess
Rostova with his hand?’ said Prince Andrew, and he
snorted several times.
‘He could not marry, for he was married already,’ said
Pierre.
Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding
one of his father.
‘And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?’
he said.
‘He has gone to Peters... But I don’t know,’ said Pierre.

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‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Tell

Countess Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and
that I wish her all that is good.’
Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to
remember whether he had something more to say, or
waiting to see if Pierre would say anything, looked
fixedly at him.
‘I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?’
asked Pierre, ‘about..’
‘Yes,’ returned Prince Andrew hastily. ‘I said that a
fallen woman should be forgiven, but I didn’t say I could
forgive her. I can’t.’
‘But can this be compared...?’ said Pierre.
Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply:
‘Yes, ask her hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?...
Yes, that would be very noble, but I am unable to follow
in that gentleman’s footsteps. If you wish to be my friend
never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So
you’ll give her the packet?’
Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and
Princess Mary.
The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary
was the same as always, but beneath her sympathy for her
brother, Pierre noticed her satisfaction that the

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engagement had been broken off. Looking at them Pierre

realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even
to mention the name of her who could give up Prince
Andrew for anyone else.
At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of
which was becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked
incessantly, arguing now with his father, now with the
Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural
animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.

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Chapter XXII

That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs’ to

fulfill the commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in
bed, the count at the Club, and Pierre, after giving the
letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna who was
interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the
news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya
Dmitrievna.
‘Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich,’ said
she.
‘But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room
there has not been tidied up.’
‘No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room,’
said Sonya.
Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
‘When will her mother come? She has worried me to
death! Now mind, don’t tell her everything!’ said she to
Pierre. ‘One hasn’t the heart to scold her, she is so much
to be pitied, so much to be pitied.’
Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing
room, emaciated, with a pale set face, but not at all
shamefaced as Pierre expected to find her. When he

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appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently

undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he
came up.
Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him
her hand as usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped,
breathing heavily, her arms hanging lifelessly just in the
pose she used to stand in when she went to the middle of
the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different expression
of face.
‘Peter Kirilovich,’ she began rapidly, ‘Prince
Bolkonski was your friend- is your friend,’ she corrected
herself. (It seemed to her that everything that had once
been must now be different.) ‘He told me once to apply to
you..’
Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak.
Till then he had reproached her in his heart and tried to
despise her, but he now felt so sorry for her that there was
no room in his soul for reproach.
‘He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!’ She
stopped and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed
tears.
‘Yes... I will tell him,’ answered Pierre; ‘but..’
He did not know what to say.

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Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what

he might think she had meant.
‘No, I know all is over,’ she said hurriedly. ‘No, that
can never be. I’m only tormented by the wrong I have
done him. Tell him only that I beg him to forgive, forgive,
forgive me for everything...’
She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed
Pierre’s heart.
‘I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more,’
said Pierre. ‘But... I should like to know one thing...’
‘Know what?’ Natasha’s eyes asked.
‘I should like to know, did you love...’ Pierre did not
know how to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought
of him- ‘did you love that bad man?’
‘Don’t call him bad!’ said Natasha. ‘But I don’t know,
don’t know at all...’
She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity,
tenderness, and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears
trickle under his spectacles and hoped they would not be
noticed.
‘We won’t speak of it any more, my dear,’ said Pierre,
and his gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange
to Natasha.

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‘We won’t speak of it, my dear- I’ll tell him

everything; but one thing I beg of you, consider me your
friend and if you want help, advice, or simply to open
your heart to someone- not now, but when your mind is
clearer think of me!’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘I
shall be happy if it’s in my power..’
Pierre grew confused.
‘Don’t speak to me like that. I am not worth it!’
exclaimed Natasha and turned to leave the room, but
Pierre held her hand.
He knew he had something more to say to her. But
when he said it he was amazed at his own words.
‘Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you,’ said
he to her.
‘Before me? No! All is over for me,’ she replied with
shame and self-abasement.
‘All over?’ he repeated. ‘If I were not myself, but the
handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and
were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your
hand and your love!’
For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of
gratitude and tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went
out of the room.

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Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the
anteroom, restraining tears of tenderness and joy that
choked him, and without finding the sleeves of his fur
cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.
‘Where to now, your excellency?’ asked the coachman.
‘Where to?’ Pierre asked himself. ‘Where can I go
now? Surely not to the Club or to pay calls?’ All men
seemed so pitiful, so poor, in comparison with this feeling
of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison
with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him
through her tears.
‘Home!’ said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of
frost Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from
his broad chest and inhaled the air with joy.
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets,
above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only
looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid
and humiliating were all mundane things compared with
the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the
entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark
starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center
of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and
sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them
all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long

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uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of

18l2- the comet which was said to portend all kinds of
woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that
comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of
fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist
with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in
its orbit with inconceivable velocity through
immeasurable space, seemed suddenly- like an arrow
piercing the earth- to remain fixed in a chosen spot,
vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its
white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It
seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what
was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now
blossoming into a new life.

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BOOK NINE: 1812

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Chapter I

From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and

concentrating of the forces of Western Europe began, and
in 1812 these forces- millions of men, reckoning those
transporting and feeding the army- moved from the west
eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since
1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the
twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe
crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an
event took place opposed to human reason and to human
nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another
such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts,
forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries,
incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not
recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world,
but which those who committed them did not at the time
regard as being crimes.
What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What
were its causes? The historians tell us with naive
assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the
Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental
System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of
Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

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Consequently, it would only have been necessary for

Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee
and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and
written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have
written to Alexander: ‘My respected Brother, I consent to
restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg’- and there
would have been no war.
We can understand that the matter seemed like that to
contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the
war was caused by England’s intrigues (as in fact he said
on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to
members of the English Parliament that the cause of the
war was Napoleon’s ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg,
that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to
businessmen that the cause of the way was the
Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the
generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war
was the necessity of giving them employment; to the
legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-
establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of
that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance
between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been
sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the
awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural

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that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other

reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of
points of view, presented themselves to the men of that
day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that
happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and
terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it
is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed
and tortured each other either because Napoleon was
ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England’s
policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We
cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have
with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why
because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from
the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of
Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.
To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are
not carried away by the process of research and can
therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense,
an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The
deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of
them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of
causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally
false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of
the events, and by its impotence- apart from the

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cooperation of all the other coincident causes- to occasion

the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that
French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a
cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his troops
beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg;
for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third,
and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there
would have been so many less men in Napoleon’s army
and the war could not have occurred.
Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he
should withdraw beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his
troops to advance, there would have been no war; but had
all his sergeants objected to serving a second term then
also there could have been no war. Nor could there have
been a war had there been no English intrigues and no
Duke of Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted,
and had there not been an autocratic government in
Russia, or a Revolution in France and a subsequent
dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced
the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these
causes nothing could have happened. So all these causes-
myriads of causes- coincided to bring it about. And so
there was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had to
occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their

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human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to

slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously
hordes of men had come from the east to the west, slaying
their fellows.
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose
words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary
as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the
campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be
otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and
Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should
be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable
circumstances was needed without any one of which the
event could not have taken place. It was necessary that
millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the
soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns-
should consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an
infinite number of diverse and complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an
explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the
reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more
we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the
more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become
to us.

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Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain

his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he
can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but
as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a
certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs
to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined
significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his
individual life, which is the more free the more abstract
its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he
inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an
unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic,
universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable,
and its result coinciding in time with the actions of
millions of other men assumes an historic significance.
The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more
people he is connected with and the more power he has
over others, the more evident is the predestination and
inevitability of his every action.
‘The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.’
A king is history’s slave.

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History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of

mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool
for its own purposes.
Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more
convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou
ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples*- as Alexander
expressed it in the last letter he wrote him- he had never
been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which
compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his
own volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say,
for history- whatever had to be performed.
*"To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples.’
The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their
fellow men, and by the law of coincidence thousands of
minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to produce that
movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of
the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg’s wrongs,
the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it
seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an
armed peace, the French Emperor’s love and habit of war
coinciding with his people’s inclinations, allurement by
the grandeur of the preparations, and the expenditure on
those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages
to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating

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honors he received in Dresden, the diplomatic

negotiations which, in the opinion of contemporaries,
were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace, but
which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and
millions and millions of other causes that adapted
themselves to the event that was happening or coincided
with it.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall?
Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk
withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows
heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy
standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of
conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events
occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls
because the cellular tissue decays and so forth is equally
right with the child who stands under the tree and says the
apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.
Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went
to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because
Alexander desired his destruction, and he who says that
an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because
the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock.
In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving

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names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest
connection with the event itself.
Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of
their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is
related to the whole course of history and predestined
from eternity.

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Chapter II

On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden,

where he had spent three weeks surrounded by a court
that included princes, dukes, kings, and even an emperor.
Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the emperor,
kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the
kings and princes with whom he was dissatisfied,
presented pearls and diamonds of his own- that is, which
he had taken from other kings- to the Empress of Austria,
and having, as his historian tells us, tenderly embraced the
Empress Marie Louise- who regarded him as her husband,
though he had left another wife in Paris- left her grieved
by the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear.
Though the diplomatists still firmly believed in the
possibility of peace and worked zealously to that end, and
though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to
Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere, and sincerely
assured him that he did not want war and would always
love and honor him- yet he set off to join his army, and at
every station gave fresh orders to accelerate the
movement of his troops from west to east. He went in a
traveling coach with six horses, surrounded by pages,

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aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to Posen,

Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns
thousands of people met him with excitement and
enthusiasm.
The army was moving from west to east, and relays of
six horses carried him in the same direction. On the tenth
of June,* coming up with the army, he spent the night in
apartments prepared for him on the estate of a Polish
count in the Vilkavisski forest.
*Old style.
Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to
the Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he
drove to the riverbank in order to select a place for the
crossing.
Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les
Cosaques) and the wide-spreading steppes in the midst of
which lay the holy city of Moscow (Moscou, la ville
sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia into
which Alexander the Great had marched- Napoleon
unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and
diplomatic considerations, ordered an advance, and the
next day his army began to cross the Niemen.
Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out
of his tent, which was pitched that day on the steep left

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bank of the Niemen, and looked through a spyglass at the

streams of his troops pouring out of the Vilkavisski forest
and flowing over the three bridges thrown across the
river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor’s presence,
were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight
of a figure in an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart
from his suite in front of his tent on the hill, they threw up
their caps and shouted: ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and one after
another poured in a ceaseless stream out of the vast forest
that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and
on by the three bridges to the other side.
‘Now we’ll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in
hand himself, things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!...
Vive l’Empereur! So these are the steppes of Asia! It’s a
nasty country all the same. Au revoir, Beauche; I’ll keep
the best palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good
luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l’Empereur!...
preur!- If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I’ll
make you Minister of Kashmir- that’s settled. Vive
l’Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks- those
rascals- see how they run! Vive l’Empereur! There he is,
do you see him? I’ve seen him twice, as I see you now.
The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the
veterans.... Vive l’Empereur!’ came the voices of men,

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old and young, of most diverse characters and social

positions. On the faces of all was one common expression
of joy at the commencement of the long-expected
campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the
gray coat who was standing on the hill.
On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred
Arab horse was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and
rode at a gallop to one of the bridges over the Niemen,
deafened continually by incessant and rapturous
acclamations which he evidently endured only because it
was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love
of him by such shouting, but the shouting which
accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and
distracted him from the military cares that had occupied
him from the time he joined the army. He rode across one
of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned
sharply to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno,
preceded by enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard
who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a
path for him through the troops. On reaching the broad
river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of Polish Uhlans
stationed by the river.
‘Vivat!’ shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their
ranks and pressing against one another to see him.

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Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted,

and sat down on a log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign
from him, a telescope was handed him which he rested on
the back of a happy page who had run up to him, and he
gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a
map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said
something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to
the Polish Uhlans.
‘What? What did he say?’ was heard in the ranks of the
Polish Uhlans when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to
them.
The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The
colonel of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man,
flushed and, fumbling in his speech from excitement,
asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted to
swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford.
In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission
to get on a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across
the river before the Emperor’s eyes. The aide-de-camp
replied that probably the Emperor would not be
displeased at this excess of zeal.
As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old
mustached officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes,
raised his saber, shouted ‘Vivat!’ and, commanding the

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Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped into

the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had
grown restive under him, and plunged into the water,
heading for the deepest part where the current was swift.
Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and
uncanny in the rapid current in the middle of the stream,
and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as they fell off
their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some
of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the
saddle and some clinging to their horses’ manes. They
tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank and,
though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were
proud that they were swimming and drowning in this river
under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not
even looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-
camp, having returned and choosing an opportune
moment, ventured to draw the Emperor’s attention to the
devotion of the Poles to his person, the little man in the
gray overcoat got up and, having summoned Berthier,
began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him
instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at
the drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
For him it was no new conviction that his presence in
any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of

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Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people and

impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for his horse
and rode to his quarters.
Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though
boats were sent to their assistance. The majority struggled
back to the bank from which they had started. The colonel
and some of his men got across and with difficulty
clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they
had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they
shouted ‘Vivat!’ and looked ecstatically at the spot where
Napoleon had been but where he no longer was and at
that moment considered themselves happy.
That evening, between issuing one order that the
forged Russian paper money prepared for use in Russia
should be delivered as quickly as possible and another
that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a letter containing
information about the orders to the French army had been
found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish
colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should
be enrolled in the Legion d’honneur of which Napoleon
was himself the head.
Quos vult perdere dementat.*
*Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.

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Chapter III

The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna

for more than a month. reviewing troops and holding
maneuvers. Nothing was ready for the war that everyone
expected and to prepare for which the Emperor had come
from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The
vacillation between the various plans that were proposed
had even increased after the Emperor had been at
headquarters for a month. Each of the three armies had its
own commander in chief, but there was no supreme
commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not
assume that responsibility himself.
The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did
everybody- tired of waiting- prepare for the war. All the
efforts of those who surrounded the sovereign seemed
directed merely to making him spend his time pleasantly
and forget that war was impending.
In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish
magnates, by the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it
occurred to one of the Polish aides-de-camp in attendance
that a dinner and ball should be given for the Emperor by
his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly received. The

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Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected

money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be
most pleasing to the Emperor was invited to act as
hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a landowner in the Vilna
province, offered his country house for the fete, and the
thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta, and
fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen’s country seat.
The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross
the Niemen, and his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks,
crossed the Russian frontier, Alexander spent the evening
at the entertainment given by his aides-de-camp at
Bennigsen’s country house.
It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such
matters declared that rarely had so many beautiful women
been assembled in one place. Countess Bezukhova was
present among other Russian ladies who had followed the
sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the
refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian
type of beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her
with a dance.
Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and
being for the present en garcon (as he phrased it), was
also there and, though not an aide-de-camp, had
subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris was

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now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no

longer sought patronage but stood on an equal footing
with the highest of those of his own age. He was meeting
Helene in Vilna after not having seen her for a long time
and did not recall the past, but as Helene was enjoying the
favors of a very important personage and Boris had only
recently married, they met as good friends of long
standing.
At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not
having a suitable partner, herself offered to dance the
mazurka with Boris. They were the third couple. Boris,
coolly looking at Helene’s dazzling bare shoulders which
emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown,
talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time,
unaware of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for
an instant ceased to observe the Emperor who was in the
same room. The Emperor was not dancing, he stood in the
doorway, stopping now one pair and now another with
gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.
As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant
General Balashev, one of those in closest attendance on
the Emperor, went up to him and contrary to court
etiquette stood near him while he was talking to a Polish
lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor

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looked inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently

understanding that he only acted thus because there were
important reasons for so doing, nodded slightly to the lady
and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to speak
before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor’s
face. He took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room
with him, unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide
as the people on both sides made way for him. Boris
noticed Arakcheev’s excited face when the sovereign
went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the
Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red
nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if expecting the
Emperor to address him. (Boris understood that
Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased that
evidently important news had reached the Emperor
otherwise than through himself.)
But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the
illuminated garden without noticing Arakcheev who,
holding his sword and glancing wrathfully around,
followed some twenty paces behind them.
All the time Boris was going through the figures of the
mazurka, he was worried by the question of what news
Balashev had brought and how he could find it out before
others. In the figure in which he had to choose two ladies,

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he whispered to Helene that he meant to choose Countess

Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the veranda,
and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the
garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor
returning to the veranda, he stood still. They were moving
toward the door. Boris, fluttering as if he had not had time
to withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost
with bowed head.
The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been
personally affronted, was finishing with these words:
‘To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not
make peace as long as a single armed enemy remains in
my country!’ It seemed to Boris that it gave the Emperor
pleasure to utter these words. He was satisfied with the
form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but
displeased that Boris had overheard it.
‘Let no one know of it! ‘ the Emperor added with a
frown.
Boris understood that this was meant for him and,
closing his eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor
re-entered the ballroom and remained there about another
half-hour.
Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the
French army had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this,

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was able to show certain important personages that much

that was concealed from others was usually known to
him, and by this means he rose higher in their estimation.
The unexpected news of the French having crossed the
Niemen was particularly startling after a month of
unfulfilled expectations, and at a ball. On first receiving
the news, under the influence of indignation and
resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased
him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become
famous. On returning home at two o’clock that night he
sent for his secretary, Shishkov, and told him to write an
order to the troops and a rescript to Field Marshal Prince
Saltykov, in which he insisted on the words being inserted
that he would not make peace so long as a single armed
Frenchman remained on Russian soil.
Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
Monsieur mon frere,
Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I
have kept my engagements with Your Majesty, your
troops have crossed the Russian frontier, and I have this
moment received from Petersburg a note, in which Count
Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that
Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of
war with me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his

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passports. The reasons on which the Duc de Bassano

based his refusal to deliver them to him would never have
led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for
aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has
declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and
as soon as I was informed of it I let him know how much I
disapproved of it and ordered him to remain at his post. If
Your Majesty does not intend to shed the blood of our
peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to
withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard
what has passed as not having occurred and an
understanding between us will be possible. In the contrary
case, Your Majesty, I shall see myself forced to repel an
attack that nothing on my part has provoked. It still
depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the
calamity of another war. I am, etc.,
(signed) Alexander

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Chapter IV

At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the

Emperor, having sent for Balashev and read him his letter
to Napoleon, ordered him to take it and hand it personally
to the French Emperor. When dispatching Balashev, the
Emperor repeated to him the words that he would not
make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on
Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to
Napoleon. Alexander did not insert them in his letter to
Napoleon, because with his characteristic tact he felt it
would be injudicious to use them at a moment when a last
attempt at reconciliation was being made, but he
definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to
Napoleon.
Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth,
accompanied by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev
reached the French outposts at the village of Rykonty, on
the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There he was
stopped by French cavalry sentinels.
A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in
crimson uniform and a shaggy cap, shouted to the
approaching Balashev to halt. Balashev did not do so at

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once, but continued to advance along the road at a

walking pace.
The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering
words of abuse, advanced his horse’s chest against
Balashev, put his hand to his saber, and shouted rudely at
the Russian general, asking: was he deaf that he did not
do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was. The
noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades
about regimental matters without looking at the Russian
general.
After living at the seat of the highest authority and
power, after conversing with the Emperor less than three
hours before, and in general being accustomed to the
respect due to his rank in the service, Balashev found it
very strange here on Russian soil to encounter this hostile,
and still more this disrespectful, application of brute force
to himself.
The sun was only just appearing from behind the
clouds, the air was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was
being driven along the road from the village, and over the
fields the larks rose trilling, one after another, like
bubbles rising in water.
Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an
officer from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler

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and the French hussars looked silently at one another

from time to time.
A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just
left his bed, came riding from the village on a handsome
sleek gray horse, accompanied by two hussars. The
officer, the soldiers, and their horses all looked smart and
well kept.
It was that first period of a campaign when troops are
still in full trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers,
but with a shade of martial swagger in their clothes, and a
touch of the gaiety and spirit of enterprise which always
accompany the opening of a campaign.
The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn,
but was polite and evidently understood Balashev’s
importance. He led him past his soldiers and behind the
outposts and told him that his wish to be presented to the
Emperor would most likely be satisfied immediately, as
the Emperor’s quarters were, he believed, not far off.
They rode through the village of Rykonty, past
tethered French hussar horses, past sentinels and men who
saluted their colonel and stared with curiosity at a Russian
uniform, and came out at the other end of the village. The
colonel said that the commander of the division was a

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mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev and

conduct him to his destination.
The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright
verdure.
They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before
they saw a group of horsemen coming toward them. In
front of the group, on a black horse with trappings that
glittered in the sun, rode a tall man with plumes in his hat
and black hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore a
red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward in French
fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his
plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in
the bright June sunshine.
Balashev was only two horses’ length from the
equestrian with the bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold
embroidery, who was galloping toward him with a
theatrically solemn countenance, when Julner, the French
colonel, whispered respectfully: ‘The King of Naples!’ It
was, in fact, Murat, now called ‘King of Naples.’ Though
it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of
Naples, he was called so, and was himself convinced that
he was so, and therefore assumed a more solemn and
important air than formerly. He was so sure that he really
was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of his

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departure from that city, while walking through the streets

with his wife, some Italians called out to him: ‘Viva il
re!’* he turned to his wife with a pensive smile and said:
‘Poor fellows, they don’t know that I am leaving them
tomorrow!’
*"Long live the king.’
But though he firmly believed himself to be King of
Naples and pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was
abandoning, latterly, after he had been ordered to return to
military service- and especially since his last interview
with Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law
had told him: ‘I made you King that you should reign in
my way, but not in yours!’- he had cheerfully taken up his
familiar business, and- like a well-fed but not overfat
horse that feels himself in harness and grows skittish
between the shafts- he dressed up in clothes as variegated
and expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly
galloped along the roads of Poland, without himself
knowing why or whither.
On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head,
with its long hair curling to his shoulders, in a
majestically royal manner, and looked inquiringly at the
French colonel. The colonel respectfully informed His

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Majesty of Balashev’s mission, whose name he could not

pronounce.
‘De Bal-macheve!’ said the King (overcoming by his
assurance the difficulty that had presented itself to the
colonel). ‘Charmed to make your acquaintance, General!’
he added, with a gesture of kingly condescension.
As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his
royal dignity instantly forsook him, and without noticing
it he passed into his natural tone of good-natured
familiarity. He laid his hand on the withers of Balashev’s
horse and said:
‘Well, General, it all looks like war,’ as if regretting a
circumstance of which he was unable to judge.
‘Your Majesty,’ replied Balashev, ‘my master, the
Emperor, does not desire war and as Your Majesty sees...’
said Balashev, using the words Your Majesty at every
opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in
frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a
novelty.
Murat’s face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he
listened to ‘Monsieur de Bal-macheve.’ But royaute
oblige!* and he felt it incumbent on him, as a king and an
ally, to confer on state affairs with Alexander’s envoy. He
dismounted, took Balashev’s arm, and moving a few steps

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away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to

pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly.
He referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had
resented the demand that he should withdraw his troops
from Prussia, especially when that demand became
generally known and the dignity of France was thereby
offended.
*"Royalty has its obligations.’
Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in
the demand, because...’ but Murat interrupted him.
‘Then you don’t consider the Emperor Alexander the
aggressor?’ he asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and
foolish smile.
Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be
the originator of the war.
‘Oh, my dear general!’ Murat again interrupted him,
‘with all my heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the
affair between them, and that the war begun by no wish of
mine may finish as quickly as possible!’ said he, in the
tone of a servant who wants to remain good friends with
another despite a quarrel between their masters.
And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and
the state of his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and
amusing times he had spent with him in Naples. Then

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suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity, Murat

solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he
had stood at his coronation. and, waving his right arm,
said:
‘I won’t detain you longer, General. I wish success to
your mission,’ and with his embroidered red mantle, his
flowing feathers, and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined
his suite who were respectfully awaiting him.
Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat’s words that
he would very soon be brought before Napoleon himself.
But instead of that, at the next village the sentinels of
Davout’s infantry corps detained him as the pickets of the
vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the corps
commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the
village to Marshal Davout.

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Chapter V

Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to

Alexander- though not a coward like Arakcheev, he was
as precise, as cruel, and as unable to express his devotion
to his monarch except by cruelty.
In the organism of states such men are necessary, as
wolves are necessary in the organism of nature, and they
always exist, always appear and hold their own, however
incongruous their presence and their proximity to the head
of the government may be. This inevitability alone can
explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore out a
grenadier’s mustache with his own hands, whose weak
nerves rendered him unable to face danger, and who was
neither an educated man nor a courtier, was able to
maintain his powerful position with Alexander, whose
own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.
Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed
of a peasant’s hut, writing- he was auditing accounts.
Better quarters could have been found him, but Marshal
Davout was one of those men who purposely put
themselves in most depressing conditions to have a
justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they

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are always hard at work and in a hurry. ‘How can I think

of the bright side of life when, as you see, I am sitting on
a barrel and working in a dirty shed?’ the expression of
his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity
of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows
animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent
activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure when
Balashev was brought in. He became still more absorbed
in his task when the Russian general entered, and after
glancing over his spectacles at Balashev’s face, which
was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his
talk with Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled
still more and sneered malevolently.
When he noticed in Balashev’s face the disagreeable
impression this reception produced, Davout raised his
head and coldly asked what he wanted.
Thinking he could have been received in such a
manner only because Davout did not know that he was
adjutant general to the Emperor Alexander and even his
envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to inform him of
his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout,
after hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.
‘Where is your dispatch?’ he inquired. ‘Give it to me. I
will send it to the Emperor.’

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Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it

personally to the Emperor.
‘Your Emperor’s orders are obeyed in your army, but
here,’ said Davout, ‘you must do as you’re told.’
And, as if to make the Russian general still more
conscious of his dependence on brute force, Davout sent
an adjutant to call the officer on duty.
Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor’s
letter and laid it on the table (made of a door with its
hinges still hanging on it, laid across two barrels). Davout
took the packet and read the inscription.
‘You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or
not,’ protested Balashev, ‘but permit me to observe that I
have the honor to be adjutant general to His Majesty...’
Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived
pleasure from the signs of agitation and confusion which
appeared on Balashev’s face.
‘You will be treated as is fitting,’ said he and, putting
the packet in his pocket, left the shed.
A minute later the marshal’s adjutant, de Castres, came
in and conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.
That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board
on the barrels.

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Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking

Balashev to come to him, peremptorily requested him to
remain there, to move on with the baggage train should
orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one except
Monsieur de Castres.
After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness
of his impotence and insignificance- particularly acute by
contrast with the sphere of power in which he had so
lately moved- and after several marches with the
marshal’s baggage and the French army, which occupied
the whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna- now
occupied by the French- through the very gate by which
he had left it four days previously.
Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte
de Turenne, came to Balashev and informed him of the
Emperor Napoleon’s wish to honor him with an audience.
Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk
regiment had stood in front of the house to which
Balashev was conducted, and now two French grenadiers
stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front and with
shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and
Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and
generals, who were waiting for Napoleon to come out,
were standing at the porch, round his saddle horse and his

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Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received Balashev in the

very house in Vilna from which Alexander had dispatched
him on his mission.

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Chapter VI

Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was

amazed at the luxury and magnificence of Napoleon’s
court.
The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big
reception room where many generals, gentlemen-in-
waiting, and Polish magnates- several of whom Balashev
had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia- were
waiting. Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the
Russian general before going for his ride.
After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who
was on duty came into the great reception room and,
bowing politely, asked Balashev to follow him.
Balashev went into a small reception room, one door
of which led into a study, the very one from which the
Russian Emperor had dispatched him on his mission. He
stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried footsteps
beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly;
all was silent and then from the study the sound was heard
of other steps, firm and resolute- they were those of
Napoleon. He had just finished dressing for his ride, and
wore a blue uniform, opening in front over a white

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waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund stomach,

white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his
short legs, and Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently
just been brushed, but one lock hung down in the middle
of his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out
sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he
smelled of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-
looking, with its prominent chin, wore a gracious and
majestic expression of imperial welcome.
He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his
head slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent
figure with broad thick shoulders, and chest and stomach
involuntarily protruding, had that imposing and stately
appearance one sees in men of forty who live in comfort.
It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits that
day.
He nodded in answer to Balashav’s low and respectful
bow, and coming up to him at once began speaking like a
man who values every moment of his time and does not
condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure he
will always say the right thing and say it well.
‘Good day, General!’ said he. ‘I have received the
letter you brought from the Emperor Alexander and am

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very glad to see you.’ He glanced with his large eyes into
Balashav’s face and immediately looked past him.
It was plain that Balashev’s personality did not interest
him at all. Evidently only what took place within his own
mind interested him. Nothing outside himself had any
significance for him, because everything in the world, it
seemed to him, depended entirely on his will.
‘I do not, and did not, desire war,’ he continued, ‘but it
has been forced on me. Even now’ (he emphasized the
word) ‘I am ready to receive any explanations you can
give me.’
And he began clearly and concisely to explain his
reasons for dissatisfaction with the Russian government.
Judging by the calmly moderate and amicable tone in
which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev was firmly
persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter
into negotiations.
When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked
inquiringly at the Russian envoy, Balashev began a
speech he had prepared long before: ‘Sire! The Emperor,
my master...’ but the sight of the Emperor’s eyes bent on
him confused him. ‘You are flurried- compose yourself!’
Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible
smile he looked at Balashev’s uniform and sword.

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Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He

said that the Emperor Alexander did not consider
Kurakin’s demand for his passports a sufficient cause for
war; that Kurakin had acted on his own initiative and
without his sovereign’s assent, that the Emperor
Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with
England.
‘Not yet!’ interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to
give vent to his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly
as a sign that Balashev might proceed.
After saying all he had been instructed to say,
Balashev added that the Emperor Alexander wished for
peace, but would not enter into negotiations except on
condition that... Here Balashev hesitated: he remembered
the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov
and had told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev
remembered these words, ‘So long as a single armed foe
remains on Russian soil,’ but some complex feeling
restrained him. He could not utter them, though he wished
to do so. He grew confused and said: ‘On condition that
the French army retires beyond the Niemen.’
Napoleon noticed Balashev’s embarrassment when
uttering these last words; his face twitched and the calf of

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his left leg began to quiver rhythmically. Without moving

from where he stood he began speaking in a louder tone
and more hurriedly than before. During the speech that
followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his
eyes, involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon’s
left leg which increased the more Napoleon raised his
voice.
‘I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander,’
he began. ‘Have I not for eighteen months been doing
everything to obtain it? I have waited eighteen months for
explanations. But in order to begin negotiations, what is
demanded of me?’ he said, frowning and making an
energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump
hand.
‘The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen,
sire,’ replied Balashev.
‘The Niemen?’ repeated Napoleon. ‘So now you want
me to retire beyond the Niemen- only the Niemen?’
repeated Napoleon, looking straight at Balashev.
The latter bowed his head respectfully.
Instead of the demand of four months earlier to
withdraw from Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the
Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned quickly
and began to pace the room.

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‘You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw

beyond the Niemen before commencing negotiations, but
in just the same way two months ago the demand was that
I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder, and
yet you are willing to negotiate.’
He went in silence from one corner of the room to the
other and again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev
noticed that his left leg was quivering faster than before
and his face seemed petrified in its stern expression. This
quivering of his left leg was a thing Napoleon was
conscious of. ‘The vibration of my left calf is a great sign
with me,’ he remarked at a later date.
‘Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and
Oder may be made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!’
Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his own surprise. ‘If
you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept
such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who
first joined his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And
you offer me negotiations when I have expended millions,
when you are in alliance with England, and when your
position is a bad one. You offer me negotiations! But
what is the aim of your alliance with England? What has
she given you?’ he continued hurriedly, evidently no
longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss

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its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and

power and Alexander’s errors and duplicity.
The commencement of his speech had obviously been
made with the intention of demonstrating the advantages
of his position and showing that he was nevertheless
willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking, and the
more he talked the less could he control his words.
The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to
exalt himself and insult Alexander- just what he had least
desired at the commencement of the interview.
‘I hear you have made peace with Turkey?’
Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.
‘Peace has been concluded...’ he began.
But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently
wanted to do all the talking himself, and continued to talk
with the sort of eloquence and unrestrained irritability to
which spoiled people are so prone.
‘Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks
without obtaining Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have
given your sovereign those provinces as I gave him
Finland. Yes,’ he went on, ‘I promised and would have
given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia,
and now he won’t have those splendid provinces. Yet he
might have united them to his empire and in a single reign

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would have extended Russia from the Gulf of Bothnia to

the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the Great could not
have done more,’ said Napoleon, growing more and more
excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to
Balashev almost the very words he had used to Alexander
himself at Tilsit. ‘All that, he would have owed to my
friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!’ he repeated
several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold
snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.
‘What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander’s might
have been!’
He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as
the latter tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted
him.
‘What could he wish or look for that he would not have
obtained through my friendship?’ demanded Napoleon,
shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. ‘But no, he has
preferred to surround himself with my enemies, and with
whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own
country; Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer;
Wintzingerode, a fugitive French subject; Bennigsen,
rather more of a soldier than the others, but all the same
an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807

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and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor

Alexander’s mind.... Granted that were they competent
they might be made use of,’ continued Napoleon- hardly
able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts that
incessantly sprang up, proving how right and strong he
was (in his perception the two were one and the same)-
‘but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war
nor peace! Barclay is said to be the most capable of them
all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first movements.
And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel
proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and
Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide
on, and time passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is
a military man. He’s stupid, but he has experience, a
quick eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young
monarch playing in that monstrous crowd? They
compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for
all that happens. A sovereign should not be with the army
unless he is a general!’ said Napoleon, evidently uttering
these words as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He
knew how Alexander desired to be a military commander.
‘The campaign began only a week ago, and you
haven’t even been able to defend Vilna. You are cut in

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two and have been driven out of the Polish provinces.

Your army is grumbling.’
‘On the contrary, Your Majesty,’ said Balashev, hardly
able to remember what had been said to him and
following these verbal fireworks with difficulty, ‘the
troops are burning with eagerness..’
‘I know everything!’ Napoleon interrupted him. ‘I
know everything. I know the number of your battalions as
exactly as I know my own. You have not two hundred
thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give
you my word of honor,’ said Napoleon, forgetting that his
word of honor could carry no weight- ‘I give you my
word of honor that I have five hundred and thirty
thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will be
of no use to you; they are worth nothing and have shown
it by making peace with you. As for the Swedes- it is their
fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane
and they changed him for another- Bernadotte, who
promptly went mad- for no Swede would ally himself
with Russia unless he were mad.’
Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his
snuffbox to his nose.
Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon’s
remarks, and would have done so; he continually made

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the gesture of a man wishing to say something, but

Napoleon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity
of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when Russia
is on her side Sweden is practically an island: but
Napoleon gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice.
Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which a man
has to talk, talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that
he is in the right. Balashev began to feel uncomfortable:
as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and felt the
necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the
transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized
Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered
by Napoleon had any significance, and that Napoleon
himself would be ashamed of them when he came to his
senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking at the
movements of Napoleon’s stout legs and trying to avoid
meeting his eyes.
‘But what do I care about your allies?’ said Napoleon.
‘I have allies- the Poles. There are eighty thousand of
them and they fight like lions. And there will be two
hundred thousand of them.’
And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he
had uttered this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still
stood silently before him in the same attitude of

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submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned round, drew

close to Balashev’s face, and, gesticulating rapidly and
energetically with his white hands, almost shouted:
‘Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I’ll wipe
it off the map of Europe!’ he declared, his face pale and
distorted by anger, and he struck one of his small hands
energetically with the other. ‘Yes, I will throw you back
beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and will re-
erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and
blind of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what
will happen to you. That is what you have gained by
alienating me!’ And he walked silently several times up
and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.
He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it
out again, lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped
in front of Balashev. He paused, looked ironically straight
into Balashev’s eyes, and said in a quiet voice:
‘And yet what a splendid reign your master might have
had!’
Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said
that from the Russian side things did not appear in so
gloomy a light. Napoleon was silent, still looking
derisively at him and evidently not listening to him.
Balashev said that in Russia the best results were

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expected from the war. Napoleon nodded

condescendingly, as if to say, ‘I know it’s your duty to
say that, but you don’t believe it yourself. I have
convinced you.’
When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out
his snuffbox, sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on
the floor as a signal. The door opened, a gentleman-in-
waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor his hat
and gloves; another brought hima pocket handkerchief.
Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to
Balashev:
‘Assure the Emperor Alexander from me,’ said he,
taking his hat, ‘that I am as devoted to him as before: I
know him thoroughly and very highly esteem his lofty
qualities. I will detain you no longer, General; you shall
receive my letter to the Emperor.’
And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in
the reception room rushed forward and descended the
staircase.

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Chapter VII

After all that Napoleon had said to him- those bursts of

anger and the last dryly spoken words: ‘I will detain you
no longer, General; you shall receive my letter,’ Balashev
felt convinced that Napoleon would not wish to see him,
and would even avoid another meeting with him- an
insulted envoy- especially as he had witnessed his
unseemly anger. But, to his surprise, Balashev received,
through Duroc, an invitation to dine with the Emperor that
day.
Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at
that dinner.
Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He
not only showed no sign of constraint or self-reproach on
account of his outburst that morning, but, on the contrary,
tried to reassure Balashev. It was evident that he had long
been convinced that it was impossible for him to make a
mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was
right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right
and wrong, but because he did it.
The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride
through Vilna, where crowds of people had rapturously

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greeted and followed him. From all the windows of the

streets through which he rode, rugs, flags, and his
monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies,
welcoming him, waved their handkerchiefs to him.
At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him,
Napoleon not only treated him amiably but behaved as if
Balashev were one of his own courtiers, one of those who
sympathized with his plans and ought to rejoice at his
success. In the course of conversation he mentioned
Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian
capital, not merely as an interested traveler asks about a
new city he intends to visit, but as if convinced that
Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered by his curiosity.
‘How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How
many houses? Is it true that Moscow is called ‘Holy
Moscow’? How many churches are there in Moscow?’ he
asked.
And receiving the reply that there were more than two
hundred churches, he remarked:
‘Why such a quantity of churches?’
‘The Russians are very devout,’ replied Balashev.
‘But a large number of monasteries and churches is
always a sign of the backwardness of a people,’ said

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Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for appreciation of this

remark.
Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the
French Emperor.
‘Every country has its own character,’ said he.
‘But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that,’
said Napoleon.
‘I beg your Majesty’s pardon,’ returned Balashev,
‘besides Russia there is Spain, where there are also many
churches and monasteries.’
This reply of Balashev’s, which hinted at the recent
defeats of the French in Spain, was much appreciated
when he related it at Alexander’s court, but it was not
much appreciated at Napoleon’s dinner, where it passed
unnoticed.
The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals
showed that they were puzzled as to what Balashev’s tone
suggested. ‘If there is a point we don’t see it, or it is not at
all witty,’ their expressions seemed to say. So little was
his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not notice it at
all and naively asked Balashev through what towns the
direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who
was on the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as
‘all roads lead to Rome,’ so all roads lead to Moscow:

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there were many roads, and ‘among them the road

through Poltava, which Charles XII chose.’ Balashev
involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this
reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before
Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road
from Petersburg to Moscow and of his Petersburg
reminiscences.
After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon’s
study, which four days previously had been that of the
Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat down, toying with his
Sevres coffee cup, and motioned Balashev to a chair
beside him.
Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood
which, more than any reasoned cause, makes a man
contented with himself and disposed to consider everyone
his friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded by
men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his
dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper.
Napoleon turned to him with a pleasant, though slightly
ironic, smile.
‘They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander
occupied? Strange, isn’t it, General?’ he said, evidently
not doubting that this remark would be agreeable to his

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hearer since it went to prove his, Napoleon’s, superiority

to Alexander.
Balashev made no reply and bowed and bowed his
head in silence.
‘Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and
Stein were deliberating,’ continued Napoleon with the
same derisive and self-confident smile. ‘What I can’t
understand,’ he went on, ‘is that the Emperor Alexander
has surrounded himself with my personal enemies. That I
do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may the
same?’ and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and
evidently this thought turned him back on to the track of
his morning’s anger, which was still fresh in him.
‘And let him know that I will do so!’ said Napoleon,
rising and pushing his cup away with his hand. ‘I’ll drive
all his Wurttemberg, Baden, and Weimar relations out of
Germany.... Yes. I’ll drive them out. Let him prepare an
asylum for them in Russia!’
Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he
would like to make his bow and leave, and only listened
because he could not help hearing what was said to him.
Napoleon did not notice this expression; he treated
Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man

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now fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his

former master’s humiliation.
‘And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command
of the armies? What is the good of that? War is my
profession, but his business is to reign and not to
command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a
responsibility?’
Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced
several times up and down the room in silence, and then,
suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to Balashev and with
a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply as if he
were doing something not merely important but pleasing
to Balashev, he raised his hand to the forty-year-old
Russian general’s face and, taking him by the ear, pulled
it gently, smiling with his lips only.
To have one’s ear pulled by the Emperor was
considered the greatest honor and mark of favor at the
French court.
‘Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander,
why don’t you say anything?’ said he, as if it was
ridiculous, in his presence, to be the adorer and courtier of
anyone but himself, Napoleon. ‘Are the horses ready for
the general?’ he added, with a slight inclination of his

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head in reply to Balashev’s bow. ‘Let him have mine, he

has a long way to go!’
The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon
sent to Alexander. Every detail of the interview was
communicated to the Russian monarch, and the war
began...

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Chapter VIII

After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince

Andrew went to Petersburg, on business as he told his
family, but really to meet Anatole Kuragin whom he felt
it necessary to encounter. On reaching Petersburg he
inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the
city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince
Andrew was on his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly
obtained an appointment from the Minister of War and
went to join the army in Moldavia. While in Petersburg
Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who
was always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov
suggested that he should accompany him to the army in
Moldavia, to which the old general had been appointed
commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having received
an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.
Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and
challenge Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him
without some fresh cause it might compromise the young
Countess Rostova and so he wanted to meet Kuragin
personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But
he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after

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Prince Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a

new country, amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found
life easier to bear. After his betrothed had broken faith
with him- which he felt the more acutely the more he tried
to conceal its effects- the surroundings in which he had
been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and
independence he had once prized so highly were still
more so. Not only could he no longer think the thoughts
that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on
the field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with
Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at Bogucharovo
and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to
recall them and them and the bright and boundless
horizons they had revealed. He was now concerned only
with the nearest practical matters unrelated to his past
interests, and he seized on these the more eagerly the
more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered
above him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that
weighed him down, in which all was clear, but nothing
eternal or mysterious.
Of the activities that presented themselves to him,
army service was the simplest and most familiar. As a
general on duty on Kutuzov’s staff, he applied himself to

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business with zeal and perseverance and surprised

Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not
having found Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not
think it necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all
the same he knew that however long it might be before he
met Kuragin, despite his contempt for him and despite all
the proofs he deduced to convince himself that it was not
worth stooping to a conflict with him- he knew that when
he did meet him he would not be able to resist calling him
out, any more than a ravenous man can help snatching at
food. And the consciousness that the insult was not yet
avenged, that his rancor was still unspent, weighed on his
heart and poisoned the artificial tranquillity which he
managed to obtain in Turkey by means of restless,
plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity.
In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon
reached Bucharest- where Kutuzov had been living for
two months, passing his days and nights with a
Wallachian woman- Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov to
transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was
already weary of Bolkonski’s activity which seemed to
reproach his own idleness, very readily let him go and
gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.

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Before joining the Western Army which was then, in

May, encamped at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald
Hills which was directly on his way, being only two miles
off the Smolensk highroad. During the last three years
there had been so many changes in his life, he had
thought, felt, and seen so much (having traveled both in
the east and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck
him as strange and unexpected to find the way of life
there unchanged and still the same in every detail. He
entered through the gates with their stone pillars and
drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were
entering an enchanted, sleeping castle. The same old
stateliness, the same cleanliness, the same stillness
reigned there, and inside there was the same furniture, the
same walls, sounds, and smell, and the same timid faces,
only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the same
timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and
joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and
constant suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same
coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of
her existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She
had merely become more self-confident, Prince Andrew
thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had brought from
Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and

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talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the

same narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic
preceptor. The old prince had changed in appearance only
by the loss of a tooth, which left a noticeable gap on one
side of his mouth; in character he was the same as ever,
only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to
what was happening in the world. Little Nicholas alone
had changed. He had grown, become rosier, had curly
dark hair, and, when merry and laughing, quite
unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth
just as the little princess used to do. He alone did not obey
the law of immutability in the enchanted, sleeping castle.
But though externally all remained as of old, the inner
relations of all these people had changed since Prince
Andrew had seen them last. The household was divided
into two alien and hostile camps, who changed their
habits for his sake and only met because he was there. To
the one camp belonged the old prince, Madmoiselle
Bourienne, and the architect; to the other Princess Mary,
Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and
maids.
During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined
together, but they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt
that he was a visitor for whose sake an exception was

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being made and that his presence made them all feel
awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first
day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also
became morosely dumb and retired to his apartments
directly after dinner. In the evening, when Prince Andrew
went to him and, trying to rouse him, began to tell him of
the young Count Kamensky’s campaign, the old prince
began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming
her for her superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle
Bourienne, who, he said, was the only person really
attached to him.
The old prince said that if he was ill it was only
because of Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and
irritated him, and that by indulgence and silly talk she was
spoiling little Prince Nicholas. The old prince knew very
well that he tormented his daughter and that her life was
very hard, but he also knew that he could not help
tormenting her and that she deserved it. ‘Why does Prince
Andrew, who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister?
Does he think me a scoundrel, or an old fool who, without
any reason, keeps his own daughter at a distance and
attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He doesn’t
understand, so I must explain it, and he must hear me
out,’ thought the old prince. And he began explaining

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why he could not put up with his daughter’s unreasonable

character.
‘If you ask me,’ said Prince Andrew, without looking
up (he was censuring his father for the first time in his
life), ‘I did not wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I
will give you my frank opinion. If there is any
misunderstanding and discord between you and Mary, I
can’t blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and
respects you. Since you ask me,’ continued Prince
Andrew, becoming irritable- as he was always liable to do
of late- ‘I can only say that if there are any
misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless
woman, who is not fit to be my sister’s companion.’
The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an
unnatural smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth
to which Prince Andrew could not get accustomed.
‘What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You’ve already
been talking it over! Eh?’
‘Father, I did not want to judge,’ said Prince Andrew,
in a hard and bitter tone, ‘but you challenged me, and I
have said, and always shall say, that Mary is not to blame,
but those to blame- the one to blame- is that
Frenchwoman.’

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‘Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!’ said

the old man in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince
Andrew, with some embarrassment, but then he suddenly
jumped up and cried: ‘Be off, be off! Let not a trace of
you remain here!..’
Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess
Mary persuaded him to stay another day. That day he did
not see his father, who did not leave his room and
admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and Tikhon,
but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next
day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son’s
rooms. The boy, curly-headed like his mother and
glowing with health, sat on his knee, and Prince Andrew
began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell into a
reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this
pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of
himself. He sought in himself either remorse for having
angered his father or regret at leaving home for the first
time in his life on bad terms with him, and was horrified
to find neither. What meant still more to him was that he
sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness
for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing
the boy and taking him on his knee.
‘Well, go on!’ said his son.

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Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from

his knee and went out of the room.
As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily
occupations, and especially on returning to the old
conditions of life amid which he had been happy,
weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity,
and he hastened to escape from these memories and to
find some work as soon as possible.
‘So you’ve decided to go, Andrew?’ asked his sister.
‘Thank God that I can,’ replied Prince Andrew. ‘I am
very sorry you can’t.’
‘Why do you say that?’ replied Princess Mary. ‘Why
do you say that, when you are going to this terrible war,
and he is so old? Mademoiselle Bourienne says he has
been asking about you...’
As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips
trembled and her tears began to fall. Prince Andrew
turned away and began pacing the room.
‘Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and
what- what trash- can cause people misery!’ he said with
a malignity that alarmed Princess Mary.
She understood that when speaking of ‘trash’ he
referred not only to Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of

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her misery, but also to the man who had ruined his own
happiness.
‘Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!’ she said,
touching his elbow and looking at him with eyes that
shone through her tears. ‘I understand you’ (she looked
down). ‘Don’t imagine that sorrow is the work of men.
Men are His tools.’ She looked a little above Prince
Andrew’s head with the confident, accustomed look with
which one looks at the place where a familiar portrait
hangs. ‘Sorrow is sent by Him, not by men. Men are His
instruments, they are not to blame. If you think someone
has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We have no right
to punish. And then you will know the happiness of
forgiving.’
‘If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a
woman’s virtue. But a man should not and cannot forgive
and forget,’ he replied, and though till that moment he had
not been thinking of Kuragin, all his unexpended anger
suddenly swelled up in his heart.
‘If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means
that I ought long ago to have punished him,’ he thought.
And giving her no further reply, he began thinking of the
glad vindictive moment when he would meet Kuragin
who he knew was now in the army.

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Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more,

saying that she knew how unhappy her father would be if
Andrew left without being reconciled to him, but Prince
Andrew replied that he would probably soon be back
again from the army and would certainly write to his
father, but that the longer he stayed now the more
embittered their differences would become.
‘Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come
from God, and men are never to blame,’ were the last
words he heard from his sister when he took leave of her.
‘Then it must be so!’ thought Prince Andrew as he
drove out of the avenue from the house at Bald Hills.
‘She, poor innocent creature, is left to be victimized by an
old man who has outlived his wits. The old man feels he
is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing
up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he
will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army.
Why? I myself don’t know. I want to meet that man
whom I despise, so as to give him a chance to kill and
laugh at me!
These conditions of life had been the same before, but
then they were all connected, while now they had all
tumbled to pieces. Only senseless things, lacking

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coherence, presented themselves one after another to

Prince Andrew’s mind.

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Chapter IX

Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the

army at the end of June. The first army, with which was
the Emperor, occupied the fortified camp at Drissa; the
second army was retreating, trying to effect a junction
with the first one from which it was said to be cut off by
large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the
general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one
anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian
provinces, and no one thought the war would extend
farther than the western, the Polish, provinces.
Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he
had been assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there
was not a single town or large village in the vicinity of the
camp, the immense number of generals and courtiers
accompanying the army were living in the best houses of
the villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of six
miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles
from the Emperor. He received Bolkonski stiffly and
coldly and told him in his foreign accent that he would
mention him to the Emperor for a decision as to his
employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on his

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staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrew had hoped

to find with the army, was not there. He had gone to
Petersburg, but Prince Andrew was glad to hear this. His
mind was occupied by the interests of the center that was
conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to be free for
a while from the distraction caused by the thought of
Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were
required of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole
fortified camp and, by the aid of his own knowledge and
by talks with experts, tried to form a definite opinion
about it. But the question whether the camp was
advantageous or disadvantageous remained for him
undecided. Already from his military experience and what
he had seen in the Austrian campaign, he had come to the
conclusion that in war the most deeply considered plans
have no significance and that all depends on the way
unexpected movements of the enemy- that cannot be
foreseen- are met, and on how and by whom the whole
matter is handled. To clear up this last point for himself,
Prince Andrew, utilizing his position and acquaintances,
tried to fathom the character of the control of the army
and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he deduced
for himself the following of the state of affairs.

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While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces

had been divided into three armies. First, the army under
Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the army under Bagration,
and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormasov. The
Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander in
chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the
Emperor would take command, but only that he would be
with the army. The Emperor, moreover, had with him not
a commander in chief’s staff but the imperial headquarters
staff. In attendance on him was the head of the imperial
staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well as
generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials,
and a large number of foreigners, but not the army staff.
Besides these, there were in attendance on the Emperor
without any definite appointments: Arakcheev, the ex-
Minister of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general in
rank; the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich;
Count Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former
Prussian minister; Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the
chief author of the plan of campaign; Paulucci, an
adjutant general and Sardinian emigre; Wolzogen- and
many others. Though these men had no military
appointment in the army, their position gave them
influence, and often a corps commander, or even the

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commander in chief, did not know in what capacity he

was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,
Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that
advice and did not know whether a certain order received
in the form of advice emanated from the man who gave it
or from the Emperor and whether it had to be executed or
not. But this was only the external condition; the essential
significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all
these people, from a courtier’s point of view (and in an
Emperor’s vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to
everyone. It was this: the Emperor did not assume the title
of commander in chief, but disposed of all the armies; the
men around him were his assistants. Arakcheev was a
faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the
sovereign’s bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the
Vilna province who appeared to be doing the honors of
the district, but was in reality a good general, useful as an
adviser and ready at hand to replace Barclay. The Grand
Duke was there because it suited him to be. The ex-
Minister Stein was there because his advice was useful
and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem
personally. Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a
general full of self-confidence, a quality that always
influenced Alexander. Paulucci was there because he was

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bold and decided in speech. The adjutants general were

there because they always accompanied the Emperor, and
lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn
up the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having
induced Alexander to believe in the efficacy of that plan,
was directing the whole business of the war. With Pfuel
was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel’s thoughts in a more
comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a harsh,
bookish theorist, self-confident to the point of despising
everyone else) was able to do.
Besides these Russians and foreigners who
propounded new and unexpected ideas every day-
especially the foreigners, who did so with a boldness
characteristic of people employed in a country not their
own- there were many secondary personages
accompanying the army because their principals were
there.
Among the opinions and voices in this immense,
restless, brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew
noticed the following sharply defined subdivisions of and
parties:
The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents-
military theorists who believed in a science of war with
immutable laws- laws of oblique movements,

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outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents

demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in
accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory
of war, and they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil
intention in every deviation from that theory. To this party
belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode,
and others, chiefly Germans.
The second party was directly opposed to the first; one
extreme, as always happens, was met by representatives
of the other. The members of this party were those who
had demanded an advance from Vilna into Poland and
freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides being
advocates of bold action, this section also represented
nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the
dispute. They were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who
was beginning to come to the front), and others. At that
time a famous joke of Ermolov’s was being circulated,
that as a great favor he had petitioned the Emperor to
make him a German. The men of that party, remembering
Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason,
or stick pins into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep
him out of Russia, and not let the army get discouraged.
To the third party- in which the Emperor had most
confidence- belonged the courtiers who tried to arrange

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compromises between the other two. The members of this

party, chiefly civilians and to whom Arakcheev belonged,
thought and said what men who have no convictions but
wish to seem to have some generally say. They said that
undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as
Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most
deeply devised plans and profound scientific knowledge
and in that respect Pfuel was a genius, but at the same
time it had to be acknowledged that the theorists are often
one sided, and therefore one should not trust them
absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel’s
opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had
to say, and then choose a middle course. They insisted on
the retention of the camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel’s
plan, but on changing the movements of the other armies.
Though, by this course, neither one aim nor the other
could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents of
this third party.
Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous
representative was the Tsarevich, who could not forget his
disillusionment at Austerlitz, where he had ridden out at
the head of the Guards, in his casque and cavalry uniform
as to a review, expecting to crush the French gallantly;
but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had

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narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of

this party had both the quality and the defect of frankness
in their opinions. They feared Napoleon, recognized his
strength and their own weakness, and frankly said so.
They said: ‘Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin will
come of all this! We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk
and shall abandon Drissa. The only reasonable thing left
to do is to conclude peace as soon as possible, before we
are turned out of Petersburg.’
This view was very general in the upper army circles
and found support also in Petersburg and from the
chancellor, Rumyantsev, who, for other reasons of state,
was in favor of peace.
The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents
of Barclay de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister
of war and commander in chief. ‘Be he what he may’
(they always began like that), ‘he is an honest, practical
man and we have nobody better. Give him real power, for
war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of
command, and he will show what he can do, as he did in
Finland. If our army is well organized and strong and has
withdrawn to Drissa without suffering any defeats, we
owe this entirely to Barclay. If Barclay is now to be

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superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for Bennigsen

showed his incapacity already in 1807.’
The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the
contrary, that at any rate there was no one more active and
experienced than Bennigsen: ‘and twist about as you may,
you will have to come to Bennigsen eventually. Let the
others make mistakes now!’ said they, arguing that our
retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse and an
unbroken series of blunders. ‘The more mistakes that are
made the better. It will at any rate be understood all the
sooner that things cannot go on like this. What is wanted
is not some Barclay or other, but a man like Bennigsen,
who made his mark in 1807, and to whom Napoleon
himself did justice- a man whose authority would be
willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the only such
man.’
The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who
are always to be found, especially around young
sovereigns, and of whom there were particularly many
round Alexander- generals and imperial aides-de-camp
passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a
monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and
disinterestedly, as Rostov had done in 1805, and who saw
in him not only all the virtues but all human capabilities

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as well. These men, though enchanted with the sovereign

for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for
such excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted
that their adored sovereign should abandon his diffidence
and openly announce that he would place himself at the
head of the army, gather round him a commander in
chief’s staff, and, consulting experienced theoreticians
and practical men where necessary, would himself lead
the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the
highest pitch.
The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous
numbers was to the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted
of men who desired neither peace nor war, neither an
advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa or anywhere
else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor
Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing- as much
advantage and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the
troubled waters of conflicting and intersecting intrigues
that eddied about the Emperor’s headquarters, it was
possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at other
times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative
post would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his
opponent, and the day after, merely to avoid responsibility
or to please the Emperor, would declare that he had no

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opinion at all on the matter. Another who wished to gain

some advantage would attract the Emperor’s attention by
loudly advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted
at the day before, and would dispute and shout at the
council, beating his breast and challenging those who did
not agree with him to duels, thereby proving that he was
prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good. A
third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils
would simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful
services, well knowing that at that moment people would
be too busy to refuse him. A fourth while seemingly
overwhelmed with work would often come accidentally
under the Emperor’s eye. A fifth, to achieve his long-
cherished aim of dining with the Emperor, would
stubbornly insist on the correctness or falsity of some
newly emerging opinion and for this object would
produce arguments more or less forcible and correct.
All the men of this party were fishing for rubles,
decorations, and promotions, and in this pursuit watched
only the weathercock of imperial favor, and directly they
noticed it turning in any direction, this whole drone
population of the army began blowing hard that way, so
that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it
elsewhere. Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the

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menace of serious danger giving a peculiarly threatening

character to everything, amid this vortex of intrigue,
egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity
of race among these people- this eighth and largest party
of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted
great confusion and obscurity to the common task.
Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones,
without having finished their buzzing on a previous
theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum
drowned and obscured the voices of those who were
disputing honestly.
From among all these parties, just at the time Prince
Andrew reached the army, another, a ninth party, was
being formed and was beginning to raise its voice. This
was the party of the elders, reasonable men experienced
and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any of
those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached
view of what was going on at the staff at headquarters and
to consider means of escape from this muddle, indecision,
intricacy, and weakness.
The men of this party said and thought that what was
wrong resulted chiefly from the Emperor’s presence in the
army with his military court and from the consequent
presence there of an indefinite, conditional, and unsteady

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fluctuation of relations, which is in place at court but

harmful in an army; that a sovereign should reign but not
command the army, and that the only way out of the
position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave
the army; that the mere presence of the Emperor
paralyzed the action of fifty thousand men required to
secure his personal safety, and that the worst commander
in chief if independent would be better than the very best
one trammeled by the presence and authority of the
monarch.
Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied
at Drissa, Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the
chief representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the
Emperor which Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign.
In this letter, availing himself of permission given him by
the Emperor to discuss the general course of affairs, he
respectfully suggested- on the plea that it was necessary
for the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the people
of the capital- that the Emperor should leave the army.
That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his
call to them to defend their country- the very incitement
which was the chief cause of Russia’s triumph in so far as
it was produced by the Tsar’s personal presence in

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Moscow- was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by

him, as a pretext for quitting the army.

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Chapter X

This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor

when Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that
the sovereign wished to see him personally, to question
him about Turkey, and that Prince Andrew was to present
himself at Bennigsen’s quarters at six that evening.
News was received at the Emperor’s quarters that very
day of a fresh movement by Napoleon which might
endanger the army- news subsequently found to be false.
And that morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the
Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out
to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and
till then considered a chef-d’oeuvre of tactical science
which would ensure Napoleon’s destruction, was an
absurdity, threatening the destruction of the Russian
army.
Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen’s quarters- a
country gentleman’s house of moderate size, situated on
the very banks of the river. Neither Bennigsen nor the
Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the Emperor’s aide-
de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the
Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and

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Marquis Paulucci, had gone a second time that day to

inspect the fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the
suitability of which serious doubts were beginning to be
felt.
Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room
with a French novel in his hand. This room had probably
been a music room; there was still an organ in it on which
some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood the folding
bedstead of Bennigsen’s adjutant. This adjutant was also
there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, evidently
exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the
room, one straight on into what had been the drawing
room, and another, on the right, to the study. Through the
first door came the sound of voices conversing in German
and occasionally in French. In that drawing room were
gathered, by the Emperor’s wish, not a military council
(the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain
persons whose opinions he wished to know in view of the
impending difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as
it were, a council to elucidate certain questions for the
Emperor personally. To this semicouncil had been invited
the Swedish General Armfeldt, Adjutant General
Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred
to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count

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Stein who was not a military man at all, and Pfuel

himself, who, as Prince Andrew had heard, was the
mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had an
opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel
arrived soon after himself and, in passing through to the
drawing room, stopped a minute to speak to Chernyshev.
At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a
Russian general, which fitted him badly like a fancy
costume, seemed familiar to Prince Andrew, though he
saw him now for the first time. There was about him
something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many
other German theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had
seen in 1805, but he was more typical than any of them.
Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German theorist in
whom all the characteristics of those others were united to
such an extent.
Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of
coarse, robust build, broad in the hips, and with prominent
shoulder blades. His face was much wrinkled and his eyes
deep set. His hair had evidently been hastily brushed
smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in
quaint little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly
and angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that large
apartment. Awkwardly holding up his sword, he

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addressed Chernyshev and asked in German where the

Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass
through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the
bows and greetings, and sit down to business in front of a
map, where he would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly
in reply to Chernyshev, and smiled ironically on hearing
that the sovereign was inspecting the fortifications that he,
Pfuel, had planned in accord with his theory. He muttered
something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice, as self-
assured Germans do- it might have been ‘stupid fellow"...
or ‘the whole affair will be ruined,’ or ‘something absurd
will come of it.’... Prince Andrew did not catch what he
said and would have passed on, but Chernyshev
introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince Andrew
was just back from Turkey where the war had terminated
so fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced- not so much at
Prince Andrew as past him- and said, with a laugh: ‘That
must have been a fine tactical war"; and, laughing
contemptuously, went on into the room from which the
sound of voices was heard.
Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was
particularly disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that
they had dared to inspect and criticize his camp in his
absence. From this short interview with Pfuel, Prince

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Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz experiences, was able to

form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was one of
those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men, self-
confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are,
because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of
an abstract notion- science, that is, the supposed
knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured
because he regards himself personally, both in mind and
body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An
Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-
organized state in the world, and therefore as an
Englishman always knows what he should do and knows
that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct.
An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and
easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-
assured just because he knows nothing does not want to
know anything, since he does not believe that anything
can be known. The German’s self-assurance is worst of
all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because
he imagines that he knows the truth- science- which he
himself has invented but which is for him the absolute
truth.
Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science- the
theory of oblique movements deduced by him from the

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history of Frederick the Great’s wars, and all he came

across in the history of more recent warfare seemed to
him absurd and barbarous- monstrous collisions in which
so many blunders were committed by both sides that these
wars could not be called wars, they did not accord with
the theory, and therefore could not serve as material for
science.
In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for
the plan of campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt,
but he did not see the least proof of the fallibility of his
theory in the disasters of that war. On the contrary, the
deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion, the
sole cause of the whole disaster, and with
characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark,
‘There, I said the whole affair would go to the devil!’
Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love their
theory that they lose sight of the theory’s object- its
practical application. His love of theory made him hate
everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was
even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from
deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him
the accuracy of his theory.
He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev
about the present war, with the air of a man who knows

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beforehand that all will go wrong, and who is not

displeased that it should be so. The unbrushed tufts of hair
sticking up behind and the hastily brushed hair on his
temples expressed this most eloquently.
He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous
sounds of his voice were at once heard from there.

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Chapter XI

Prince Andrew’s eyes were still following Pfuel out of

the room when Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and
nodding to Bolkonski, but not pausing, went into the
study, giving instructions to his adjutant as he went. The
Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened
on to make some preparations and to be ready to receive
the sovereign. Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out
into the porch, where the Emperor, who looked fatigued,
was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was talking to him
with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head
bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The
Emperor moved forward evidently wishing to end the
conversation, but the flushed and excited Italian,
oblivious of decorum, followed him and continued to
speak.
‘And as for the man who advised forming this camp-
the Drissa camp,’ said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted
the steps and noticing Prince Andrew scanned his
unfamiliar face, ‘as to that person, sire...’ continued
Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain

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himself, ‘the man who advised the Drissa camp- I see no

alternative but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!’
Without heeding the end of the Italian’s remarks, and
as though not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing
Bolkonski, addressed him graciously.
‘I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are
meeting, and wait for me.’
The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by
Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein,
and the door closed behind them. Prince Andrew, taking
advantage of the Emperor’s permission, accompanied
Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the
drawing room where the council was assembled.
Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the
position, as it were, of chief of the Emperor’s staff. He
came out of the study into the drawing room with some
maps which he spread on a table, and put questions on
which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen
present. What had happened was that news (which
afterwards proved to be false) had been received during
the night of a movement by the French to outflank the
Drissa camp.
The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet
the difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed

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a perfectly new position away from the Petersburg and

Moscow roads. The reason for this was inexplicable
(unless he wished to show that he, too, could have an
opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should
unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that
Armfeldt had thought out that plan long ago and now
expounded it not so much to answer the questions put-
which, in fact, his plan did not answer- as to avail himself
of the opportunity to air it. It was one of the millions of
proposals, one as good as another, that could be made as
long as it was quite unknown what character the war
would take. Some disputed his arguments, others
defended them. Young Count Toll objected to the
Swedish general’s views more warmly than anyone else,
and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket
a well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to read
to them. In these voluminous notes Toll suggested another
scheme, totally different from Armfeldt’s or Pfuel’s plan
of campaign. In answer to Toll, Paulucci suggested an
advance and an attack, which, he urged, could alone
extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the trap
(as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.
During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter,
Wolzogen (his ‘bridge’ in court relations), were silent.

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Pfuel only snorted contemptuously and turned away, to

show that he would never demean himself by replying to
such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when Prince
Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his
opinion, he merely said:
‘Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a
splendid position with an exposed rear, or why not this
Italian gentleman’s attack- very fine, or a retreat, also
good! Why ask me?’ said he. ‘Why, you yourselves know
everything better than I do.’
But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in
the Emperor’s name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose
and, suddenly growing animated, began to speak:
‘Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled,
everybody thought they knew better than I did, and now
you come to me! How mend matters? There is nothing to
mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly
adhered to,’ said he, drumming on the table with his bony
fingers. ‘What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!’
He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began
proving that no eventuality could alter the efficiency of
the Drissa camp, that everything had been foreseen, and
that if the enemy were really going to outflank it, the
enemy would inevitably be destroyed.

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Paulucci, who did not know German, began

questioning him in French. Wolzogen came to the
assistance of his chief, who spoke French badly, and
began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with
Pfuel, who was rapidly demonstrating that not only all
that had happened, but all that could happen, had been
foreseen in his scheme, and that if there were now any
difficulties the whole fault lay in the fact that his plan had
not been precisely executed. He kept laughing
sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously
ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases
to prove in various ways the accuracy of a problem that
has already been proved. Wolzogen took his place and
continued to explain his views in French, every now and
then turning to Pfuel and saying, ‘Is it not so, your
excellency?’ But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who
strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own
supporter, Wolzogen:
‘Well, of course, what more is there to explain?’
Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen
simultaneously in French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in
German. Toll explained to Volkonski in Russian. Prince
Andrew listened and observed in silence.

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Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most

with Pfuel, angry, determined, and absurdly self-confident
as he was. Of all those present, evidently he alone was not
seeking anything for himself, nursed no hatred against
anyone, and only desired that the plan, formed on a theory
arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out. He was
ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired
involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an idea.
Besides this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one
common trait that had not been noticeable at the council
of war in 1805: there was now a panic fear of Napoleon’s
genius, which, though concealed, was noticeable in every
rejoinder. Everything was assumed to be possible for
Napoleon, they expected him from every side, and
invoked his terrible name to shatter each other’s
proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to consider Napoleon a
barbarian like everyone else who opposed his theory. But
besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in Prince
Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed
him and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of
him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain
desperation in Pfuel’s own expressions, it was clear that
the others knew, and Pfuel himself felt, that his fall was at
hand. And despite his self-confidence and grumpy

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German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly

brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind.
Though he concealed the fact under a show of irritation
and contempt, he was evidently in despair that the sole
remaining chance of verifying his theory by a huge
experiment and proving its soundness to the whole world
was slipping away from him.
The discussions continued a long time, and the longer
they lasted the more heated became the disputes,
culminating in shouts and personalities, and the less was it
possible to arrive at any general conclusion from all that
had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to this polyglot
talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and shouts,
felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A
thought that had long since and often occurred to him
during his military activities- the idea that there is not and
cannot be any science of war, and that therefore there can
be no such thing as a military genius- now appeared to
him an obvious truth. ‘What theory and science is
possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances
of which are unknown and cannot be defined, especially
when the strength of the acting forces cannot be
ascertained? No one was or is able to foresee in what
condition our or the enemy’s armies will be in a day’s

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time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that

detachment. Sometimes- when there is not a coward at the
front to shout, ‘We are cut off!’ and start running, but a
brave and jolly lad who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’- a detachment
of five thousand is worth thirty thousand, as at Schon
Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight
thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a
matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be
defined and everything depends on innumerable
conditions, the significance of which is determined at a
particular moment which arrives no one knows when?
Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says
we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud
says that the worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in
having the river behind it, and Pfuel says that is what
constitutes its strength; Toll proposes one plan, Armfeldt
another, and they are all good and all bad, and the
advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the
moment of trial. And why do they all speak of a ‘military
genius’? Is a man a genius who can order bread to be
brought up at the right time and say who is to go to the
right and who to the left? It is only because military men
are invested with pomp and power and crowds of
sychophants flatter power, attributing to it qualities of

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genius it does not possess. The best generals I have

known were, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded
men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted
that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited,
self-satisfied face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does
a good army commander not need any special qualities,
on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and
best human attributes- love, poetry, tenderness, and
philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly
convinced that what he is doing is very important
(otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only
then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should
be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just
and unjust. It is understandable that a theory of their
‘genius’ was invented for them long ago because they
have power! The success of a military action depends not
on them, but on the man in the ranks who shouts, ‘We are
lost!’ or who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’ And only in the ranks can
one serve with assurance of being useful.’
So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking,
and he roused himself only when Paulucci called him and
everyone was leaving.
At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince
Andrew where he would like to serve, and Prince Andrew

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lost his standing in court circles forever by not asking to

remain attached to the sovereign’s person, but for
permission to serve in the army.

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Chapter XII

Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had

received a letter from his parents in which they told him
briefly of Natasha’s illness and the breaking off of her
engagement to Prince Andrew (which they explained by
Natasha’s having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas
to retire from the army and return home. On receiving this
letter, Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get
leave of absence or to retire from the army, but wrote to
his parents that he was sorry Natasha was ill and her
engagement broken off, and that he would do all he could
to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.
‘Adored friend of my soul!’ he wrote. ‘Nothing but
honor could keep me from returning to the country. But
now, at the commencement of the campaign, I should feel
dishonored, not only in my comrades’ eyes but in my
own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and duty
to the Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation.
Believe me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and
still loved by you, I will throw up everything and fly to
you, to press you forever to my ardent breast.’

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It was, in fact, only the commencement of the

campaign that prevented Rostov from returning home as
he had promised and marrying Sonya. The autumn in
Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the
Christmas holidays and Sonya’s love, had opened out to
him a vista of tranquil rural joys and peace such as he had
never known before, and which now allured him. ‘A
splendid wife, children, a good pack of hounds, a dozen
leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors, service
by election...’ thought he. But now the campaign was
beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And
since it had to be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to
him, felt contented with the life he led in the regiment and
was able to find pleasure in that life.
On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been
joyfully welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain
remounts and brought back from the Ukraine excellent
horses which pleased him and earned him commendation
from his commanders. During his absence he had been
promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war
footing with an increase in numbers, he was again allotted
his old squadron.
The campaign began, the regiment was moved into
Poland on double pay, new officers arrived, new men and

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horses, and above all everybody was infected with the

merrily excited mood that goes with the commencement
of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous
position in the regiment, devoted himself entirely to the
pleasures and interests of military service, though he
knew that sooner or later he would have to relinquish
them.
The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated
reasons of state, political and strategic. Each step of the
retreat was accompanied by a complicated interplay of
interests, arguments, and passions at headquarters. For the
Pavlograd hussars, however, the whole of this retreat
during the finest period of summer and with sufficient
supplies was a very simple and agreeable business.
It was only at headquarters that there was depression,
uneasiness, and intriguing; in the body of the army they
did not ask themselves where they were going or why. If
they regretted having to retreat, it was only because they
had to leave billets they had grown accustomed to, or
some pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that things
looked bad chanced to enter anyone’s head, he tried to be
as cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the
general trend of affairs, but only of the task nearest to
hand. First they camped gaily before Vilna, making

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acquaintance with the Polish landowners, preparing for

reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor and other
high commanders. Then came an order to retreat to
Sventsyani and destroy any provisions they could not
carry away with them. Sventsyani was remembered by the
hussars only as the drunken camp, a name the whole army
gave to their encampment there, and because many
complaints were made against the troops, who, taking
advantage of the order to collect provisions, took also
horses, carriages, and carpets from the Polish proprietors.
Rostov remembered Sventsyani, because on the first day
of their arrival at that small town he changed his sergeant
major and was unable to manage all the drunken men of
his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five
barrels of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther
and farther to Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa,
drawing near to the frontier of Russia proper.
On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a
serious action for the first time.
On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there
was a heavy storm of rain and hail. In general, the
summer of 18l2 was remarkable for its storms.
The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a
field of rye, which was already in ear but had been

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completely trodden down by cattle and horses. The rain

was descending in torrents, and Rostov, with a young
officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a hastily
constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with
long mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after
riding to the staff had been overtaken by the rain, entered
Rostov’s shelter.
‘I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of
Raevski’s exploit?’
And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov
battle, which he had heard at the staff.
Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as
the water trickled down his neck, listened inattentively,
with an occasional glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close
to him. This officer, a lad of sixteen who had recently
joined the regiment, was now in the same relation to
Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years
before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and
adored him as a girl might have done.
Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke
grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being ‘a Russian
Thermopylae,’ and of how a deed worthy of antiquity had
been performed by General Raevski. He recounted how
Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific

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fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard
the story and not only said nothing to encourage
Zdrzhinski’s enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like
a man ashamed of what he was hearing, though with no
intention of contradicting it. Since the campaigns of
Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that
men always lie when describing military exploits, as he
himself had done when recounting them; besides that, he
had experience enough to know that nothing happens in
war at all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not
like Zdrzhinski’s tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski himself
who, with his mustaches extending over his cheeks, bent
low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and
crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at
him in silence. ‘In the first place, there must have been
such a confusion and crowding on the dam that was being
attacked that if Raevski did lead his sons there, it could
have had no effect except perhaps on some dozen men
nearest to him,’ thought he, ‘the rest could not have seen
how or with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even
those who did see it would not have been much stimulated
by it, for what had they to do with Raevski’s tender
paternal feelings when their own skins were in danger?
And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did not depend on

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whether they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are told

was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have
made such a sacrifice? And why expose his own children
in the battle? I would not have taken my brother Petya
there, or even Ilyin, who’s a stranger to me but a nice lad,
but would have tried to put them somewhere under
cover,’ Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to
Zdrzhinski. But he did not express his thoughts, for in
such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew that
this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one
had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted accordingly.
‘I can’t stand this any more,’ said Ilyin, noticing that
Rostov did not relish Zdrzhinski’s conversation. ‘My
stockings and shirt... and the water is running on my seat!
I’ll go and look for shelter. The rain seems less heavy.’
Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.
Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud,
came running back to the shanty.
‘Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I’ve found it! About two
hundred yards away there’s a tavern where ours have
already gathered. We can at least get dry there, and Mary
Hendrikhovna’s there.’
Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental
doctor, a pretty young German woman he had married in

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Poland. The doctor, whether from lack of means or

because he did not like to part from his young wife in the
early days of their marriage, took her about with him
wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had
become a standing joke among the hussar officers.
Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to
Lavrushka to follow with the things, and- now slipping in
the mud, now splashing right through it- set off with Ilyin
in the lessening rain and the darkness that was
occasionally rent by distant lightning.
‘Rostov, where are you?’
‘Here. What lightning!’ they called to one another.

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Chapter XIII

In the tavern, before which stood the doctor’s covered

cart, there were already some five officers. Mary
Hendrikhovna, a plump little blonde German, in a
dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench
in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep
behind her. Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were
welcomed with merry shouts and laughter.
‘Dear me, how jolly we are!’ said Rostov laughing.
‘And why do you stand there gaping?’
‘What swells they are! Why, the water streams from
them! Don’t make our drawing room so wet.’
‘Don’t mess Mary Hendrikhovna’s dress!’ cried other
voices.
Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they
could change into dry clothes without offending Mary
Hendrikhovna’s modesty. They were going into a tiny
recess behind a partition to change, but found it
completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards
by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and
these officers would on no account yield their position.
Mary Hendrikhovna obliged them with the loan of a

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petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that screen

Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had brought
their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.
A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A
board was found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a
horsecloth, a small samovar was produced and a cellaret
and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary
Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her. One
offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming
hands, another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep
them from the damp, another hung his coat over the
window to keep out the draft, and yet another waved the
flies off her husband’s face, lest he should wake up.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling
timidly and happily. ‘He is sleeping well as it is, after a
sleepless night.’
‘Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna,’ replied the officer, ‘one
must look after the doctor. Perhaps he’ll take pity on me
someday, when it comes to cutting off a leg or an arm for
me.’
There were only three tumblers, the water was so
muddy that one could not make out whether the tea was
strong or weak, and the samovar held only six tumblers of
water, but this made it all the pleasanter to take turns in

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order of seniority to receive one’s tumbler from Mary

Hendrikhovna’s plump little hands with their short and
not overclean nails. All the officers appeared to be, and
really were, in love with her that evening. Even those
playing cards behind the partition soon left their game and
came over to the samovar, yielding to the general mood of
courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself
surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men,
beamed with satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and
perturbed as she evidently was each time her husband
moved in his sleep behind her.
There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful
than anything else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it
was decided that Mary Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar
for everyone in turn. Rostov received his tumbler, and
adding some rum to it asked Mary Hendrikhovna to stir it.
‘But you take it without sugar?’ she said, smiling all
the time, as if everything she said and everything the
others said was very amusing and had a double meaning.
‘It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand
should stir my tea.’
Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for
the spoon which someone meanwhile had pounced on.

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‘Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still

nicer,’ said Rostov.
‘Too hot!’ she replied, blushing with pleasure.
Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water
and brought it to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it
with her finger.
‘This is my cup,’ said he. ‘Only dip your finger in it
and I’ll drink it all up.’
When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a
pack of cards and proposed that they should play ‘Kings’
with Mary Hendrikhovna. They drew lots to settle who
should make up her set. At Rostov’s suggestion it was
agreed that whoever became ‘King’ should have the right
to kiss Mary Hendrikhovna’s hand, and that the ‘Booby’
should go to refill and reheat the samovar for the doctor
when the latter awoke.
‘Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is ‘King’?’
asked Ilyin.
‘As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!’
They had hardly begun to play before the doctor’s
disheveled head suddenly appeared from behind Mary
Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for some time,
listening to what was being said, and evidently found
nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on.

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His face was sad and depressed. Without greeting the

officers, he scratched himself and asked to be allowed to
pass as they were blocking the way. As soon as he had
left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter and
Mary Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears
and thereby became still more attractive to them.
Returning from the yard, the doctor told his wife (who
had ceased to smile so happily, and looked at him in
alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had ceased and
they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or everything
in it would be stolen.
‘But I’ll send an orderly.... Two of them!’ said Rostov.
‘What an idea, doctor!’
‘I’ll stand guard on it myself!’ said Ilyin.
‘No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have
not slept for two nights,’ replied the doctor, and he sat
down morosely beside his wife, waiting for the game to
end.
Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the
officers grew still merrier, and some of them could not
refrain from laughter, for which they hurriedly sought
plausible pretexts. When he had gone, taking his wife
with him, and had settled down with her in their covered
cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering

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themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep
for a long time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling
the doctor’s uneasiness and his wife’s delight, now they
ran out into the porch and reported what was taking place
in the covered trap. Several times Rostov, covering his
head, tried to go to sleep, but some remark would arouse
him and conversation would be resumed, to the
accompaniment of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.

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Chapter XIV

It was nearly three o’clock but no one was yet asleep,

when the quartermaster appeared with an order to move
on to the little town of Ostrovna. Still laughing and
talking, the officers began hurriedly getting ready and
again boiled again boiled some muddy water in the
samovar. But Rostov went off to his squadron without
waiting for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased,
and the clouds were dispersing. It felt damp and cold,
especially in clothes that were still moist. As they left the
tavern in the twilight of the dawn, Rostov and Ilyin both
glanced under the wet and glistening leather hood of the
doctor’s cart, from under the apron of which his feet were
sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife’s
nightcap was visible and her sleepy breathing audible.
‘She really is a dear little thing,’ said Rostov to Ilyin,
who was following him.
‘A charming woman!’ said Ilyin, with all the gravity of
a boy of sixteen.
Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the
road. The command was heard to ‘mount’ and the soldiers
crossed themselves and mounted. Rostov riding in front

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gave the order ‘Forward!’ and the hussars, with clanking

sabers and subdued talk, their horses’ hoofs splashing in
the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad road
planted with birch trees on each side, following the
infantry and a battery that had gone on in front.
Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east,
were scudding before the wind. It was growing lighter and
lighter. That curly grass which always grows by country
roadsides became clearly visible, still wet with the night’s
rain; the drooping branches of the birches, also wet,
swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of water
to one side. The soldiers’ faces were more and more
clearly visible. Rostov, always closely followed by Ilyin,
rode along the side of the road between two rows of birch
trees.
When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the
indulgence of riding not a regimental but a Cossack horse.
A judge of horses and a sportsman, he had lately procured
himself a large, fine, mettlesome, Donets horse, dun-
colored, with light mane and tail, and when he rode it no
one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a pleasure
to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the
doctor’s wife, but not once of the impending danger.

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Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt

afraid; now he had not the least feeling of fear. He was
fearless, not because he had grown used to being under
fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but because he had
learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He
had grown accustomed when going into action to think
about anything but what would seem most likely to
interest him- the impending danger. During the first
period of his service, hard as he tried and much as he
reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able
to do this, but with time it had come of itself. Now he
rode beside Ilyin under the birch trees, occasionally
plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand,
sometimes touching his horse’s side with his foot, or,
without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to
an hussar riding behind him, with as calm and careless an
air as though he were merely out for a ride. He glanced
with pity at the excited face of Ilyin, who talked much and
in great agitation. He knew from experience the
tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet was
suffering and knew that only time could help him.
As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky
beneath the clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil
the beauty of the summer morning after the storm; drops

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still continued to fall, but vertically now, and all was still.
The whole sun appeared on the horizon and disappeared
behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it. A few
minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind the
top of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright
and glittered. And with that light, and as if in reply to it,
came the sound of guns ahead of them.
Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine
the distance of that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy’s
adjutant came galloping from Vitebsk with orders to
advance at a trot along the road.
The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the
battery- which had also quickened their pace- rode down
a hill, and passing through an empty and deserted village
again ascended. The horses began to lather and the men to
flush.
‘Halt! Dress your ranks!’ the order of the regimental
commander was heard ahead. ‘Forward by the left. Walk,
march!’ came the order from in front.
And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the
left flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who
were in the front line. To the right stood our infantry in a
dense column: they were the reserve. Higher up the hill,
on the very horizon, our guns were visible through the

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wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated by slanting

morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could
be seen the enemy’s columns and guns. Our advanced
line, already in action, could be heard briskly exchanging
shots with the enemy in the dale.
At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov’s spirits rose, as
at the strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap!
cracked the shots, now together, now several quickly one
after another. Again all was silent and then again it
sounded as if someone were walking on detonators and
exploding them.
The hussars remained in the same place for about an
hour. A cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite
rode up behind the squadron, halted, spoke to the
commander of the regiment, and rode up the hill to the
guns.
After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the
Uhlans.
‘Form column! Prepare to charge!’
The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to
allow the cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the
streamers on their spears fluttering, and trotted downhill
toward the French cavalry which was seen below to the
left.

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As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars

were ordered up the hill to support the battery. As they
took the places vacated by the Uhlans, bullets came from
the front, whining and whistling, but fell spent without
taking effect.
The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an
even more pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov
than the previous sounds of firing. Drawing himself up,
he viewed the field of battle opening out before him from
the hill, and with his whole soul followed the movement
of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French
dragoons, something confused happened there amid the
smoke, and five minutes later our Uhlans were galloping
back, not to the place they had occupied but more to the
left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans on chestnut
horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French
dragoons on gray horses could be seen.

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Chapter XV

Rostov, with his keen sportsman’s eye, was one of the

first to catch sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing
our Uhlans. Nearer and nearer in disorderly crowds came
the Uhlans and the French dragoons pursuing them. He
could already see how these men, who looked so small at
the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another,
waving their arms and their sabers in the air.
Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a
hunt. He felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the
French dragoons now, the latter could not withstand them,
but if a charge was to be made it must be done now, at
that very moment, or it would be too late. He looked
around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing like
himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.
‘Andrew Sevastyanych!’ said Rostov. ‘You know, we
could crush them...’
‘A fine thing too!’ replied the captain, ‘and really..’
Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his
horse, galloped to the front of his squadron, and before he
had time to finish giving the word of command, the whole
squadron, sharing his feeling, was following him. Rostov

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himself did not know how or why he did it. He acted as he

did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He
saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in
disorder; he knew they could not withstand an attack-
knew there was only that moment and that if he let it slip
it would not return. The bullets were whining and
whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse was
so eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He
touched his horse, gave the word of command, and
immediately, hearing behind him the tramp of the horses
of his deployed squadron, rode at full trot downhill
toward the dragoons. Hardly had they reached the bottom
of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a
gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer
to our Uhlans and the French dragoons who galloped after
them. The dragoons were now close at hand. On seeing
the hussars, the foremost began to turn, while those
behind began to halt. With the same feeling with which he
had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave rein
to his Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of
the dragoons’ disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped,
another who was on foot flung himself to the ground to
avoid being knocked over, and a riderless horse fell in
among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were

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galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse,

dashed after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his
gallant horse cleared it, and almost before he had righted
himself in his saddle he saw that he would immediately
overtake the enemy he had selected. That Frenchman, by
his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching
on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In
another moment Rostov’s horse dashed its breast against
the hindquarters of the officer’s horse, almost knocking it
over, and at the same instant Rostov, without knowing
why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman with it.
The instant he had done this, all Rostov’s animation
vanished. The officer fell, not so much from the blow-
which had but slightly cut his arm above the elbow- as
from the shock to his horse and from fright. Rostov reined
in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see whom he
had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping
with one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the
stirrup. His eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every
moment expected another blow, gazed up at Rostov with
shrinking terror. His pale and mud-stained face- fair and
young, with a dimple in the chin and light-blue eyes- was
not an enemy’s face at all suited to a battlefield, but a
most ordinary, homelike face. Before Rostov had decided

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what to do with him, the officer cried, ‘I surrender!’ He

hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup
and did not remove his frightened blue eyes from
Rostov’s face. Some hussars who galloped up disengaged
his foot and helped him into the saddle. On all sides, the
hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was wounded,
but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up
his horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with
his arms round him; a third was being helped by an hussar
to mount his horse. In front, the French infantry were
firing as they ran. The hussars galloped hastily back with
their prisoners. Rostov galloped back with the rest, aware
of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart.
Something vague and confused, which he could not at all
account for, had come over him with the capture of that
officer and the blow he had dealt him.
Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars,
sent for Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his
gallant deed to the Emperor and would recommend him
for a St. George’s Cross. When sent for by Count
Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged
without orders, felt sure his commander was sending for
him to punish him for breach of discipline. Ostermann’s
flattering words and promise of a reward should therefore

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have struck him all the more pleasantly, but he still felt
that same vaguely disagreeable feeling of moral nausea.
‘But what on earth is worrying me?’ he asked himself as
he rode back from the general. ‘Ilyin? No, he’s safe. Have
I disgraced myself in any way? No, that’s not it.’
Something else, resembling remorse, tormented him.
‘Yes, oh yes, that French officer with the dimple. And I
remember how my arm paused when I raised it.’
Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped
after them to have a look at his Frenchman with the
dimple on his chin. He was sitting in his foreign uniform
on an hussar packhorse and looked anxiously about him;
The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called a
wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and
waved his hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same
indefinite feeling, as of shame.
All that day and the next his friends and comrades
noticed that Rostov, without being dull or angry, was
silent, thoughtful, and preoccupied. He drank reluctantly,
tried to remain alone, and kept turning something over in
his mind.
Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit
of his, which to his amazement had gained him the St.
George’s Cross and even given him a reputation for

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bravery, and there was something he could not at all

understand. ‘So others are even more afraid than I am!’ he
thought. ‘So that’s all there is in what is called heroism!
And heroism! And did I do it for my country’s sake? And
how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And
how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him.
Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have
given me a St. George’s Cross.... I can’t make it out at
all.’
But while Nicholas was considering these questions
and still could reach no clear solution of what puzzled
him so, the wheel of fortune in the service, as often
happens, turned in his favor. After the affair at Ostrovna
he was brought into notice, received command of an
hussar battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he
was chosen.

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Chapter XVI

On receiving news of Natasha’s illness, the countess,

though not quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow
with Petya and the rest of the household, and the whole
family moved from Marya Dmitrievna’s house to their
own and settled down in town.
Natasha’s illness was so serious that, fortunately for
her and for her parents, the consideration of all that had
caused the illness, her conduct and the breaking off of her
engagement, receded into the background. She was so ill
that it was impossible for them to consider in how far she
was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat or
sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors
made them feel, was in danger. They could not think of
anything but how to help her. Doctors came to see her
singly and in consultation, talked much in French,
German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a
great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to
them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them
that they could not know the disease Natasha was
suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can
be known, for every living person has his own

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peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal,

novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine- not a
disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on
mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of
one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of
those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the
doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to
work his charms) because the business of their lives was
to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the
best years of their lives on that business. But, above all,
that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that
they saw they were really useful, as in fact they were to
the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not depend
on making the patient swallow substances for the most
part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they
were given in small doses), but they were useful,
necessary, and indispensable because they satisfied a
mental need of the invalid and of those who loved her-
and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-
healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They
satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for
sympathy, and that something should be done, which is
felt by those who are suffering. They satisfied the need
seen in its most elementary form in a child, when it wants

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to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A child knocks

itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or nurse to
have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better
when this is done. The child cannot believe that the
strongest and wisest of its people have no remedy for its
pain, and the hope of relief and the expression of its
mother’s sympathy while she rubs the bump comforts it.
The doctors were of use to Natasha because they kissed
and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon pass
if only the coachman went to the chemist’s in the Arbat
and got a powder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble
and seventy kopeks, and if she took those powders in
boiled water at intervals of precisely two hours, neither
more nor less.
What would Sonya and the count and countess have
done, how would they have looked, if nothing had been
done, if there had not been those pills to give by the clock,
the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the other
details of life ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of
which supplied an occupation and consolation to the
family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly
loved daughter’s illness had he not known that it was
costing him a thousand rubles, and that he would not
grudge thousands more to benefit her, or had he not

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known that if her illness continued he would not grudge

yet other thousands and would take her abroad for
consultations there, and had he not been able to explain
the details of how Metivier and Feller had not understood
the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had diagnosed
them even better? What would the countess have done
had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for
not strictly obeying the doctor’s orders?
‘You’ll never get well like that,’ she would say,
forgetting her grief in her vexation, ‘if you won’t obey the
doctor and take your medicine at the right time! You
mustn’t trifle with it, you know, or it may turn to
pneumonia,’ she would go on, deriving much comfort
from the utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible
to others as well as to herself.
What would Sonya have done without the glad
consciousness that she had not undressed during the first
three nights, in order to be ready to carry out all the
doctor’s injunctions with precision, and that she still kept
awake at night so as not to miss the proper time when the
slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be
administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to
see that so many sacrifices were being made for her sake,
and to know that she had to take medicine at certain

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hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure

her and that it was all nonsense. And it was even pleasant
to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she did
not believe in medical treatment and did not value her
life.
The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at
her tongue, and regardless of her grief-stricken face joked
with her. But when he had gone into another room, to
which the countess hurriedly followed him, he assumed a
grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said that
though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this
last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady
was chiefly mental, but... And the countess, trying to
conceal the action from herself and from him, slipped a
gold coin into his hand and always returned to the patient
with a more tranquil mind.
The symptoms of Natasha’s illness were that she ate
little, slept little, coughed, and was always low-spirited.
The doctors said that she could not get on without medical
treatment, so they kept her in the stifling atmosphere of
the town, and the Rostovs did not move to the country
that summer of 1812.
In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops
and powders out of the little bottles and boxes of which

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Madame Schoss who was fond of such things made a

large collection, and in spite of being deprived of the
country life to which she was accustomed, youth
prevailed. Natasha’s grief began to be overlaid by the
impressions of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on
her heart, it gradually faded into the past, and she began
to recover physically.

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Chapter XVII

Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely

avoided all external forms of pleasure- balls, promenades,
concerts, and theaters- but she never laughed without a
sound of tears in her laughter. She could not sing. As soon
as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears
choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of
those pure times which could never return, tears of
vexation that she should so uselessly have ruined her
young life which might have been so happy. Laughter and
singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy, in
face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no
wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at
that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya
Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within
her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the
old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so
full of hope. The previous autumn, the hunting, ‘Uncle,’
and the Christmas holidays spent with Nicholas at
Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most
painfully. What would she not have given to bring back
even a single day of that time! But it was gone forever.

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Her presentiment at the time had not deceived her- that

that state of freedom and readiness for any enjoyment
would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live on.
It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she
had formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than
anybody else in the world. But this was not enough. She
knew that, and asked herself, ‘What next?’ But there was
nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was
passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a burden or a
hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She
kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease
only with her brother Petya. She liked to be with him
better than with the others, and when alone with him she
sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of
those who came to see them was glad to see only one
person, Pierre. It would have been impossible to treat her
with more delicacy, greater care, and at the same time
more seriously than did Count Bezukhov. Natasha
unconsciously felt this delicacy and so found great
pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful to
him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part seemed to her to
be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to
everyone that there was no merit in his kindness.
Sometimes Natasha noticed embarrassment and

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awkwardness on his part in her presence, especially when

he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that
something they spoke of would awaken memories
distressing to her. She noticed this and attributed it to his
general kindness and shyness, which she imagined must
be the same toward everyone as it was to her. After those
involuntary words- that if he were free he would have
asked on his knees for her hand and her love- uttered at a
moment when she was so strongly agitated, Pierre never
spoke to Natasha of his feelings; and it seemed plain to
her that those words, which had then so comforted her,
were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken
to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was a
married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with
him that moral barrier the absence of which she had
experienced with Kuragin that it never entered her head
that the relations between him and herself could lead to
love on her part, still less on his, or even to the kind of
tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a man
and a woman of which she had known several instances.
Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena
Ivanovna Belova, a country neighbor of the Rostovs,
came to Moscow to pay her devotions at the shrines of the
Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should fast

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and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly

welcomed the idea. Despite the doctor’s orders that she
should not go out early in the morning, Natasha insisted
on fasting and preparing for the sacrament, not as they
generally prepared for it in the Rostov family by attending
three services in their own house, but as Agrafena
Ivanovna did, by going to church every day for a week
and not once missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass.
The countess was pleased with Natasha’s zeal; after
the poor results of the medical treatment, in the depths of
her heart she hoped that prayer might help her daughter
more than medicines and, though not without fear and
concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natasha’s
wish and entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna
used to come to wake Natasha at three in the morning, but
generally found her already awake. She was afraid of
being late for Matins. Hastily washing, and meekly
putting on her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla,
Natasha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the
deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By Agrafena
Ivanovna’s advice Natasha prepared herself not in their
own parish, but at a church where, according to the
devout Agrafena Ivanovna, the priest was a man of very
severe and lofty life. There were never many people in the

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church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in the

customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let
into the screen before the choir on the left side, and a
feeling, new to her, of humility before something great
and incomprehensible, seized her when at that unusual
morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin
illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the
morning light falling from the window, she listened to the
words of the service which she tried to follow with
understanding. When she understood them her personal
feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of
its own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still
to think that the wish to understand everything is pride,
that it is impossible to understand all, that it is only
necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom
she felt guiding her soul at those moments. She crossed
herself, bowed low, and when she did not understand, in
horror at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive
her everything, everything, to have mercy upon her. The
prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were
those of repentance. On her way home at an early hour
when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or
men sweeping the street, and everybody within the houses
was still asleep, Natasha experienced a feeling new to her,

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a sense of the possibility of correcting her faults, the

possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.
During the whole week she spent in this way, that
feeling grew every day. And the happiness of taking
communion, or ‘communing’ as Agrafena Ivanovna,
joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to
Natasha so great that she felt she should never live till that
blessed Sunday.
But the happy day came, and on that memorable
Sunday, when, dressed in white muslin, she returned
home after communion, for the first time for many
months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of
the life that lay before her.
The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to
continue the powders he had prescribed a fortnight
previously.
‘She must certainly go on taking them morning and
evening,’ said he, evidently sincerely satisfied with his
success. ‘Only, please be particular about it.
‘Be quite easy,’ he continued playfully, as he adroitly
took the gold coin in his palm. ‘She will soon be singing
and frolicking about. The last medicine has done her a
very great deal of good. She has freshened up very much.’

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The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face,

looked down at her nails and spat a little for luck as she
returned to the drawing room.

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Chapter XVIII

At the beginning of July more and more disquieting

reports about the war began to spread in Moscow; people
spoke of an appeal by the Emperor to the people, and of
his coming himself from the army to Moscow. And as up
to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had been
received, exaggerated reports became current about them
and about the position of Russia. It was said that the
Emperor was leaving the army because it was in danger, it
was said that Smolensk had surrendered, that Napoleon
had an army of a million and only a miracle could save
Russia.
On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the
manifesto was received but was not yet in print, and
Pierre, who was at the Rostovs’, promised to come to
dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the
manifesto and appeal, which he would obtain from Count
Rostopchin.
That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the
Razumovskis’ private chapel as usual. It was a hot July
day. Even at ten o’clock, when the Rostovs got out of
their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of

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hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the crowd,

the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds
of the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching
to parade, the rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and
the brilliant, hot sunshine were all full of that summer
languor, that content and discontent with the present,
which is most strongly felt on a bright, hot day in town.
All the Moscow notabilities, all the Rostovs’
acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis’ chapel, for, as if
expecting something to happen, many wealthy families
who usually left town for their country estates had not
gone away that summer. As Natasha, at her mother’s side,
passed through the crowd behind a liveried footman who
cleared the way for them, she heard a young man
speaking about her in too loud a whisper.
‘That’s Rostova, the one who..’
‘She’s much thinner, but all the same she’s pretty!’
She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin
and Bolkonski. But she was always imagining that. It
always seemed to her that everyone who looked at her
was thinking only of what had happened to her. With a
sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she
found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress
trimmed with black lace walked- as women can walk-

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with the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain
and shame in her soul. She knew for certain that she was
pretty, but this no longer gave her satisfaction as it used
to. On the contrary it tormented her more than anything
else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot summer
day in town. ‘It’s Sunday again- another week past,’ she
thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday
before, ‘and always the same life that is no life, and the
same surroundings in which it used to be so easy to live.
I’m pretty, I’m young, and I know that now I am good. I
used to be bad, but now I know I am good,’ she thought,
‘but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to
anyone.’ She stood by her mother’s side and exchanged
nods with acquaintances near her. From habit she
scrutinized the ladies’ dresses, condemned the bearing of
a lady standing close by who was not crossing herself
properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought
with vexation that she was herself being judged and was
judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service,
she felt horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the
former purity of her soul was again lost to her.
A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the
service with that mild solemnity which has so elevating
and soothing an effect on the souls of the worshipers. The

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gates of the sanctuary screen were closed, the curtain was

slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft mysterious voice
pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which she
herself did not understand, made Natasha’s breast heave,
and a joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.
‘Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I
may grow good forever, forever!’ she pleaded.
The deacon came out onto the raised space before the
altar screen and, holding his thumb extended, drew his
long hair from under his dalmatic and, making the sign of
the cross on his breast, began in a loud and solemn voice
to recite the words of the prayer...
‘In peace let us pray unto the Lord.’
‘As one community, without distinction of class,
without enmity, united by brotherly love- let us pray!’
thought Natasha.
‘For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation
of our souls.’
‘For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell
above us,’ prayed Natasha.
When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her
brother and Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling
by land and sea, she remembered Prince Andrew, prayed
for him, and asked God to forgive her all the wrongs she

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had done him. When they prayed for those who love us,
she prayed for the members of her own family, her father
and mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how
wrongly she had acted toward them, and feeling all the
strength of her love for them. When they prayed for those
who hate us, she tried to think of her enemies and people
who hated her, in order to pray for them. She included
among her enemies the creditors and all who had business
dealings with her father, and always at the thought of
enemies and those who hated her she remembered
Anatole who had done her so much harm- and though he
did not hate her she gladly prayed for him as for an
enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to think clearly
and calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for
whom her feelings were as nothing compared with her
awe and devotion to God. When they prayed for the
Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and
made the sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if
she did not understand, still she could not doubt, and at
any rate loved the governing Synod and prayed for it.
When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed
the stole over his breast and said, ‘Let us commit
ourselves and our whole lives to Christ the Lord!’

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‘Commit ourselves to God,’ Natasha inwardly

repeated. ‘Lord God, I submit myself to Thy will!’ she
thought. ‘I want nothing, wish for nothing; teach me what
to do and how to use my will! Take me, take me!’ prayed
Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing
herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if
expecting some invisible power at any moment to take her
and deliver her from herself, from her regrets, desires,
remorse, hopes, and sins.
The countess looked round several times at her
daughter’s softened face and shining eyes and prayed God
to help her.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in
the usual order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought
out a small stool, the one he knelt on when praying on
Trinity Sunday, and placed it before the doors of the
sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his purple
velvet biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt
down with an effort. Everybody followed his example and
they looked at one another in surprise. Then came the
prayer just received from the Synod- a prayer for the
deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.
‘Lord God of might, God of our salvation!’ began the
priest in that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in

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which only the Slav clergy read and which acts so

irresistibly on a Russian heart.
‘Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this
day in mercy and blessing on Thy humble people, and
graciously hear us, spare us, and have mercy upon us!
This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay waste the
whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are
gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy
Thy dear Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy
temples, to overthrow Thine altars, and to desecrate our
holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how long shall the
wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful
power?
‘Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen
with Thy might our most gracious sovereign lord, the
Emperor Alexander Pavlovich; be mindful of his
uprightness and meekness, reward him according to his
righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel!
Bless his counsels, his undertakings, and his work;
strengthen his kingdom by Thine almighty hand, and give
him victory over his enemy, even as Thou gavest Moses
the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and David
over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the
hands of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name,

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and gird their loins with strength for the fight. Take up the
spear and shield and arise to help us; confound and put to
shame those who have devised evil against us, may they
be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust before
the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and
put them to flight; may they be ensnared when they know
it not, and may the plots they have laid in secret be turned
against them; let them fall before Thy servants’ feet and
be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art able to save both
great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot prevail
against Thee!
‘God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy
and loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy
face from us, but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in
Thy great goodness and Thy many mercies regard not our
transgressions and iniquities! Create in us a clean heart
and renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all in Thy
faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for
another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous
defense of the heritage Thou gavest to us and to our
fathers, and let not the scepter of the wicked be exalted
against the destiny of those Thou hast sanctified.
‘O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom
we put our trust, let us not be confounded in our hope of

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Thy mercy, and give us a token of Thy blessing, that

those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see it and
be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know
that Thou art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy
mercy upon us this day, O Lord, and grant us Thy
salvation; make the hearts of Thy servants to rejoice in
Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy them
swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou
art the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that
put their trust in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, now and forever, world without
end. Amen.’
In Natasha’s receptive condition of soul this prayer
affected her strongly. She listened to every word about the
victory of Moses over Amalek, of Gideon over Midian,
and of David over Goliath, and about the destruction of
‘Thy Jerusalem,’ and she prayed to God with the
tenderness and emotion with which her heart was
overflowing, but without fully understanding what she
was asking of God in that prayer. She shared with all her
heart in the prayer for the spirit of righteousness, for the
strengthening of the heart by faith and hope, and its
animation by love. But she could not pray that her
enemies might be trampled under foot when but a few

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minutes before she had been wishing she had more of

them that she might pray for them. But neither could she
doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being read
on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and
tremulous awe at the thought of the punishment that
overtakes men for their sins, and especially of her own
sins, and she prayed to God to forgive them all, and her
too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and
happiness. And it seemed to her that God heard her
prayer.

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Chapter XIX

From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs’

with Natasha’s grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed
at the comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt
that something new was appearing on his own horizon-
from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of
all earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no
longer presented itself. That terrible question ‘Why?’
‘Wherefore?’ which had come to him amid every
occupation, was now replaced, not by another question or
by a reply to the former question, but by her image. When
he listened to, or himself took part in, trivial
conversations, when he read or heard of human baseness
or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask
himself why men struggled so about these things when all
is so transient and incomprehensible- but he remembered
her as he had last seen her, and all his doubts vanished-
not because she had answered the questions that had
haunted him, but because his conception of her
transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of
spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or
guilty- a realm of beauty and love which it was worth

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living for. Whatever worldly baseness presented itself to

him, he said to himself:
‘Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the
Tsar, and the country and the Tsar confer honors upon
him, what does that matter? She smiled at me yesterday
and asked me to come again, and I love her, and no one
will ever know it.’ And his soul felt calm and peaceful.
Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the
same idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he
spent at the Rostovs’ there were other hours he had to
spend somehow, and the habits and acquaintances he had
made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along
irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more disquieting
reports came from the seat of war and Natasha’s health
began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the
former feeling of careful pity, an ever-increasing
restlessness, which he could not explain, took possession
of him. He felt that the condition he was in could not
continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which
would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought
everywhere for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One
of his brother Masons had revealed to Pierre the following
prophecy concerning Napoleon, drawn from the
Revelation of St. John.

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In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count
the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and
his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great
things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to
continue forty and two months.
The French alphabet, written out with the same
numerical values as the Hebrew, in which the first nine
letters denote units and the others tens, will have the
following significance:
a b c d e f g h i k
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
l m n o p q r s
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
t u v w x y
100 110 120 130 140 150
z
160
Writing the words L’Empereur Napoleon in numbers,
it appears that the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon
therefore the beast foretold in the Apocalypse. Moreover,
by applying the same system to the words quarante-

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deux,* which was the term allowed to the beast that

‘spoke great things and blasphemies,’ the same number
666 was obtained; from which it followed that the limit
fixed for Napoleon’s power had come in the year 1812
when the French emperor was forty-two. This prophecy
pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what
would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of
Napoleon, and tried by the same system of using letters as
numbers and adding them up, to find an answer to the
question that engrossed him. He wrote the words
L’Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up
their numbers, but the sums were either more or less than
666. Once when making such calculations he wrote down
his own name in French, Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the
sum of the numbers did not come right. Then he changed
the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de and
the article le, still without obtaining the desired result.
Then it occurred to him: if the answer to the question
were contained in his name, his nationality would also be
given in the answer. So he wrote Le russe Besuhof and
adding up the numbers got 671. This was only five too
much, and five was represented by e, the very letter elided
from the article le before the word Empereur. By omitting
the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought.

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L’russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him.

How, or by what means, he was connected with the great
event foretold in the Apocalypse he did not know, but he
did not doubt that connection for a moment. His love for
Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet,
666, L’Empereur Napoleon, and L’russe Besuhof- all this
had to mature and culminate, to lift him out of that
spellbound, petty sphere of Moscow habits in which he
felt himself held captive and lead him to a great
achievement and great happiness.
*Forty-two.
On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was
read, Pierre had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from
Count Rostopchin whom he knew well, both the appeal to
the people and the news from the army. In the morning,
when he went to call at Rostopchin’s he met there a
courier fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own,
who often danced at Moscow balls.
‘Do, please, for heaven’s sake, relieve me of
something!’ said the courier. ‘I have a sackful of letters to
parents.’
Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to
his father. Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also
gave him the Emperor’s appeal to Moscow, which had

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just been printed, the last army orders, and his own most
recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, Pierre
found in one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and
rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St.
George’s Cross of the Fourth Class for courage shown in
the Ostrovna affair, and in the same order the name of
Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the command of a
regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind
the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from
making them happy by the news of their son’s having
received a decoration, so he sent that printed army order
and Nicholas’ letter to the Rostovs, keeping the appeal,
the bulletin, and the other orders to take with him when he
went to dinner.
His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the
latter’s tone of anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier
who talked casually of how badly things were going in the
army, the rumors of the discovery of spies in Moscow and
of a leaflet in circulation stating that Napoleon promised
to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, and the
talk of the Emperor’s being expected to arrive next day-
all aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and
expectation in Pierre which he had been conscious of ever

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since the appearance of the comet, and especially since

the beginning of the war.
He had long been thinking of entering the army and
would have done so had he not been hindered, first, by his
membership of the Society of Freemasons to which he
was bound by oath and which preached perpetual peace
and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that
when he saw the great mass of Muscovites who had
donned uniform and were talking patriotism, he somehow
felt ashamed to take the step. But the chief reason for not
carrying out his intention to enter the army lay in the
vague idea that he was L’russe Besuhof who had the
number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair
of setting a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great
and blasphemous things had been predestined from
eternity, and that therefore he ought not to undertake
anything, but wait for what was bound to come to pass.
CHAPTER XX
A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs
that day, as usual on Sundays.
Pierre came early so as to find them alone.
He had grown so stout this year that he would have
been abnormal had he not been so tall, so broad of limb,
and so strong that he carried his bulk with evident ease.

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He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering

something. His coachman did not even ask whether he
was to wait. He knew that when his master was at the
Rostovs’ he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs’ footman
rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and
take his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left
both hat and stick in the anteroom.
The first person he saw in the house was Natasha.
Even before he saw her, while taking off his cloak, he
heard her. She was practicing solfa exercises in the music
room. He knew that she had not sung since her illness,
and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted him.
He opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress
she had worn at church, walking about the room singing.
She had her back to him when he opened the door, but
when, turning quickly, she saw his broad, surprised face,
she blushed and came rapidly up to him.
‘I want to try to sing again,’ she said, adding as if by
way of excuse, ‘it is, at least, something to do.’
‘That’s capital!’
‘How glad I am you’ve come! I am so happy today,’
she said, with the old animation Pierre had not seen in her
for along time. ‘You know Nicholas has received a St.
George’s Cross? I am so proud of him.’

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‘Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don’t want to

interrupt you,’ he added, and was about to go to the
drawing room.
Natasha stopped him.
‘Count, is it wrong of me to sing?’ she said blushing,
and fixing her eyes inquiringly on him.
‘No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do
you ask me?’
‘I don’t know myself,’ Natasha answered quickly, ‘but
I should not like to do anything you disapproved of. I
believe in you completely. You don’t know how
important you are to me, how much you’ve done for
me....’ She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre
flushed at her words. ‘I saw in that same army order that
he, Bolkonski’ (she whispered the name hastily), ‘is in
Russia, and in the army again. What do you think?’- she
was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid her strength
might fail her- ‘Will he ever forgive me? Will he not
always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you
think? What do you think?’
‘I think...’ Pierre replied, ‘that he has nothing to
forgive.... If I were in his place..’
By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried
back to the day when, trying to comfort her, he had said

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that if he were not himself but the best man in the world
and free, he would ask on his knees for her hand; and the
same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love took possession
of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she did
not give him time to say them.
‘Yes, you... you...’ she said, uttering the word you
rapturously- ‘that’s a different thing. I know no one
kinder, more generous, or better than you; nobody could
be! Had you not been there then, and now too, I don’t
know what would have become of me, because..’
Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted
her music before her eyes, began singing again, and again
began walking up and down the room.
Just then Petya came running in from the drawing
room.
Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full
red lips and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter
the university, but he and his friend Obolenski had lately,
in secret, agreed to join the hussars.
Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake
about this affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether
he would be accepted in the hussars.
Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not
listening to what Petya was saying.

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Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.

‘Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for
heaven’s sake! You are my only hope ‘ said Petya.
‘Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I’ll mention it,
I’ll bring it all up today.’
‘Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?’ asked
the old count. ‘The countess has been to Mass at the
Razumovskis’ and heard the new prayer. She says it’s
very fine.’
‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ said Pierre. ‘The Emperor is to be
here tomorrow... there’s to be an Extraordinary Meeting
of the nobility, and they are talking of a levy of ten men
per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate you!’
‘Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the
army?’
‘We are again retreating. They say we’re already near
Smolensk,’ replied Pierre.
‘O Lord, O Lord!’ exclaimed the count. ‘Where is the
manifesto?’
‘The Emperor’s appeal? Oh yes!’
Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but
could not find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed
the hand of the countess who entered the room and
glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting Natasha,

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who had left off singing but had not yet come into the
drawing room.
‘On my word, I don’t know what I’ve done with it,’ he
said.
‘There he is, always losing everything!’ remarked the
countess.
Natasha entered with a softened and agitated
expression of face and sat down looking silently at Pierre.
As soon as she entered, Pierre’s features, which had been
gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still searching for
the papers he glanced at her several times.
‘No, really! I’ll drive home, I must have left them
there. I’ll certainly..’
‘But you’ll be late for dinner.’
‘Oh! And my coachman has gone.’
But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the
anteroom, had found them in Pierre’s hat, where he had
carefully tucked them under the lining. Pierre was about
to begin reading.
‘No, after dinner,’ said the old count, evidently
expecting much enjoyment from that reading.
At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health
of the new chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the
town news, of the illness of the old Georgian princess, of

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Metivier’s disappearance from Moscow, and of how some

German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin and
accused of being a French ‘spyer’ (so Count Rostopchin
had told the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and
assured the people that he was ‘not a spire at all, but only
an old German ruin.’
‘People are being arrested...’ said the count. ‘I’ve told
the countess she should not speak French so much. It’s
not the time for it now.’
‘And have you heard?’ Shinshin asked. ‘Prince
Golitsyn has engaged a master to teach him Russian. It is
becoming dangerous to speak French in the streets.’
‘And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call
up the militia, you too will have to mount a horse,’
remarked the old count, addressing Pierre.
Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through
dinner, seeming not to grasp what was said. He looked at
the count.
‘Oh yes, the war,’ he said. ‘No! What sort of warrior
should I make? And yet everything is so strange, so
strange! I can’t make it out. I don’t know, I am very far
from having military tastes, but in these times no one can
answer for himself.’

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After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in

an easy chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who
was considered an excellent reader, to read the appeal.
‘To Moscow, our ancient Capital!
‘The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with
immense forces. He comes to despoil our beloved
country,’
Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice.
The count listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs
at certain passages.
Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at
her father and now at Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round.
The countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily
at every solemn expression in the manifesto. In all these
words she saw only that the danger threatening her son
would not soon be over. Shinshin, with a sarcastic smile
on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of
anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya’s reading,
any remark of the count’s, or even the manifesto itself
should no better pretext present itself.
After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia,
the hopes the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially
on its illustrious nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her

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voice due chiefly to the attention that was being paid to

her, read the last words:
‘We ourselves will not delay to appear among our
people in that Capital and in others parts of our realm for
consultation, and for the direction of all our levies, both
those now barring the enemy’s path and those freshly
formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the
ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head,
and may Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name
of Russia!’
‘Yes, that’s it!’ cried the count, opening his moist eyes
and sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been
held to his nose; and he added, ‘Let the Emperor but say
the word and we’ll sacrifice everything and begrudge
nothing.’
Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was
ready to make on the count’s patriotism, Natasha jumped
up from her place and ran to her father.
‘What a darling our Papa is!’ she cried, kissing him,
and she again looked at Pierre with the unconscious
coquetry that had returned to her with her better spirits.
‘There! Here’s a patriot for you!’ said Shinshin.

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‘Not a patriot at all, but simply...’ Natasha replied in an

injured tone. ‘Everything seems funny to you, but this
isn’t at all a joke...’
‘A joke indeed!’ put in the count. ‘Let him but say the
word and we’ll all go.... We’re not Germans!’
‘But did you notice, it says, ‘for consultation’?’ said
Pierre.
‘Never mind what it’s for...’
At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying
any attention, came up to his father with a very flushed
face and said in his breaking voice that was now deep and
now shrill:
‘Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it’s
as you please, but I say definitely that you must let me
enter the army, because I can’t... that’s all...’
The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped
her hands, and turned angrily to her husband.
‘That comes of your talking!’ said she.
But the count had already recovered from his
excitement.
‘Come, come!’ said he. ‘Here’s a fine warrior! No!
Nonsense! You must study.’
‘It’s not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger
than I, and he’s going too. Besides, all the same I can’t

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study now when...’ Petya stopped short, flushed till he

perspired, but still got out the words, ‘when our
Fatherland is in danger.’
‘That’ll do, that’ll do- nonsense...’
‘But you said yourself that we would sacrifice
everything.’
‘Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!’ cried the count, with a
glance at his wife, who had turned pale and was staring
fixedly at her son.
‘And I tell you- Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..’
‘Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother’s milk has hardly
dried on your lips and you want to go into the army!
There, there, I tell you,’ and the count moved to go out of
the room, taking the papers, probably to reread them in
his study before having a nap.
‘Well, Peter Kirilych, let’s go and have a smoke,’ he
said.
Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha’s
unwontedly brilliant eyes, continually glancing at him
with a more than cordial look, had reduced him to this
condition.
‘No, I think I’ll go home.’
‘Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with
us.... You don’t often come nowadays as it is, and this girl

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of mine,’ said the count good-naturedly, pointing to

Natasha, ‘only brightens up when you’re here.’
‘Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home...
business...’ said Pierre hurriedly.
‘Well, then, au revoir!’ said the count, and went out of
the room.
‘Why are you going? Why are you upset?’ asked
Natasha, and she looked challengingly into Pierre’s eyes.
‘Because I love you!’ was what he wanted to say, but
he did not say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and
lowered his eyes.
‘Because it is better for me to come less often...
because... No, simply I have business...’
‘Why? No, tell me!’ Natasha began resolutely and
suddenly stopped.
They looked at each other with dismayed and
embarrassed faces. He tried to smile but could not: his
smile expressed suffering, and he silently kissed her hand
and went out.
Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs’ any
more.

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Chapter XXI

After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went

to his room and there locked himself in and wept bitterly.
When he came in to tea, silent, morose, and with tear-
stained face, everybody pretended not to notice anything.
Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several
of the Rostovs’ domestic serfs begged permission to go to
have a look at him. That morning Petya was a long time
dressing and arranging his hair and collar to look like a
grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass,
gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without
saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the house
by the back door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to
go straight to where the Emperor was and to explain
frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting (he imagined the
Emperor to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-
waiting) that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth
wished to serve his country; that youth could be no
hindrance to loyalty, and that he was ready to... While
dressing, Petya had prepared many fine things he meant to
say to the gentleman-in-waiting.

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It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya

counted for success in reaching the Emperor- he even
thought how surprised everyone would be at his
youthfulness- and yet in the arrangement of his collar and
hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to appear
a grown-up man. But the farther he went and the more his
attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds
moving toward the Kremlin, the less he remembered to
walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he
approached the Kremlin he even began to avoid being
crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a menacing
way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to
the wall by people who probably were unaware of the
patriotic intentions with which he had come that in spite
of all his determination he had to give in, and stop while
carriages passed in, rumbling beneath the archway.
Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a footman, two
tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some
time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front
of the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass,
and he began resolutely working his way with his elbows,
but the woman just in front of him, who was the first
against whom he directed his efforts, angrily shouted at
him:

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‘What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don’t you

see we’re all standing still? Then why push?’
‘Anybody can shove,’ said the footman, and also
began working his elbows to such effect that he pushed
Petya into a very filthy corner of the gateway.
Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and
pulled up the damp collar which he had arranged so well
at home to seem like a man’s.
He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and
feared that if he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-
waiting in that plight he would not be admitted to the
Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten oneself up or
move to another place, because of the crowd. One of the
generals who drove past was an acquaintance of the
Rostovs’, and Petya thought of asking his help, but came
to the conclusion that that would not be a manly thing to
do. When the carriages had all passed in, the crowd,
carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the Kremlin
Square which was already full of people. There were
people not only in the square, but everywhere- on the
slopes and on the roofs. As soon as Petya found himself in
the square he clearly heard the sound of bells and the
joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole Kremlin.

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For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all
heads were bared, and everyone rushed forward in one
direction. Petya was being pressed so that he could
scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, ‘Hurrah!
hurrah! hurrah!’ Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and
pinched, but could see nothing except the people about
him.
All the faces bore the same expression of excitement
and enthusiasm. A tradesman’s wife standing beside
Petya sobbed, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Father! Angel! Dear one!’ she kept repeating, wiping
away her tears with her fingers.
‘Hurrah!’ was heard on all sides.
For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made
another rush forward.
Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and
rolling his eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his
way and shouting ‘hurrah!’ as if he were prepared that
instant to kill himself and everyone else, but on both sides
of him other people with similarly ferocious faces pushed
forward and everybody shouted ‘hurrah!’
‘So this is what the Emperor is!’ thought Petya. ‘No, I
can’t petition him myself- that would be too bold.’ But in
spite of this he continued to struggle desperately forward,

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and from between the backs of those in front he caught

glimpses of an open space with a strip of red cloth spread
out on it; but just then the crowd swayed back- the police
in front were pushing back those who had pressed too
close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the
palace to the Cathedral of the Assumption- and Petya
unexpectedly received such a blow on his side and ribs
and was squeezed so hard that suddenly everything grew
dim before his eyes and he lost consciousness. When he
came to himself, a man of clerical appearance with a tuft
of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a shabby
blue cassock- probably a church clerk and chanter- was
holding him under the arm with one hand while warding
off the pressure of the crowd with the other.
‘You’ve crushed the young gentleman!’ said the clerk.
‘What are you up to? Gently!... They’ve crushed him,
crushed him!’
The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption.
The crowd spread out again more evenly, and the clerk
led Petya- pale and breathless- to the Tsar-cannon.
Several people were sorry for Petya, and suddenly a
crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those
who stood nearest him attended to him, unbuttoned his
coat, seated him on the raised platform of the cannon, and

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reproached those others (whoever they might be) who had

crushed him.
‘One might easily get killed that way! What do they
mean by it? Killing people! Poor dear, he’s as white as a
sheet!’- various voices were heard saying.
Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his
face, the pain had passed, and at the cost of that
temporary unpleasantness he had obtained a place by the
cannon from where he hoped to see the Emperor who
would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of
presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor
he would be happy!
While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of
the Assumption- it was a combined service of prayer on
the occasion of the Emperor’s arrival and of thanksgiving
for the conclusion of peace with the Turks- the crowd
outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling kvas,
gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was
particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could again
be heard. A tradesman’s wife was showing a rent in her
shawl and telling how much the shawl had cost; another
was saying that all silk goods had now got dear. The clerk
who had rescued Petya was talking to a functionary about
the priests who were officiating that day with the bishop.

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The clerk several times used the word ‘plenary’ (of the
service), a word Petya did not understand. Two young
citizens were joking with some serf girls who were
cracking nuts. All these conversations, especially the
joking with the girls, were such as might have had a
particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did not
interest him now. He sat on his elevation- the pedestal of
the cannon- still agitated as before by the thought of the
Emperor and by his love for him. The feeling of pain and
fear he had experienced when he was being crushed,
together with that of rapture, still further intensified his
sense of the importance of the occasion.
Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard
from the embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace
with the Turks, and the crowd rushed impetuously toward
the embankment to watch the firing. Petya too would have
run there, but the clerk who had taken the young
gentleman under his protection stopped him. The firing
was still proceeding when officers, generals, and
gentlemen-in-waiting came running out of the cathedral,
and after them others in a more leisurely manner: caps
were again raised, and those who had run to look at the
cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and

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sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. ‘Hurrah!

hurrah!’ shouted the crowd again.
‘Which is he? Which?’ asked Petya in a tearful voice,
of those around him, but no one answered him, everybody
was too excited; and Petya, fixing on one of those four
men, whom he could not clearly see for the tears of joy
that filled his eyes, concentrated all his enthusiasm on
him- though it happened not to be the Emperor-
frantically shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and resolved that tomorrow,
come what might, he would join the army.
The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the
palace, and began to disperse. It was already late, and
Petya had not eaten anything and was drenched with
perspiration, yet he did not go home but stood with that
diminishing, but still considerable, crowd before the
palace while the Emperor dined- looking in at the palace
windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike
the notables he saw arriving at the entrance to dine with
the Emperor and the court footmen who served at table,
glimpses of whom could be seen through the windows.
While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of
the window, said:
‘The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty
again.’

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The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor,

munching a biscuit, rose and went out onto the balcony.
The people, with Petya among them, rushed toward the
balcony.
‘Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!...’ cried the crowd,
and Petya with it, and again the women and men of
weaker mold, Petya among them, wept with joy.
A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding
in his hand broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and
then to the ground. A coachman in a jerkin, who stood
nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several people
in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the
Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began
throwing them down from the balcony. Petya’s eyes grew
bloodshot, and still more excited by the danger of being
crushed, he rushed at the biscuits. He did not know why,
but he had to have a biscuit from the Tsar’s hand and he
felt that he must not give way. He sprang forward and
upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the old
woman did not consider herself defeated though she was
lying on the ground- she grabbed at some biscuits but her
hand did not reach them. Petya pushed her hand away
with his knee, seized a biscuit, and as if fearing to be too
late, again shouted ‘Hurrah!’ with a voice already hoarse.

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The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of
the crowd began to disperse.
‘There! I said if only we waited- and so it was!’ was
being joyfully said by various people.
Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home
knowing that all the enjoyment of that day was over. He
did not go straight home from the Kremlin, but called on
his friend Obolenski, who was fifteen and was also
entering the regiment. On returning home Petya
announced resolutely and firmly that if he was not
allowed to enter the service he would run away. And next
day, Count Ilya Rostov- though he had not yet quite
yielded- went to inquire how he could arrange for Petya to
serve where there would be least danger.

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Chapter XXII

Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense

number of carriages were standing outside the Sloboda
Palace.
The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility
and gentry in their uniforms, in the second bearded
merchants in full-skirted coats of blue cloth and wearing
medals. in the noblemen’s hall there was an incessant
movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat on
high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of
the Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about
the room.
All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the
Club or in their own houses, were in uniform- some in
that of Catherine’s day, others in that of Emperor Paul,
others again in the new uniforms of Alexander’s time or
the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the general
characteristic of being in uniform imparted something
strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar
personalities, both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed,
toothless, bald, sallow, and bloated, or gaunt and
wrinkled, were especially striking. For the most part they

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sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if they

walked about and talked, attached themselves to someone
younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of the crowd
Petya had seen in the Square, there was a striking
contradiction: the general expectation of a solemn event,
and at the same time the everyday interests in a boston
card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna’s health,
and so on.
Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning
in a nobleman’s uniform that had become too tight for
him. He was agitated; this extraordinary gathering not
only of nobles but also of the merchant-class- les etats
generaux (States-General)- evoked in him a whole series
of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply
graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the
French Revolution. The words that had struck him in the
Emperor’s appeal- that the sovereign was coming to the
capital for consultation with his people- strengthened this
idea. And imagining that in this direction something
important which he had long awaited was drawing near,
he strolled about watching and listening to conversations,
but nowhere finding any confirmation of the ideas that
occupied him.

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The Emperor’s manifesto was read, evoking

enthusiasm, and then all moved about discussing it.
Besides the ordinary topics of conversation, Pierre heard
questions of where the marshals of the nobility were to
stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be
given in the Emperor’s honor, whether they should group
themselves by districts or by whole provinces... and so on;
but as soon as the war was touched on, or what the
nobility had been convened for, the talk became
undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening to
speaking.
A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the
uniform of a retired naval officer, was speaking in one of
the rooms, and a small crowd was pressing round him.
Pierre went up to the circle that had formed round the
speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a military
uniform of Catherine’s time, was sauntering with a
pleasant smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was
acquainted. He too approached that group and listened
with a kindly smile and nods of approval, as he always
did, to what the speaker was saying. The retired naval
man was speaking very boldly, as was evident from the
expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact
that some people Pierre knew as the meekest and quietest

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of men walked away disapprovingly or expressed

disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his way into the
middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that
the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different
from his own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly
sonorous, musical, and aristocratic baritone voice,
pleasantly swallowing his r’s and generally slurring his
consonants: the voice of a man calling out to his servant,
‘Heah! Bwing me my pipe!’ It was indicative of
dissipation and the exercise of authority.
‘What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise
militia for the Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our
patte’n? If the noble awistocwacy of the pwovince of
Moscow thinks fit, it can show its loyalty to our
sov’weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we
fo’gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah ‘seven? All
that did was to enwich the pwiests’ sons and thieves and
wobbahs...’
Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded
approval.
‘And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at
all! It only wuined our farming! Bettah have another
conscwiption... o’ ou’ men will wetu’n neithah soldiers
no’ peasants, and we’ll get only depwavity fwom them.

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The nobility don’t gwudge theah lives- evewy one of us

will go and bwing in more wecwuits, and the sov’weign’
(that was the way he referred to the Emperor) ‘need only
say the word and we’ll all die fo’ him!’ added the orator
with animation.
Count Rostov’s mouth watered with pleasure and he
nudged Pierre, but Pierre wanted to speak himself. He
pushed forward, feeling stirred, but not yet sure what
stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had he opened
his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth
in his head, with a shrewd though angry expression,
standing near the first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently
accustomed to managing debates and to maintaining an
argument, he began in low but distinct tones:
‘I imagine, sir,’ said he, mumbling with his toothless
mouth, ‘that we have been summoned here not to discuss
whether it’s best for the empire at the present moment to
adopt conscription or to call out the militia. We have been
summoned to reply to the appeal with which our
sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what
is best- conscription or the militia- we can leave to the
supreme authority...’
Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He
hardened his heart against the senator who was

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introducing this set and narrow attitude into the

deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and
interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he
would say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally
lapsing into French or expressing himself in bookish
Russian.
‘Excuse me, your excellency,’ he began. (He was well
acquainted with the senator, but thought it necessary on
this occasion to address him formally.) ‘Though I don’t
agree with the gentleman...’ (he hesitated: he wished to
say, ‘Mon tres honorable preopinant’- ‘My very
honorable opponent’) ‘with the gentleman... whom I have
not the honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have
been summoned not merely to express their sympathy and
enthusiasm but also to consider the means by which we
can assist our Fatherland! I imagine,’ he went on,
warming to his subject, ‘that the Emperor himself would
not be satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom
we are willing to devote to his service, and chair a canon*
we are ready to make of ourselves- and not to obtain from
us any co-co-counsel.’
*"Food for cannon.’
Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the
senator’s sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre’s

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remarks. Only Count Rostov was pleased with them as he

had been pleased with those of the naval officer, the
senator, and in general with whatever speech he had last
heard.
‘I think that before discussing these questions,’ Pierre
continued, ‘we should ask the Emperor- most respectfully
ask His Majesty- to let us know the number of our troops
and the position in which our army and our forces now
are, and then..’
But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he
was attacked from three sides. The most vigorous attack
came from an old acquaintance, a boston player who had
always been well disposed toward him, Stepan
Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and
whether as a result of the uniform or from some other
cause Pierre saw before him quite a different man. With a
sudden expression of malevolence on his aged face,
Adraksin shouted at Pierre:
‘In the first place, I tell you we have no right to
question the Emperor about that, and secondly, if the
Russian nobility had that right, the Emperor could not
answer such a question. The troops are moved according
to the enemy’s movements and the number of men
increases and decreases..’

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Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height

and about forty years of age, whom Pierre had formerly
met at the gypsies’ and knew as a bad cardplayer, and
who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to Pierre,
interrupted Adraksin.
‘Yes, and this is not a time for discussing,’ he
continued, ‘but for acting: there is war in Russia! The
enemy is advancing to destroy Russia, to desecrate the
tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives and children.’
The nobleman smote his breast. ‘We will all arise, every
one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!’ he shouted,
rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were
heard in the crowd. ‘We are Russians and will not grudge
our blood in defense of our faith, the throne, and the
Fatherland! We must cease raving if we are sons of our
Fatherland! We will show Europe how Russia rises to the
defense of Russia!’
Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He
felt that his words, apart from what meaning they
conveyed, were less audible than the sound of his
opponent’s voice.
Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing
approval; several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to
the orator at the end of a phrase, said:

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‘That’s right, quite right! Just so!’

Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his
money, his serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the
state of affairs in order to be able to improve it, but he
was unable to speak. Many voices shouted and talked at
the same time, so that Count Rostov had not time to
signify his approval of them all, and the group increased,
dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk
into the largest hall and to the big table. Not only was
Pierre’s attempt to speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely
interrupted, pushed aside, and people turned away from
him as from a common enemy. This happened not
because they were displeased by the substance of his
speech, which had even been forgotten after the many
subsequent speeches, but to animate it the crowd needed a
tangible object to love and a tangible object to hate. Pierre
became the latter. Many other orators spoke after the
excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many spoke
eloquently and with originality.
Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was
recognized (cries of ‘author! author!’ were heard in the
crowd), said that ‘hell must be repulsed by hell,’ and that
he had seen a child smiling at lightning flashes and
thunderclaps, but ‘we will not be that child.’

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‘Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!’ was repeated approvingly

in the back rows of the crowd.
The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat
gray-haired or bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed
and besashed almost all of whom Pierre had seen in their
own homes with their buffoons, or playing boston at the
clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd
advanced to the table. Pressed by the throng against the
high backs of the chairs, the orators spoke one after
another and sometimes two together. Those standing
behind noticed what a speaker omitted to say and
hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked
their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it.
The old magnates, whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to
look first at one and then at another, and their faces for
the most part only expressed the fact that they found it
very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general
desire to show that they were ready to go to all lengths-
which found expression in the tones and looks more than
in the substance of the speeches- infected him too. He did
not renounce his opinions, but felt himself in some way to
blame and wished to justify himself.

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‘I only said that it would be more to the purpose to

make sacrifices when we know what is needed!’ said he,
trying to be heard above the other voices.
One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but
his attention was immediately diverted by an exclamation
at the other side of the table.
‘Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our
expiation!’ shouted one man.
‘He is the enemy of mankind!’ cried another. ‘Allow
me to speak....’ ‘Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..’

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Chapter XXIII

At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding

chin and alert eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with
sash over his shoulder, entered the room, stepping briskly
to the front of the crowd of gentry.
‘Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment,’
said Rostopchin. ‘I am straight from the palace. Seeing
the position we are in, I think there is little need for
discussion. The Emperor has deigned to summon us and
the merchants. Millions will pour forth from there’- he
pointed to the merchants’ hall- ‘but our business is to
supply men and not spare ourselves... That is the least we
can do!’
A conference took place confined to the magnates
sitting at the table. The whole consultation passed more
than quietly. After all the preceding noise the sound of
their old voices saying one after another, ‘I agree,’ or for
variety, ‘I too am of that opinion,’ and so on had even a
mournful effect.
The secretary was told to write down the resolution of
the Moscow nobility and gentry, that they would furnish
ten men, fully equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as

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the Smolensk gentry had done. Their chairs made a

scraping noise as the gentlemen who had conferred rose
with apparent relief, and began walking up and down, arm
in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples.
‘The Emperor! The Emperor!’ a sudden cry resounded
through the halls and the whole throng hurried to the
entrance.
The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path
between two lines of nobles. Every face expressed
respectful, awe-struck curiosity. Pierre stood rather far off
and could not hear all that the Emperor said. From what
he did hear he understood that the Emperor spoke of the
danger threatening the empire and of the hopes he placed
on the Moscow nobility. He was answered by a voice
which informed him of the resolution just arrived at.
‘Gentlemen!’ said the Emperor with a quivering voice.
There was a rustling among the crowd and it again
subsided, so that Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly
human voice of the Emperor saying with emotion:
‘I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles,
but today it has surpassed my expectations. I thank you in
the name of the Fatherland! Gentlemen, let us act! Time is
most precious..’

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The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began

pressing round him, and rapturous exclamations were
heard from all sides.
‘Yes, most precious... a royal word,’ said Count
Rostov, with a sob. He stood at the back, and, though he
had heard hardly anything, understood everything in his
own way.
From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that
of the merchants. There he remained about ten minutes.
Pierre was among those who saw him come out from the
merchants’ hall with tears of emotion in his eyes. As
became known later, he had scarcely begun to address the
merchants before tears gushed from his eyes and he
concluded in a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the
Emperor he was coming out accompanied by two
merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat otkupshchik.
The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face
and narrow beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the
thin man’s eyes, and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright
like a child and kept repeating:
‘Our lives and property- take them, Your Majesty!’
Pierre’s one feeling at the moment was a desire to
show that he was ready to go all lengths and was prepared
to sacrifice everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech

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with its constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity

of effacing it. Having heard that Count Mamonov was
furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at once informed
Rostopchin that he would give a thousand men and their
maintenance.
Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed
without tears, and at once consented to Petya’s request
and went himself to enter his name.
Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled
nobles all took off their uniforms and settled down again
in their homes and clubs, and not without some groans
gave orders to their stewards about the enrollment, feeling
amazed themselves at what they had done.

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BOOK TEN: 1812

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Chapter I

Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could

not resist going to Dresden, could not help having his
head turned by the homage he received, could not help
donning a Polish uniform and yielding to the stimulating
influence of a June morning, and could not refrain from
bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of
Balashev.
Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself
to be personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to
command the army in the best way, because he wished to
fulfill his duty and earn fame as a great commander.
Rostov charged the French because he could not restrain
his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same
way the innumerable people who took part in the war
acted in accord with their personal characteristics, habits,
circumstances, and aims. They were moved by fear or
vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining
that they knew what they were doing and did it of their
own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of
history, carrying on a work concealed from them but
comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men

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of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy

the less are they free.
The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their
personal interests have vanished leaving no trace, and
nothing remains of that time but its historic results.
Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain
personal aims, to further the accomplishment of a
stupendous result no one of them at all expected- neither
Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still less any of those who
did the actual fighting.
The cause of the destruction of the French army in
1812 is clear to us now. No one will deny that that cause
was, on the one hand, its advance into the heart of Russia
late in the season without any preparation for a winter
campaign and, on the other, the character given to the war
by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the foe
this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the
time foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was
the only way an army of eight hundred thousand men- the
best in the world and led by the best general- could be
destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half its numerical
strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the
Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on
the Russian side every effort was made to hinder the only

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thing that could save Russia, while on the French side,

despite Napoleon’s experience and so-called military
genius, every effort was directed to pushing on to
Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the
very thing that was bound to lead to destruction.
In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are
very fond of saying that Napoleon felt the danger of
extending his line, that he sought a battle and that his
marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk, and of making
similar statements to show that the danger of the
campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are
still fonder of telling us that from the commencement of
the campaign a Scythian war plan was adopted to lure
Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and this plan some of
them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman,
others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself-
pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints
of such a line of action. But all these hints at what
happened, both from the French side and the Russian, are
advanced only because they fit in with the event. Had that
event not occurred these hints would have been forgotten,
as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of hints
and expectations to the contrary which were current then
but have now been forgotten because the event falsified

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them. There are always so many conjectures as to the

issue of any event that however it may end there will
always be people to say: ‘I said then that it would be so,’
quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures
many were to quite the contrary effect.
Conjectures as to Napoleon’s awareness of the danger
of extending his line, and (on the Russian side) as to
luring the enemy into the depths of Russia, are evidently
of that kind, and only by much straining can historians
attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals,
or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts
are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the
whole period of the war not only was there no wish on the
Russian side to draw the French into the heart of the
country, but from their first entry into Russia everything
was done to stop them. And not only was Napoleon not
afraid to extend his line, but he welcomed every step
forward as a triumph and did not seek battle as eagerly as
in former campaigns, but very lazily.
At the very beginning of the war our armies were
divided, and our sole aim was to unite them, though
uniting the armies was no advantage if we meant to retire
and lure the enemy into the depths of the country. Our
Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every

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inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The enormous

Drissa camp was formed on Pfuel’s plan, and there was
no intention of retiring farther. The Emperor reproached
the commanders in chief for every step they retired. He
could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even reach
Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of
Moscow, and when our armies did unite he was
displeased that Smolensk was abandoned and burned
without a general engagement having been fought under
its walls.
So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders
and people were still more provoked at the thought that
our forces were retreating into the depths of the country.
Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far
into the country and missed several chances of forcing an
engagement. In August he was at Smolensk and thought
only of how to advance farther, though as we now see that
advance was evidently ruinous to him.
The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee
the danger of the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander
and the Russian commanders then think of luring
Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring of
Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result
of any plan, for no one believed it to be possible; it

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resulted from a most complex interplay of intrigues, aims,

and wishes among those who took part in the war and had
no perception whatever of the inevitable, or of the one
way of saving Russia. Everything came about
fortuitously. The armies were divided at the
commencement of the campaign. We tried to unite them,
with the evident intention of giving battle and checking
the enemy’s advance, and by this effort to unite them
while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and
necessarily withdrawing the armies at an acute angle- we
led the French on to Smolensk. But we withdrew at an
acute angle not only because the French advanced
between our two armies; the angle became still more
acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de
Tolly was an unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration
(who would come his command), and Bagration- being in
command of the second army- tried to postpone joining
up and coming under Barclay’s command as long as he
could. Bagration was slow in effecting the junction-
though that was the chief aim of all at headquarters-
because, as he alleged, he exposed his army to danger on
this march, and it was best for him to retire more to the
left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from flank
and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for his

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army; and it looks as if he planned this in order not to

come under the command of the detested foreigner
Barclay, whose rank was inferior to his own.
The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but
his presence and ignorance of what steps to take, and the
enormous number of advisers and plans, destroyed the
first army’s energy and it retired.
The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp,
but Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief,
unexpectedly employed his energy to influence
Alexander, and Pfuel’s whole plan was abandoned and
the command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not
inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies
were divided, there was no unity of command, and
Barclay was unpopular; but from this confusion, division,
and the unpopularity of the foreign commander in chief,
there resulted on the one hand indecision and the
avoidance of a battle (which we could not have refrained
from had the armies been united and had someone else,
instead of Barclay, been in command) and on the other an
ever-increasing indignation against the foreigners and an
increase in patriotic zeal.
At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most
convenient and indeed the only pretext for his departure it

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was decided that it was necessary for him to inspire the

people in the capitals and arouse the nation in general to a
patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor to Moscow
the strength of the Russian army was trebled.
He left in order not to obstruct the commander in
chief’s undivided control of the army, and hoping that
more decisive action would then be taken, but the
command of the armies became still more confused and
enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of
adjutants general remained with the army to keep the
commander in chief under observation and arouse his
energy, and Barclay, feeling less free than ever under the
observation of all these ‘eyes of the Emperor,’ became
still more cautious of undertaking any decisive action and
avoided giving battle.
Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at
treachery and demanded a general engagement.
Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the others of that
group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under
pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched
these Polish adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged
into an open struggle with Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.
At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as
Bagration disliked it.

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Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house

occupied by Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came
out to meet and report to his senior officer Bagration.
Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest
of magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having
submitted, agreed with him less than ever. By the
Emperor’s orders Bagration reported direct to him. He
wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor’s confidant: ‘It must be
as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with the
Minister (meaning Barclay). For God’s sake send me
somewhere else if only in command of a regiment. I
cannot stand it here. Headquarters are so full of Germans
that a Russian cannot exist and there is no sense in
anything. I thought I was really serving my sovereign and
the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving Barclay. I
confess I do not want to.’
The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and
their like still further embittered the relations between the
commanders in chief, and even less unity resulted.
Preparations were made to fight the French before
Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position. This
general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a
corps commander, and, having spent the day with him,

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returned to Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from

every point of view, the battleground he had not seen.
While disputes and intrigues were going on about the
future field of battle, and while we were looking for the
French- having lost touch with them- the French stumbled
upon Neverovski’s division and reached the walls of
Smolensk.
It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at
Smolensk to save our lines of communication. The battle
was fought and thousands were killed on both sides.
Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the
Emperor and of the whole people. But Smolensk was
burned by its own inhabitants-who had been misled by
their governor. And these ruined inhabitants, setting an
example to other Russians, went to Moscow thinking only
of their own losses but kindling hatred of the foe.
Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at
the very result which caused his destruction.

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Chapter II

The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for
Princess Mary to come to his study.
‘Well? Are you satisfied now?’ said he. ‘You’ve made
me quarrel with my son! Satisfied, are you? That’s all you
wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts me, it hurts. I’m old and
weak and this is what you wanted. Well then, gloat over
it! Gloat over it!’
After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a
whole week. He was ill and did not leave his study.
Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this
illness the old prince not only excluded her from his
room, but did not admit Mademoiselle Bourienne either.
Tikhon alone attended him.
At the end of the week the prince reappeared and
resumed his former way of life, devoting himself with
special activity to building operations and the
arrangement of the gardens and completely breaking off
his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks and
cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: ‘There, you see?
You plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about

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my relations with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel

with him, but you see I need neither her nor you!’
Princess Mary spent half of every day with little
Nicholas, watching his lessons, teaching him Russian and
music herself, and talking to Dessalles; the rest of the day
she spent over her books, with her old nurse, or with
‘God’s folk’ who sometimes came by the back door to see
her.
Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think
about wars. She feared for her brother who was in it, was
horrified by and amazed at the strange cruelty that impels
men to kill one another, but she did not understand the
significance of this war, which seemed to her like all
previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this
war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly
conversed was passionately interested in its progress and
tried to explain his own conception of it to her, and
though the ‘God’s folk’ who came to see her reported, in
their own way, the rumors current among the people of an
invasion by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess
Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence with her,
wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.
‘I write you in Russian, my good friend,’ wrote Julie in
her Frenchified Russian, ‘because I have a detestation for

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all the French, and the same for their language which I
cannot support to hear spoken.... We in Moscow are
elated by enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.
‘My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in
Jewish taverns, but the news which I have inspires me yet
more.
‘You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski,
embracing his two sons and saying: ‘I will perish with
them but we will not be shaken!’ And truly though the
enemy was twice stronger than we, we were unshakable.
We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The
princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and
we, unhappy widows of live men, make beautiful
conversations over our charpie, only you, my friend, are
missing...’ and so on.
The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full
significance of this war was that the old prince never
spoke of it, did not recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles
when he mentioned it at dinner. The prince’s tone was so
calm and confident that Princess Mary unhesitatingly
believed him.
All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and
even animated. He planned another garden and began a
new building for the domestic serfs. The only thing that

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made Princess Mary anxious about him was that he slept

very little and, instead of sleeping in his study as usual,
changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would
order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery,
another day he remained on the couch or on the lounge
chair in the drawing room and dozed there without
undressing, while- instead of Mademoiselle Bourienne- a
serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night
in the dining room.
On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince
Andrew. In his first letter which came soon after he had
left home, Prince Andrew had dutifully asked his father’s
forgiveness for what he had allowed himself to say and
begged to be restored to his favor. To this letter the old
prince had replied affectionately, and from that time had
kept the Frenchwoman at at Prince Andrew’s second
letter, written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied
that town, gave a brief account of the whole campaign,
enclosed for them a plan he had drawn and forecasts as to
the further progress of the war. In this letter Prince
Andrew pointed out to his father the danger of staying at
Bald Hills, so near the theater of war and on the army’s
direct line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow.

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At dinner that day, on Dessalles’ mentioning that the

French were said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old
prince remembered his son’s letter.
‘There was a letter from Prince Andrew today,’ he said
to Princess Mary- ‘Haven’t you read it?’
‘No, Father,’ she replied in a frightened voice.
She could not have read the letter as she did not even
know it had arrived.
‘He writes about this war,’ said the prince, with the
ironic smile that had become habitual to him in speaking
of the present war.
‘That must be very interesting,’ said Dessalles. ‘Prince
Andrew is in a position to know..’
‘Oh, very interesting!’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘Go and get it for me,’ said the old prince to
Mademoiselle Bourienne. ‘You know- under the
paperweight on the little table.’
Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.
‘No, don’t!’ he exclaimed with a frown. ‘You go,
Michael Ivanovich.’
Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as
soon as he had left the room the old prince, looking
uneasily round, threw down his napkin and went himself.

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‘They can’t do anything... always make some muddle,’

he muttered.
While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles,
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and even little Nicholas
exchanged looks in silence. The old prince returned with
quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivanovich, bringing
the letter and a plan. These he put down beside him- not
letting anyone read them at dinner.
On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to
Princess Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of
the new building and fixing his eyes upon it, told her to
read the letter aloud. When she had done so Princess
Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was examining
the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.
‘What do you think of it, Prince?’ Dessalles ventured
to ask.
‘I? I?...’ said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened,
and not taking his eyes from the plan of the building.
‘Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to
us that..’
‘Ha ha ha! The theater of war!’ said the prince. ‘I have
said and still say that the theater of war is Poland and the
enemy will never get beyond the Niemen.’

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Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was

talking of the Niemen when the enemy was already at the
Dnieper, but Princess Mary, forgetting the geographical
position of the Niemen, thought that what her father was
saying was correct.
‘When the snow melts they’ll sink in the Polish
swamps. Only they could fail to see it,’ the prince
continued, evidently thinking of the campaign of 1807
which seemed to him so recent. ‘Bennigsen should have
advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have
taken a different turn..’
‘But, Prince,’ Dessalles began timidly, ‘the letter
mentions Vitebsk...’
‘Ah, the letter? Yes...’ replied the prince peevishly.
‘Yes... yes...’ His face suddenly took on a morose
expression. He paused. ‘Yes, he writes that the French
were beaten at... at... what river is it?’
Dessalles dropped his eyes.
‘The prince says nothing about that,’ he remarked
gently.
‘Doesn’t he? But I didn’t invent it myself.’
No one spoke for a long time.

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‘Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich,’ he suddenly

went on, raising his head and pointing to the plan of the
building, ‘tell me how you mean to alter it...’
Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince
after speaking to him about the building looked angrily at
Princess Mary and Dessalles and went to his own room.
Princess Mary saw Dessalles’ embarrassed and
astonished look fixed on her father, noticed his silence,
and was struck by the fact that her father had forgotten his
son’s letter on the drawing-room table; but she was not
only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the reason of
his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think
about it.
In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince,
came to Princess Mary for Prince Andrew’s letter which
had been forgotten in the drawing room. She gave it to
him and, unpleasant as it was to her to do so, ventured to
ask him what her father was doing.
‘Always busy,’ replied Michael Ivanovich with a
respectfully ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to
turn pale. ‘He’s worrying very much about the new
building. He has been reading a little, but now’- Michael
Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice- ‘now he’s at his
desk, busy with his will, I expect.’ (One of the prince’s

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favorite occupations of late had been the preparation of

some papers he meant to leave at his death and which he
called his ‘will.’)
‘And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?’ asked
Princess Mary.
‘Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time.’

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Chapter III

When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the

letter, the old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over
his eyes, was sitting at his open bureau with screened
candles, holding a paper in his outstretched hand, and in a
somewhat dramatic attitude was reading his manuscript-
his ‘Remarks’ as he termed it- which was to be
transmitted to the Emperor after his death.
When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in
the prince’s eyes evoked by the memory of the time when
the paper he was now reading had been written. He took
the letter from Michael Ivanovich’s hand, put it in his
pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who
had long been waiting.
The prince had a list of things to be bought in
Smolensk and, walking up and down the room past
Alpatych who stood by the door, he gave his instructions.
‘First, notepaper- do you hear? Eight quires, like this
sample, gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample.
Varnish, sealing wax, as in Michael Ivanovich’s list.’
He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his
notes.

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‘Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the

deed.’
Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were
wanted and had to be of a special shape the prince had
himself designed, and a leather case had to be ordered to
keep the ‘will’ in.
The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and
still the prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into
thought, closed his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a
slight movement.
‘Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I’ll send
after you.’
Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his
bureau, glanced into it, fingered his papers, closed the
bureau again, and sat down at the table to write to the
governor.
It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter.
He wished to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to
and that most depressing thoughts came to him in bed. So
he called Tikhon and went through the rooms with him to
show him where to set up the bed for that night.
He went about looking at every corner. Every place
seemed unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary
couch in the study. That couch was dreadful to him,

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probably because of the oppressive thoughts he had had

when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere, but
the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was better
than other places: he had never slept there yet.
With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the
bedstead and began putting it up.
‘That’s not right! That’s not right!’ cried the prince,
and himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and
then closer in again.
‘Well, at last I’ve finished, now I’ll rest,’ thought the
prince, and let Tikhon undress him.
Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to
divest himself of his coat and trousers, the prince
undressed, sat down heavily on the bed, and appeared to
be meditating as he looked contemptuously at his
withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only
deferring the moment of making the effort to lift those
legs up and turn over on the bed. ‘Ugh, how hard it is!
Oh, that this toil might end and you would release me!’
thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that effort
for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly
had he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards
and forwards beneath him as if it were breathing heavily

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and jolting. This happened to him almost every night. He

opened his eyes as they were closing.
‘No peace, damn them!’ he muttered, angry he knew
not with whom. ‘Ah yes, there was something else
important, very important, that I was keeping till I should
be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them. No, it
was something, something in the drawing room. Princess
Mary talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said
something. Something in my pocket- can’t remember..’
‘Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?’
‘About Prince Michael..’
‘Be quiet, quiet!’ The prince slapped his hand on the
table. ‘Yes, I know, Prince Andrew’s letter! Princess
Mary read it. Dessalles said something about Vitebsk.
Now I’ll read it.’
He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table-
on which stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax
candle- moved close to the bed, and putting on his
spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of
the night, reading it by the faint light under the green
shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.
‘The French at Vitebsk, in four days’ march they may
be at Smolensk; perhaps are already there! Tikhon!’

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Tikhon jumped up. ‘No, no, I don’t want anything!’ he

shouted.
He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his
eyes. And there rose before him the Danube at bright
noonday: reeds, the Russian camp, and himself a young
general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, vigorous and
alert, entering Potemkin’s gaily colored tent, and a
burning sense of jealousy of ‘the favorite’ agitated him
now as strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the
words spoken at that first meeting with Potemkin. And he
saw before him a plump, rather sallow-faced, short, stout
woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile and her
words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that
same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had
with Zubov over her coffin about his right to kiss her
hand.
‘Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and
have done with all the present! Quicker, quicker- and that
they should leave me in peace!’

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Chapter IV

Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski’s estate, lay

forty miles east from Smolensk and two miles from the
main road to Moscow.
The same evening that the prince gave his instructions
to Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess
Mary, told her that, as the prince was not very well and
was taking no steps to secure his safety, though from
Prince Andrew’s letter it was evident that to remain at
Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised
her to send a letter by Alpatych to the Provincial
Governor at Smolensk, asking him to let her know the
state of affairs and the extent of the danger to which Bald
Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote this letter to the
Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it, and it was
given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it to the
Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there
was danger.
Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a
white beaver hat- a present from the prince- and carrying
a stick as the prince did, went out accompanied by his

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family. Three well-fed roans stood ready harnessed to a

small conveyance with a leather hood.
The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the
harness stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at
Bald Hills to drive with ringing bells; but on a long
journey Alpatych liked to have them. His satellites- the
senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid, a
cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and
various domestic serfs- were seeing him off.
His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for
him to sit on and behind his back. His old sister-in-law
popped in a small bundle, and one of the coachmen
helped him into the vehicle.
‘There! There! Women’s fuss! Women, women!’ said
Alpatych, puffing and speaking rapidly just as the prince
did, and he climbed into the trap.
After giving the clerk orders about the work to be
done, Alpatych, not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted
the hat from his bald head and crossed himself three
times.
‘If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych!
For Christ’s sake think of us!’ cried his wife, referring to
the rumors of war and the enemy.

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‘Women, women! Women’s fuss!’ muttered Alpatych

to himself and started on his journey, looking round at the
fields of yellow rye and the still-green, thickly growing
oats, and at other quite black fields just being plowed a
second time.
As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year’s
splendid crop of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield
which here and there were already being reaped, made his
calculations as to the sowing and the harvest, and asked
himself whether he had not forgotten any of the prince’s
orders.
Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived
at the town toward evening on the fourth of August.
Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains
and troops on the road. As he approached Smolensk he
heard the sounds of distant firing, but these did not
impress him. What struck him most was the sight of a
splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched
and which was being mown down by the soldiers,
evidently for fodder. This fact impressed Alpatych, but in
thinking about his own business he soon forgot it.
All the interests of his life for more than thirty years
had been bounded by the will of the prince, and he never
went beyond that limit. Everything not connected with the

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execution of the prince’s orders did not interest and did

not even exist for Alpatych.
On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of
August he put up in the Gachina suburb across the
Dnieper, at the inn kept by Ferapontov, where he had
been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years.
Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych’s advice,
had bought a wood from the prince, had begun to trade,
and now had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer’s shop in
that province. He was a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in
the forties, with thick lips, a broad knob of a nose, similar
knobs over his black frowning brows, and a round belly.
Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov
was standing before his shop which opened onto the
street. On seeing Alpatych he went up to him.
‘You’re welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving
the town, but you have come to it,’ said he.
‘Why are they leaving the town?’ asked Alpatych.
‘That’s what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of
the French.’
‘Women’s fuss, women’s fuss!’ said Alpatych.
‘Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is:
orders have been given not to let them in, so that must be

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right. And the peasants are asking three rubles for carting-
it isn’t Christian!’
Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a
samovar and for hay for his horses, and when he had had
his tea he went to bed.
All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next
morning Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town
and went out on business. It was a sunny morning and by
eight o’clock it was already hot. ‘A good day for
harvesting,’ thought Alpatych.
From beyond the town firing had been heard since
early morning. At eight o’clock the booming of cannon
was added to the sound of musketry. Many people were
hurrying through the streets and there were many soldiers,
but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at their
shops, and service was being held in the churches as
usual. Alpatych went to the shops, to government offices,
to the post office, and to the Governor’s. In the offices
and shops and at the post office everyone was talking
about the army and about the enemy who was already
attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be
done, and all were trying to calm one another.
In front of the Governor’s house Alpatych found a
large number of people, Cossacks, and a traveling

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carriage of the Governor’s. At the porch he met two of the

landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This man, an ex-
captain of police, was saying angrily:
‘It’s no joke, you know! It’s all very well if you’re
single. ‘One man though undone is but one,’ as the
proverb says, but with thirteen in your family and all the
property... They’ve brought us to utter ruin! What sort of
governors are they to do that? They ought to be hanged-
the brigands!..’
‘Oh come, that’s enough!’ said the other.
‘What do I care? Let him hear! We’re not dogs,’ said
the ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed
Alpatych.
‘Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?’
‘To see the Governor by his excellency’s order,’
answered Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting
his hand into the bosom of his coat as he always did when
he mentioned the prince.... He has ordered me to inquire
into the position of affairs,’ he added.
‘Yes, go and find out!’ shouted the angry gentleman.
‘They’ve brought things to such a pass that there are no
carts or anything!... There it is again, do you hear?’ said
he, pointing in the direction whence came the sounds of
firing.

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‘They’ve brought us all to ruin... the brigands!’ he

repeated, and descended the porch steps.
Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the
waiting room were tradesmen, women, and officials,
looking silently at one another. The door of the
Governor’s room opened and they all rose and moved
forward. An official ran out, said some words to a
merchant, called a stout official with a cross hanging on
his neck to follow him, and vanished again, evidently
wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and questions
addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time
the official came out addressed him, one hand placed in
the breast of his buttoned coat, and handed him two
letters.
‘To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief
Prince Bolkonski,’ he announced with such solemnity and
significance that the official turned to him and took the
letters.
A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych
and hurriedly said to him:
‘Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I
acted on the highest instructions- here...’ and he handed a
paper to Alpatych. ‘Still, as the prince is unwell my

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advice is that they should go to Moscow. I am just starting

myself. Inform them..’
But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring
officer ran into the room and began to say something in
French. The Governor’s face expressed terror.
‘Go,’ he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began
questioning the officer.
Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on
Alpatych when he came out of the Governor’s room.
Involuntarily listening now to the firing, which had drawn
nearer and was increasing in strength, Alpatych hurried to
his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor said
this:
‘I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the
slightest danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be
threatened with any. I from the one side and Prince
Bagration from the other are marching to unite our forces
before Smolensk, which junction will be effected on the
22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces will
defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to your
care till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of
our Fatherland, or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks
has perished. From this you will see that you have a
perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolensk, for

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those defended by two such brave armies may feel

assured of victory.’ (Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to
Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolensk, 1812.)
People were anxiously roaming about the streets.
Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and
cupboards kept emerging from the gates of the yards and
moving along the streets. Loaded carts stood at the house
next to Ferapontov’s and women were wailing and
lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran
round barking in front of the harnessed horses.
Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than
usual and went straight to the shed where his horses and
trap were. The coachman was asleep. He woke him up,
told him to harness, and went into the passage. From the
host’s room came the sounds of a child crying, the
despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry
shouting of Ferapontov. The cook began running hither
and thither in the passage like a frightened hen, just as
Alpatych entered.
‘He’s done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat
her... dragged her about so!..’
‘What for?’ asked Alpatych.
‘She kept begging to go away. She’s a woman! ‘Take
me away,’ says she, ‘don’t let me perish with my little

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children! Folks,’ she says, ‘are all gone, so why,’ she

says, ‘don’t we go?’ And he began beating and pulling
her about so!’
At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and
not wishing to hear more went to the door of the room
opposite the innkeeper’s, where he had left his purchases.
‘You brute, you murderer!’ screamed a thin, pale
woman who, with a baby in her arms and her kerchief
torn from her head, burst through the door at that moment
and down the steps into the yard.
Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych
adjusted his waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and
followed Alpatych into the opposite room.
‘Going already?’ said he.
Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host,
sorted his packages and asked how much he owed.
‘We’ll reckon up! Well, have you been to the
Governor’s?’ asked Ferapontov. ‘What has been
decided?’
Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him
anything definite.
‘With our business, how can we get away?’ said
Ferapontov. ‘We’d have to pay seven rubles a cartload to
Dorogobuzh and I tell them they’re not Christians to ask

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it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke last Thursday- sold

flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will you have
some tea?’ he added.
While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and
Ferapontov over their tea talked of the price of corn, the
crops, and the good weather for harvesting.
‘Well, it seems to be getting quieter,’ remarked
Ferapontov, finishing his third cup of tea and getting up.
‘Ours must have got the best of it. The orders were not to
let them in. So we’re in force, it seems.... They say the
other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove them into the
river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one
day.’
Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the
coachman who had come in, and settled up with the
innkeeper. The noise of wheels, hoofs, and bells was
heard from the gateway as a little trap passed out.
It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was
in shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych
looked out of the window and went to the door. Suddenly
the strange sound of a far-off whistling and thud was
heard, followed by a boom of cannon blending into a dull
roar that set the windows rattling.

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He went out into the street: two men were running past
toward the bridge. From different sides came whistling
sounds and the thud of cannon balls and bursting shells
falling on the town. But these sounds were hardly heard in
comparison with the noise of the firing outside the town
and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The
town was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns
which Napoleon had ordered up after four o’clock. The
people did not at once realize the meaning of this
bombardment.
At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only
aroused curiosity. Ferapontov’s wife, who till then had
not ceased wailing under the shed, became quiet and with
the baby in her arms went to the gate, listening to the
sounds and looking in silence at the people.
The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With
lively curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the
projectiles as they flew over their heads. Several people
came round the corner talking eagerly.
‘What force!’ remarked one. ‘Knocked the roof and
ceiling all to splinters!’
‘Routed up the earth like a pig,’ said another.

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‘That’s grand, it bucks one up!’ laughed the first.

‘Lucky you jumped aside, or it would have wiped you
out!’
Others joined those men and stopped and told how
cannon balls had fallen on a house close to them.
Meanwhile still more projectiles, now with the swift
sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the agreeable
intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people’s heads
incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over.
Alpatych was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at
the gate.
‘What are you staring at?’ he shouted to the cook, who
in her red skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare
elbows, had stepped to the corner to listen to what was
being said.
‘What marvels!’ she exclaimed, but hearing her
master’s voice she turned back. pulling down her tucked-
up skirt.
Once more something whistled, but this time quite
close, swooping downwards like a little bird; a flame
flashed in the middle of the street, something exploded,
and the street was shrouded in smoke.
‘Scoundrel, what are you doing?’ shouted the
innkeeper, rushing to the cook.

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At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was

heard from different sides, the frightened baby began to
cry, and people crowded silently with pale faces round the
cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was her wailing.
‘Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don’t let me die!
My good souls!..’
Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The
cook, with her thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been
carried into the kitchen. Alpatych, his coachman,
Ferapontov’s wife and children and the house porter were
all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the
whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the
cook, which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for
a moment. The mistress rocked and hushed her baby and
when anyone came into the cellar asked in a pathetic
whisper what had become of her husband who had
remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her
that her husband had gone with others to the cathedral,
whence they were fetching the wonder-working icon of
Smolensk.
Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside.
Alpatych left the cellar and stopped in the doorway. The
evening sky that had been so clear was clouded with
smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new

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moon shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the

guns had ceased a hush seemed to reign over the town,
broken only by the rustle of footsteps, the moaning, the
distant cries, and the crackle of fires which seemed
widespread everywhere. The cook’s moans had now
subsided. On two sides black curling clouds of smoke
rose and spread from the fires. Through the streets
soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran confusedly in
different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill.
Several of them ran into Ferapontov’s yard before
Alpatych’s eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A
retreating regiment, thronging and hurrying, blocked the
street.
Noticing him, an officer said: ‘The town is being
abandoned. Get away, get away!’ and then, turning to the
soldiers, shouted:
‘I’ll teach you to run into the yards!’
Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman,
and told him to set off. Ferapontov’s whole household
came out too, following Alpatych and the coachman. The
women, who had been silent till then, suddenly began to
wail as they looked at the fires- the smoke and even the
flames of which could be seen in the failing twilight- and
as if in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard from

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other parts of the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the
coachman arranged the tangled reins and traces of their
horses with trembling hands.
As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some
ten soldiers in Ferapontov’s open shop, talking loudly and
filling their bags and knapsacks with flour and sunflower
seeds. Just then Ferapontov returned and entered his shop.
On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at them, but
suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, burst into
sobs and laughter:
‘Loot everything, lads! Don’t let those devils get it!’ he
cried, taking some bags of flour himself and throwing
them into the street.
Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away,
others went on filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych,
Ferapontov turned to him:
‘Russia is done for!’ he cried. ‘Alpatych, I’ll set the
place on fire myself. We’re done for!...’ and Ferapontov
ran into the yard.
Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the
street blocking it completely, so that Alpatych could not
pass out and had to wait. Ferapontov’s wife and children
were also sitting in a cart waiting till it was it was possible
to drive out.

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Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the
new moon shone out amid the smoke that screened it. On
the sloping descent to the Dnieper Alpatych’s cart and
that of the innkeeper’s wife, which were slowly moving
amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to
stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the
vehicles had stopped, a house and some shops were on
fire. This fire was already burning itself out. The flames
now died down and were lost in the black smoke, now
suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with strange
distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the
crossroads. Black figures flitted about before the fire, and
through the incessant crackling of the flames talking and
shouting could be heard. Seeing that his trap would not be
able to move on for some time, Alpatych got down and
turned into the side street to look at the fire. Soldiers were
continually rushing backwards and forwards near it, and
he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging
burning beams into another yard across the street, while
others carried bundles of hay.
Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a
high barn which was blazing briskly. The walls were all
on fire and the back wall had fallen in, the wooden roof
was collapsing, and the rafters were alight. The crowd

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was evidently watching for the roof to fall in, and

Alpatych watched for it too.
‘Alpatych!’ a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old
man.
‘Mercy on us! Your excellency!’ answered Alpatych,
immediately recognizing the voice of his young prince.
Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black
horse, was looking at Alpatych from the back of the
crowd.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
‘Your... your excellency,’ stammered Alpatych and
broke into sobs. ‘Are we really lost? Master!..’
‘Why are you here?’ Prince Andrew repeated.
At that moment the flames flared up and showed his
young master’s pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had
been sent there and how difficult it was to get away.
‘Are we really quite lost, your excellency?’ he asked
again.
Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook
and raising his knee began writing in pencil on a page he
tore out. He wrote to his sister:
‘Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be
occupied by the enemy within a week. Set off

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immediately for Moscow. Let me know at once when you

will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh.’
Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych,
he told him how to arrange for departure of the prince, the
princess, his son, and the boy’s tutor, and how and where
to let him know immediately. Before he had had time to
finish giving these instructions, a chief of staff followed
by a suite galloped up to him.
‘You are a colonel?’ shouted the chief of staff with a
German accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew.
‘Houses are set on fire in your presence and you stand by!
What does this mean? You will answer for it!’ shouted
Berg, who was now assistant to the chief of staff of the
commander of the left flank of the infantry of the first
army, a place, as Berg said, ‘very agreeable and well en
evidence.’
Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying
went on speaking to Alpatych.
‘So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and
if by the tenth I don’t receive news that they have all got
away I shall have to throw up everything and come
myself to Bald Hills.’
‘Prince,’ said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, ‘I
only spoke because I have to obey orders, because I

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always do obey exactly.... You must please excuse me,’

he went on apologetically.
Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down
for a moment and wreaths of black smoke rolled from
under the roof. There was another terrible crash and
something huge collapsed.
‘Ou-rou-rou!’ yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of
the collapsing roof of the barn, the burning grain in which
diffused a cakelike aroma all around. The flames flared up
again, lighting the animated, delighted, exhausted faces of
the spectators.
The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:
‘It’s fine, lads! Now it’s raging... It’s fine!’
‘That’s the owner himself,’ cried several voices.
‘Well then,’ continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych,
‘report to them as I have told you"; and not replying a
word to Berg who was now mute beside him, he touched
his horse and rode down the side street.

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Chapter V

From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat,

followed by the enemy. On the tenth of August the
regiment Prince Andrew commanded was marching along
the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat
and drought had continued for more than three weeks.
Each day fleecy clouds floated across the sky and
occasionally veiled the sun, but toward evening the sky
cleared again and the sun set in reddish-brown mist.
Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The unreaped
corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried
up. The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the
sun-parched meadows. Only at night and in the forests
while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the
road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there
was no such freshness even at night or when the road
passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on
the sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As
soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery and
baggage wagons moved noiselessly through the deep dust
that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and the infantry
sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that never

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cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by

the feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a
cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and
nostrils, and worst of all in the lungs of the men and
beasts as they moved along that road. The higher the sun
rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and through the
screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked
eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in
the unclouded sky. There was no wind, and the men
choked in that motionless atmosphere. They marched with
handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths. When
they passed through a village they all rushed to the wells
and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.
Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the
management of that regiment, the welfare of the men and
the necessity of receiving and giving orders, engrossed
him. The burning of Smolensk and its abandonment made
an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against the
foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely
devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate
and kind to his men and officers. In the regiment they
called him ‘our prince,’ were proud of him and loved him.
But he was kind and gentle only to those of his regiment,
to Timokhin and the like- people quite new to him,

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belonging to a different world and who could not know

and understand his past. As soon as he came across a
former acquaintance or anyone from the staff, he bristled
up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and
contemptuous. Everything that reminded him of his past
was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that
former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty
and not to be unfair.
In truth everything presented itself in a dark and
gloomy light to Prince Andrew, especially after the
abandonment of Smolensk on the sixth of August (he
considered that it could and should have been defended)
and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow,
abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which
he had built and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his
regiment, Prince Andrew had something to think about
entirely apart from general questions. Two days
previously he had received news that his father, son, and
sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing
for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a
characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided that
he must ride there.
He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his
regiment on the march, rode to his father’s estate where

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he had been born and spent his childhood. Riding past the
pond where there used always to be dozens of women
chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden
beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul
about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place
and half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle
of the pond. He rode to the keeper’s lodge. No one at the
stone entrance gates of the drive and the door stood open.
Grass had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and
horses and calves were straying in the English park.
Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass
panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were
overturned and others dried up. He called for Taras the
gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the
corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw
that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of
the plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old
peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often
seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat,
plaiting a bast shoe.
He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up.
He was sitting on the seat the old prince used to like to sit
on, and beside him strips of bast were hanging on the
broken and withered branch of a magnolia.

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Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in

the old garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and
her foal were wandering in front of the house among the
rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at one
window which was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince
Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent his
family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting
indoors reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that
Prince Andrew had come, he went out with his spectacles
on his nose, buttoning his coat, and, hastily stepping up,
without a word began weeping and kissing Prince
Andrew’s knee.
Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and
began to report on the position of affairs. Everything
precious and valuable had been removed to Bogucharovo.
Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted away. The
hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych said there had
been a remarkable crop that year, had been
commandeered by the troops and mown down while still
green. The peasants were ruined; some of them too had
gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.
Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:
‘When did my father and sister leave?’ meaning when
did they leave for Moscow.

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Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their

departure for Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on
the seventh and again went into details concerning the
estate management, asking for instructions.
‘Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a
receipt for them? We have still six hundred quarters left,’
he inquired.
‘What am I to say to him?’ thought Prince Andrew,
looking down on the old man’s bald head shining in the
sun and seeing by the expression on his face that the old
man himself understood how untimely such questions
were and only asked them to allay his grief.
‘Yes, let them have it,’ replied Prince Andrew.
‘If you noticed some disorder in the garden,’ said
Alpatych, ‘it was impossible to prevent it. Three
regiments have been here and spent the night, dragoons
mostly. I took down the name and rank of their
commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it.’
‘Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay
here if the enemy occupies the place?’ asked Prince
Andrew.
Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at
him, and suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm.
‘He is my refuge! His will be done!’ he exclaimed.

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A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching

across the meadow toward the prince.
‘Well, good-by!’ said Prince Andrew, bending over to
Alpatych. ‘You must go away too, take away what you
can and tell the serfs to go to the Ryazan estate or to the
one near Moscow.’
Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew’s leg and burst into
sobs. Gently disengaging himself, the prince spurred his
horse and rode down the avenue at a gallop.
The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden,
like a fly impassive on the face of a loved one who is
dead, tapping the last on which he was making the bast
shoe, and two little girls, running out from the hot house
carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked from the
trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the
young master, the elder one frightened look clutched her
younger companion by the hand and hid with her behind a
birch tree, not stopping to pick up some green plums they
had dropped.
Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste,
unwilling to let them see that they had been observed. He
was sorry for the pretty frightened little girl, was afraid of
looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible desire to do so.
A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him

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when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of other

human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as
legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these
girls passionately desired one thing- to carry away and eat
those green plums without being caught- and Prince
Andrew shared their wish for the success of their
enterprise. He could not resist looking at them once more.
Believing their danger past, they sprang from their
ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little
voices and holding up their skirts, their bare little
sunburned feet scampered merrily and quickly across the
meadow grass.
Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having
ridden off the dusty highroad along which the troops were
moving. But not far from Bald Hills he again came out on
the road and overtook his regiment at its halting place by
the dam of a small pond. It was past one o’clock. The sun,
a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his back
intolerably through his black coat. The dust always hung
motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the
resting troops. There was no wind. As he crossed the dam
Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and freshness of the
pond. He longed to get into that water, however dirty it
might be, and he glanced round at the pool from whence

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came sounds of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy,

green pond had risen visibly more than a foot, flooding
the dam, because it was full of the naked white bodies of
soldiers with brick-red hands, necks, and faces, who were
splashing about in it. All this naked white human flesh,
laughing and shrieking, floundered about in that dirty
pool like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the
suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass
rendered it specially pathetic.
One fair-haired young soldier of the third company,
whom Prince Andrew knew and who had a strap round
the calf of one leg, crossed himself, stepped back to get a
good run, and plunged into the water; another, a dark
noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood
up to his waist in the water joyfully wriggling his
muscular figure and snorted with satisfaction as he poured
the water over his head with hands blackened to the
wrists. There were sounds of men slapping one another,
yelling, and puffing.
Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond,
there was healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer,
Timokhin, with his red little nose, standing on the dam
wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing the
prince, but made up his mind to address him nevertheless.

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‘It’s very nice, your excellency! Wouldn’t you like to?’

said he.
‘It’s dirty,’ replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.
‘We’ll clear it out for you in a minute,’ said Timokhin,
and, still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the
pond.
‘The prince wants to bathe.’
‘What prince? Ours?’ said many voices, and the men
were in such haste to clear out that the prince could hardly
stop them. He decided that he would rather himself with
water in the barn.
‘Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!’ he thought, and he
looked at his own naked body and shuddered, not from
cold but from a sense of disgust and horror he did not
himself understand, aroused by the sight of that immense
number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.
On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as
follows from his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the
Smolensk road:
Dear Count Alexis Andreevich- (He was writing to
Arakcheev but knew that his letter would be read by the
Emperor, and therefore weighed every word in it to the
best of his ability.)

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I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already

reported the abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is
pitiable and sad, and the whole army is in despair that this
most important place has been wantonly abandoned. I, for
my part, begged him personally most urgently and finally
wrote him, but nothing would induce him to consent. I
swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix
as never before and might have lost half his army but
could not have taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and
are fighting, as never before. With fifteen thousand men I
held the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him;
but he would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is
disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for him, he ought,
it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our losses
were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not
more, and not even that; but even were they ten thousand,
that’s war! But the enemy has lost masses...
What would it have cost him to hold out for another
two days? They would have had to retire of their own
accord, for they had no water for men or horses. He gave
me his word he would not retreat, but suddenly sent
instructions that he was retiring that night. We cannot
fight in this way, or we may soon bring the enemy to
Moscow...

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There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God

forbid that you should make peace after all our sacrifices
and such insane retreats! You would set all Russia against
you and every one of us would feel ashamed to wear the
uniform. If it has come to this- we must fight as long as
Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...
One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your
Minister may perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a
general he is not merely bad but execrable, yet to him is
entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I am really
frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is
clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a
peace, and that the Minister should command the army,
does not love our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all.
So I write you frankly: call out the militia. For the
Minister is leading these visitors after him to Moscow in a
most masterly way. The whole army feels great suspicion
of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be
more Napoleon’s man than ours, and he is always
advising the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but
obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior. This is
painful, but, loving my benefactor and sovereign, I
submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts
our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our retreat

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we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than

fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not
have happened. Tell me, for God’s sake, what will Russia,
our mother Russia, say to our being so frightened, and
why are we abandoning our good and gallant Fatherland
to such rabble and implanting feelings of hatred and
shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and of
whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister
is vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad
qualities. The whole army bewails it and calls down
curses upon him...

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Chapter VI

Among the innumerable categories applicable to the

phenomena of human life one may discriminate between
those in which substance prevails and those in which form
prevails. To the latter- as distinguished from village,
country, provincial, or even Moscow life- we may allot
Petersburg life, and especially the life of its salons. That
life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805 we
had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte
and had made constitutions and unmade them again, but
the salons of Anna Pavlovna Helene remained just as they
had been- the one seven and the other five years before.
At Anna Pavlovna’s they talked with perplexity of
Bonaparte’s successes just as before and saw in them and
in the subservience shown to him by the European
sovereigns a malicious conspiracy, the sole object of
which was to cause unpleasantness and anxiety to the
court circle of which Anna Pavlovna was the
representative. And in Helene’s salon, which Rumyantsev
himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a
remarkably intelligent woman, they talked with the same
ecstasy in 1812 as in 1808 of the ‘great nation’ and the

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‘great man,’ and regretted our rupture with France, a

rupture which, according to them, ought to be promptly
terminated by peace.
Of late, since the Emperor’s return from the army,
there had been some excitement in these conflicting salon
circles and some demonstrations of hostility to one
another, but each camp retained its own tendency. In
Anna Pavlovna’s circle only those Frenchmen were
admitted who were deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic
views were expressed to the effect that one ought not to
go to the French theater and that to maintain the French
troupe was costing the government as much as a whole
army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly
followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army
were circulated. In the French circle of Helene and
Rumyantsev the reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of
the war were contradicted and all Napoleon’s attempts at
conciliation were discussed. In that circle they
discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations
for a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls’
educational establishments under the patronage of the
Dowager Empress. In Helene’s circle the war in general
was regarded as a series of formal demonstrations which
would very soon end in peace, and the view prevailed

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expressed by Bilibin- who now in Petersburg was quite at

home in Helene’s house, which every clever man was
obliged to visit- that not by gunpowder but by those who
invented it would matters be settled. In that circle the
Moscow enthusiasm- news of which had reached
Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor’s return- was
ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with
much caution.
Anna Pavlovna’s circle on the contrary was enraptured
by this enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of
the deeds of the ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied
his former important posts, formed a connecting link
between these two circles. He visited his ‘good friend
Anna Pavlovna’ as well as his daughter’s ‘diplomatic
salon,’ and often in his constant comings and goings
between the two camps became confused and said at
Helene’s what he should have said at Anna Pavlovna’s
and vice versa.
Soon after the Emperor’s return Prince Vasili in a
conversation about the war at Anna Pavlovna’s severely
condemned Barclay de Tolly, but was undecided as to
who ought to be appointed commander in chief. One of
the visitors, usually spoken of as ‘a man of great merit,’
having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the

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newly chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding

over the enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously
ventured to suggest that Kutuzov would be the man to
satisfy all requirements.
Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that
Kutuzov had done nothing but cause the Emperor
annoyance.
‘I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the
Nobility,’ Prince Vasili interrupted, ‘but they did not
listen to me. I told them his election as chief of the militia
would not please the Emperor. They did not listen to me.
‘It’s all this mania for opposition,’ he went on. ‘And
who for? It is all because we want to ape the foolish
enthusiasm of those Muscovites,’ Prince Vasili continued,
forgetting for a moment that though at Helene’s one had
to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pavlovna’s
one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his
mistake at once. ‘Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov,
the oldest general in Russia, should preside at that
tribunal? He will get nothing for his pains! How could
they make a man commander in chief who cannot mount
a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the very
worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at
Bucharest! I don’t speak of his capacity as a general, but

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at a time like this how they appoint they appoint a

decrepit, blind old man, positively blind? A fine idea to
have a blind general! He can’t see anything. To play
blindman’s bluff? He can’t see at all!’
No one replied to his remarks.
This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July.
But on the twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title
of Prince. This might indicate a wish to get rid of him,
and therefore Prince Vasili’s opinion continued to be
correct though he was not now in any hurry to express it.
But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting of
Field Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov,
Lopukhin, and Kochubey met to consider the progress of
the war. This committee came to the conclusion that our
failures were due to a want of unity in the command and
though the members of the committee were aware of the
Emperor’s dislike of Kutuzov, after a short deliberation
they agreed to advise his appointment as commander in
chief. That same day Kutuzov was appointed commander
in chief with full powers over the armies and over the
whole region occupied by them.
On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna
Pavlovna’s again met the ‘man of great merit.’ The latter
was very attentive to Anna Pavlovna because he wanted

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to be appointed director of one of the educational

establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the
room with the air of a happy conqueror who has attained
the object of his desires.
‘Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov
is field marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so
glad, so delighted! At last we have a man!’ said he,
glancing sternly and significantly round at everyone in the
drawing room.
The ‘man of great merit,’ despite his desire to obtain
the post of director, could not refrain from reminding
Prince Vasili of his former opinion. Though this was
impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing
room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had
received the news with delight, he could not resist the
temptation.
‘But, Prince, they say he is blind!’ said he, reminding
Prince Vasili of his own words.
‘Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough,’ said Prince
Vasili rapidly, in a deep voice and with a slight cough- the
voice and cough with which he was wont to dispose of all
difficulties.
‘He sees well enough,’ he added. ‘And what I am so
pleased about,’ he went on, ‘is that our sovereign has

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given him full powers over all the armies and the whole
region- powers no commander in chief ever had before.
He is a second autocrat,’ he concluded with a victorious
smile.
‘God grant it! God grant it!’ said Anna Pavlovna.
The ‘man of great merit,’ who was still a novice in
court circles, wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by
defending her former position on this question, observed:
‘It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give
Kutuzov those powers. They say he blushed like a girl to
whom Joconde is read, when he said to Kutuzov: ‘Your
Emperor and the Fatherland award you this honor.’
‘Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech,’ said
Anna Pavlovna.
‘Oh, no, no!’ warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who
would not now yield Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion
Kutuzov was not only admirable himself, but was adored
by everybody. ‘No, that’s impossible,’ said he, ‘for our
sovereign appreciated him so highly before.’
‘God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real
power and does not allow anyone to put a spoke in his
wheel,’ observed Anna Pavlovna.
Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince
Vasili said in a whisper:

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‘I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute

condition that the Tsarevich should not be with the army.
Do you know what he said to the Emperor?’
And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have
been spoken by Kutuzov to the Emperor. ‘I can neither
punish him if he does wrong nor reward him if he does
right.’
‘Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known
him a long time!’
‘They even say,’ remarked the ‘man of great merit’
who did not yet possess courtly tact, ‘that his excellency
made it an express condition that the sovereign himself
should not be with the army.’
As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna
Pavlovna turned away from him and glanced sadly at one
another with a sigh at his naivete.

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Chapter VII

While this was taking place in Petersburg the French

had already passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer
and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon’s historian Thiers, like
other of his historians, trying to justify his hero says that
he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He
is as right as other historians who look for the explanation
of historic events in the will of one man; he is as right as
the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was
drawn to Moscow by the skill of the Russian
commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection,
which regards all the past as a preparation for events that
subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in,
confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having
lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted
from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the
opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there
were similar mistakes and that none of his moves were
perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays
attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How
much more complex than this is the game of war, which
occurs under certain limits of time, and where it is not one

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will that manipulates lifeless objects, but everything

results from innumerable conflicts of various wills!
After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond
Dorogobuzh at Vyazma, and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche,
but it happened that owing to a conjunction of
innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give
battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles from
Moscow. From Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct
advance on Moscow.
Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la
ville sacree des peuples d’Alexandre, Moscou avec ses
innombrables eglises en forme de pagodes chinoises,* this
Moscow gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest. On the
march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his
light bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards,
his bodyguard, his pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his
chief of staff, dropped behind to question a Russian
prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by Lelorgne
d’Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a
gallop and reined in his horse with an amused expression.
*"Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the
sacred city of Alexander’s people, Moscow with its
innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas.’
‘Well?’ asked Napoleon.

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‘One of Platov’s Cossacks says that Platov’s corps is

joining up with the main army and that Kutuzov has been
appointed commander in chief. He is a very shrewd and
garrulous fellow.’
Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a
horse and bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him
himself. Several adjutants galloped off, and an hour later,
Lavrushka, the serf Denisov had handed over to Rostov,
rode up to Napoleon in an orderly’s jacket and on a
French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face.
Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began
questioning him.
‘You are a Cossack?’
‘Yes, a Cossack, your Honor.’
‘The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was,
for Napoleon’s plain appearance had nothing about it that
would reveal to an Oriental mind the presence of a
monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the incidents
of the war,’ says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality
Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his
master dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the
village in quest of chickens, where he engaged in looting
till the French took him prisoner. Lavrushka was one of
those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all sorts

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of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean

and cunning way, are ready to render any sort of service
to their master, and are keen at guessing their master’s
baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and
pettiness.
Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose
identity he had easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka
was not in the least abashed but merely did his utmost to
gain his new master’s favor.
He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but
Napoleon’s presence could no more intimidate him than
Rostov’s, or a sergeant major’s with the rods, would have
done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major or
Napoleon could deprive him of.
So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard
among the orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon
asked him whether the Russians thought they would beat
Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed up his eyes and
considered.
In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his
type see cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not
answer immediately.
‘It’s like this,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if there’s a battle
soon, yours will win. That’s right. But if three days pass,

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then after that, well, then that same battle will not soon be
over.’
Lelorgne d’Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to
Napoleon thus: ‘If a battle takes place within the next
three days the French will win, but if later, God knows
what will happen.’ Napoleon did not smile, though he was
evidently in high good humor, and he ordered these words
to be repeated.
Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further,
pretending not to know who Napoleon was, added:
‘We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has
beaten everybody in the world, but we are a different
matter...’- without knowing why or how this bit of
boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.
The interpreter translated these words without the last
phrase, and Bonaparte smiled. ‘The young Cossack made
his mighty interlocutor smile,’ says Thiers. After riding a
few paces in silence, Napoleon turned to Berthier and said
he wished to see how the news that he was talking to the
Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written
his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would
affect this enfant du Don.*
*"Child of the Don.’
The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.

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Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex

him and that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to
gratify his new masters promptly pretended to be
astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes wide, and
assumed the expression he usually put on when taken to
be whipped. ‘As soon as Napoleon’s interpreter had
spoken,’ says Thiers, ‘the Cossack, seized by amazement,
did not utter another word, but rode on, his eyes fixed on
the conqueror whose fame had reached him across the
steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly
arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of
admiration. Napoleon, after making the Cossack a
present, had him set free like a bird restored to its native
fields.’
Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so
appealed to his imagination, and ‘the bird restored to its
native fields’ galloped to our outposts, inventing on the
way all that had not taken place but that he meant to relate
to his comrades. What had really taken place he did not
wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth telling.
He found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment
operating with Platov’s detachment and by evening found
his master, Nicholas Rostov, quartered at Yankovo.
Rostov was just mounting to go for a ride round the

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neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka have

another horse and took him along with him.

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Chapter VIII

Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as

Prince Andrew supposed.
After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old
prince suddenly seemed to awake as from a dream. He
ordered the militiamen to be called up from the villages
and armed, and wrote a letter to the commander in chief
informing him that he had resolved to remain at Bald
Hills to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the
commander in chief’s discretion to take measures or not
for the defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia’s oldest
generals would be captured or killed, and he announced to
his household that he would remain at Bald Hills.
But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for
the departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little
prince to Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess
Mary, alarmed by her father’s feverish and sleepless
activity after his previous apathy, could not bring herself
to leave him alone and for the first time in her life
ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her
father’s fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He
repeated every injustice he had ever inflicted on her.

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Trying to convict her, he told her she had worn him out,
had caused his quarrel with his son, had harbored nasty
suspicions of him, making it the object of her life to
poison his existence, and he drove her from his study
telling her that if she did not go away it was all the same
to him. He declared that he did not wish to remember her
existence and warned her not to dare to let him see her.
The fact that he did not, as she had feared, order her to be
carried away by force but only told her not to let him see
her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that
in the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at
home and had not gone away.
The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old
prince donned his full uniform and prepared to visit the
commander in chief. His caleche was already at the door.
Princess Mary saw him walk out of the house in his
uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden to
review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by
the window listening to his voice which reached her from
the garden. Suddenly several men came running up the
avenue with frightened faces.
Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-
bordered path, and into the avenue. A large crowd of
militiamen and domestics were moving toward her, and in

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their midst several men were supporting by the armpits

and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and
decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the
sunlight that fell in small round spots through the shade of
the lime-tree avenue, could not be sure what change there
was in his face. All she could see was that his former
stern and determined expression had altered to one of
timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he
moved his helpless lips and made a hoarse sound. It was
impossible to make out what he wanted. He was lifted up,
carried to his study, and laid on the very couch he had so
feared of late.
The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him
and said that the prince had had seizure a paralyzing his
right side.
It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain
at Bald Hills, and next day they moved the prince to
Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying him.
By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and
the little prince had already left for Moscow.
For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis
in the new house Prince Andrew had built at
Bogucharovo, ever in the same state, getting neither better
nor worse. He was unconscious and lay like a distorted

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corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and lips

twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he
understood what was going on around him or not. One
thing was certain- that he was suffering and wished to say
something. But what it was, no one could tell: it might be
some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man, or it might
relate to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.
The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything
and was due to physical causes; but Princess Mary
thought he wished to tell her something, and the fact that
her presence always increased his restlessness confirmed
her opinion.
He was evidently suffering both physically and
mentally. There was no hope of recovery. It was
impossible for him to travel, it would not do to let him die
on the road. ‘Would it not be better if the end did come,
the very end?’ Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night
and day, hardly sleeping at all, she watched him and,
terrible to say, often watched him not with hope of
finding signs of improvement but wishing to find
symptoms of the approach of the end.
Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in
herself, yet there it was. And what seemed still more
terrible to her was that since her father’s illness began

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(perhaps even sooner, when she stayed with him

expecting something to happen), all the personal desires
and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her
had awakened. Thoughts that had not entered her mind for
years- thoughts of a life free from the fear of her father,
and even the possibility of love and of family happiness-
floated continually in her imagination like temptations of
the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions
continually recurred to her as to how she would order her
life now, after that. These were temptations of the devil
and Princess Mary knew it. She knew that the sole
weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray. She
assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons,
repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray.
She felt that a different world had now taken possession
of her- the life of a world of strenuous and free activity,
quite opposed to the spiritual world in which till now she
had been confined and in which her greatest comfort had
been prayer. She could not pray, could not weep, and
worldly cares took possession of her.
It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo.
News of the approach of the French came from all sides,
and in one village, ten miles from Bogucharovo, a
homestead had been looted by French marauders.

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The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the

prince; the provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an
official to Princess Mary to persuade her to get away as
quickly as possible, and the head of the rural police
having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing,
saying that the French were only some twenty-five miles
away, that French proclamations were circulating in the
villages, and that if the princess did not take her father
away before the fifteenth, he could not answer for the
consequences.
The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The
cares of preparation and giving orders, for which
everyone came to her, occupied her all day. She spent the
night of the fourteenth as usual, without undressing, in the
room next to the one where the prince lay. Several times,
waking up, she heard his groans and muttering, the creak
of his bed, and the steps of Tikhon and the doctor when
they turned him over. Several times she listened at the
door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were louder
than usual and that they turned him over oftener. She
could not sleep and several times went to the door and
listened, wishing to enter but not deciding to do so.
Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw and knew
how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was

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to him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he

turned from the look she sometimes involuntarily fixed on
him. She knew that her going in during the night at an
unusual hour would irritate him.
But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much
afraid of losing him. She recalled all her life with him and
in every word and act of his found an expression of his
love of her. Occasionally amid these memories
temptations of the devil would surge into her imagination:
thoughts of how things would be after his death, and how
her new, liberated life would be ordered. But she drove
these thoughts away with disgust. Toward morning he
became quiet and she fell asleep.
She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with
waking showed her clearly what chiefly concerned her
about her father’s illness. On waking she listened to what
was going on behind the door and, hearing him groan,
said to herself with a sigh that things were still the same.
‘But what could have happened? What did I want? I
want his death!’ she cried with a feeling of loathing for
herself.
She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to
the porch. In front of it stood carriages without horses and
things were being packed into the vehicles.

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It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at

the porch, still horrified by her spiritual baseness and
trying to arrange her thoughts before going to her father.
The doctor came downstairs and went out to her.
‘He is a little better today,’ said he. ‘I was looking for
you. One can make out something of what he is saying.
His head is clearer. Come in, he is asking for you..’
Princess Mary’s heart beat so violently at this news
that she grew pale and leaned against the wall to keep
from falling. To see him, talk to him, feel his eyes on her
now that her whole soul was overflowing with those
dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment of joy and
terror.
‘Come,’ said the doctor.
Princess Mary entered her father’s room and went up
to his bed. He was lying on his back propped up high, and
his small bony hands with their knotted purple veins were
lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed straight before him,
his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips motionless.
He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His
face seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had
grown smaller. Princess Mary went up and kissed his
hand. His left hand pressed hers so that she understood
that he had long been waiting for her to come. He

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twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered

angrily.
She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he
wanted of her. When she changed her position so that his
left eye could see her face he calmed down, not taking his
eyes off her for some seconds. Then his lips and tongue
moved, sounds came, and he began to speak, gazing
timidly and imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she
might not understand.
Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him.
The comic efforts with which he moved his tongue made
her drop her eyes and with difficulty repress the sobs that
rose to her throat. He said something, repeating the same
words several times. She could not understand them, but
tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly
repeated the words he uttered.
‘Mmm...ar...ate...ate...’ he repeated several times.
It was quite impossible to understand these sounds.
The doctor thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly
repeated: ‘Mary, are you afraid?’ The prince shook his
head, again repeated the same sounds.
‘My mind, my mind aches?’ questioned Princess Mary.

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He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this,

took her hand, and began pressing it to different parts of
his breast as if trying to find the right place for it.
‘Always thoughts... about you... thoughts...’ he then
uttered much more clearly than he had done before, now
that he was sure of being understood.
Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand,
trying to hide her sobs and tears.
He moved his hand over her hair.
‘I have been calling you all night...’ he brought out.
‘If only I had known...’ she said through her tears. ‘I
was afraid to come in.’
He pressed her hand.
‘Weren’t you asleep?’
‘No, I did not sleep,’ said Princess Mary, shaking her
head.
Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to
express herself as he did, as much as possible by signs,
and her tongue too seemed to move with difficulty.
‘Dear one... Dearest...’ Princess Mary could not quite
make out what he had said, but from his look it was clear
that he had uttered a tender caressing word such as he had
never used to her before. ‘Why didn’t you come in?’

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‘And I was wishing for his death!’ thought Princess

Mary.
He was silent awhile.
‘Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all...
forgive!... thank you!... forgive!... thank you!...’ and tears
began to flow from his eyes. ‘Call Andrew!’ he said
suddenly, and a childish, timid expression of doubt
showed itself on his face as he spoke.
He himself seemed aware that his demand was
meaningless. So at least it seemed to Princess Mary.
‘I have a letter from him,’ she replied.
He glanced at her with timid surprise.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s with the army, Father, at Smolensk.’
He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time.
Then as if in answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact
that now he understood and remembered everything, he
nodded his head and reopened his eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, softly and distinctly. ‘Russia has
perished. They’ve destroyed her.’
And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his
eyes. Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and
wept while she gazed at his face.

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Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed

to his eyes, and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away
the tears.
Then he again opened his eyes and said something
none of them could understand for a long time, till at last
Tikhon understood and repeated it. Princess Mary had
sought the meaning of his words in the mood in which he
had just been speaking. She thought he was speaking of
Russia, or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, or
of his own death, and so she could not guess his words.
‘Put on your white dress. I like it,’ was what he said.
Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still
louder, and the doctor taking her arm led her out to the
veranda, soothing her and trying to persuade her to
prepare for her journey. When she had left the room the
prince again began speaking about his son, about the war,
and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and
raising his hoarse voice, and then he had a second and
final stroke.
Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had
cleared, it was hot and sunny. She could understand
nothing, think of nothing and feel nothing, except
passionate love for her father, love such as she thought
she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing

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into the garden and as far as the pond, along the avenues
of young lime trees Prince Andrew had planted.
‘Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to
end quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will
become of me? What use will peace be when he is no
longer here?’ Princess Mary murmured, pacing the garden
with hurried steps and pressing her hands to her bosom
which heaved with convulsive sobs.
When she had completed the tour of the garden, which
brought her again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle
Bourienne- who had remained at Bogucharovo and did
not wish to leave it- coming toward her with a stranger.
This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, who
had come personally to point out to the princess the
necessity for her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened
without understanding him; she led him to the house,
offered him lunch, and sat down with him. Then, excusing
herself, she went to the door of the old prince’s room. The
doctor came out with an agitated face and said she could
not enter.
‘Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!’
She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at
the foot of the slope by the pond, where no one could see
her. She did not know how long she had been there when

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she was aroused by the sound of a woman’s footsteps

running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha her
maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who
stopped suddenly as if in alarm on seeing her mistress.
‘Please come, Princess... The Prince,’ said Dunyasha
in a breaking voice.
‘Immediately, I’m coming, I’m coming!’ replied the
princess hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish
what she was saying, and trying to avoid seeing the girl
she ran toward the house.
‘Princess, it’s God’s will! You must be prepared for
everything,’ said the Marshal, meeting her at the house
door.
‘Let me alone; it’s not true!’ she cried angrily to him.
The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and
ran to her father’s door. ‘Why are these people with
frightened faces stopping me? I don’t want any of them!
And what are they doing here?’ she thought. She opened
the door and the bright daylight in that previously
darkened room startled her. In the room were her nurse
and other women. They all drew back from the bed,
making way for her. He was still lying on the bed as
before, but the stern expression of his quiet face made
Princess Mary stop short on the threshold.

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‘No, he’s not dead- it’s impossible!’ she told herself

and approached him, and repressing the terror that seized
her, she pressed her lips to his cheek. But she stepped
back immediately. All the force of the tenderness she had
been feeling for him vanished instantly and was replaced
by a feeling of horror at what lay there before her. ‘No, he
is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something
unfamiliar and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and
repellent mystery!’ And hiding her face in her hands,
Princess Mary sank into the arms of the doctor, who held
her up.
In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women
washed what had been the prince, tied his head up with a
handkerchief that the mouth should not stiffen while
open, and with another handkerchief tied together the legs
that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him
in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled
little body on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged
all this and when, but it all got done as if of its own
accord. Toward night candles were burning round his
coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was strewn with
sprays of juniper, a printed band was tucked in under his
shriveled head, and in a corner of the room sat a chanter
reading the psalms.

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Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead

horse, so the inmates of the house and strangers crowded
into the drawing room round the coffin- the Marshal, the
village Elder, peasant women- and all with fixed and
frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and kissed
the old prince’s cold and stiffened hand.

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Chapter IX

Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners

had always been absentees, and its peasants were of quite
a different character from those of Bald Hills. They
differed from them in speech, dress, and disposition. They
were called steppe peasants. The old prince used to
approve of them for their endurance at work when they
came to Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig
ponds, and ditches, but he disliked them for their
boorishness.
Prince Andrew’s last stay at Bogucharovo, when he
introduced hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent
the peasants had to pay, had not softened their disposition
but had on the contrary strengthened in them the traits of
character the old prince called boorishness. Various
obscure rumors were always current among them: at one
time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks;
at another of a new religion to which they were all to be
converted; then of some proclamation of the Tsar’s and of
an oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with
which it was rumored that freedom had been granted them
but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter

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Fedorovich’s return to the throne in seven years’ time,

when everything would be made free and so ‘simple’ that
there would be no restrictions. Rumors of the war with
Bonaparte and his invasion were connected in their minds
with the same sort of vague notions of Antichrist, the end
of the world, and ‘pure freedom.’
In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages
belonging to the crown or to owners whose serfs paid
quitrent and could work where they pleased. There were
very few resident landlords in the neighborhood and also
very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the
peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in
the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of
which are so baffling to contemporaries, were more
clearly and strongly noticeable than among others. One
instance, which had occurred some twenty years before,
was a movement among the peasants to emigrate to some
unknown ‘warm rivers.’ Hundreds of peasants, among
them the Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their
cattle and moving in whole families toward the southeast.
As birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these
men with their wives and children streamed to the
southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been.
They set off in caravans, bought their freedom one by one

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or ran away, and drove or walked toward the ‘warm

rivers.’ Many of them were punished, some sent to
Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many
returned of their own accord, and the movement died
down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent
reason. But such undercurrents still existed among the
people and gathered new forces ready to manifest
themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the
same time simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812,
to anyone living in close touch with these people it was
apparent that these undercurrents were acting strongly and
nearing an eruption.
Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly
before the old prince’s death, noticed an agitation among
the peasants, and that contrary to what was happening in
the Bald Hills district, where over a radius of forty miles
all the peasants were moving away and leaving their
villages to be devastated by the Cossacks, the peasants in
the steppe region round Bogucharovo were, it was
rumored, in touch with the French, received leaflets from
them that passed from hand to hand, and did not migrate.
He learned from domestic serfs loyal to him that the
peasant Karp, who possessed great influence in the village
commune and had recently been away driving a

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government transport, had returned with news that the

Cossacks were destroying deserted villages, but that the
French did not harm them. Alpatych also knew that on the
previous day another peasant had even brought from the
village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied by the
French, a proclamation by a French general that no harm
would be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained
they would be paid for anything taken from them. As
proof of this the peasant had brought from Visloukhovo a
hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that they were
false) paid to him in advance for hay.
More important still, Alpatych learned that on the
morning of the very day he gave the village Elder orders
to collect carts to move the princess’ luggage from
Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting at which it
had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was
no time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old
prince’s death, the Marshal had insisted on Princess
Mary’s leaving at once, as it was becoming dangerous. He
had told her that after the sixteenth he could not be
responsible for what might happen. On the evening of the
day the old prince died the Marshal went away, promising
to return next day for the funeral. But this he was unable
to do, for he received tidings that the French had

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unexpectedly advanced, and had barely time to remove

his own family and valuables from his estate.
For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed
by the village Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by
the diminutive ‘Dronushka.’
Dron was one of those physically and mentally
vigorous peasants who grow big beards as soon as they
are of age and go on unchanged till they are sixty or
seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a tooth, as
straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.
Soon after the migration to the ‘warm rivers,’ in which
he had taken part like the rest, Dron was made village
Elder and overseer of Bogucharovo, and had since filled
that post irreproachably for twenty-three years. The
peasants feared him more than they did their master. The
masters, both the old prince and the young, and the
steward respected him and jestingly called him ‘the
Minister.’ During the whole time of his service Dron had
never been drunk or ill, never after sleepless nights or the
hardest tasks had he shown the least fatigue, and though
he could not read he had never forgotten a single money
account or the number of quarters of flour in any of the
endless cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock

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of the whole corn crop on any single acre of the

Bogucharovo fields.
Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills
estate, sent for his Dron on the day of the prince’s funeral
and told him to have twelve horses got ready for the
princess’ carriages and eighteen carts for the things to be
removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants paid
quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made
about complying with this order, for there were two
hundred and thirty households at work in Bogucharovo
and the peasants were well to do. But on hearing the order
Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent. Alpatych
named certain peasants he knew, from whom he told him
to take the carts.
Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were
away carting. Alpatych named others, but they too,
according to Dron, had no horses available: some horses
were carting for the government, others were too weak,
and others had died for want of fodder. It seemed that no
horses could be had even for the carriages, much less for
the carting.
Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as
Dron was a model village Elder, so Alpatych had not
managed the prince’s estates for twenty years in vain. He

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a model steward, possessing in the highest degree the

faculty of divining the needs and instincts of those he
dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood
that his answers did not express his personal views but the
general mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which
the Elder had already been carried away. But he also
knew that Dron, who had acquired property and was hated
by the commune, must be hesitating between the two
camps: the masters’ and the serfs’. He noticed this
hesitation in Dron’s look and therefore frowned and
moved closer up to him.
‘Now just listen, Dronushka,’ said he. ‘Don’t talk
nonsense to me. His excellency Prince Andrew himself
gave me orders to move all the people away and not leave
them with the enemy, and there is an order from the Tsar
about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar. Do
you hear?’
‘I hear,’ Dron answered without lifting his eyes.
Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.
‘Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!’ he said, shaking his
head.
‘The power is in your hands,’ Dron rejoined sadly.
‘Eh, Dron, drop it!’ Alpatych repeated, withdrawing
his hand from his bosom and solemnly pointing to the

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floor at Dron’s feet. ‘I can see through you and three

yards into the ground under you,’ he continued, gazing at
the floor in front of Dron.
Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych
and again lowered his eyes.
‘You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get
ready to leave their homes and go to Moscow and to get
carts ready for tomorrow morning for the princess’ things.
And don’t go to any meeting yourself, do you hear?’
Dron suddenly fell on his knees.
‘Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from
me and discharge me, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Stop that!’ cried Alpatych sternly. ‘I see through you
and three yards under you,’ he repeated, knowing that his
skill in beekeeping, his knowledge of the right time to
sow the oats, and the fact that he had been able to retain
the old prince’s favor for twenty years had long since
gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the
power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an
attribute of wizards.
Dron got up and was about to say something, but
Alpatych interrupted him.
‘What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What
are you thinking of, eh?’

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‘What am I to do with the people?’ said Dron. ‘They’re

quite beside themselves; I have already told them..’
‘‘Told them,’ I dare say!’ said Alpatych. ‘Are they
drinking?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they’ve
fetched another barrel.’
‘Well, then, listen! I’ll go to the police officer, and you
tell them so, and that they must stop this and the carts
must be got ready.’
‘I understand.’
Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people
for a long time and knew that the chief way to make them
obey is to show no suspicion that they can possibly
disobey. Having wrung a submissive ‘I understand’ from
Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he not
only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help
of troops the carts would not be forthcoming.
And so it was, for when evening came no carts had
been provided. In the village, outside the drink shop,
another meeting was being held, which decided that the
horses should be driven out into the woods and the carts
should not be provided. Without saying anything of this to
the princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out
of the carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had

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those horses got ready for the princess’ carriages.

Meanwhile he went himself to the police authorities.

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Chapter X

After her father’s funeral Princess Mary shut herself up

in her room and did not admit anyone. A maid came to
the door to say that Alpatych was asking for orders about
their departure. (This was before his talk with Dron.)
Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she had
been lying and replied through the closed door that she
did not mean to go away and begged to be left in peace.
The windows of the room in which she was lying
looked westward. She lay on the sofa with her face to the
wall, fingering the buttons of the leather cushion and
seeing nothing but that cushion, and her confused
thoughts were centered on one subject- the irrevocability
of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had
not suspected, but which had shown itself during her
father’s illness. She wished to pray but did not dare to,
dared not in her present state of mind address herself to
God. She lay for a long time in that position.
The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its
slanting rays shone into the open window, lighting up the
room and part of the morocco cushion at which Princess
Mary was looking. The flow of her thoughts suddenly

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stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed her hair, got

up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the
freshness of the clear but windy evening.
‘Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone
and no one will hinder you,’ she said to herself, and
sinking into a chair she let her head fall on the window
sill.
Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice
from the garden and kissed her head. She looked up. It
was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black dress and
weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary, sighed,
kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess
looked up at her. All their former disharmony and her
own jealousy recurred to her mind. But she remembered
too how he had changed of late toward Mademoiselle
Bourienne and could not bear to see her, thereby showing
how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had
mentally addressed to her. ‘Besides, is it for me, for me
who desired his death, to condemn anyone?’ she thought.
Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position
of Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at
a distance, but who yet was dependent on her and living
in her house. She felt sorry for her and held out her hand
with a glance of gentle inquiry. Mademoiselle Bourienne

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at once began crying again and kissed that hand, speaking

of the princess’ sorrow and making herself a partner in it.
She said her only consolation was the fact that the
princess allowed her to share her sorrow, that all the old
misunderstandings should sink into nothing but this great
grief; that she felt herself blameless in regard to everyone,
and that he, from above, saw her affection and gratitude.
The princess heard her, not heeding her words but
occasionally looking up at her and listening to the sound
of her voice.
‘Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess,’ said
Mademoiselle Bourienne after a pause. ‘I understand that
you could not, and cannot, think of yourself, but with my
love for you I must do so.... Has Alpatych been to you?
Has he spoken to you of going away?’ she asked.
Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand
who was to go or where to. ‘Is it possible to plan or think
of anything now? Is it not all the same?’ she thought, and
did not reply.
‘You know, chere Marie,’ said Mademoiselle
Bourienne, ‘that we are in danger- are surrounded by the
French. It would be dangerous to move now. If we go we
are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God knows..’

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Princess Mary looked at her companion without

understanding what she was talking about.
‘Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me
now,’ she said. ‘Of course I would on no account wish to
go away from him.... Alpatych did say something about
going.... Speak to him; I can do nothing, nothing, and
don’t want to...’
‘I’ve spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to
get away tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to
stay here,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne. ‘Because, you
will agree, chere Marie, to fall into the hands of the
soldiers or of riotous peasants would be terrible.’
Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a
proclamation (not printed on ordinary Russian paper) of
General Rameau’s, telling people not to leave their homes
and that the French authorities would afford them proper
protection. She handed this to the princess.
‘I think it would be best to appeal to that general,’ she
continued, ‘and and am sure that all due respect would be
shown you.’
Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to
quiver with stifled sobs.
‘From whom did you get this?’ she asked.

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‘They probably recognized that I am French, by my

name,’ replied Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.
Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from
the window and with a pale face went out of the room and
into what had been Prince Andrew’s study.
‘Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or
somebody to me!’ she said, ‘and tell Mademoiselle
Bourienne not to come to me,’ she added, hearing
Mademoiselle Bourienne’s voice. ‘We must go at once, at
once!’ she said, appalled at the thought of being left in the
hands of the French.
‘If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the
French! That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski, asked General Rameau for protection and
accepted his favor!’ This idea horrified her, made her
shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and pride as
she had never experienced before. All that was
distressing, and especially all that was humiliating, in her
position rose vividly to her mind. ‘They, the French,
would settle in this house: M. le General Rameau would
occupy Prince Andrew’s study and amuse himself by
looking through and reading his letters and papers.
Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honors of
Bogucharovo for him. I should be given a small room as a

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favor, the soldiers would violate my father’s newly dug

grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would tell me of
their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to
sympathize with my sorrow...’ thought Princess Mary, not
thinking her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like
her father and her brother. For herself she did not care
where she remained or what happened to her, but she felt
herself the representative of her dead father and of Prince
Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their thoughts and felt
their feelings. What they would have said and what they
would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went
into Prince Andrew’s study, trying to enter completely
into his ideas, and considered her position.
The demands of life, which had seemed to her
annihilated by her father’s death, all at once rose before
her with a new, previously unknown force and took
possession of her.
Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now
for Michael Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron.
Dunyasha, the nurse, and the other maids could not say in
how far Mademoiselle Bourienne’s statement was correct.
Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the police.
Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on
being sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess

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Mary anything. With just the same smile of agreement

with which for fifteen years he had been accustomed to
answer the old prince without expressing views of his
own, he now replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing
definite could be got from his answers. The old valet
Tikhon, with sunken, emaciated face that bore the stamp
of inconsolable grief, replied: ‘Yes, Princess’ to all
Princess Mary’s questions and hardly refrained from
sobbing as he looked at her.
At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and
with a deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the
doorpost.
Princess Mary walked up and down the room and
stopped in front of him.
‘Dronushka,’ she said, regarding as a sure friend this
Dronushka who always used to bring a special kind of
gingerbread from his visit to the fair at Vyazma every
year and smilingly offer it to her, ‘Dronushka, now since
our misfortune...’ she began, but could not go on.
‘We are all in God’s hands,’ said he, with a sigh.
They were silent for a while.
‘Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I
have no one to turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can’t
even go away?’

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‘Why shouldn’t you go away, your excellency? You

can go,’ said Dron.
‘I was told it would be dangerous because of the
enemy. Dear friend, I can do nothing. I understand
nothing. I have nobody! I want to go away tonight or
early tomorrow morning.’
Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and
said: ‘There are no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so.’
‘Why are there none?’ asked the princess.
‘It’s all God’s scourge,’ said Dron. ‘What horses we
had have been taken for the army or have died- this is
such a year! It’s not a case of feeding horses- we may die
of hunger ourselves! As it is, some go three days without
eating. We’ve nothing, we’ve been ruined.’
Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.
‘The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?’ she
asked.
‘They’re dying of hunger,’ said Dron. ‘It’s not a case
of carting.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me, Dronushka? Isn’t it
possible to help them? I’ll do all I can...’
To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment
when such sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich
people and poor, and the rich could refrain from helping

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the poor. She had heard vaguely that there was such a
thing as ‘landlord’s corn’ which was sometimes given to
the peasants. She also knew that neither her father nor her
brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she
only feared to make some mistake in speaking about the
distribution of the grain she wished to give. She was glad
such cares presented themselves, enabling her without
scruple to forget her own grief. She began asking Dron
about the peasants’ needs and what there was in
Bogucharovo that belonged to the landlord.
‘But we have grain belonging to my brother?’ she said.
‘The landlord’s grain is all safe,’ replied Dron proudly.
‘Our prince did not order it to be sold.’
‘Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I
give you leave in my brother’s name,’ said she.
Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.
‘Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute
it all. I give this order in my brother’s name; and tell them
that what is ours is theirs. We do not grudge them
anything. Tell them so.’
’ Dron looked intently at the princess while she was
speaking.
‘Discharge me, little mother, for God’s sake! Order the
keys to be taken from me,’ said he. ‘I have served twenty-

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three years and have done no wrong. Discharge me, for

God’s sake!’
Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of
her or why he was asking to be discharged. She replied
that she had never doubted his devotion and that she was
ready to do anything for him and for the peasants.

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Chapter XI

An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that

Dron had come, and all the peasants had assembled at the
barn by the princess’ order and wished to have word with
their mistress.
‘But I never told them to come,’ said Princess Mary. ‘I
only told Dron to let them have the grain.’
‘Only, for God’s sake, Princess dear, have them sent
away and don’t go out to them. It’s all a trick,’ said
Dunyasha, ‘and when Yakov Alpatych returns let us get
away... and please don’t..’
‘What is a trick?’ asked Princess Mary in surprise.
‘I know it is, only listen to me for God’s sake! Ask
nurse too. They say they don’t agree to leave
Bogucharovo as you ordered.’
‘You’re making some mistake. I never ordered them to
go away,’ said Princess Mary. ‘Call Dronushka.’
Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha’s words; the
peasants had come by the princess’ order.
‘But I never sent for them,’ declared the princess. ‘You
must have given my message wrong. I only said that you
were to give them the grain.’

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Dron only sighed in reply.

‘If you order it they will go away,’ said he.
‘No, no. I’ll go out to them,’ said Princess Mary, and
in spite of the nurse’s and Dunyasha’s protests she went
out into the porch; Dron, Dunyasha, the nurse, and
Michael Ivanovich following her.
‘They probably think I am offering them the grain to
bribe them to remain here, while I myself go away
leaving them to the mercy of the French,’ thought
Princess Mary. ‘I will offer them monthly rations and
housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would
do even more in my place,’ she thought as she went out in
the twilight toward the crowd standing on the pasture by
the barn.
The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly
took off their hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and,
tripping over her skirt, came close up to them. So many
different eyes, old and young, were fixed on her, and
there were so many different faces, that she could not
distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak
to them all at once, did not know how to do it. But again
the sense that she represented her father and her brother
gave her courage, and she boldly began her speech.

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‘I am very glad you have come,’ she said without

raising her eyes, and feeling her heart beating quickly and
violently. ‘Dronushka tells me that the war has ruined
you. That is our common misfortune, and I shall grudge
nothing to help you. I am myself going away because it is
dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am
giving you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take
everything, all our grain, so that you may not suffer want!
And if you have been told that I am giving you the grain
to keep you here- that is not true. On the contrary, I ask
you to go with all your belongings to our estate near
Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there you
shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and
lodging.’
The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard
in the crowd.
‘I am not doing this on my own account,’ she
continued, ‘I do it in the name of my dead father, who
was a good master to you, and of my brother and his son.’
Again she paused. No one broke the silence.
‘Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it
together. All that is mine is yours,’ she concluded,
scanning the faces before her.

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All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same
expression. She could not fathom whether it was
curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or apprehension and
distrust- but the expression on all the faces was identical.
‘We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won’t
do for us to take the landlord’s grain,’ said a voice at the
back of the crowd.
‘But why not?’ asked the princess.
No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at
the crowd, found that every eye she met now was
immediately dropped.
‘But why don’t you want to take it?’ she asked again.
No one answered.
The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried
to catch someone’s eye.
‘Why don’t you speak?’ she inquired of a very old man
who stood just in front of her leaning on his stick. ‘If you
think something more is wanted, tell me! I will do
anything,’ said she, catching his eye.
But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low
and muttered:
‘Why should we agree? We don’t want the grain.’
‘Why should we give up everything? We don’t agree.
Don’t agree.... We are sorry for you, but we’re not

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willing. Go away yourself, alone...’ came from various

sides of the crowd.
And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical
expression, though now it was certainly not an expression
of curiosity or gratitude, but of angry resolve.
‘But you can’t have understood me,’ said Princess
Mary with a sad smile. ‘Why don’t you want to go? I
promise to house and feed you, while here the enemy
would ruin you..’
But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.
‘We’re not willing. Let them ruin us! We won’t take
your grain. We don’t agree.’
Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone’s eye, but
not a single eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently
they were all trying to avoid her look. She felt strange and
awkward.
‘Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull
down your houses and go into bondage! I dare say! ‘I’ll
give you grain, indeed!’ she says,’ voices in the crowd
were heard saying.
With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and
went back to the house. Having repeated her order to
Dron to have horses ready for her departure next morning,

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she went to her room and remained alone with her own
thoughts.

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Chapter XII

For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the

open window of her room hearing the sound of the
peasants’ voices that reached her from the village, but it
was not of them she was thinking. She felt that she could
not understand them however much she might think about
them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which,
after the break caused by cares for the present, seemed
already to belong to the past. Now she could remember it
and weep or pray.
After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm
and fresh. Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a
cock crowed, the full moon began to show from behind
the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to rise, and
stillness reigned over the village and the house.
Pictures of the near past- her father’s illness and last
moments- rose one after another to her memory. With
mournful pleasure she now lingered over these images,
repelling with horror only the last one, the picture of his
death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in
imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And
these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and

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in such detail that they seemed now present, now past,

and now future.
She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first
stroke and was being dragged along by his armpits
through the garden at Bald Hills, muttering something
with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray eyebrows and
looking uneasily and timidly at her.
‘Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the
day he died,’ she thought. ‘He had always thought what
he said then.’ And she recalled in all its detail the night at
Bald Hills before he had the last stroke, when with a
foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against
his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs on
tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he
slept that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and
weary voice he was saying something to Tikhon, speaking
of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the Empress.
Evidently he had wanted to talk. ‘And why didn’t he call
me? Why didn’t he let me be there instead of Tikhon?’
Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. ‘Now
he will never tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never
will that moment return for him or for me when he might
have said all he longed to say, and not Tikhon but I might
have heard and understood him. Why didn’t I enter the

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room?’ she thought. ‘Perhaps he would then have said to

me what he said the day he died. While talking to Tikhon
he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was
standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and painful
for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand him. I
remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if
she were alive- he had forgotten she was dead- and
Tikhon reminded him that she was no more, and he
shouted, ‘Fool!’ He was greatly depressed. From behind
the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and
loudly exclaimed, ‘My God!’ Why didn’t I go in then?
What could he have done to me? What could I have lost?
And perhaps he would then have been comforted and
would have said that word to me.’ And Princess Mary
uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the
day of his death. ‘Dear-est!’ she repeated, and began
sobbing, with tears that relieved her soul. She now saw
his face before her. And not the face she had known ever
since she could remember and had always seen at a
distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the
first time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details,
when she stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.
‘Dear-est!’ she repeated again.

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‘What was he thinking when he uttered that word?

What is he thinking now?’ This question suddenly
presented itself to her, and in answer she saw him before
her with the expression that was on his face as he lay in
his coffin with his chin bound up with a white
handkerchief. And the horror that had seized her when she
touched him and convinced herself that that was not he,
but something mysterious and horrible, seized her again.
She tried to think of something else and to pray, but could
do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the
moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to
see his dead face, and she felt that the silence brooding
over the house and within it held her fast.
‘Dunyasha,’ she whispered. ‘Dunyasha!’ she screamed
wildly, and tearing herself out of this silence she ran to
the servants’ quarters to meet her old nurse and the
maidservants who came running toward her.

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Chapter XIII

On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin,

accompanied by Lavrushka who had just returned from
captivity and by an hussar orderly, left their quarters at
Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo, and went for a
ride- to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find out
whether there was any hay to be had in the villages.
For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between
the two hostile armies, so that it was as easy for the
Russian rearguard to get to it as for the French vanguard;
Rostov, as a careful squadron commander, wished to take
such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo before the
French could get them.
Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the
way to Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling
house and farm where they hoped to find many domestic
serfs and pretty girls, they questioned Lavrushka about
Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one
another to try Ilyin’s horse.
Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering
was the property of that very Bolkonski who had been
engaged to his sister.

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Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race
along the incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and
Rostov, outstripping Ilyin, was the first to gallop into the
village street.
‘You’re first!’ cried Ilyin, flushed.
‘Yes, always first both on the grassland and here,’
answered Rostov, stroking his heated Donets horse.
‘And I’d have won on my Frenchy, your excellency,’
said Lavrushka from behind, alluding to his shabby cart
horse, ‘only I didn’t wish to mortify you.
They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large
crowd of peasants was standing.
Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the
new arrivals without doffing their caps. Two tall old
peasants with wrinkled faces and scanty beards emerged
from the tavern, smiling, staggering, and singing some
incoherent song, and approached the officers.
‘Fine fellows!’ said Rostov laughing. ‘Is there any hay
here?’
‘And how like one another,’ said Ilyin.
‘A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!’ sang one of the
peasants with a blissful smile.
One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to
Rostov.

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‘Who do you belong to?’ he asked.

‘The French,’ replied Ilyin jestingly, ‘and here is
Napoleon himself’- and he pointed to Lavrushka.
‘Then you are Russians?’ the peasant asked again.
‘And is there a large force of you here?’ said another, a
short man, coming up.
‘Very large,’ answered Rostov. ‘But why have you
collected here?’ he added. ‘Is it a holiday?’
‘The old men have met to talk over the business of the
commune,’ replied the peasant, moving away.
At that moment, on the road leading from the big
house, two women and a man in a white hat were seen
coming toward the officers.
‘The one in pink is mine, so keep off!’ said Ilyin on
seeing Dunyasha running resolutely toward him.
‘She’ll be ours!’ said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.
‘What do you want, my pretty?’ said Ilyin with a
smile.
‘The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and
your name.’
‘This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am
your humble servant.’
‘Co-o-om-pa-ny!’ roared the tipsy peasant with a
beatific smile as he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl.

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Following Dunyasha, Alpatych advanced to Rostov,

having bared his head while still at a distance.
‘May I make bold to trouble your honor?’ said he
respectfully, but with a shade of contempt for the
youthfulness of this officer and with a hand thrust into his
bosom. ‘My mistress, daughter of General in Chief Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this
month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the
boorishness of these people’- he pointed to the peasants-
‘asks you to come up to the house.... Won’t you, please,
ride on a little farther,’ said Alpatych with a melancholy
smile, ‘as it is not convenient in the presence of...?’ He
pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to him as
horseflies to a horse.
‘Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand!
Forgive us for Christ’s sake, eh?’ said the peasants,
smiling joyfully at him.
Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.
‘Or perhaps they amuse your honor?’ remarked
Alpatych with a staid air, as he pointed at the old men
with his free hand.
‘No, there’s not much to be amused at here,’ said
Rostov, and rode on a little way. ‘What’s the matter?’ he
asked.

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‘I make bold to inform your honor that the rude

peasants here don’t wish to let the mistress leave the
estate, and threaten to unharness her horses, so that
though everything has been packed up since morning, her
excellency cannot get away.’
‘Impossible!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘I have the honor to report to you the actual truth,’ said
Alpatych.
Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and
followed Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the
state of affairs. It appeared that the princess’ offer of corn
to the peasants the previous day, and her talk with Dron
and at the meeting, had actually had so bad an effect that
Dron had finally given up the keys and joined the
peasants and had not appeared when Alpatych sent for
him; and that in the morning when the princess gave
orders to harness for her journey, the peasants had come
in a large crowd to the barn and sent word that they would
not let her leave the village: that there was an order not to
move, and that they would unharness the horses. Alpatych
had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was
chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing
himself in the crowd) that they could not let the princess
go, that there was an order to the contrary, but that if she

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stayed they would serve her as before and obey her in

everything.
At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping
along the road, Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of
Alpatych, her nurse, and the maids, had given orders to
harness and intended to start, but when the cavalrymen
were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the
coachman ran away, and the women in the house began to
wail.
‘Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!’ exclaimed
deeply moved voices as Rostov passed through the
anteroom.
Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in
the large sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She
could not grasp who he was and why he had come, or
what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian
face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered
recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at
him with her deep radiant look and began speaking in a
voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This
meeting immediately struck Rostov as a romantic event.
‘A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy
of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent
me here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her

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features and expression!’ thought he as he looked at her

and listened to her timid story.
When she began to tell him that all this had happened
the day after her father’s funeral, her voiced trembled.
She turned away, and then, as if fearing he might take her
words as meant to move him to pity, looked at him with
an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in
Rostov’s eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced
gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the
plainness of her face to be forgotten.
‘I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I
happened to ride here and am able to show my readiness
to serve you,’ said Rostov, rising. ‘Go when you please,
and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare to
cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as
your escort.’ And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of
royal blood, he moved toward the door.
Rostov’s deferential tone seemed to indicate that
though he would consider himself happy to be acquainted
with her, he did not wish to take advantage of her
misfortunes to intrude upon her.
Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his
delicacy.

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‘I am very, very grateful to you,’ she said in French,

‘but I hope it was all a misunderstanding and that no one
is to blame for it.’ She suddenly began to cry.
‘Excuse me!’ she said.
Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another
low bow.

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Chapter XIV

Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend- my pink one is

delicious; her name is Dunyasha...’
But on glancing at Rostov’s face Ilyin stopped short.
He saw that his hero and commander was following quite
a different train of thought.
Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying
strode off with rapid steps to the village.
‘I’ll show them; I’ll give it to them, the brigands!’ said
he to himself.
Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to
run, kept up with him with difficulty.
‘What decision have you been pleased to come to?’
said he.
Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and
sternly turned on Alpatych.
‘Decision? What decision? Old dotard!...’ cried he.
‘What have you been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting,
and you can’t manage them? You’re a traitor youself! I
know you. I’ll flay you all alive!...’ And as if afraid of
wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and went
rapidly forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended

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feelings, kept pace with Rostov at a gliding gait and

continued to impart his views. He said the peasants were
obdurate and that at the present moment it would be
imprudent to ‘overresist’ them without an armed force,
and would it not be better first to send for the military?
‘I’ll give them armed force... I’ll ‘overresist’ them!’
uttered Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational
animal fury and the need to vent it.
Without considering what he would do he moved
unconciously with quick, resolute steps toward the crowd.
And the nearer he drew to it the more Alpatych felt that
this unreasonable action might produce good results. The
peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they
saw Rostov’s rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning
face.
After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov
had gone to see the princess, a certain confusion and
dissension had arisen among the crowd. Some of the
peasants said that these new arrivals were Russians and
might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained.
Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it
Karp and others attacked their ex-Elder.
‘How many years have you been fattening on the
commune?’ Karp shouted at him. ‘It’s all one to you!

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You’ll dig up your pot of money and take it away with

you.... What does it matter to you whether our homes are
ruined or not?’
‘We’ve been told to keep order, and that no one is to
leave their homes or take away a single grain, and that’s
all about it!’ cried another.
‘It was your son’s turn to be conscripted, but no fear!
You begrudged your lump of a son,’ a little old man
suddenly began attacking Dron- ‘and so they took my
Vanka to be shaved for a soldier! But we all have to die.’
‘To be sure, we all have to die. I’m not against the
commune,’ said Dron.
‘That’s it- not against it! You’ve filled your belly...’
The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov,
followed by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to
the crowd, Karp, thrusting his fingers into his belt and
smiling a little, walked to the front. Dron on the contrary
retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer together.
‘Who is your Elder here? Hey?’ shouted Rostov,
coming up to the crowd with quick steps.
‘The Elder? What do you want with him?...’ asked
Karp.
But before the words were well out of his mouth, his
cap flew off and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.

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‘Caps off, traitors!’ shouted Rostov in a wrathful

voice. ‘Where’s the Elder?’ he cried furiously.
‘The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych,
you!’ meek and flustered voices here and there were
heard calling and caps began to come off their heads.
‘We don’t riot, we’re following the orders,’ declared
Karp, and at that moment several voices began speaking
together.
‘It’s as the old men have decided- there’s too many of
you giving orders.’
‘Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!’ cried Rostov
unmeaningly in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the
collar. ‘Bind him, bind him!’ he shouted, though there
was no one to bind him but Lavrushka and Alpatych.
Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by
the arms from behind.
‘Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?’ he
called out.
Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of
them by name to come and bind Karp. The men
obediently came out of the crowd and began taking off
their belts.
‘Where’s the Elder?’ demanded Rostov in a loud
voice.

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With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the

crowd.
‘Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!’ shouted
Rostov, as if that order, too, could not possibly meet with
any opposition.
And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron,
who took off his own belt and handed it to them, as if to
aid them.
‘And you all listen to me!’ said Rostov to the peasants.
‘Be off to your houses at once, and don’t let one of your
voices be heard!’
‘Why, we’ve not done any harm! We did it just out of
foolishness. It’s all nonsense... I said then that it was not
in order,’ voices were heard bickering with one another.
‘There! What did I say?’ said Alpatych, coming into
his own again. ‘It’s wrong, lads!’
‘All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych,’ came the answers,
and the crowd began at once to disperse through the
village.
The two bound men were led off to the master’s house.
The two drunken peasants followed them.
‘Aye, when I look at you!...’ said one of them to Karp.
‘How can one talk to the masters like that? What were
you thinking of, you fool?’ added the other- ‘A real fool!’

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Two hours later the carts were standing in the

courtyard of the Bogucharovo house. The peasants were
briskly carrying out the proprietor’s goods and packing
them on the carts, and Dron, liberated at Princess Mary’s
wish from the cupboard where he had been confined, was
standing in the yard directing the men.
‘Don’t put it in so carelessly,’ said one of the peasants,
a man with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a
housemaid. ‘You know it has cost money! How can you
chuck it in like that or shove it under the cord where it’ll
get rubbed? I don’t like that way of doing things. Let it all
be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put it
under the bast matting and cover it with hay- that’s the
way!’
‘Eh, books, books!’ said another peasant, bringing out
Prince Andrew’s library cupboards. ‘Don’t catch up
against it! It’s heavy, lads- solid books.’
‘Yes, they worked all day and didn’t play!’ remarked
the tall, round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a
significant wink at the dictionaries that were on the top.
Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov
did not go back to the house but remained in the village
awaiting her departure. When her carriage drove out of
the house, he mounted and accompanied her eight miles

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from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our

troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave
of her, for the first time permitting himself to kiss her
hand.
‘How can you speak so!’ he blushingly replied to
Princess Mary’s expressions of gratitude for her
deliverance, as she termed what had occurred. ‘Any
police officer would have done as much! If we had had
only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy
come so far,’ said he with a sense of shame and wishing
to change the subject. ‘I am only happy to have had the
opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-by,
Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope
to meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don’t
want to make me blush, please don’t thank me!’
But the princess, if she did not again thank him in
words, thanked him with the whole expression of her
face, radiant with gratitude and tenderness. She could not
believe that there was nothing to thank him for. On the
contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he not been
there she would have perished at the hands of the
mutineers and of the French, and that he had exposed
himself to terrible and obvious danger to save her, and
even more certain was it that he was a man of lofty and

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noble soul, able to understand her position and her

sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in
them when she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of
her loss, did leave her memory.
When she had taken leave of him and remained alone
she suddenly felt her eyes filling with tears, and then not
for the first time the strange question presented itself to
her: did she love him?
On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess’
position was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went
with her in the carriage, more than once noticed that her
mistress leaned out of the window and smiled at
something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.
‘Well, supposing I do love him?’ thought Princess
Mary.
Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that
she had fallen in love with a man who would perhaps
never love her, she comforted herself with the thought
that no one would ever know it and that she would not be
to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she
continued to the end of her life to love the man with
whom she had fallen in love for the first and last time in
her life.

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Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy,

and his words, happiness did not appear impossible to her.
It was at those moments that Dunyasha noticed her
smiling as she looked out of the carriage window.
‘Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and
at that very moment?’ thought Princess Mary. ‘And that
caused his sister to refuse my brother?’ And in all this
Princess Mary saw the hand of Providence.
The impression the princess made on Rostov was a
very agreeable one. To remember her gave him pleasure,
and when his comrades, hearing of his adventure at
Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay
and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in
Russia, he grew angry. It made him angry just because the
idea of marrying the gentle Princess Mary, who was
attractive to him and had an enormous fortune, had
against his will more than once entered his head. For
himself personally Nicholas could not wish for a better
wife: by marrying her he would make the countess his
mother happy, would be able to put his father’s affairs in
order, and would even- he felt it- ensure Princess Mary’s
happiness.

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But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why

Rostov grew angry when he was rallied about Princess
Bolkonskaya.

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Chapter XV

On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov

remembered Prince Andrew and sent an order for him to
report at headquarters.
Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the
very day and at the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing
the troops for the first time. He stopped in the village at
the priest’s house in front of which stood the commander
in chief’s carriage, and he sat down on the bench at the
gate awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now
called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came
now sounds of regimental music and now the roar of
many voices shouting ‘Hurrah!’ to the new commander in
chief. Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, stood
near by, some ten paces from Prince Andrew, availing
themselves of Kutuzov’s absence and of the fine weather.
A short, swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick
mustaches and whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing
at Prince Andrew, inquired whether his Serene Highness
was putting up there and whether he would soon be back.
Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene
Highness’ staff but was himself a new arrival. The

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lieutenant colonel turned to a smart orderly, who, with the

peculiar contempt with which a commander in chief’s
orderly speaks to officers, replied:
‘What? His Serene Highness? I expect he’ll be here
soon. What do you want?’
The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his
mustache at the orderly’s tone, dismounted, gave his
horse to a dispatch runner, and approached Bolkonski
with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on the
bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.
‘You’re also waiting for the commander in chief?’ said
he. ‘They say he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It’s
awful with those sausage eaters! Ermolov had weason to
ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now p’waps
Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows
what was happening. We kept wetweating and
wetweating. Did you take part in the campaign?’ he
asked.
‘I had the pleasure,’ replied Prince Andrew, ‘not only
of taking part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all
I held dear- not to mention the estate and home of my
birth- my father, who died of grief. I belong to the
province of Smolensk.’

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‘Ah? You’re Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make

your acquaintance! I’m Lieutenant Colonel Denisov,
better known as ‘Vaska,’’ said Denisov, pressing Prince
Andrew’s hand and looking into his face with a
particularly kindly attention. ‘Yes, I heard,’ said he
sympathetically, and after a short pause added: ‘Yes, it’s
Scythian warfare. It’s all vewy well- only not for those
who get it in the neck. So you are Pwince Andwew
Bolkonski?’ He swayed his head. ‘Vewy pleased, Pwince,
to make your acquaintance!’ he repeated again, smiling
sadly, and he again pressed Prince Andrew’s hand.
Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had
told him of her first suitor. This memory carried him
sadly and sweetly back to those painful feelings of which
he had not thought lately, but which still found place in
his soul. Of late he had received so many new and very
serious impressions- such as the retreat from Smolensk,
his visit to Bald Hills, and the recent news of his father’s
death- and had experienced so many emotions, that for a
long time past those memories had not entered his mind,
and now that they did, they did not act on him with nearly
their former strength. For Denisov, too, the memories
awakened by the name of Bolkonski belonged to a distant,
romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha’s

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singing he had proposed to a little girl of fifteen without

realizing what he was doing. He smiled at the recollection
of that time and of his love for Natasha, and passed at
once to what now interested him passionately and
exclusively. This was a plan of campaign he had devised
while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had
proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to
propose it to Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that
the French line of operation was to extended, and it
proposed that instead of, or concurrently with, action on
the front to bar the advance of the French, we should
attack their line of communication. He began explaining
his plan to Prince Andrew.
‘They can’t hold all that line. It’s impossible. I will
undertake to bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men
and I will bweak the line, that’s certain! There’s only one
way- guewilla warfare!’
Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained
his plan to Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation
shouts were heard from the army, growing more
incoherent and more diffused, mingling with music and
songs and coming from the field where the review was
held. Sounds of hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.

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‘He’s coming! He’s coming!’ shouted a Cossack

standing at the gate.
Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a
knot of soldiers (a guard of honor) was standing, and they
saw Kutuzov coming down the street mounted on a rather
small sorrel horse. A huge suite of generals rode behind
him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and a crowd
of officers ran after and around them shouting, ‘Hurrah!’
His adjutants galloped into the yard before him.
Kutuzov was impatiently urging on his horse, which
ambled smoothly under his weight, and he raised his hand
to his white Horse Guard’s cap with a red band and no
peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to
the guard of honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly
wearing decorations, who were giving him the salute, he
looked at them silently and attentively for nearly a minute
with the steady gaze of a commander and then turned to
the crowd of generals and officers surrounding him.
Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he
shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity.
‘And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat!
Well, good-by, General,’ he added, and rode into the yard
past Prince Andrew and Denisov.
‘Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!’ shouted those behind him.

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Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had

grown still more corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the
bleached eyeball, the scar, and the familiar weariness of
his expression were still the same. He was wearing the
white Horse Guard’s cap and a military overcoat with a
whip hanging over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat
heavily and swayed limply on his brisk little horse.
‘Whew... whew... whew!’ he whistled just audibly as
he rode into the yard. His face expressed the relief of
relaxed strain felt by a man who means to rest after a
ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the stirrup and,
lurching with his whole body and puckering his face with
the effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned
on his knee, groaned, and slipped down into the arms of
the Cossacks and adjutants who stood ready to assist him.
He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up
his eyes, glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not
recognizing him, moved with his waddling gait to the
porch. ‘Whew... whew... whew!’ he whistled, and again
glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old men,
it was only after some seconds that the impression
produced by Prince Andrew’s face linked itself up with
Kutuzov’s remembrance of his personality.

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‘Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do,

my dear boy? Come along...’ said he, glancing wearily
round, and he stepped onto the porch which creaked under
his weight.
He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the
porch.
‘And how’s your father?’
‘I received news of his death, yesterday,’ replied
Prince Andrew abruptly.
Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with
dismay and then took off his cap and crossed himself:
‘May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God’s will be
done to us all!’ He sighed deeply, his whole chest
heaving, and was silent for a while. ‘I loved him and
respected him, and sympathize with you with all my
heart.’
He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat
breast, and for some time did not let him go. When he
released him Prince Andrew saw that Kutuzov’s flabby
lips were trembling and that tears were in his eyes. He
sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise
himself.
‘Come! Come with me, we’ll have a talk,’ said he.

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But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by

his superiors than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs
up the steps of the porch, despite the angry whispers of
the adjutants who tried to stop him. Kutuzov, his hands
still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly. Denisov,
having given his name, announced that he had to
communicate to his Serene Highness a matter of great
importance for their country’s welfare. Kutuzov looked
wearily at him and, lifting his hands with a gesture of
annoyance, folded them across his stomach, repeating the
words: ‘For our country’s welfare? Well, what is it?
Speak!’ Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see
the color rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face)
and boldly began to expound his plan of cutting the
enemy’s lines of communication between Smolensk and
Vyazma. Denisov came from those parts and knew the
country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good one,
especially from the strength of conviction with which he
spoke. Kutuzov looked down at his own legs,
occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut as if
expecting something unpleasant to emerge from it. And
from that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with
a portfolio under his arm really did appear.

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‘What?’ said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov’s

explanations, ‘are you ready so soon?’
‘Ready, your Serene Highness,’ replied the general.
Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: ‘How is
one man to deal with it all?’ and again listened to
Denisov.
‘I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer,’ said
Denisov, ‘that I can bweak Napoleon’s line of
communication!’
‘What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril
Andreevich Denisov?’ asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.
‘He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness.’
‘Ah, we were friends,’ said Kutuzov cheerfully. ‘All
right, all right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow
we’ll have a talk.’
With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his
hand for the papers Konovnitsyn had brought him.
‘Would not your Serene Highness like to come
inside?’ said the general on duty in a discontented voice,
‘the plans must be examined and several papers have to
be signed.’
An adjutant came out and announced that everything
was in readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not

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wish to enter that room till he was disengaged. He made a

grimace...
‘No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear
boy. I’ll look at them here,’ said he. ‘Don’t go away,’ he
added, turning to Prince Andrew, who remained in the
porch and listened to the general’s report.
While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the
whisper of a woman’s voice and the rustle of a silk dress
behind the door. Several times on glancing that way he
noticed behind that door a plump, rosy, handsome woman
in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief on her head,
holding a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the
commander in chief. Kutiizov’s adjutant whispered to
Prince Andrew that this was the wife of the priest whose
home it was, and that she intended to offer his Serene
Highness bread and salt. ‘Her husband has welcomed his
Serene Highness with the cross at the church, and she
intends to welcome him in the house.... She’s very pretty,’
added the adjutant with a smile. At those words Kutuzov
looked round. He was listening to the general’s report-
which consisted chiefly of a criticism of the position at
Tsarevo-Zaymishche- as he had listened to Denisov, and
seven years previously had listened to the discussion at
the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only

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because he had ears which, though there was a piece of

tow in one of them, could not help hearing; but it was
evident that nothing the general could say would surprise
or even interest him, that he knew all that would be said
beforehand, and heard it all only because he had to, as one
has to listen to the chanting of a service of prayer. All that
Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the
general was saying was even more clever and to the point,
but it was evident that Kutuzov despised knowledge and
cleverness, and knew of something else that would decide
the matter- something independent of clever. ness and
knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander in
chief’s face attentively, and the only expression he could
see there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning
of the feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire
to observe propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised
cleverness and learning and even the patriotic feeling
shown by Denisov, but despised them not because of his
own intellect, feelings, or knowledge- he did not try to
display any of these- but because of something else. He
despised them because of his old age and experience of
life. The only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord
during that report referred to looting by the Russian
troops. At the end of the report the general put before him

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for signature a paper relating to the recovery of payment

from army commanders for green oats mown down by the
soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for
compensation.
After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips
together and shook his head.
‘Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for
all, my dear fellow,’ said he, ‘into the fire with all such
things! Let them cut the crops and burn wood to their
hearts’ content. I don’t order it or allow it, but I don’t
exact compensation either. One can’t get on without it.
‘When wood is chopped the chips will fly.’’ He looked at
the paper again. ‘Oh, this German precision!’ he
muttered, shaking his head.

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Chapter XVI

‘Well, that’s all!’ said Kutuzov as he signed the last of

the documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the
folds in his fat white neck he moved toward the door with
a more cheerful expression.
The priest’s wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish
she had after all not managed to present at the right
moment, though she had so long been preparing for it, and
with a low bow offered it to Kutuzov.
He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his
hand, and said:
‘Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!’
He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and
put them on the dish for her. ‘Well, my dear, and how are
we getting on?’ he asked, moving to the door of the room
assigned to him. The priest’s wife smiled, and with
dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the room.
The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince
Andrew to lunch with him. Half an hour later Prince
Andrew was again called to Kutuzov. He found him
reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned
overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he

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closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with

a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les
Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
‘Well, sit down, sit down here. Let’s have a talk,’ said
Kutuzov. ‘It’s sad, very sad. But remember, my dear
fellow, that I am a father to you, a second father...’
Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father’s
death, and what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed
through it.
‘What... what they have brought us to!’ Kutuzov
suddenly cried in an agitated voice, evidently picturing
vividly to himself from Prince Andrew’s story the
condition Russia was in. ‘But give me time, give me
time!’ he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to
continue this agitating conversation, and added: ‘I sent for
you to keep you with me.’
‘I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am longer
fit for the staff,’ replied Prince Andrew with a smile
which Kutuzov noticed.
Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.
‘But above all,’ added Prince Andrew, ‘I have grown
used to my regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy
the men also like me. I should be sorry to leave the

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regiment. If I decline the honor of being with you, believe

me..’
A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up
Kutuzov’s podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short.
‘I am sorry, for I need you. But you’re right, you’re
right! It’s not here that men are needed. Advisers are
always plentiful, but men are not. The regiments would
not be what they are if the would-be advisers served there
as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I remember,
yes, I remember you with the standard!’ said Kutuzov,
and a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew’s face at
this recollection.
Taking his hand and drawing him downwards,
Kutuzov offered his cheek to be kissed, and again Prince
Andrew noticed tears in the old man’s eyes. Though
Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov’s tears came easily,
and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of
him from a wish to show sympathy with his loss, yet this
reminder of Austerlitz was both pleasant and flattering to
him.
‘Go your way and God be with you. I know your path
is the path of honor!’ He paused. ‘I missed you at
Bucharest, but I needed someone to send.’ And changing
the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish war

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and the peace that had been concluded. ‘Yes, I have been
much blamed,’ he said, ‘both for that war and the peace...
but everything came at the right time. Tout vient a point a
celui qui sait attendre.* And there were as many advisers
there as here...’ he went on, returning to the subject of
‘advisers’ which evidently occupied him. ‘Ah, those
advisers!’ said he. ‘If we had listened to them all we
should not have made peace with Turkey and should not
have been through with that war. Everything in haste, but
more haste, less speed. Kamenski would have been lost if
he had not died. He stormed fortresses with thirty
thousand men. It is not difficult to capture a fortress but it
is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming and
attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski
sent soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two
things and took more fortresses than Kamenski and made
the but eat horseflesh!’ He swayed his head. ‘And the
French shall too, believe me,’ he went on, growing
warmer and beating his chest, ‘I’ll make them eat
horseflesh!’ And tears again dimmed his eyes.
*"Everything comes in time to him who knows how to
wait.’
‘But shan’t we have to accept battle?’ remarked Prince
Andrew.

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‘We shall if everybody wants it; it can’t be helped....

But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger
than those two: patience and time, they will do it all. But
the advisers n’entendent pas de cette oreille, voila le
mal.* Some want a thing- others don’t. What’s one to
do?’ he asked, evidently expecting an answer. ‘Well, what
do you want us to do?’ he repeated and his eye shone with
a deep, shrewd look. ‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ he
continued, as Prince Andrew still did not reply: ‘I will tell
you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher,’
he paused, ‘abstiens-toi"*[2]- he articulated the French
proverb deliberately.
*"Don’t see it that way, that’s the trouble.’
*[2] ‘When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing.’
‘Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with
all my heart I share your sorrow, and that for you I am not
a Serene Highness, nor a prince, nor a commander in
chief, but a father! If you want anything come straight to
me. Good-by, my dear boy.’
Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but
before the latter had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of
relief and went on with his unfinished novel, Les
Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.

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Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it

was, but after that interview with Kutuzov he went back
to his regiment reassured as to the general course of
affairs and as to the man to whom it had been entrusted.
The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in
that old man- in whom there seemed to remain only the
habit of passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping
events and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly
to contemplate the course of events- the more reassured
he was that everything would be as it should. ‘He will not
bring in any plan of his own. He will not devise or
undertake anything,’ thought Prince Andrew, ‘but he will
hear everything, remember everything, and put everything
in its place. He will not hinder anything useful nor allow
anything harmful. He understands that there is something
stronger and more important than his own will- the
inevitable course of events, and he can see them and grasp
their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain
from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to
something else. And above all,’ thought Prince Andrew,
‘one believes in him because he’s Russian, despite the
novel by Genlis and the French proverbs, and because his
voice shook when he said: ‘What they have brought us

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to!’ and had a sob in it when he said he would ‘make

them eat horseflesh!’’
On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the
unanimity and general approval were founded with which,
despite court influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as
commander in chief was received.

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Chapter XVII

After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on

there in its usual course, and its course was so very usual
that it was difficult to remember the recent days of
patriotic elation and ardor, hard to believe that Russia was
really in danger and that the members of the English Club
were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice
everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic
fervor everyone had displayed during the Emperor’s stay
was the call for contributions of men and money, a
necessity that as soon as the promises had been made
assumed a legal, official form and became unavoidable.
With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the
Moscovites’ view of their situation did not grow more
serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous,
as always happens with people who see a great danger
approaching. At the approach of danger there are always
two voices that speak with equal power in the human
soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the
nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the
other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing
and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s

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power to foresee everything and avert the general course

of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is
painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant.
In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in
society to the second. So it was now with the inhabitants
of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in
Moscow as that year.
Rostopchin’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a
drink shop, a potman, and a Moscow burgher called
Karpushka Chigirin, ‘who- having been a militiaman and
having had rather too much at the pub- heard that
Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry,
abused the French in very bad language, came out of the
drink shop, and, under the sign of the eagle, began to
address the assembled people,’ were read and discussed,
together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich Pushkin’s bouts
rimes.
In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to
read these broadsheets, and some liked the way
Karpushka jeered at the French, saying: ‘They will swell
up with Russian cabbage, burst with our buckwheat
porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They
are all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of
them with a hayfork.’ Others did not like that tone and

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said it was stupid and vulgar. It was said that Rostopchin

had expelled all Frenchmen and even all foreigners from
Moscow, and that there had been some spies and agents
of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to
introduce Rostopchin’s witty remark on that occasion.
The foreigners were deported to Nizhni by boat, and
Rostopchin had said to them in French: ‘Rentrez en
vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n’en faites pas une
barque de Charon.’* There was talk of all the government
offices having been already removed from Moscow, and
to this Shinshin’s witticism was added- that for that alone
Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that
Mamonov’s regiment would cost him eight hundred
thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even more
on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov’s action
was that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride
at the head of his regiment without charging anything for
the show.
*"Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not
to make it a barque of Charon.’
‘You don’t spare anyone,’ said Julie Drubetskaya as
she collected and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint
with her thin, beringed fingers.

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Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was

giving a farewell soiree.
‘Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-
natured. What pleasure is there to be so caustique?’
‘A forfeit!’ cried a young man in militia uniform
whom Julie called ‘mon chevalier,’ and who was going
with her to Nizhni.
In Julie’s set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it
had been agreed that they would speak nothing but
Russian and that those who made a slip and spoke French
should pay fines to the Committee of Voluntary
Contributions.
‘Another forfeit for a Gallicism,’ said a Russian writer
who was present. ‘‘What pleasure is there to be’ is not
Russian!’
‘You spare no one,’ continued Julie to the young man
without heeding the author’s remark.
‘For caustique- I am guilty and will pay, and I am
prepared to pay again for the pleasure of telling you the
truth. For Gallicisms I won’t be responsible,’ she
remarked, turning to the author: ‘I have neither the money
nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a master to
teach me Russian!’

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‘Ah, here he is!’ she added. ‘Quand on... No, no,’ she
said to the militia officer, ‘you won’t catch me. Speak of
the sun and you see its rays!’ and she smiled amiably at
Pierre. ‘We were just talking of you,’ she said with the
facility in lying natural to a society woman. ‘We were
saying that your regiment would be sure to be better than
Mamonov’s.’
‘Oh, don’t talk to me of my regiment,’ replied Pierre,
kissing his hostess’ hand and taking a seat beside her. ‘I
am so sick of it.’
‘You will, of course, command it yourself?’ said Julie,
directing a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.
The latter in Pierre’s presence had ceased to be caustic,
and his face expressed perplexity as to what Julie’s smile
might mean. In spite of his absent-mindedness and good
nature, Pierre’s personality immediately checked any
attempt to ridicule him to his face.
‘No,’ said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big,
stout body. ‘I should make too good a target for the
French, besides I am afraid I should hardly be able to
climb onto a horse.’
Among those whom Julie’s guests happened to choose
to gossip about were the Rostovs.

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‘I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way,’ said

Julie. ‘And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I
mean. The Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his
estate near Moscow, but it drags on and on. He asks too
much.’
‘No, I think the sale will come off in a few days,’ said
someone. ‘Though it is madness to buy anything in
Moscow now.’
‘Why?’ asked Julie. ‘You don’t think Moscow is in
danger?’
‘Then why are you leaving?’
‘I? What a question! I am going because... well,
because everyone is going: and besides- I am not Joan of
Arc or an Amazon.’
‘Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more
strips of linen.’
‘If he manages the business properly he will be able to
pay off all his debts,’ said the militia officer, speaking of
Rostov.
‘A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do
they stay on so long in Moscow? They meant to leave for
the country long ago. Natalie is quite well again now,
isn’t she?’ Julie asked Pierre with a knowing smile.

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‘They are waiting for their younger son,’ Pierre

replied. ‘He joined Obolenski’s Cossacks and went to
Belaya Tserkov where the regiment is being formed. But
now they have had him transferred to my regiment and
are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave
long ago, but the countess won’t on any account leave
Moscow till her son returns.’
‘I met them the day before yesterday at the
Arkharovs’. Natalie has recovered her looks and is
brighter. She sang a song. How easily some people get
over everything!’
‘Get over what?’ inquired Pierre, looking displeased.
Julie smiled.
‘You know, Count, such knights as you are only found
in Madame de Souza’s novels.’
‘What knights? What do you mean?’ demanded Pierre,
blushing.
‘Oh, come, my dear count! C’est la fable de tout
Moscou. Je vous admire, ma parole d’honneur!’*
*"It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!’
‘Forfeit, forfeit!’ cried the militia officer.
‘All right, one can’t talk- how tiresome!’
‘What is ‘the talk of all Moscow’?’ Pierre asked
angrily, rising to his feet.

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‘Come now, Count, you know!’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Pierre.
‘I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I
was always more friendly with Vera- that dear Vera.’
‘No, madame!’ Pierre continued in a tone of
displeasure, ‘I have not taken on myself the role of
Natalie Rostova’s knight at all, and have not been their
house for nearly a month. But I cannot understand the
cruelty..’
‘Qui s’excuse s’accuse,’* said Julie, smiling and
waving the lint triumphantly, and to have the last word
she promptly changed the subject. ‘Do you know what I
heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya arrived in Moscow
yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her father?’
*"Who excuses himself, accuses himself.’
‘Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see
her,’ said Pierre.
‘I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to
their estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow
morning, with her nephew.’
‘Well, and how is she?’ asked Pierre.
‘She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued
her? It is quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was

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surrounded, and they wanted to kill her and had wounded

some of her people. He rushed in and saved her...’
‘Another romance,’ said the militia officer. ‘Really,
this general flight has been arranged to get all the old
maids married off. Catiche is one and Princess
Bolkonskaya another.’
‘Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu
amoureuse du jeune homme.’*
*"A little bit in love with the young man.’
‘Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!’
‘But how could one say that in Russian?’

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Chapter XVIII

When Pierre returned home he was handed two of

Rostopchin’s broadsheets that had been brought that day.
The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin
had forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the
contrary he was glad that ladies and tradesmen’s wives
were leaving the city. ‘There will be less panic and less
gossip,’ ran the broadsheet ‘but I will stake my life on it
that that will not enter Moscow.’ These words showed
Pierre clearly for the first time that the French would enter
Moscow. The second broadsheet stated that our
headquarters were at Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein
had defeated the French, but that as many of the
inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons
were ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and
muskets which could be had at a low price. The tone of
the proclamation was not as jocose as in the former
Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these broadsheets.
Evidently the terrible stormcloud he had desired with the
whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused
involuntary horror in him was drawing near.

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‘Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?’

he asked himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack
of cards that lay on the table and began to lay them out for
a game of patience.
‘If this patience comes out,’ he said to himself after
shuffling the cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting
his head, ‘if it comes out, it means... what does it mean?’
He had not decided what it should mean when he heard
the voice of the eldest princess at the door asking whether
she might come in.
‘Then it will mean that I must go to the army,’ said
Pierre to himself. ‘Come in, come in!’ he added to the
princess.
Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face
and long waist, was still living in Pierre’s house. The two
younger ones had both married.
‘Excuse my coming to you, cousin,’ she said in a
reproachful and agitated voice. ‘You know some decision
must be come to. What is going to happen? Everyone has
left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is it that we
are staying on?’
‘On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma
cousine,’ said Pierre in the bantering tone he habitually

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adopted toward her, always feeling uncomfortable in the

role of her benefactor.
‘Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara
Ivanovna told me today how our troops are distinguishing
themselves. It certainly does them credit! And the people
too are quite mutinous- they no longer obey, even my
maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they will soon
begin beating us. One can’t walk in the streets. But, above
all, the French will be here any day now, so what are we
waiting for? I ask just one thing of you, cousin,’ she went
on, ‘arrange for me to be taken to Petersburg. Whatever I
may be, I can’t live under Bonaparte’s rule.’
‘Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your
information from? On the contrary..’
‘I won’t submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they
please.... If you don’t want to do this..’
‘But I will, I’ll give the order at once.’
The princess was apparently vexed at not having
anyone to be angry with. Muttering to herself, she sat
down on a chair.
‘But you have been misinformed,’ said Pierre.
‘Everything is quiet in the city and there is not the
slightest danger. See! I’ve just been reading...’ He showed

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her the broadsheet. ‘Count Rostopchin writes that he will

stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter Moscow.’
‘Oh, that count of yours!’ said the princess
malevolently. ‘He is a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself
roused the people to riot. Didn’t he write in those idiotic
broadsheets that anyone, ‘whoever it might be, should be
dragged to the lockup by his hair’? (How silly!) ‘And
honor and glory to whoever captures him,’ he says. This
is what his cajolery has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna
told me the mob near killed her because she said
something in French.’
‘Oh, but it’s so... You take everything so to heart,’ said
Pierre, and began laying out his cards for patience.
Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not
join the army, but remained in deserted Moscow ever in
the same state of agitation, irresolution, and alarm, yet at
the same time joyfully expecting something terrible.
Next day toward evening the princess set off, and
Pierre’s head steward came to inform him that the money
needed for the equipment of his regiment could not be
found without selling one of the estates. In general the
head steward made out to Pierre that his project of raising
a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him,
scarcely able to repress a smile.

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‘Well then, sell it,’ said he. ‘What’s to be done? I can’t

draw back now!’
The worse everything became, especially his own
affairs, the better was Pierre pleased and the more evident
was it that the catastrophe he expected was approaching.
Hardly anyone he knew was left in town. Julie had gone,
and so had Princess Mary. Of his intimate friends only the
Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see them.
To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village
of Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was
constructing to destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that
was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet ready, but
Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the
Emperor’s desire. The Emperor had written to Count
Rostopchin as follows:
As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of
reliable and intelligent men for his car and send a courier
to General Kutuzov to let him know. I have informed him
of the matter.
Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where
he descends for the first time, that he may not make a
mistake and fall into the enemy’s hands. It is essential for
him to combine his movements with those of the
commander in chief.

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On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing

the Bolotnoe Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the
Lobnoe Place, stopped and got out of his trap. A French
cook accused of being a spy was being flogged. The
flogging was only just over, and the executioner was
releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red
whiskers, in blue stockings and a green jacket, who was
moaning piteously. Another criminal, thin and pale, stood
near. Judging by their faces they were both Frenchmen.
With a frightened and suffering look resembling that on
the thin Frenchman’s face, Pierre pushed his way in
through the crowd.
‘What is it? Who is it? What is it for?’ he kept asking.
But the attention of the crowd- officials, burghers,
shopkeepers, peasants, and women in cloaks and in
pelisses- was so eagerly centered on what was passing in
Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The stout man
rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently
trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without
looking about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he
began to cry, in the way full-blooded grown-up men cry,
though angry with himself for doing so. In the crowd
people began talking loudly, to stifle their feelings of pity
as it seemed to Pierre.

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‘He’s cook to some prince.’

‘Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a
Frenchman... sets his teeth on edge!’ said a wrinkled clerk
who was standing behind Pierre, when the Frenchman
began to cry.
The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke
would be appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others
continued to watch in dismay the executioner who was
undressing the other man.
Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily
away, went back to his trap muttering something to
himself as he went, and took his seat. As they drove along
he shuddered and exclaimed several times so audibly that
the coachman asked him:
‘What is your pleasure?’
‘Where are you going?’ shouted Pierre to the man,
who was driving to Lubyanka Street.
‘To the Governor’s, as you ordered,’ answered the
coachman.
‘Fool! Idiot!’ shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman- a
thing he rarely did. ‘Home, I told you! And drive faster,
blockhead!’ ‘I must get away this very day,’ he murmured
to himself.

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At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd

surrounding the Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely
made up his mind that he could no longer remain in
Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that
it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman this
or that the man ought to have known it for himself.
On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey- his
head coachman who knew everything, could do anything,
and was known to all Moscow- that he would leave that
night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that his saddle horses
should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that
day, so on Evstafey’s representation Pierre had to put off
his departure till next day to allow time for the relay
horses to be sent on in advance.
On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a
spell of rain, and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When
changing horses that night in Perkhushkovo, he learned
that there had been a great battle that evening. (This was
the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there in
Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but
nobody could answer his questions as to who had won. At
dawn next day Pierre was approaching Mozhaysk.
Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it,
and at the hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and

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coachman there was no room to be had. It was full of

officers.
Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were
stationed or on the march. Cossacks, foot and horse
soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon were everywhere.
Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the farther
he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into
that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless
agitation and a new and joyful feeling he had not
experienced before. It was a feeling akin to what he had
felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor’s visit- a
sense of the necessity of undertaking something and
sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad
consciousness that everything that constitutes men’s
happiness- the comforts of life, wealth, even life itself- is
rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with
something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did
not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such
particular delight in sacrificing everything. He was not
occupied with the question of what to sacrifice for; the
fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and joyous
sensation.

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Chapter XIX

On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the

Shevardino Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a
shot was fired by either side, and on the twenty-sixth the
battle of Borodino itself took place.
Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and
Borodino given and accepted? Why was the battle of
Borodino fought? There was not the least sense in it for
either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result for
the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were
brought nearer to the destruction of Moscow- which we
feared more than anything in the world; and for the
French its immediate result was that they were brought
nearer to the destruction of their whole army- which they
feared more than anything in the world. What the result
must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and
Kutuzov accepted that battle.
If the commanders had been guided by reason, it
would seem that it must have been obvious to Napoleon
that by advancing thirteen hundred miles and giving battle
with a probability of losing a quarter of his army, he was
advancing to certain destruction, and it must have been

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equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and

risking the loss of a quarter of his army he would
certainly lose Moscow. For Kutuzov this was
mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing draughts
I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall
certainly lose, and therefore should not exchange. When
my opponent has sixteen men and I have fourteen, I am
only one eighth weaker than he, but when I have
exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times as
strong as I am.
Before the battle of Borodino our strength in
proportion to the French was about as five to six, but after
that battle it was little more than one to two: previously
we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and twenty
thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand
against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and
experienced Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon,
who was said to be a commander of genius, gave it, losing
a quarter of his army and lengthening his lines of
communication still more. If it is said that he expected to
end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had ended
a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is much
evidence to the contrary. Napoleon’s historians
themselves tell us that from Smolensk onwards he wished

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to stop, knew the danger of his extended position, and

knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be the
end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the
state in which Russian towns were left to him, and had not
received a single reply to his repeated announcements of
his wish to negotiate.
In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov
acted involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit
what had occurred, the historians provided cunningly
devised evidence of the foresight and genius the generals
who, of all the blind tools of history were the most
enslaved and involuntary.
The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which
the heroes furnish the whole interest of the story, and we
are still unable to accustom ourselves to the fact that for
our epoch histories of that kind are meaningless.
On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and
the preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also
exists a definite and well-known, but quite false,
conception. All the historians describe the affair as
follows:
The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from
Smolensk sought out for itself the best position for a

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general engagement and found such a position at

Borodino.
The Russians, they say, fortified this position in
advance on the left of the highroad (from Moscow to
Smolensk) and almost at a right angle to it, from
Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the battle was
fought.
In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost
was set up on the Shevardino mound to observe the
enemy. On the twenty-fourth, we are told, Napoleon
attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the
twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which
was in position on the field of Borodino.
So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone
who cares to look into the matter can easily convince
himself.
The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on
the contrary, during the retreat passed many positions
better than Borodino. They did not stop at any one of
these positions because Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a
position he had not himself chosen, because the popular
demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly
enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived
with the militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is

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that other positions they had passed were stronger, and

that the position at Borodino (the one where the battle was
fought), far from being strong, was no more a position
than any other spot one might find in the Russian Empire
by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.
Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on
the field of Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to,
the highroad (that is, the position on which the battle took
place), but never till the twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did
they think that a battle might be fought there. This was
shown first by the fact that there were no entrenchments
there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and
secondly, by the position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That
redoubt was quite senseless in front of the position where
the battle was accepted. Why was it more strongly
fortified than any other post? And why were all efforts
exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till
late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol
would have sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as
proof that the position on which the battle was fought had
not been foreseen and that the Shevardino Redoubt was
not an advanced post of that position, we have the fact
that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagration

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were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left

flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his
report, written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the
Shevardino Redoubt as the left flank of the position. It
was much later, when reports on the battle of Borodino
were written at leisure, that the incorrect and
extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify
the mistakes of a commander in chief who had to be
represented as infallible) that the Shevardino Redoubt was
an advanced post- whereas in reality it was simply a
fortified point on the left flank- and that the battle of
Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position
previously selected, where as it was fought on a quite
unexpected spot which was almost unentrenched.
The case was evidently this: a position was selected
along the river Kolocha- which crosses the highroad not
at a right angle but at an acute angle- so that the left flank
was at Shevardino, the right flank near the village of
Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the confluence of
the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.
To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without
thinking of how the battle was actually fought, this
position, protected by the river Kolocha, presents itself as
obvious for an army whose object was to prevent an

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enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to

Moscow.
Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did
not see (as the history books say he did) the position of
the Russians from Utitsa to Borodino (he could not have
seen that position because it did not exist), nor did he see
an advanced post of the Russian army, but while pursuing
the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
Russian position- at the Shevardino Redoubt- and
unexpectedly for the Russians moved his army across the
Kolocha. And the Russians, not having time to begin a
general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the
position they had intended to occupy and took up a new
position which had not been foreseen and was not
fortified. By crossing to the other side of the Kolocha to
the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the whole
forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the
Russian side) and transferred it to the plain between
Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino- a plain no more
advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia-
and there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August
took place.
Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the
twenty-fourth to the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered

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an immediate attack on the redoubt but had begun the

attack next morning, no one would have doubted that the
Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and the
battle would have taken place where we expected it. In
that case we should probably have defended the
Shevardino Redoubt- our left flank- still more obstinately.
We should have attacked Napoleon in the center or on the
right, and the engagement would have taken place on the
twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified.
But as the attack on our left flank took place in the
evening after the retreat of our rea guard (that is,
immediately after the fight at Gridneva), and as the
Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to
begin a general engagement then on the evening of the
twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of
Borodino was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and
obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the twenty-
sixth.
After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found
ourselves on the morning of the twenty-fifth without a
position for our left flank, and were forced to bend it back
and hastily entrench it where it chanced to be.
Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth
defended by weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the

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disadvantage of that position was increased by the fact

that the Russian commanders- not having fully realized
what had happened, namely the loss of our position on the
left flank and the shifting of the whole field of the
forthcoming battle from right to left- maintained their
extended position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and
consequently had to move their forces from right to left
during the battle. So it happened that throughout the
whole battle the Russians opposed the entire French army
launched against our left flank with but half as many men.
(Poniatowski’s action against Utitsa, and Uvarov’s on the
right flank against the French, were actions distinct from
the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino
did not take place at all as (in an effort to conceal our
commanders’ mistakes even at the cost of diminishing the
glory due to the Russian army and people) it has been
described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a
chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly
weaker than those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss
of the Shevardino Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle
of Borodino on an open and almost unentrenched
position, with forces only half as numerous as the French;
that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merely
unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive

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result, but unthinkable to keep an army even from

complete disintegration and flight.
CHAPTER XX
On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving
Mozhaysk. At the descent of the high steep hill, down
which a winding road led out of the town past the
cathedral on the right, where a service was being held and
the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle and
proceeded on foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was
coming down the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up
toward him was a train of carts carrying men who had
been wounded in the engagement the day before. The
peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their horses, kept
crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which
three or four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted
over the stones that had been thrown on the steep incline
to make it something like a road. The wounded, bandaged
with rags, with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and knitted
brows, held on to the sides of the carts as they were jolted
against one another. Almost all of them stared with naive,
childlike curiosity at Pierre’s white hat and green
swallow-tail coat.
Pierre’s coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of
wounded to keep to one side of the road. The cavalry

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regiment, as it descended the hill with its singers,

surrounded Pierre’s carriage and blocked the road. Pierre
stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in
which the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did
not penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and
damp, but above Pierre’s head was the bright August
sunshine and the bells sounded merrily. One of the carts
with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to
Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it,
placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and
began arranging the breech-band on his little horse.
One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged
arm who was following the cart on foot, caught hold of it
with his sound hand and turned to look at Pierre.
‘I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here
or take us on to Moscow?’ he asked.
Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the
question. He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that
had met the convoy of wounded, now at the cart by which
he was standing, in which two wounded men were sitting
and one was lying. One of those sitting up in the cart had
probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was
wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of
a baby’s head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one

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side. This soldier was looking at the cathedral and

crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a fair-haired
recruit as white as though there was no blood in his thin
face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third
lay prone so that his face was not visible. The cavalry
singers were passing close by:
Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,
Living in a foreign land.
they sang their soldiers’ dance song.
As if responding to them but with a different sort of
merriment, the metallic sound of the bells reverberated
high above and the hot rays of the sun bathed the top of
the opposite slope with yet another sort of merriment. But
beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded near the
panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp,
somber, and sad.
The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at
the cavalry singers.
‘Oh, the coxcombs!’ he muttered reproachfully.
‘It’s not the soldiers only, but I’ve seen peasants today,
too.... The peasants- even they have to go,’ said the
soldier behind the cart, addressing Pierre with a sad smile.
‘No distinctions made nowadays.... They want the whole

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nation to fall on them- in a word, it’s Moscow! They want

to make an end of it.’
In spite of the obscurity of the soldier’s words Pierre
understood what he wanted to say and nodded approval.
The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and
drove on.
He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar
faces, but only saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of
various military men of different branches of the service,
who all looked with astonishment at his white hat and
green tail coat.
Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an
acquaintance and eagerly addressed him. This was one of
the head army doctors. He was driving toward Pierre in a
covered gig, sitting beside a young surgeon, and on
recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied the
driver’s seat to pull up.
‘Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?’
asked the doctor.
‘Well, you know, I wanted to see..’
‘Yes, yes, there will be something to see...’
Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his
intention of taking part in a battle.
The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.

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‘Why should you be God knows where out of sight,

during the battle?’ he said, exchanging glances with his
young companion. ‘Anyhow his Serene Highness knows
you and will receive you graciously. That’s what you
must do.’
The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.
‘You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where
our position is exactly?’ said Pierre.
‘The position?’ repeated the doctor. ‘Well, that’s not
my line. Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going
on there. Go up the hillock and you’ll see.’
‘Can one see from there?... If you would..’
But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his
gig.
‘I would go with you but on my honor I’m up to here’-
and he pointed to his throat. ‘I’m galloping to the
commander of the corps. How do matters stand?... You
know, Count, there’ll be a battle tomorrow. Out of an
army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least
twenty thousand wounded, and we haven’t stretchers, or
bunks, or dressers, or doctors enough for six thousand.
We have ten thousand carts, but we need other things as
well- we must manage as best we can!’

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The strange thought that of the thousands of men,

young and old, who had stared with merry surprise at his
hat (perhaps the very men he had noticed), twenty
thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death
amazed Pierre.
‘They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of
anything but death?’ And by some latent sequence of
thought the descent of the Mozhaysk hill, the carts with
the wounded, the ringing bells, the slanting rays of the
sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly recurred to
his mind.
‘The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and
do not for a moment think of what awaits them, but pass
by, winking at the wounded. Yet from among these men
twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they wonder at
my hat! Strange!’ thought Pierre, continuing his way to
Tatarinova.
In front of a landowner’s house to the left of the road
stood carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and
sentinels. The commander in chief was putting up there,
but just when Pierre arrived he was not in and hardly any
of the staff were there- they had gone to the church
service. Pierre drove on toward Gorki.

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When he had ascended the hill and reached the little

village street, he saw for the first time peasant militiamen
in their white shirts and with crosses on their caps, who,
talking and laughing loudly, animated and perspiring,
were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to the
right of the road.
Some of them were digging, others were wheeling
barrowloads of earth along planks, while others stood
about doing nothing.
Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the
men. On seeing these peasants, who were evidently still
amused by the novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre
once more thought of the wounded men at Mozhaysk and
understood what the soldier had meant when he said:
‘They want the whole nation to fall on them.’ The sight of
these bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with
their queer, clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their
shirts opening from the left toward the middle,
unfastened, exposing their sunburned collarbones,
impressed Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and
importance of the moment than anything he had yet seen
or heard.

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Chapter XXI

Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the

toiling militiamen, ascended the knoll from which,
according to the doctor, the battlefield could be seen.
It was about eleven o’clock. The sun shone somewhat
to the left and behind him and brightly lit up the
enormous panorama which, rising like an amphitheater,
extended before him in the clear rarefied atmosphere.
From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater,
wound the Smolensk highroad, passing through a village
with a white church some five hundred paces in front of
the knoll and below it. This was Borodino. Below the
village the road crossed the river by a bridge and, winding
down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of
Valuevo visible about four miles away, where Napoleon
was then stationed. Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared
into a yellowing forest on the horizon. Far in the distance
in that birch and fir forest to the right of the road, the
cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery gleamed in the
sun. Here and there over the whole of that blue expanse,
to right and left of the forest and the road, smoking
campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troops-

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ours and the enemy’s. The ground to the right- along the
course of the Kolocha and Moskva rivers- was broken and
hilly. Between the hollows the villages of Bezubova and
Zakharino showed in the distance. On the left the ground
was more level; there were fields of grain, and the
smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned
down, could be seen.
All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the
left nor the right side of the field fully satisfied his
expectations. Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had
expected to find, but only fields, meadows, troops, woods,
the smoke of campfires, villages, mounds, and streams;
and try as he would he could descry no military ‘position’
in this place which teemed with life, nor could he even
distinguish our troops from the enemy’s.
‘I must ask someone who knows,’ he thought, and
addressed an officer who was looking with curiosity at his
huge unmilitary figure.
‘May I ask you,’ said Pierre, ‘what village that is in
front?’
‘Burdino, isn’t it?’ said the officer, turning to his
companion.
‘Borodino,’ the other corrected him.

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The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk,

moved up to Pierre.
‘Are those our men there?’ Pierre inquired.
‘Yes, and there, further on, are the French,’ said the
officer. ‘There they are, there... you can see them.’
‘Where? Where?’ asked Pierre.
‘One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!’
The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible
on the left beyond the river, and the same stern and
serious expression that Pierre had noticed on many of the
faces he had met came into his face.
‘Ah, those are the French! And over there?...’ Pierre
pointed to a knoll on the left, near which some troops
could be seen.
‘Those are ours.’
‘Ah, ours! And there?...’ Pierre pointed to another
knoll in the distance with a big tree on it, near a village
that lay in a hollow where also some campfires were
smoking and something black was visible.
‘That’s his again,’ said the officer. (It was the
Shevardino Redoubt.) ‘It was ours yesterday, but now it is
his.’
‘Then how about our position?’

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‘Our position?’ replied the officer with a smile of

satisfaction. ‘I can tell you quite clearly, because I
constructed nearly all our entrenchments. There, you see?
There’s our center, at Borodino, just there,’ and he
pointed to the village in front of them with the white
church. ‘That’s where one crosses the Kolocha. You see
down there where the rows of hay are lying in the hollow,
there’s the bridge. That’s our center. Our right flank is
over there’- he pointed sharply to the right, far away in
the broken ground- ‘That’s where the Moskva River is,
and we have thrown up three redoubts there, very strong
ones. The left flank...’ here the officer paused. ‘Well, you
see, that’s difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank
was there at Shevardino, you see, where the oak is, but
now we have withdrawn our left wing- now it is over
there, do you see that village and the smoke? That’s
Semenovsk, yes, there,’ he pointed to Raevski’s knoll.
‘But the battle will hardly be there. His having moved his
troops there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round to
the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a
man will be missing tomorrow!’ he remarked.
An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer
while he was giving these explanations had waited in

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silence for him to finish speaking, but at this point,

evidently not liking the officer’s remark, interrupted him.
‘Gabions must be sent for,’ said he sternly.
The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood
that one might think of how many men would be missing
tomorrow but ought not to speak to speak of it.
‘Well, send number three company again,’ the officer
replied hurriedly.
‘And you, are you one of the doctors?’
‘No, I’ve come on my own,’ answered Pierre, and he
went down the hill again, passing the militiamen.
‘Oh, those damned fellows!’ muttered the officer who
followed him, holding his nose as he ran past the men at
work.
‘There they are... bringing her, coming... There they
are... They’ll be here in a minute...’ voices were suddenly
heard saying; and officers, soldiers, and militiamen began
running forward along the road.
A church procession was coming up the hill from
Borodino. First along the dusty road came the infantry in
ranks, bareheaded and with arms reversed. From behind
them came the sound of church singing.
Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre
toward the procession.

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‘They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian

Mother of God!’ someone cried.
‘The Smolensk Mother of God,’ another corrected him.
The militiamen, both those who had been in the village
and those who had been at work on the battery, threw
down their spades and ran to meet the church procession.
Following the battalion that marched along the dusty road
came priests in their vestments- one little old man in a
hood with attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers
and officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an
embossed metal cover. This was the icon that had been
brought from and had since accompanied the army.
Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen
with bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.
At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon;
the men who had been holding it up by the linen bands
attached to it were relieved by others, the chanters relit
their censers, and service began. The hot rays of the sun
beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind played with the
hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons decorating
the icon. The singing did not sound loud under the open
sky. An immense crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers,
and militiamen surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and
a chanter stood the notabilities on a spot reserved for

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them. A bald general with general with a St. George’s

Cross on his neck stood just behind the priest’s back, and
without crossing himself (he was evidently a German)
patiently awaited the end of the service, which he
considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to
arouse the patriotism of the Russian people. Another
general stood in a martial pose, crossing himself by
shaking his hand in front of his chest while looking about
him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre
recognized several acquaintances among these notables,
but did not look at them- his whole attention was
absorbed in watching the serious expression on the faces
of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who were all
gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters,
who were singing the service for the twentieth time that
day, began lazily and mechanically to sing: ‘Save from
calamity Thy servants, O Mother of God,’ and the priest
and deacon chimed in: ‘For to Thee under God we all flee
as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,’ there again
kindled in all those faces the same expression of
consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment
that Pierre had seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at
Mozhaysk and momentarily on many and many faces he
had met that morning; and heads were bowed more

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frequently and hair tossed back, and sighs and the sound
men made as they crossed themselves were heard.
The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed
against Pierre. Someone, a very important personage
judging by the haste with which way was made for him,
was approaching the icon.
It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the
position and on his way back to Tatarinova had stopped
where the service was being held. Pierre recognized him
at once by his peculiar figure, which distinguished him
from everybody else.
With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout,
round-shouldered body, with uncovered white head and
puffy face showing the white ball of the eye he had lost,
Kutuzov walked with plunging, swaying gait into the
crowd and stopped behind the priest. He crossed himself
with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched the
ground with his hand, and bowed his white head with a
deep sigh. Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite.
Despite the presence of the commander in chief, who
attracted the attention of all the superior officers, the
militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers without
looking at him.

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When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the

icon, sank heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and
for a long time tried vainly to rise, but could not do so on
account of his weakness and weight. His white head
twitched with the effort. At last he rose, kissed the icon as
a child does with naively pouting lips, and again bowed
till he touched the ground with his hand. The other
generals followed his example, then the officers, and after
them with excited faces, pressing on one another,
crowding, panting, and pushing, scrambled the soldiers
and militiamen.

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Chapter XXII

Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.

‘Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?’ said a
voice.
Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his
knees with his hand (he had probably soiled them when
he, too, had knelt before the icon), came up to him
smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a slightly
martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long
coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his
shoulder.
Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated
himself in the shade of the nearest house, on a bench
which one Cossack had run to fetch and another had
hastily covered with a rug. An immense and brilliant suite
surrounded him.
The icon was carried further, accompanied by the
throng. Pierre stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov,
talking to Boris.
He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to
see the position.

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‘This is what you must do,’ said Boris. ‘I will do the

honors of the camp to you. You will see everything best
from where Count Bennigsen will be. I am in attendance
on him, you know; I’ll mention it to him. But if you want
to ride round the position, come along with us. We are
just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do
spend the night with me and we’ll arrange a game of
cards. Of course you know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are
his quarters,’ and he pointed to the third house in the
village of Gorki.
‘But I should like to see the right flank. They say it’s
very strong,’ said Pierre. ‘I should like to start from the
Moskva River and ride round the whole position.’
‘Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the
left flank.’
‘Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski’s regiment?
Can you point it out to me?’
‘Prince Andrew’s? We shall pass it and I’ll take you to
him.’
What about the left flank?’ asked Pierre
‘To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only
knows what state our left flank is in,’ said Boris
confidentially lowering his voice. ‘It is not at all what
Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify that knoll

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quite differently, but...’ Boris shrugged his shoulders, ‘his

Serene Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded
him. You see...’ but Boris did not finish, for at that
moment Kaysarov, Kutuzov’s adjutant, came up to Pierre.
‘Ah, Kaysarov!’ said Boris, addressing him with an
unembarrassed smile, ‘I was just trying to explain our
position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene
Highness could so the intentions of the French!’
‘You mean the left flank?’ asked Kaysarov.
‘Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong.’
Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men
from the staff, Boris had contrived to remain at
headquarters after the changes. He had established
himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom
Boris had been in attendance, considered young Prince
Drubetskoy an invaluable man.
In the higher command there were two sharply defined
parties: Kutuzov’s party and that of Bennigsen, the chief
of staff. Boris belonged to the latter and no one else,
while showing servile respect to Kutuzov, could so create
an impression that the old fellow was not much good and
that Bennigsen managed everything. Now the decisive
moment of battle had come when Kutuzov would be
destroyed and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if

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Kutuzov won the battle it would be felt that everything

was done by Bennigsen. In any case many great rewards
would have to be given for tomorrow’s action, and new
men would come to the front. So Boris was full of
nervous vivacity all day.
After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to
him, and he had not time to reply to all the questions
about Moscow that were showered upon him, or to listen
to all that was told him. The faces all expressed animation
and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the cause of
the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in
questions of personal success; his mind, however, was
occupied by the different expression he saw on other
faces- an expression that spoke not of personal matters
but of the universal questions of life and death. Kutuzov
noticed Pierre’s figure and the group gathered round him.
‘Call him to me,’ said Kutuzov.
An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness’ wish,
and Pierre went toward Kutuzov’s bench. But a
militiaman got there before him. It was Dolokhov.
‘How did that fellow get here?’ asked Pierre.
‘He’s a creature that wriggles in anywhere!’ was the
answer. ‘He has been degraded, you know. Now he wants
to bob up again. He’s been proposing some scheme or

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other and has crawled into the enemy’s picket line at

night.... He’s a brave fellow.’
Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to
Kutuzov.
‘I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness
you might send me away or say that you knew what I was
reporting, but then I shouldn’t lose anything...’
Dolokhov was saying.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to
my Fatherland for which I am ready to die.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘And should your Serene Highness require a man who
will not spare his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I
may prove useful to your Serene Highness.’
‘Yes... Yes...’ Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye
narrowing more and more as he looked at Pierre.
Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness,
stepped up to Pierre’s side near Kutuzov and in a most
natural manner, without raising his voice, said to Pierre,
as though continuing an interrupted conversation:
‘The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready
to die. What heroism, Count!’

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Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be

overheard by his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov’s
attention would be caught by those words, and so it was.
‘What are you saying about the militia?’ he asked
Boris.
‘Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness- for
death- they have put on clean shirts.’
‘Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!’ said Kutuzov;
and he closed his eyes and swayed his head. ‘A matchless
people!’ he repeated with a sigh.
‘So you want to smell gunpowder?’ he said to Pierre.
‘Yes, it’s a pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of
your wife’s adorers. Is she well? My quarters are at your
service.’
And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began
looking about absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he
wanted to say or do.
Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he
beckoned to Andrew Kaysarov, his adjutant’s brother.
‘Those verses... those verses of Marin’s... how do they
go, eh? Those he wrote about Gerakov: ‘Lectures for the
corps inditing’... Recite them, recite them!’ said he,
evidently preparing to laugh.

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Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his

head to the rhythm of the verses.
When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to
him and took his hand.
‘I am very glad to meet you here, Count,’ he said
aloud, regardless of the presence of strangers and in a
particularly resolute and solemn tone. ‘On the eve of a
day when God alone knows who of us is fated to survive,
I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that I regret the
misunderstandings that occurred between us and should
wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to
forgive me.’
Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing
what to say to him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov
embraced Pierre and kissed him.
Boris said a few words to his general, and Count
Bennigsen turned to Pierre and proposed that he should
ride with him along the line.
‘It will interest you,’ said he.
‘Yes, very much,’ replied Pierre.
Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and
Bennigsen and his suite, with Pierre among them, set out
on their ride along the line.

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Chapter XXIII

From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the

bridge which, when they had looked it from the hill, the
officer had pointed out as being the center of our position
and where rows of fragrant new-mown hay lay by the
riverside. They rode across that bridge into the village of
Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an
enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high
knoll where militiamen were digging. This was the
redoubt, as yet unnamed, which afterwards became
known as the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll Battery, but
Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know that
it would become more memorable to him than any other
spot on the plain of Borodino.
They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the
soldiers were dragging away the last logs from the huts
and barns. Then they rode downhill and uphill, across a
ryefield trodden and beaten down as if by hail, following
a track freshly made by the artillery over the furrows of
the plowed land, and reached some fleches* which were
still being dug.
*A kind of entrenchment.

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At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at

the Shevardino Redoubt opposite, which had been ours
the day before and where several horsemen could be
descried. The officers said that either Napoleon or Murat
was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of
horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess
which of the scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon.
At last those mounted men rode away from the mound
and disappeared.
Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him,
and began explaining the whole position of our troops.
Pierre listened to him, straining each faculty to understand
the essential points of the impending battle, but was
mortified to feel that his mental capacity was inadequate
for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen
stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening,
suddenly said to him:
‘I don’t think this interests you?’
‘On the contrary it’s very interesting!’ replied Pierre
not quite truthfully.
From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along
a road winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood.
In the middle of the wood a brown hare with white feet
sprang out and, scared by the tramp of the many horses,

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grew so confused that it leaped along the road in front of

them for some time, arousing general attention and
laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it
dart to one side and disappear in the thicket. After going
through the wood for about a mile and a half they came
out on a glade where troops of Tuchkov’s corps were
stationed to defend the left flank.
Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a
great deal and with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre,
gave orders of great military importance. In front of
Tuchkov’s troops was some high ground not occupied by
troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, saying
that it was madness to leave a height which commanded
the country around unoccupied and to place troops below
it. Some of the generals expressed the same opinion. One
in particular declared with martial heat that they were put
there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen on his own authority
ordered the troops to occupy the high ground. This
disposition on the left flank increased Pierre’s doubt of
his own capacity to understand military matters. Listening
to Bennigsen and the generals criticizing the position of
the troops behind the hill, he quite understood them and
shared their opinion, but for that very reason he could not

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understand how the man who put them there behind the
hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder.
Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as
Bennigsen supposed, put there to defend the position, but
were in a concealed position as an ambush, that they
should not be seen and might be able to strike an
approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not
know this and moved the troops forward according to his
own ideas without mentioning the matter to the
commander in chief.

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Chapter XXIV

On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew

lay leaning on his elbow in a broken-down shed in the
village of Knyazkovo at the further end of his regiment’s
encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he could
see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty year-old
birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field on
which shocks of oats were standing, and some bushes
near which rose the smoke of campfires- the soldiers’
kitchens.
Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his
life now seemed to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of
battle felt agitated and irritable as he had done seven years
before at Austerlitz.
He had received and given the orders for next day’s
battle and had nothing more to do. But his thoughts- the
simplest, clearest, and therefore most terrible thoughts-
would give him no peace. He knew that tomorrow’s battle
would be the most terrible of all he had taken part in, and
for the first time in his life the possibility of death
presented itself to him- not in relation to any worldly
matter or with reference to its effect on others, but simply

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in relation to himself, to his own soul- vividly, plainly,

terribly, and almost as a certainty. And from the height of
this perception all that had previously tormented and
preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold
white light without shadows, without perspective, without
distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-
lantern pictures at which he had long been gazing by
artificial light through a glass. Now he suddenly saw
those badly daubed pictures in clear daylight and without
a glass. ‘Yes, yes! There they are, those false images that
agitated, enraptured, and tormented me,’ said he to
himself, passing in review the principal pictures of the
magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold
white daylight of his clear perception of death. ‘There
they are, those rudely painted figures that once seemed
splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of society, love
of a woman, the Fatherland itself- how important these
pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning
they seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and
crude in the cold white light of this morning which I feel
is dawning for me.’ The three great sorrows of his life
held his attention in particular: his love for a woman, his
father’s death, and the French invasion which had overrun
half Russia. ‘Love... that little girl who seemed to me

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brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved

her. I made romantic plans of love and happiness with
her! Oh, what a boy I was!’ he said aloud bitterly. ‘Ah
me! I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her
faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the
gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart from me....
But it was much simpler really.... It was all very simple
and horrible.’
‘When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place
was his: his land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came
and swept him aside, unconscious of his existence, as he
might brush a chip from his path, and his Bald Hills and
his whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says it is a trial
sent from above. What is the trial for, when he is not here
and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is
the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of
Moscow! And tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not
even by a Frenchman but by one of our own men, by a
soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as one of
them did yesterday, and the French will come and take me
by head and heels and fling me into a hole that I may not
stink under their noses, and new conditions of life will
arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others and about
which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist..’

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He looked at the row of birches shining in the

sunshine, with their motionless green and yellow foliage
and white bark. ‘To die... to be killed tomorrow... That I
should not exist... That all this should still be, but no
me...’
And the birches with their light and shade, the curly
clouds, the smoke of the campfires, and all that was
around him changed and seemed terrible and menacing. A
cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose quickly, went out
of the shed, and began to walk about.
After he had returned, voices were heard outside the
shed. ‘Who’s that?’ he cried.
The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly
Dolokhov’s squadron commander, but now from lack of
officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the shed
followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.
Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business
they had come about, gave them some further
instructions, and was about to dismiss them when he
heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.
‘Devil take it!’ said the voice of a man stumbling over
something.
Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre,
who had tripped over a pole on the ground and had nearly

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fallen, coming his way. It was unpleasant to Prince

Andrew to meet people of his own set in general, and
Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful
moments of his last visit to Moscow.
‘You? What a surprise!’ said he. ‘What brings you
here? This is unexpected!’
As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than
coldness- they expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at
once. He had approached the shed full of animation, but
on seeing Prince Andrew’s face he felt constrained and ill
at ease.
‘I have come... simply... you know... come... it
interests me,’ said Pierre, who had so often that day
senselessly repeated that word ‘interesting.’ ‘I wish to see
the battle.’
‘Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about
war? How would they stop it?’ said Prince Andrew
sarcastically. ‘Well, and how’s Moscow? And my people?
Have they reached Moscow at last?’ he asked seriously.
‘Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went
to see them, but missed them. They have gone to your
estate near Moscow.’

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Chapter XXV

The officers were about to take leave, but Prince

Andrew, apparently reluctant to be left alone with his
friend, asked them to stay and have tea. Seats were
brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed with
surprise at Pierre’s huge stout figure and listened to his
talk of Moscow and the position of our army, round
which he had ridden. Prince Andrew remained silent, and
his expression was so forbidding that Pierre addressed his
remarks chiefly to the good-natured battalion commander.
‘So you understand the whole position of our troops?’
Prince Andrew interrupted him.
‘Yes- that is, how do you mean?’ said Pierre. ‘Not
being a military man I can’t say I have understood it fully,
but I understand the general position.’
‘Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it
who it may,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Oh!’ said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in
perplexity at Prince Andrew. ‘Well, and what do think of
Kutuzov’s appointment?’ he asked.
‘I was very glad of his appointment, that’s all I know,’
replied Prince Andrew.

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‘And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In

Moscow they are saying heaven knows what about him....
What do you think of him?’
‘Ask them,’ replied Prince Andrew, indicating the
officers.
Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly
interrogative smile with which everybody involuntarily
addressed that officer.
‘We see light again, since his Serenity has been
appointed, your excellency,’ said Timokhin timidly, and
continually turning to glance at his colonel.
‘Why so?’ asked Pierre.
‘Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me
inform you. Why, when we were retreating from
Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick or a wisp of hay or
anything. You see, we were going away, so he would get
it all; wasn’t it so, your excellency?’ and again Timokhin
turned to the prince. ‘But we daren’t. In our regiment two
officers were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But
when his Serenity took command everything became
straight forward. Now we see light..’
‘Then why was it forbidden?’

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Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing

what or how to answer such a question. Pierre put the
same question to Prince Andrew.
‘Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were
abandoning to the enemy,’ said Prince Andrew with
venomous irony. ‘It is very sound: one can’t permit the
land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to marauding.
At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French
might outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could
not understand this,’ cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice
that seemed to escape him involuntarily: ‘he could not
understand that there, for the first time, we were fighting
for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit in the men
such as I had never seen before, that we had held the
French for two days, and that that success had increased
our strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our
efforts and losses went for nothing. He had no thought of
betraying us, he tried to do the best he could, he thought
out everything, and that is why he is unsuitable. He is
unsuitable now, just because he plans out everything very
thoroughly and accurately as every German has to. How
can I explain?... Well, say your father has a German valet,
and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your father’s
requirements better than you could, then it’s all right to let

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him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you’ll send

the valet away and attend to your father with your own
unpracticed, awkward hands, and will soothe him better
than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it has been
with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is
in danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club
they have been making him out a traitor! They slander
him as a traitor, and the only result will be that
afterwards, ashamed of their false accusations, they will
make him out a hero or a genius instead of a traitor, and
that will be still more unjust. He is an honest and very
punctilious German.’
‘And they say he’s a skillful commander,’ rejoined
Pierre.
‘I don’t understand what is meant by ‘a skillful
commander,’’ replied Prince Andrew ironically.
‘A skillful commander?’ replied Pierre. ‘Why, one
who foresees all contingencies... and foresees the
adversary’s intentions.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ said Prince Andrew as if it
were a matter settled long ago.
Pierre looked at him in surprise.

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‘And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?’ he

remarked.
‘Yes,’ replied Prince Andrew, ‘but with this little
difference, that in chess you may think over each move as
long as you please and are not limited for time, and with
this difference too, that a knight is always stronger than a
pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while
in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division
and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative
strength of bodies of troops can never be known to
anyone. Believe me,’ he went on, ‘if things depended on
arrangements made by the staff, I should be there making
arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve
here in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider
that on us tomorrow’s battle will depend and not on those
others.... Success never depends, and never will depend,
on position, or equipment, or even on numbers, and least
of all on position.’
‘But on what then?’
‘On the feeling that is in me and in him,’ he pointed to
Timokhin, ‘and in each soldier.’
Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his
commander in alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his
former reticent taciturnity Prince Andrew now seemed

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excited. He could apparently not refrain from expressing

the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.
‘A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it!
Why did we lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French
losses were almost equal to ours, but very early we said to
ourselves that we were losing the battle, and we did lose
it. And we said so because we had nothing to fight for
there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon
as we could. ‘We’ve lost, so let us run,’ and we ran. If we
had not said that till the evening, heaven knows what
might not have happened. But tomorrow we shan’t say it!
You talk about our position, the left flank weak and the
right flank too extended,’ he went on. ‘That’s all
nonsense, there’s nothing of the kind. But what awaits us
tomorrow? A hundred million most diverse chances
which will be decided on the instant by the fact that our
men or theirs run or do not run, and that this man or that
man is killed, but all that is being done at present is only
play. The fact is that those men with whom you have
ridden round the position not only do not help matters, but
hinder. They are only concerned with their own petty
interests.’
‘At such a moment?’ said Pierre reproachfully.

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‘At such a moment!’ Prince Andrew repeated. ‘To

them it is only a moment affording opportunities to
undermine a rival and obtain an extra cross or ribbon. For
me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a hundred
thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have
met to fight, and the thing is that these two hundred
thousand men will fight and the side that fights more
fiercely and spares itself least will win. And if you like I
will tell you that whatever happens and whatever muddles
those at the top may make, we shall win tomorrow’s
battle. Tomorrow, happen what may, we shall win!’
‘There now, your excellency! That’s the truth, the real
truth,’ said Timokhin. ‘Who would spare himself now?
The soldiers in my battalion, believe me, wouldn’t drink
their vodka! ‘It’s not the day for that!’ they say.’
All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went
out of the shed with them, giving final orders to the
adjutant. After they had gone Pierre approached Prince
Andrew and was about to start a conversation when they
heard the clatter of three horses’ hoofs on the road not far
from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince
Andrew recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz
accompanied by a Cossack. They rode close by

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continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew involuntarily

heard these words:
‘Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht
kann ich nicht genug Preis geben,’* said one of them.
*"The war must be extended widely. I cannot
sufficiently commend that view.’
‘Oh, ja,’ said the other, ‘der Zweck ist nur den Feind
zu schwachen, so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der
Privat-Personen in Achtung nehmen.’*
*"Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of
course one cannot take into account the loss of private
individuals.’
‘Oh, no,’ agreed the other.
‘Extend widely!’ said Prince Andrew with an angry
snort, when they had ridden past. ‘In that ‘extend’ were
my father, son, and sister, at Bald Hills. That’s all the
same to him! That’s what I was saying to you- those
German gentlemen won’t win the battle tomorrow but
will only make all the mess they can, because they have
nothing in their German heads but theories not worth an
empty eggshell and haven’t in their hearts the one thing
needed tomorrow- that which Timokhin has. They have
yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach
us. Fine teachers!’ and again his voice grew shrill.

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‘So you think we shall win tomorrow’s battle?’ asked

Pierre.
‘Yes, yes,’ answered Prince Andrew absently. ‘One
thing I would do if I had the power,’ he began again, ‘I
would not take prisoners. Why take prisoners? It’s
chivalry! The French have destroyed my home and are on
their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are
outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my
opinion they are all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin
and the whole army. They should be executed! Since they
are my foes they cannot be my friends, whatever may
have been said at Tilsit.’
‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes
at Prince Andrew. ‘I quite agree with you!’
The question that had perturbed Pierre on the
Mozhaysk hill and all that day now seemed to him quite
clear and completely solved. He now understood the
whole meaning and importance of this war and of the
impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the
significant and stern expressions on the faces he had seen
in passing, were lit up for him by a new light. He
understood that latent heat (as they say in physics) of
patriotism which was present in all these men he had

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seen, and this explained to him why they all prepared for
death calmly, and as it were lightheartedly.
‘Not take prisoners,’ Prince Andrew continued: ‘That
by itself would quite change the whole war and make it
less cruel. As it is we have played at war- that’s what’s
vile! We play at magnanimity and all that stuff. Such
magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being
killed: she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at blood,
but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce. They talk
to us of the rules of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of
mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s all rubbish! I saw
chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged us
and we humbugged them. They plunder other people’s
houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill
my children and my father, and then talk of rules of war
and magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and
be killed! He who has come to this as I have through the
same sufferings..’
Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to
him whether or not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had
been, was suddenly checked in his speech by an
unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a

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few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and

his lips quivered as he began speaking.
‘If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we
should go to war only when it was worth while going to
certain death, as now. Then there would not be war
because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael Ivanovich.
And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war!
And then the determination of the troops would be quite
different. Then all these Westphalians and Hessians
whom Napoleon is leading would not follow him into
Russia, and we should not go to fight in Austria and
Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the
most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand
that and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible
necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of
falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is
now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous.
The military calling is the most highly honored.
‘But what is war? What is needed for success in
warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of
war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery,
and their encouragement, the ruin of a country’s
inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the
army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The

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habits of the military class are the absence of freedom,

that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty,
debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is
the highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings,
except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he who
kills most people receives the highest rewards.
‘They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one
another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then
have thanksgiving services for having killed so many
people (they even exaggerate the number), and they
announce a victory, supposing that the more people they
have killed the greater their achievement. How does God
above look at them and hear them?’ exclaimed Prince
Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. ‘Ah, my friend, it has
of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have begun
to understand too much. And it doesn’t do for man to taste
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.... Ah, well, it’s
not for long!’ he added.
‘However, you’re sleepy, and it’s time for me to sleep.
Go back to Gorki!’ said Prince Andrew suddenly.
‘Oh no!’ Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with
frightened, compassionate eyes.
‘Go, go! Before a battle one must have one’s sleep
out,’ repeated Prince Andrew.

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He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed

him. ‘Good-by, be off!’ he shouted. ‘Whether we meet
again or not...’ and turning away hurriedly he entered the
shed.
It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out
whether the expression of Prince Andrew’s face was
angry or tender.
For some time he stood in silence considering whether
he should follow him or go away. ‘No, he does not want
it!’ Pierre concluded. ‘And I know that this is our last
meeting!’ He sighed deeply and rode back to Gorki.
On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a
rug, but he could not sleep.
He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in
his imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and
joyfully. He vividly recalled an evening in Petersburg.
Natasha with animated and excited face was telling him
how she had gone to look for mushrooms the previous
summer and had lost her way in the big forest. She
incoherently described the depths of the forest, her
feelings, and a talk with a beekeeper she met, and
constantly interrupted her story to say: ‘No, I can’t! I’m
not telling it right; no, you don’t understand,’ though he
encouraged her by saying that he did understand, and he

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really had understood all she wanted to say. But Natasha

was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they
did not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had
experienced that day and wished to convey. ‘He was such
a delightful old man, and it was so dark in the forest... and
he had such kind... No, I can’t describe it,’ she had said,
flushed and excited. Prince Andrew smiled now the same
happy smile as then when he had looked into her eyes. ‘I
understood her,’ he thought. ‘I not only understood her,
but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity,
that frankness of soul- that very soul of hers which
seemed to be fettered by her body- it was that soul I loved
in her... loved so strongly and happily...’ and suddenly he
remembered how his love had ended. ‘He did not need
anything of that kind. He neither saw nor understood
anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty and fresh
young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite his fate.
And I?... and he is still alive and gay!’
Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned
him, and again began pacing up and down in front of the
shed.

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Chapter XXVI

On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de

Beausset, prefect of the French Emperor’s palace, arrived
at Napoleon’s quarters at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier,
the former from Paris and the latter from Madrid.
Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a
box he had brought for the Emperor to be carried before
him and entered the first compartment of Napoleon’s tent,
where he began opening the box while conversing with
Napoleon’s aides-de-camp who surrounded him.
Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance
talking to some generals of his acquaintance.
The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom
and was finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and
grunting, he presented now his back and now his plump
hairy chest to the brush with which his valet was rubbing
him down. Another valet, with his finger over the mouth
of a bottle, was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the
Emperor’s pampered body with an expression which
seemed to say that he alone knew where and how much
Eau de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon’s short
hair was wet and matted on the forehead, but his face,

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though puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction.

‘Go on, harder, go on!’ he muttered to the valet who was
rubbing him, slightly twitching and grunting. An aide-de-
camp, who had entered the bedroom to report to the
Emperor the number of prisoners taken in yesterday’s
action, was standing by the door after delivering his
message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon,
frowning, looked at him from under his brows.
‘No prisoners!’ said he, repeating the aide-de-camp’s
words. ‘They are forcing us to exterminate them. So much
the worse for the Russian army.... Go on... harder,
harder!’ he muttered, hunching his back and presenting
his fat shoulders.
‘All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier
too,’ he said, nodding to the aide-de-camp.
‘Yes, sire,’ and the aide-de-camp disappeared through
the door of the tent.
Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing
the blue uniform of the Guards he went with firm quick
steps to the reception room.
De Beausset’s hands meanwhile were busily engaged
arranging the present he had brought from the Empress,
on two chairs directly in front of the entrance. But
Napoleon had dressed and come out with such unexpected

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rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the

surprise.
Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and
guessed that they were not ready. He did not wish to
deprive them of the pleasure of giving him a surprise, so
he pretended not to see de Beausset and called Fabvier to
him, listening silently and with a stern frown to what
Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops
fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with
but one thought- to be worthy of their Emperor- and but
one fear- to fail to please him. The result of that battle had
been deplorable. Napoleon made ironic remarks during
Fabvier’s account, as if he had not expected that matters
could go otherwise in his absence.
‘I must make up for that in Moscow,’ said Napoleon.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he added, and summoned de Beausset,
who by that time had prepared the surprise, having placed
something on the chairs and covered it with a cloth.
De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow
which only the old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to
make, and approached him, presenting an envelope.
Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.

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‘You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is

Paris saying?’ he asked, suddenly changing his former
stern expression for a most cordial tone.
‘Sire, all Paris regrets your absence,’ replied de
Beausset as was proper.
But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say
something of this kind, and though in his lucid moments
he knew it was untrue, he was pleased to hear it from him.
Again he honored him by touching his ear.
‘I am very sorry to have made you travel so far,’ said
he.
‘Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the
gates of Moscow,’ replied de Beausset.
Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly,
glanced to the right. An aide-de-camp approached with
gliding steps and offered him a gold snuffbox, which he
took.
‘Yes, it has happened luckily for you,’ he said, raising
the open snuffbox to his nose. ‘You are fond of travel,
and in three days you will see Moscow. You surely did
not expect to see that Asiatic capital. You will have a
pleasant journey.’
De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his
taste for travel (of which he had not till then been aware).

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‘Ha, what’s this?’ asked Napoleon, noticing that all the

courtiers were looking at something concealed under a
cloth.
With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and
without turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps,
twitching off the cloth at the same time, and said:
‘A present to Your Majesty from the Empress.’
It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of
the son borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor
of Austria, the boy whom for some reason everyone
called ‘The King of Rome.’
A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the
Christ in the Sistine Madonna was depicted playing at
stick and ball. The ball represented the terrestrial globe
and the stick in his other hand a scepter.
Though it was not clear what the artist meant to
express by depicting the so-called King of Rome spiking
the earth with a stick, the allegory apparently seemed to
Napoleon, as it had done to all who had seen it in Paris,
quite clear and very pleasing.
‘The King of Rome!’ he said, pointing to the portrait
with a graceful gesture. ‘Admirable!’
With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the
expression of his face at will, he drew nearer to the

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portrait and assumed a look of pensive tenderness. He felt

that what he now said and did would be historical, and it
seemed to him that it would now be best for him- whose
grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball with the
terrestrial globe- to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the
simplest paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he
moved forward, glanced round at a chair (which seemed
to place itself under him), and sat down on it before the
portrait. At a single gesture from him everyone went out
on tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and his
emotion.
Having sat still for a while he touched- himself not
knowing why- the thick spot of paint representing the
highest light in the portrait, rose, and recalled de Beausset
and the officer on duty. He ordered the portrait to be
carried outside his tent, that the Old Guard, stationed
round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of seeing
the King of Rome, the son and heir of their adored
monarch.
And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of
breakfasting with him, they heard, as Napoleon had
anticipated, the rapturous cries of the officers and men of
the Old Guard who had run up to see the portrait.

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‘Vive l’Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive

l’Empereur!’ came those ecstatic cries.
After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset’s presence
dictated his order of the day to the army.
‘Short and energetic!’ he remarked when he had read
over the proclamation which he had dictated straight off
without corrections. It ran:
Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for.
Victory depends on you. It is essential for us; it will give
us all we need: comfortable quarters and a speedy return
to our country. Behave as you did at Austerlitz, Friedland,
Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our remotest posterity recall
your achievements this day with pride. Let it be said of
each of you: ‘He was in the great battle before Moscow!’
‘Before Moscow!’ repeated Napoleon, and inviting M.
de Beausset, who was so fond of travel, to accompany
him on his ride, he went out of the tent to where the
horses stood saddled.
‘Your Majesty is too kind!’ replied de Beausset to the
invitation to accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep,
did not know how to ride and was afraid of doing so.
But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset
had to mount. When Napoleon came out of the tent the

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shouting of the Guards before his son’s portrait grew still

louder. Napoleon frowned.
‘Take him away!’ he said, pointing with a gracefully
majestic gesture to the portrait. ‘It is too soon for him to
see a field of battle.’
De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and
sighed deeply, to indicate how profoundly he valued and
comprehended the Emperor’s words.

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Chapter XXVII

On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us,

Napoleon spent the whole day on horseback inspecting
the locality, considering plans submitted to him by his
marshals, and personally giving commands to his
generals.
The original line of the Russian forces along the river
Kolocha had been dislocated by the capture of the
Shevardino Redoubt on the twenty-fourth, and part of the
line- the left flank- had been drawn back. That part of the
line was not entrenched and in front of it the ground was
more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to
anyone, military or not, that it was here the French should
attack. It would seem that not much consideration was
needed to reach this conclusion, nor any particular care or
trouble on the part of the Emperor and his marshals, nor
was there any need of that special and supreme quality
called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to
Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later
and the men who then surrounded Napoleon, and he
himself, thought otherwise.

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Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality

with a profound air and in silence, nodded with approval
or shook his head dubiously, and without communicating
to the generals around him the profound course of ideas
which guided his decisions merely gave them his final
conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to
a suggestion from Davout, who was now called Prince
d’Eckmuhl, to turn the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it
should not be done, without explaining why not. To a
proposal made by General Campan (who was to attack the
fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon
agreed, though the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney)
ventured to remark that a movement through the woods
was dangerous and might disorder the division.
Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino
Redoubt, Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then
indicated the spots where two batteries should be set up
by the morrow to act against the Russian entrenchments,
and the places where, in line with them, the field artillery
should be placed.
After giving these and other commands he returned to
his tent, and the dispositions for the battle were written
down from his dictation.

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These dispositions, of which the French historians

write with enthusiasm and other historians with profound
respect, were as follows:
At dawn the two new batteries established during the
night on the plain occupied by the Prince d’Eckmuhl will
open fire on the opposing batteries of the enemy.
At the same time the commander of the artillery of the
1st Corps, General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of
Campan’s division and all the howitzers of Dessaix’s and
Friant’s divisions, will move forward, open fire, and
overwhelm with shellfire the enemy’s battery, against
which will operate:
24 guns of the artillery of the Guards
30 guns of Campan’s division
and 8 guns of Friant’s and Dessaix’s divisions
—
in all 62 guns.
The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps,
General Fouche, will place the howitzers of the 3rd and
8th Corps, sixteen in all, on the flanks of the battery that
is to bombard the entrenchment on the left, which will
have forty guns in all directed against it.

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General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to

advance with all the howitzers of the Guard’s artillery
against either one or other of the entrenchments.
During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to
advance through the wood on the village and turn the
enemy’s position.
General Campan will move through the wood to seize
the first fortification.
After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will
be given in accordance with the enemy’s movements.
The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as
the guns of the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of
Morand’s division and of the vice-King’s division will
open a heavy fire on seeing the attack commence on the
right wing.
The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its
three bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand’s
and Gibrard’s divisions, which under his leadership will
be directed against the redoubt and come into line with
the rest of the forces.
All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera
avec ordre et methode) as far as possible retaining troops
in reserve.

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The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,

September, 6, 1812.
These dispositions, which are very obscure and
confused if one allows oneself to regard the arrangements
without religious awe of his genius, related to Napoleon’s
orders to deal with four points- four different orders. Not
one of these was, or could be, carried out.
In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed
on the spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti
and Fouche; which were to come in line with them, 102
guns in all, were to open fire and shower shells on the
Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be done, as
from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did
not carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot
into the air until the nearest commander, contrary to
Napoleon’s instructions, moved them forward.
The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the
village through the wood, should turn the Russian left
flank. This could not be done and was not done, because
Poniatowski, advancing on the village through the wood,
met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and did
not turn the Russian position.
The third order was: General Campan will move
through the wood to seize the first fortification. General

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Campan’s division did not seize the first fortification but

was driven back, for on emerging from the wood it had to
reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was unaware.
The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the
village (Borodino) and cross by its three bridges,
advancing to the same heights as Morand’s and Gdrard’s
divisions (for whose movements no directions are given),
which under his leadership will be directed against the
redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.
As far as one can make out, not so much from this
unintelligible sentence as from the attempts the vice-King
made to execute the orders given him, he was to advance
from the left through Borodino to the redoubt while the
divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance
simultaneously from the front.
All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not
and could not be executed. After passing through
Borodino the vice-King was driven back to the Kolocha
and could get no farther; while the divisions of Morand
and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were driven back,
and the redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle by
the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of
by Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition
was, or could be, executed. But in the disposition it is said

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that, after the fight has commenced in this manner, orders

will be given in accordance with the enemy’s movements,
and so it might be supposed that all necessary
arrangements would be made by Napoleon during the
battle. But this was not and could not be done, for during
the whole battle Napoleon was so far away that, as
appeared later, he could not know the course of the battle
and not one of his orders during the fight could be
executed.

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Chapter XXVIII

Many historians say that the French did not win the
battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that
if he had not had a cold the orders he gave before and
during the battle would have been still more full of genius
and Russia would have been lost and the face of the world
have been changed. To historians who believe that Russia
was shaped by the will of one man- Peter the Great- and
that France from a republic became an empire and French
armies went to Russia at the will of one man- Napoleon-
to say that Russia remained a power because Napoleon
had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August may seem
logical and convincing.
If it had depended on Napoleon’s will to fight or not to
fight the battle of Borodino, and if this or that other
arrangement depended on his will, then evidently a cold
affecting the manifestation of his will might have saved
Russia, and consequently the valet who omitted to bring
Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth
would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of
thought such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as
the deduction Voltaire made in jest (without knowing

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what he was jesting at) when he saw that the Massacre of

St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX’s stomach being
deranged. But to men who do not admit that Russia was
formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French
Empire was formed and the war with Russia begun by the
will of one man, Napoleon, that argument seems not
merely untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human
reality. To the question of what causes historic events
another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of
human events is predetermined from on high- depends on
the coincidence of the wills of all who take part in the
events, and that a Napoleon’s influence on the course of
these events is purely external and fictitious.
Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles
IX’s will, though he gave the order for it and thought it
was done as a result of that order; and strange as it may
seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand men
at Borodino was not due to Napoleon’s will, though he
ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and
thought it was done because he ordered it; strange as these
suppositions appear, yet human dignity- which tells me
that each of us is, if not more at least not less a man than
the great Napoleon- demands the acceptance of that

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solution of the question, and historic investigation

abundantly confirms it.
At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and
killed no one. That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore
it was not he who killed people.
The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the
battle of Borodino not because of Napoleon’s orders but
by their own volition. The whole army- French, Italian,
German, Polish, and Dutch- hungry, ragged, and weary of
the campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their
road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be
drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the
Russians, they would have killed him and have proceeded
to fight the Russians because it was inevitable.
When they heard Napoleon’s proclamation offering
them, as compensation for mutilation and death, the
words of posterity about their having been in the battle
before Moscow, they cried ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ just as
they had cried ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ at the sight of the
portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy
stick, and just as they would have cried ‘Vive
l’Empereur!’ at any nonsense that might be told them.
There was nothing left for them to do but cry ‘Vive
l’Empereur!’ and go to fight, in order to get food and rest

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as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of

Napoleon’s commands that they killed their fellow men.
And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of
the battle, for none of his orders were executed and during
the battle he did not know what was going on before him.
So the way in which these people killed one another was
not decided by Napoleon’s will but occurred
independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds
of thousands of people who took part in the common
action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took place
by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not
a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the
least of the transport soldiers.
Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that
his cold was the cause of his dispositions not being as
well planned as on former occasions, and of his orders
during the battle not being as good as previously, is quite
baseless, which again shows that Napoleon’s cold on the
twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.
The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but
are even better, than previous dispositions by which he
had won victories. His pseudo-orders during the battle
were also no worse than formerly, but much the same as
usual. These dispositions and orders only seem worse

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than previous ones because the battle of Borodino was the

first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most
excellent dispositions and orders seem very bad, and
every learned militarist criticizes them with looks oks
importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost,
and the very worst dispositions and orders seem very
good, and serious people fill whole volumes to
demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that
has been won.
The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle
of Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of
composition, but still they were criticized- criticized for
their very perfection, for their excessive minuteness.
Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office
as representative of authority as well as, and even better
than, at other battles. He did nothing harmful to the
progress of the battle; he inclined to the most reasonable
opinions, he made no confusion, did not contradict
himself, did not get frightened or run away from the field
of battle, but with his great tact and military experience
carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and
with dignity.

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Chapter XXIX

On returning from a second inspection of the lines,

Napoleon remarked:
‘The chessmen are set up, the game will begin
tomorrow!’
Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he
began to talk to him about Paris and about some changes
he meant to make the Empress’ household, surprising the
prefect by his memory of minute details relating to the
court.
He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de
Beausset’s love of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a
famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does
when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron
while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.
‘The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my
head. When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as
no one else could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest
and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you
ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius.’
Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon
went to rest before the serious business which, he

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considered, awaited him next day. He was so much

interested in that task that he was unable to sleep, and in
spite of his cold which had grown worse from the
dampness of the evening, he went into the large division
of the tent at three o’clock in the morning, loudly blowing
his nose. He asked whether the Russians had not
withdrawn, and was told that the enemy’s fires were still
in the same places. He nodded approval.
The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.
‘Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business
today?’ Napoleon asked him.
‘Without doubt, sire,’ replied Rapp.
Napoleon looked at him.
‘Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to
say at Smolensk?’ continued Rapp. ‘The wine is drawn
and must be drunk.’
Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time
leaning his head on his hand.
‘This poor army!’ he suddenly remarked. ‘It has
diminished greatly since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a
courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so and I am
beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the
Guards are intact?’ he remarked interrogatively.
‘Yes, sire,’ replied Rapp.

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Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and

glanced at his watch. He was not sleepy and it was still
not nearly morning. It was impossible to give further
orders for the sake of killing time, for the orders had all
been given and were now being executed.
‘Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the
regiments of the Guards?’ asked Napoleon sternly.
‘Yes, sire.’
‘The rice too?’
Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor’s order
about the rice, but Napoleon shook his head in
dissatisfaction as if not believing that his order had been
executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon
ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently
sipped his own.
‘I have neither taste nor smell,’ he remarked, sniffing
at his glass. ‘This cold is tiresome. They talk about
medicine- what is the good of medicine when it can’t cure
a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but they don’t
help at all. What can doctors cure? One can’t cure
anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized
for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and
let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it
by encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a

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perfect watch that should go for a certain time;

watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by
fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is just a
machine for living, that is all.’
And having entered on the path of definition, of which
he was fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a
new one.
‘Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?’ asked he.
‘It is the art of being stronger than the enemy at a given
moment. That’s all.’
Rapp made no reply.
‘Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!’ said
Napoleon. ‘We shall see! Do you remember at Braunau
he commanded an army for three weeks and did not once
mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall
see!’
He looked at his watch. It was still only four o’clock.
He did not feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there
was still nothing to do. He rose, walked to and fro, put on
a warm overcoat and a hat, and went out of the tent. The
night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible moisture
was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were
dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the
distance those of the Russian line shone through the

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smoke. The weather was calm, and the rustle and tramp of
the French troops already beginning to move to take up
their positions were clearly audible.
Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at
the fires and listened to these sounds, and as he was
passing a tall guardsman in a shaggy cap, who was
standing sentinel before his tent and had drawn himself up
like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon
stopped in front of him.
‘What year did you enter the service?’ he asked with
that affectation of military bluntness and geniality with
which he always addressed the soldiers.
The man answered the question.
‘Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its
rice?’
‘It has, Your Majesty.’
Napoleon nodded and walked away.
At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of
Shevardino.
It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a
single cloud lay in the east. The abandoned campfires
were burning themselves out in the faint morning light.
On the right a single deep report of a cannon
resounded and died away in the prevailing silence. Some

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minutes passed. A second and a third report shook the air,

then a fourth and a fifth boomed solemnly near by on the
right.
The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before
others rang out and yet more were heard mingling with
and overtaking one another.
Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino
Redoubt where he dismounted. The game had begun.

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Chapter XXX

On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince

Andrew, Pierre ordered his groom to get the horses ready
and to call him early in the morning, and then
immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner
Boris had given up to him.
Before he was thoroughly awake next morning
everybody had already left the hut. The panes were
rattling in the little windows and his groom was shaking
him.
‘Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!’
he kept repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by
the shoulder without looking at him, having apparently
lost hope of getting him to wake up.
‘What? Has it begun? Is it time?’ Pierre asked, waking
up.
‘Hear the firing,’ said the groom, a discharged soldier.
‘All the gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene
Highness himself rode past long ago.’
Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside
all was bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just
bursting forth from behind a cloud that had concealed it,

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was shining, with rays still half broken by the clouds, over
the roofs of the street opposite, on the dew-besprinkled
dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the
windows, the fence, and on Pierre’s horses standing
before the hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct
outside. An adjutant accompanied by a Cossack passed by
at a sharp trot.
‘It’s time, Count; it’s time!’ cried the adjutant.
Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre
went down the street to the knoll from which he had
looked at the field of battle the day before. A crowd of
military men was assembled there, members of the staff
could be heard conversing in French, and Kutuzov’s gray
head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his gray
nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through
a field glass down the highroad before him.
Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the
scene before him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same
panorama he had admired from that spot the day before,
but now the whole place was full of troops and covered
by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting rays of
the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast
upon it through the clear morning air penetrating streaks
of rosy, golden tinted light and long dark shadows. The

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forest at the farthest extremity of the panorama seemed

carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green color;
its undulating outline was silhouetted against the horizon
and was pierced beyond Valuevo by the Smolensk
highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered
golden cornfields interspersed with copses. There were
troops to be seen everywhere, in front and to the right and
left. All this was vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but
what impressed Pierre most of all was the view of the
battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on both
sides of the Kolocha.
Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of
it, especially to the left where the Voyna flowing between
its marshy banks falls into the Kolocha, a mist had spread
which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to become
translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and magically
colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns
mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and
through that mist the rays of the morning sun were
reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water,
from the dew, and from the bayonets of the troops
crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A
white church could be seen through the mist, and here and
there the roofs of huts in Borodino as well as dense

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masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and

ordnance. And all this moved, or seemed to move, as the
smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as
in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the
entire line outside and above it and especially in the
woods and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the
summits of the high ground, clouds of powder smoke
seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now
singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others
dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending,
extended over the whole expanse.
These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of
sound of the firing produced the chief beauty of the
spectacle.
‘Puff!’- suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was
seen merging from violet into gray and milky white, and
‘boom!’ came the report a second later.
‘Puff! puff!’- and two clouds arose pushing one
another and blending together; and ‘boom, boom!’ came
the sounds confirming what the eye had seen.
Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had
seen as a round compact ball, and in its place already
were balloons of smoke floating to one side, and- ‘puff’
(with a pause)- ‘puff, puff!’ three and then four more

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appeared and then from each, with the same interval-

‘boom- boom, boom!’ came the fine, firm, precise sounds
in reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes
ran and sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and
glittering bayonets ran past them. From the left, over
fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were
continually appearing followed by their solemn reports,
while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst
from the muskets small cloudlets that had no time to
become balls, but had their little echoes in just the same
way. ‘Trakh-ta-ta-takh!’ came the frequent crackle of
musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in comparison
with the reports of the cannon.
Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those
shining bayonets, that movement, and those sounds. He
turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite, to compare his
impressions with those of others. They were all looking at
the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with
the same feelings. All their faces were now shining with
that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day
before and had fully understood after his talk with Prince
Andrew.

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‘Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!’

Kutuzov was saying to a general who stood beside him,
not taking his eye from the battlefield.
Having received this order the general passed by Pierre
on his way down the knoll.
‘To the crossing!’ said the general coldly and sternly in
reply to one of the staff who asked where he was going.
‘I’ll go there too, I too!’ thought Pierre, and followed
the general.
The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought
him. Pierre went to his groom who was holding his horses
and, asking which was the quietest, clambered onto it,
seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes pressed his
heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles were
slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins, he
galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to
smile as they watched him from the knoll.

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Chapter XXXI

Having descended the hill the general after whom

Pierre was galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre,
losing sight of him, galloped in among some ranks of
infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass either in
front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers
everywhere, all with expression and busy with some
unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with
the same dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout
man in a white hat, who for some unknown reason
threatened to trample them under his horse’s hoofs.
‘Why ride into the middle of the battalion?’ one of
them shouted at him.
Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a
musket, and Pierre, bending over his saddlebow and
hardly able to control his shying horse, galloped ahead of
the soldiers where there was a free space.
There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers
stood firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware
of it he had come to the bridge across the Kolocha
between Gorki and Borodino, which the French (having
occupied Borodino) were attacking in the first phase of

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the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of

him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides
of it and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown
hay which he had taken no notice of amid the smoke of
the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant
firing going on there he had no idea that this was the field
of battle. He did not notice the sound of the bullets
whistling from every side, or the projectiles that flew over
him, did not see the enemy on the other side of the river,
and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded,
though many fell near him. He looked about him with a
smile which did not leave his face.
‘Why’s that fellow in front of the line?’ shouted
somebody at him again.
‘To the left!... Keep to the right!’ the men shouted to
him.
Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered
one of Raevski’s adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant
looked angrily at him, evidently also intending to shout at
him, but on recognizing him he nodded.
‘How have you got here?’ he said, and galloped on.
Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do,
and afraid of getting in someone’s way again, galloped
after the adjutant.

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‘What’s happening here? May I come with you?’ he

asked.
‘One moment, one moment!’ replied the adjutant, and
riding up to a stout colonel who was standing in the
meadow, he gave him some message and then addressed
Pierre.
‘Why have you come here, Count?’ he asked with a
smile. ‘Still inquisitive?’
‘Yes, yes,’ assented Pierre.
But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.
‘Here it’s tolerable,’ said he, ‘but with Bagration on
the left flank they’re getting it frightfully hot.’
‘Really?’ said Pierre. ‘Where is that?’
‘Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view
from there and in our battery it is still bearable,’ said the
adjutant. ‘Will you come?’
‘Yes, I’ll come with you,’ replied Pierre, looking round
for his groom.
It was only now that he noticed wounded men
staggering along or being carried on stretchers. On that
very meadow he had ridden over the day before, a soldier
was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, with his head
thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.

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‘Why haven’t they carried him away?’ Pierre was

about to ask, but seeing the stern expression of the
adjutant who was also looking that way, he checked
himself.
Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the
hollow with the adjutant to Raevski’s Redoubt. His horse
lagged behind the adjutant’s and jolted him at every step.
‘You don’t seem to be used to riding, Count?’
remarked the adjutant.
‘No it’s not that, but her action seems so jerky,’ said
Pierre in a puzzled tone.
‘Why... she’s wounded!’ said the adjutant. ‘In the off
foreleg above the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate
you, Count, on your baptism of fire!’
Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps,
behind the artillery which had been moved forward and
was in action, deafening them with the noise of firing,
they came to a small wood. There it was cool and quiet,
with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant
dismounted and walked up the hill on foot.
‘Is the general here?’ asked the adjutant on reaching
the knoll.
‘He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way,’
someone told him, pointing to the right.

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The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do

with him now.
‘Don’t trouble about me,’ said Pierre. ‘I’ll go up onto
the knoll if I may?’
‘Yes, do. You’ll see everything from there and it’s less
dangerous, and I’ll come for you.’
Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on.
They did not meet again, and only much later did Pierre
learn that he lost an arm that day.
The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous
one afterwards known to the Russians as the Knoll
Battery or Raevski’s Redoubt, and to the French as la
grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre,
around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French
regarded as the key to the whole position.
This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of
which trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment
stood ten guns that were being fired through openings in
the earthwork.
In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns
which also fired incessantly. A little behind the guns
stood infantry. When ascending that knoll Pierre had no
notion that this spot, on which small trenches had been

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dug and from which a few guns were firing, was the most
important point of the battle.
On the contrary, just because he happened to be there
he thought it one of the least significant parts of the field.
Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end
of a trench surrounding the battery and gazed at what was
going on around him with an unconsciously happy smile.
Occasionally he rose and walked about the battery still
with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers
who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually
running past him with bags and charges. The guns of that
battery were being fired continually one after another with
a deafening roar, enveloping the whole neighborhood in
powder smoke.
In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen
placed in support, here in the battery where a small
number of men busy at their work were separated from
the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and
as it were family feeling of animation.
The intrusion of Pierre’s nonmilitary figure in a white
hat made an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers
looked askance at him with surprise and even alarm as
they went past him. The senior artillery officer, a tall,
long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if

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to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him

with curiosity.
A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and
evidently only just out of the Cadet College, who was
zealously commanding the two guns entrusted to him,
addressed Pierre sternly.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘permit me to ask you to stand aside.
You must not be here.’
The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they
looked at Pierre. But when they had convinced
themselves that this man in the white hat was doing no
harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench with
a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced
up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were
on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually
began to change into a kindly and bantering sympathy,
such as soldiers feel for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in
general for the animals that live with the regiment. The
men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,
gave him a nickname ("our gentleman’), and made kindly
fun of him among themselves.
A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he
looked around with a smile as he brushed from his clothes
some earth it had thrown up.

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‘And how’s it you’re not afraid, sir, really now?’ a red-

faced, broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin
that disclosed a set of sound, white teeth.
‘Are you afraid, then?’ said Pierre.
‘What else do you expect?’ answered the soldier. ‘She
has no mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering
down, out go your innards. One can’t help being afraid,’
he said laughing.
Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped
beside Pierre. They seemed not to have expected him to
talk like anybody else, and the discovery that he did so
delighted them.
‘It’s the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it’s
wonderful! There’s a gentleman for you!’
‘To your places!’ cried the young officer to the men
gathered round Pierre.
The young officer was evidently exercising his duties
for the first or second time and therefore treated both his
superiors and the men with great precision and formality.
The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry
were growing more intense over the whole field,
especially to the left where Bagration’s fleches were, but
where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it almost
impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole

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attention was engrossed by watching the family circle-

separated from all else- formed by the men in the battery.
His first unconscious feeling of joyful animation
produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield was
now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that
soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the
slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around
him.
By ten o’clock some twenty men had already been
carried away from the battery; two guns were smashed
and cannon balls fell more and more frequently on the
battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around. But
the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and
merry voices and jokes were heard on all sides.
‘A live one!’ shouted a man as a whistling shell
approached.
‘Not this way! To the infantry!’ added another with
loud laughter, seeing the shell fly past and fall into the
ranks of the supports.
‘Are you bowing to a friend, eh?’ remarked another,
chaffing a peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew
over.
Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench,
looking out to see what was happening in front.

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‘They’ve withdrawn the front line, it has retired,’ said

they, pointing over the earthwork.
‘Mind your own business,’ an old sergeant shouted at
them. ‘If they’ve retired it’s because there’s work for
them to do farther back.’
And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the
shoulders, gave him a shove with his knee. This was
followed by a burst of laughter.
‘To the fifth gun, wheel it up!’ came shouts from one
side.
‘Now then, all together, like bargees!’ rose the merry
voices of those who were moving the gun.
‘Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman’s hat off!’
cried the red-faced humorist, showing his teeth chaffing
Pierre. ‘Awkward baggage!’ he added reproachfully to a
cannon ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man’s leg.
‘Now then, you foxes!’ said another, laughing at some
militiamen who, stooping low, entered the battery to carry
away the wounded man.
‘So this gruel isn’t to your taste? Oh, you crows!
You’re scared!’ they shouted at the militiamen who stood
hesitating before the man whose leg had been torn off.
‘There, lads... oh, oh!’ they mimicked the peasants,
‘they don’t like it at all!’

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Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt,
and after every loss, the liveliness increased more and
more.
As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and
more vividly and rapidly from an approaching
thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to what was taking
place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and more
intense glowed in the faces of these men.
Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not
concerned to know what was happening there; he was
entirely absorbed in watching this fire which burned ever
more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the
same way in his own soul.
At ten o’clock the infantry that had been among the
bushes in front of the battery and along the Kamenka
streamlet retreated. From the battery they could be seen
running back past it carrying their wounded on their
muskets. A general with his suite came to the battery, and
after speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look
and went away again having ordered the infantry supports
behind the battery to lie down, so as to be less exposed to
fire. After this from amid the ranks of infantry to the right
of the battery came the sound of a drum and shouts of

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command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks
of infantry moved forward.
Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was
particularly struck by a pale young officer who, letting his
sword hang down, was walking backwards and kept
glancing uneasily around.
The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke
but their long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing
could still be heard. A few minutes later crowds of
wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back from that
direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in
the battery. Several men were lying about who had not
been removed. Around the cannon the men moved still
more briskly and busily. No one any longer took notice of
Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted at for being in the
way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid strides
from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young
officer, with his face still more flushed, commanded the
men more scrupulously than ever. The soldiers handed up
the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business with
strained smartness. They gave little jumps as they walked,
as though they were on springs.
The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every
face the fire which Pierre had watched kindle burned up

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brightly. Pierre standing beside the commanding officer.

The young officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to his
superior.
‘I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds
are left. Are we to continue firing?’ he asked.
‘Grapeshot!’ the senior shouted, without answering the
question, looking over the wall of the trench.
Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave
a gasp and bending double sat down on the ground like a
bird shot on the wing. Everything became strange,
confused, and misty in Pierre’s eyes.
One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck
the earthwork, a soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not
noticed these sounds before, now heard nothing else. On
the right of the battery soldiers shouting ‘Hurrah!’ were
running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.
A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by
which he was standing, crumbling down the earth; a black
ball flashed before his eyes and at the same instant
plumped into something. Some militiamen who were
entering the battery ran back.
‘All with grapeshot!’ shouted the officer.
The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened
whisper informed him (as a butler at dinner informs his

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master that there is no more of some wine asked for) that

there were no more charges.
‘The scoundrels! What are they doing?’ shouted the
officer, turning to Pierre.
The officer’s face was red and perspiring and his eyes
glittered under his frowning brow.
‘Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition
boxes!’ he yelled, angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes
and speaking to his men.
‘I’ll go,’ said Pierre.
The officer, without answering him, strode across to
the opposite side.
‘Don’t fire.... Wait!’ he shouted.
The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition
stumbled against Pierre.
‘Eh, sir, this is no place for you,’ said he, and ran down
the slope.
Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young
officer was sitting.
One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him,
falling in front, beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down
the slope. ‘Where am I going?’ he suddenly asked himself
when he was already near the green ammunition wagons.
He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or

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go on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him

backwards to the ground. At the same instant he was
dazzled by a great flash of flame, and immediately a
deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made his ears
tingle.
When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground
leaning on his hands; the ammunition wagons he had been
approaching no longer existed, only charred green boards
and rags littered the scorched grass, and a horse, dangling
fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while
another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering
prolonged and piercing cries.

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Chapter XXXII

Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran

back to the battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors
that surrounded him.
On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were
men doing something there but that no shots were being
fired from the battery. He had no time to realize who
these men were. He saw the senior officer lying on the
earth wall with his back turned as if he were examining
something down below and that one of the soldiers he had
noticed before was struggling forward shouting
‘Brothers!’ and trying to free himself from some men who
were holding him by the arm. He also saw something else
that was strange.
But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been
killed, that the soldier shouting ‘Brothers!’ was a prisoner,
and that another man had been bayoneted in the back
before his eyes, for hardly had he run into the redoubt
before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in a blue
uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting
something. Instinctively guarding against the shock- for
they had been running together at full speed before they

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saw one another- Pierre put out his hands and seized the
man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one hand and
by the throat with the other. The officer, dropping his
sword, seized Pierre by his collar.
For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at
one another’s unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at
what they had done and what they were to do next. ‘Am I
taken prisoner or have I taken him prisoner?’ each was
thinking. But the French officer was evidently more
inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because
Pierre’s strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear,
squeezed his throat ever tighter and tighter. The
Frenchman was about to say something, when just above
their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and
it seemed to Pierre that the French officer’s head had been
torn off, so swiftly had he ducked it.
Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without
further thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the
Frenchman ran back to the battery and Pierre ran down
the slope stumbling over the dead and wounded who, it
seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he reached
the foot of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of
Russian soldiers who, stumbling, tripping up, and
shouting, ran merrily and wildly toward the battery. (This

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was the attack for which Ermolov claimed the credit,

declaring that only his courage and good luck made such
a feat possible: it was the attack in which he was said to
have thrown some St. George’s Crosses he had in his
pocket into the battery for the first soldiers to take who
got there.)
The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our
troops shouting ‘Hurrah!’ pursued them so far beyond the
battery that it was difficult to call them back.
The prisoners were brought down from the battery and
among them was a wounded French general, whom the
officers surrounded. Crowds of wounded- some known to
Pierre and some unknown- Russians and French, with
faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were
carried on stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went
up onto the knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of
that family circle which had received him as a member he
did not find a single one. There were many dead whom he
did not know, but some he recognized. The young officer
still sat in the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood at
the edge of the earth wall. The red-faced man was still
twitching, but they did not carry him away.
Pierre ran down the slope once more.

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‘Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at

what they have done!’ he thought, aimlessly going toward
a crowd of stretcher bearers moving from the battlefield.
But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high,
and in front and especially to the left, near Semenovsk,
something seemed to be seething in the smoke, and the
roar of cannon and musketry did not diminish, but even
increased to desperation like a man who, straining
himself, shrieks with all his remaining strength.

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Chapter XXXIII

The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought

within the seven thousand feet between Borodino and
Bagration’s fleches. Beyond that space there was, on the
one side, a demonstration made by the Russians with
Uvarov’s cavalry at midday, and on the other side,
beyond Utitsa, Poniatowski’s collision with Tuchkov; but
these two were detached and feeble actions in comparison
with what took place in the center of the battlefield. On
the field between Borodino and the fleches, beside the
wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open
space visible from both sides and was fought in the
simplest and most artless way.
The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from
several hundred guns.
Then when the whole field was covered with smoke,
two divisions, Campan’s and Dessaix’s, advanced from
the French right, while Murat’s troops advanced on
Borodino from their left.
From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was
standing the fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and it
was more than a mile as the crow flies to Borodino, so

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that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,

especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the
whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix’s division
advancing against the fleches could only be seen till they
had entered the hollow that lay between them and the
fleches. As soon as they had descended into that hollow,
the smoke of the guns and musketry on the fleches grew
so dense that it covered the whole approach on that side
of it. Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of
something black- probably men- and at times the glint of
bayonets. But whether they were moving or stationary,
whether they were French or Russian, could not be
discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.
The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck
straight into Napoleon’s face as, shading his eyes with his
hand, he looked at the fleches. The smoke spread out
before them, and at times it looked as if the smoke were
moving, at times as if the troops moved. Sometimes
shouts were heard through the firing, but it was
impossible to tell what was being done there.
Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field
glass, and in its small circlet saw smoke and men,
sometimes his own and sometimes Russians, but when he

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looked again with the naked eye, he could not tell where
what he had seen was.
He descended the knoll and began walking up and
down before it.
Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and
gazed intently at the battlefield.
But not only was it impossible to make out what was
happening from where he was standing down below, or
from the knoll above on which some of his generals had
taken their stand, but even from the fleches themselves- in
which by this time there were now Russian and now
French soldiers, alternately or together, dead, wounded,
alive, frightened, or maddened- even at those fleches
themselves it was impossible to make out what was taking
place. There for several hours amid incessant cannon and
musketry fire, now Russians were seen alone, now
Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and now cavalry: they
appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do
with one another, screamed, and ran back again.
From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and
orderlies from his marshals, kept galloping up to
Napoleon with reports of the progress of the action, but
all these reports were false, both because it was
impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening

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at any given moment and because many of the adjutants

did not go to the actual place of conflict but reported what
they had heard from others; and also because while an
adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon
circumstances changed and the news he brought was
already becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up
from Murat with tidings that Borodino had been occupied
and the bridge over the Kolocha was in the hands of the
French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished the
troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops
should form up on the farther side and wait. But before
that order was given- almost as soon in fact as the
adjutant had left Borodino- the bridge had been retaken
by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which
Pierre had been present at the beginning of the battle.
An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale
and frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their
attack had been repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout
killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been told that
the French had been repulsed, the fleches had in fact been
recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive
and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these
necessarily untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his

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orders, which had either been executed before he gave

them or could not be and were not executed.
The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the
field of battle but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the
actual fighting and only occasionally went within musket
range, made their own arrangements without asking
Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction
to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry
should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon’s, were
seldom carried out, and then but partially. For the most
part things happened contrary to their orders. Soldiers
ordered to advance ran back on meeting grapeshot;
soldiers ordered to remain where they were, suddenly,
seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes
rushed back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry
dashed without orders in pursuit of the flying Russians. In
this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the
Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they reached the top of
the incline turned round and galloped full speed back
again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes
running to quite other places than those they were ordered
to go to. All orders as to where and when to move the
guns, when to send infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride
down the Russian infantry- all such orders were given by

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the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned,

without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less
Napoleon. They did not fear getting into trouble for not
fulfilling orders or for acting on their own initiative, for in
battle what is at stake is what is dearest to man- his own
life- and it sometimes seems that safety lies in running
back, sometimes in running forward; and these men who
were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the
mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these
movements forward and backward did not improve or
alter the position of the troops. All their rushing and
galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of
disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets
that flew over the fields on which these men were
floundering about. As soon as they left the place where
the balls and bullets were flying about, their superiors,
located in the background, re-formed them and brought
them under discipline and under the influence of that
discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where under
the influence of fear of death they lost their discipline and
rushed about according to the chance promptings of the
throng.

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Chapter XXXIV

Napoleon’s generals- Davout, Ney, and Murat, who

were near that region of fire and sometimes even entered
it- repeatedly led into it huge masses of well-ordered
troops. But contrary to what had always happened in their
former battles, instead of the news they expected of the
enemy’s flight, these orderly masses returned thence as
disorganized and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed
them, but their numbers constantly decreased. In the
middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon to
demand reinforcements.
Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch,
when Murat’s adjutant galloped up with an assurance that
the Russians would be routed if His Majesty would let
him have another division.
‘Reinforcements?’ said Napoleon in a tone of stern
surprise, looking at the adjutant- a handsome lad with
long black curls arranged like Murat’s own- as though he
did not understand his words.
‘Reinforcements!’ thought Napoleon to himself. ‘How
can they need reinforcements when they already have half

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the army directed against a weak, unentrenched Russian

wing?’
‘Tell the King of Naples,’ said he sternly, ‘that it is not
noon yet, and I don’t yet see my chessboard clearly.
Go!..’
The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed
deeply without removing his hand from his hat and
galloped back to where men were being slaughtered.
Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt
and Berthier began talking to them about matters
unconnected with the battle.
In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning
to interest Napoleon, Berthier’s eyes turned to look at a
general with a suite, who was galloping toward the knoll
on a lathering horse. It was Belliard. Having dismounted
he went up to the Emperor with rapid strides and in a loud
voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity of
sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the
Russians were lost if the Emperor would give another
division.
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to
pace up and down without replying. Belliard began
talking loudly and eagerly to the generals of the suite
around him.

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‘You are very fiery, Belliard,’ said Napoleon, when he

again came up to the general. ‘In the heat of a battle it is
easy to make a mistake. Go and have another look and
then come back to me.’
Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from
another part of the battlefield galloped up.
‘Now then, what do you want?’ asked Napoleon in the
tone of a man irritated at being continually disturbed.
‘Sire, the prince...’ began the adjutant.
‘Asks for reinforcements?’ said Napoleon with an
angry gesture.
The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to
report, but the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of
steps, stopped, came back, and called Berthier.
‘We must give reserves,’ he said, moving his arms
slightly apart. ‘Who do you think should be sent there?’
he asked of Berthier (whom he subsequently termed ‘that
gosling I have made an eagle’).
‘Send Claparede’s division, sire,’ replied Berthier, who
knew all the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.
Napoleon nodded assent.
The adjutant galloped to Claparede’s division and a
few minutes later the Young Guards stationed behind the

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knoll moved forward. Napoleon gazed silently in that

direction.
‘No!’ he suddenly said to Berthier. ‘I can’t send
Claparede. Send Friant’s division.’
Though there was no advantage in sending Friant’s
division instead of Claparede’s, and even in obvious
inconvenience and delay in stopping Claparede and
sending Friant now, the order was carried out exactly.
Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was
playing the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines-
a role he so justly understood and condemned.
Friant’s division disappeared as the others had done
into the smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants
continued to arrive at a gallop and as if by agreement all
said the same thing. They all asked for reinforcements and
all said that the Russians were holding their positions and
maintaining a hellish fire under which the French army
was melting away.
Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.
M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having
fasted since morning, came up to the Emperor and
ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His Majesty.
‘I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a
victory?’ said he.

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Napoleon silently shook his head in negation.

Assuming the negation to refer only to the victory and not
to the lunch, M. de Beausset ventured with respectful
jocularity to remark that there is no reason for not having
lunch when one can get it.
‘Go away...’ exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and
morosely, and turned aside.
A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy
beamed on M. de Beausset’s face and he glided away to
the other generals.
Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like
that of an ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly
flinging money about and always winning, suddenly just
when he has calculated all the chances of the game, finds
that the more he considers his play the more surely he
loses.
His troops were the same, his generals the same, the
same preparations had been made, the same dispositions,
and the same proclamation courte et energique, he himself
was still the same: he knew that and knew that he was
now even more experienced and skillful than before. Even
the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland-
yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally
become impotent.

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All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned

with success: the concentration of batteries on one point,
an attack by reserves to break the enemy’s line, and a
cavalry attack by ‘the men of iron,’ all these methods had
already been employed, yet not only was there no victory,
but from all sides came the same news of generals killed
and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the
impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of
disorganization among his own troops.
Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and
uttered a few phrases, marshals and adjutants had come
galloping up with congratulations and happy faces,
announcing the trophies taken, the corps of prisoners,
bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon and
stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the
cavalry to gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at
Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so
on. But now something strange was happening to his
troops.
Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon
saw that this was not the same, not at all the same, as
what had happened in his former battles. He saw that
what he was feeling was felt by all the men about him
experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked

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dejected, and they all shunned one another’s eyes- only a

de Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was
happening.
But Napoleon with his long experience of war well
knew the meaning of a battle not gained by the attacking
side in eight hours, after all efforts had been expended. He
knew that it was a lost battle and that the least accident
might now- with the fight balanced on such a strained
center- destroy him and his army.
When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange
Russian campaign in which not one battle had been won,
and in which not a flag, or cannon, or army corps had
been captured in two months, when he looked at the
concealed depression on the faces around him and heard
reports of the Russians still holding their ground- a
terrible feeling like a nightmare took possession of him,
and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy him
occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall on his left
wing, might break through his center, he himself might be
killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In
former battles he had only considered the possibilities of
success, but now innumerable unlucky chances presented
themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like a
dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to

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attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a

terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but
then feels that his arm drops powerless and limp like a
rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him
in his helplessness.
The news that the Russians were attacking the left
flank of the French army aroused that horror in Napoleon.
He sat silently on a campstool below the knoll, with head
bowed and elbows on his knees. Berthier approached and
suggested that they should ride along the line to ascertain
the position of affairs.
‘What? What do you say?’ asked Napoleon. ‘Yes, tell
them to bring me my horse.’
He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.
Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the
whole space through which Napoleon rode, horses and
men were lying in pools of blood, singly or in heaps.
Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever before
seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small area.
The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours,
wearied the ear and gave a peculiar significance to the
spectacle, as music does to tableaux vivants. Napoleon
rode up the high ground at Semenovsk, and through the

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smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color unfamiliar

to him. They were Russians.
The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk
village and its knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly
along their line and sent forth clouds of smoke. It was no
longer a battle: it was a continuous slaughter which could
be of no avail either to the French or the Russians.
Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the reverie
from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop
what was going on before him and around him and was
supposed to be directed by him and to depend on him, and
from its lack of success this affair, for the first time,
seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.
One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured
to offer to lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and
Berthier, standing near Napoleon, exchanged looks and
smiled contemptuously at this general’s senseless offer.
Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long
time.
‘At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have
my Guard destroyed!’ he said, and turning his horse rode
back to Shevardino.

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Chapter XXXV

On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him

in the morning sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his
heavy body relaxed. He gave no orders, but only assented
to or dissented from what others suggested.
‘Yes, yes, do that,’ he replied to various proposals.
‘Yes, yes: go, dear boy, and have a look,’ he would say to
one or another of those about him; or, ‘No, don’t, we’d
better wait!’ He listened to the reports that were brought
him and gave directions when his subordinates demanded
that of him; but when listening to the reports it seemed as
if he were not interested in the import of the words
spoken, but rather in something else- in the expression of
face and tone of voice of those who were reporting. By
long years of military experience he knew, and with the
wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one
man to direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling
with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is
decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor
the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the
number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that
intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he

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watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his

power.
Kutuzov’s general expression was one of concentrated
quiet attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he
found it difficult to master the fatigue of his old and
feeble body.
At eleven o’clock they brought him news that the
fleches captured by the French had been retaken, but that
Prince Bagration was wounded. Kutuzov groaned and
swayed his head.
‘Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about
it exactly,’ he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned
to the Duke of Wurttemberg who was standing behind
him.
‘Will Your Highness please take command of the first
army?’
Soon after the duke’s departure- before he could
possibly have reached Semenovsk- his adjutant came
back from him and told Kutuzov that the duke asked for
more troops.
Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to
Dokhturov to take over the command of the first army,
and a request to the duke- whom he said he could not
spare at such an important moment- to return to him.

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When they brought him news that Murat had been taken
prisoner, and the staff officers congratulated him,
Kutuzov smiled.
‘Wait a little, gentlemen,’ said he. ‘The battle is won,
and there is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat.
Still, it is better to wait before we rejoice.’
But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the
army.
When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank
with news that the French had captured the fleches and
the village of Semenovsk, Kutuzov, guessing by the
sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin’s looks that the
news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and, taking
Scherbinin’s arm, led him aside.
‘Go, my dear fellow,’ he said to Ermolov, ‘and see
whether something can’t be done.’
Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian
position. The attack directed by Napoleon against our left
flank had been several times repulsed. In the center the
French had not got beyond Borodino, and on their left
flank Uvarov’s cavalry had put the French to flight.
Toward three o’clock the French attacks ceased. On
the faces of all who came from the field of battle, and of
those who stood around him, Kutuzov noticed an

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expression of extreme tension. He was satisfied with the

day’s success- a success exceeding his expectations, but
the old man’s strength was failing him. Several times his
head dropped low as if it were falling and he dozed off.
Dinner was brought him.
Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding
past Prince Andrew had said, ‘the war should be extended
widely,’ and whom Bagration so detested, rode up while
Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen had come from Barclay
de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on the left
flank. The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of
wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the
army, weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the
battle was lost, and sent his favorite officer to the
commander in chief with that news.
Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with
difficulty and glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that
brightened under their puckering lids.
Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs,
approached Kutuzov with a half-contemptuous smile on
his lips, scarcely touching the peak of his cap.
He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat
affected nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly
trained military man, he left it to Russians to make an idol

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of this useless old man, but that he knew whom he was

dealing with. ‘Der alte Herr’ (as in their own set the
Germans called Kutuzov) ‘is making himself very
comfortable,’ thought Wolzogen, and looking severely at
the dishes in front of Kutuzov he began to report to ‘the
old gentleman’ the position of affairs on the left flank as
Barclay had ordered him to and as he himself had seen
and understood it.
‘All the points of our position are in the enemy’s hands
and we cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men
are running away and it is impossible to stop them,’ he
reported.
Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze
on Wolzogen, as if not understand what was said to him.
Wolzogen, noticing ‘the old gentleman’s’ agitation, said
with a smile:
‘I have not considered it right to conceal from your
Serene Highness what I have seen. The troops are in
complete disorder..’
‘You have seen? You have seen?...’ Kutuzov shouted
frowning, and rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.
‘How... how dare you!...’ he shouted, choking and
making a threatening gesture with his trembling arms:
‘How dare you, sir, say that to me? You know nothing

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about it. Tell General Barclay from me that his

information is incorrect and that the real course of the
battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than
to him.’
Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov
interrupted him.
‘The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated
on the right flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not
allow yourself to say what you don’t know! Be so good as
to ride to General Barclay and inform him of my firm
intention to attack the enemy tomorrow,’ said Kutuzov
sternly.
All were silent, and the only sound audible was the
heavy breathing of the panting old general.
‘They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God
and our brave army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow
we shall drive him from the sacred soil of Russia,’ said
Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly sobbed as his
eyes filled with tears.
Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his
lips, stepped silently aside, marveling at ‘the old
gentleman’s’ conceited stupidity.

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‘Ah, here he is, my hero!’ said Kutuzov to a portly,

handsome, dark-haired general who was just ascending
the knoll.
This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the
most important part of the field of Borodino.
Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding
their ground and that the French no longer ventured to
attack.
After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:
‘Then you do not think, like some others, that we must
retreat?’
‘On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions
it is always the most stubborn who remain victors,’
replied Raevski, ‘and in my opinion..’
‘Kaysarov!’ Kutuzov called to his adjutant. ‘Sit down
and write out the order of the day for tomorrow. And
you,’ he continued, addressing another, ‘ride along the
line and that tomorrow we attack.’
While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating
the order of the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and
said that General Barclay wished to have written
confirmation of the order the field marshal had given.
Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave
directions for the order to be written out which the former

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commander in chief, to avoid personal responsibility, very

judiciously wished to receive.
And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond
which maintains throughout an army one and the same
temper, known as ‘the spirit of the army,’ and which
constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov’s words, his order
for a battle next day, immediately became known from
one end of the army to the other.
It was far from being the same words or the same order
that reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales
passing from mouth to mouth at different ends of the
army did not even resemble what Kutuzov had said, but
the sense of his words spread everywhere because what
he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but
of a feeling that lay in the commander in chief’s soul as in
that of every Russian.
And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the
enemy, and hearing from the highest quarters a
confirmation of what they wanted to believe, the
exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.

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Chapter XXXVI

Prince Andrew’s regiment was among the reserves

which till after one o’clock were stationed inactive behind
Semenovsk, under heavy artillery fire. Toward two
o’clock the regiment, having already lost more than two
hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled oatfield
in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery,
where thousands of men perished that day and on which
an intense, concentrated fire from several hundred enemy
guns was directed between one and two o’clock.
Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot
the regiment here lost another third of its men. From in
front and especially from the right, in the unlifting smoke
the guns boomed, and out of the mysterious domain of
smoke that overlay the whole space in front, quick hissing
cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly.
At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour
passed during which the cannon balls and shells all flew
overhead, but sometimes several men were torn from the
regiment in a minute and the slain were continually being
dragged away and the wounded carried off.

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With each fresh blow less and less chance of life

remained for those not yet killed. The regiment stood in
columns of battalion, three hundred paces apart, but
nevertheless the men were always in one and the same
mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely
heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the
thud of a successful shot and the cry of ‘stretchers!’ was
heard. Most of the time, by their officers’ order, the men
sat on the ground. One, having taken off his shako,
carefully loosened the gathers of its lining and drew them
tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay between his
palms, polished his bayonet; another fingered the strap
and pulled the buckle of his bandolier, while another
smoothed and refolded his leg bands and put his boots on
again. Some built little houses of the tufts in the plowed
ground, or plaited baskets from the straw in the cornfield.
All seemed fully absorbed in these pursuits. When men
were killed or wounded, when rows of stretchers went
past, when some troops retreated, and when great masses
of the enemy came into view through the smoke, no one
paid any attention to these things. But when our artillery
or cavalry advanced or some of our infantry were seen to
move forward, words of approval were heard on all sides.
But the liveliest attention was attracted by occurrences

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quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was

as if the minds of these morally exhausted men found
relief in everyday, commonplace occurrences. A battery
of artillery was passing in front of the regiment. The horse
of an ammunition cart put its leg over a trace. ‘Hey, look
at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She’ll fall.... Ah, they
don’t see it!’ came identical shouts from the ranks all
along the regiment. Another time, general attention was
attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows
whence, which trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of
the ranks with tail stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell
close by, when it yelped, tucked its tail between its legs,
and darted aside. Yells and shrieks of laughter rose from
the whole regiment. But such distractions lasted only a
moment, and for eight hours the men had been inactive,
without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale and
gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.
Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the
regiment, paced up and down from the border of one
patch to another, at the edge of the meadow beside an
oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind his back.
There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be
given. Everything went on of itself. The killed were
dragged from the front, the wounded carried away, and

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the ranks closed up. If any soldiers ran to the rear they
returned immediately and hastily. At first Prince Andrew,
considering it his duty to rouse the courage of the men
and to set them an example, walked about among the
ranks, but he soon became convinced that this was
unnecessary and that there was nothing he could teach
them. All the powers of his soul, as of every soldier there,
were unconsciously bent on avoiding the contemplation
of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the
meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing
at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides
trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the
mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often
he must walk from one strip to another to walk a mile,
then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that
grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and
smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing
remained of the previous day’s thoughts. He thought of
nothing. He listened with weary ears to the ever-recurring
sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying projectiles
from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely
familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited.
‘Here it comes... this one is coming our way again!’ he
thought, listening to an approaching whistle in the hidden

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region of smoke. ‘One, another! Again! It has hit....’ He

stopped and looked at the ranks. ‘No, it has gone over.
But this one has hit!’ And again he started trying to reach
the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud!
Five paces from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth
and disappeared. A chill ran down his back. Again he
glanced at the ranks. Probably many had been hit- a large
crowd had gathered near the second battalion.
‘Adjutant!’ he shouted. ‘Order them not to crowd
together.’
The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction,
approached Prince Andrew. From the other side a
battalion commander rode up.
‘Look out!’ came a frightened cry from a soldier and,
like a bird whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the
ground, a shell dropped with little noise within two steps
of Prince Andrew and close to the battalion commander’s
horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it was right
or wrong to show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing
the major, and galloped aside. The horse’s terror infected
the men.
‘Lie down!’ cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on
the ground.

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Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like

a top between him and the prostrate adjutant, near a
wormwood plant between the field and the meadow.
‘Can this be death?’ thought Prince Andrew, looking
with a quite new, envious glance at the grass, the
wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke that curled up
from the rotating black ball. ‘I cannot, I do not wish to
die. I love life- I love this grass, this earth, this air....’ He
thought this, and at the same time remembered that people
were looking at him.
‘It’s shameful, sir!’ he said to the adjutant. ‘What..’
He did not finish speaking. At one and the same
moment came the sound of an explosion, a whistle of
splinters as from a breaking window frame, a suffocating
smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started to one side,
raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several officers ran
up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood was
welling out making a large stain on the grass.
The militiamen with stretchers who were called up
stood behind the officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest
with his face in the grass, breathing heavily and noisily.
‘What are you waiting for? Come along!’

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The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders

and legs, but he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks,
they set him down again.
‘Pick him up, lift him, it’s all the same!’ cried
someone.
They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on
the stretcher.
‘Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That
means death! My God!’- voices among the officers were
heard saying.
‘It flew a hair’s breadth past my ear,’ said the adjutant.
The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders,
started hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to
the dressing station.
‘Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!’ shouted an
officer, seizing by their shoulders and checking the
peasants, who were walking unevenly and jolting the
stretcher.
‘Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!’ said the foremost
peasant.
‘Now that’s right!’ said the one behind joyfully, when
he had got into step.

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‘Your excellency! Eh, Prince!’ said the trembling

voice of Timokhin, who had run up and was looking
down on the stretcher.
Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the
speaker from the stretcher into which his head had sunk
deep and again his eyelids drooped.
The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing
station by the wood, where wagons were stationed. The
dressing station consisted of three tents with flaps turned
back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood. In the wood,
wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating
oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down
and pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting
blood, flew among the birch trees cawing impatiently.
Around the tents, over more than five acres, bloodstained
men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the
wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with
dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping
order tried in vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the
officers’ orders, the soldiers stood leaning against their
stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend
the difficult problem of what was taking place before
them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now
plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch

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water, or to point out those who were to be brought in

next. The wounded men awaiting their turn outside the
tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for
vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew’s bearers,
stepping over the wounded who had not yet been
bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up
to one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting
instructions. Prince Andrew opened his eyes and for a
long time could not make out what was going on around
him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the
field, the whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of
passionate love of life. Two steps from him, leaning
against a branch and talking loudly and attracting general
attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had
been wounded in the head and leg by bullets. Around him,
eagerly listening to his talk, a crowd of wounded and
stretcher-bearers was gathered.
‘We kicked him out from there so that he chucked
everything, we grabbed the King himself!’ cried he,
looking around him with eyes that glittered with fever. ‘If
only reserves had come up just then, lads, there wouldn’t
have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..’

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Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew

looked at him with shining eyes and experienced a sense
of comfort. ‘But isn’t it all the same now?’ thought he.
‘And what will be there, and what has there been here?
Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was
something in this life I did not and do not understand.’

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Chapter XXXVII

One of the doctors came out of the tent in a

bloodstained apron, holding a cigar between the thumb
and little finger of one of his small bloodstained hands, so
as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked about
him, but above the level of the wounded men. He
evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his head
from right to left for some time, he sighed and looked
down.
‘All right, immediately,’ he replied to a dresser who
pointed Prince Andrew out to him, and he told them to
carry him into the tent.
Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.
‘It seems that even in the next world only the gentry
are to have a chance!’ remarked one.
Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that
had only just been cleared and which a dresser was
washing down. Prince Andrew could not make out
distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all
sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and
back distracted him. All he saw about him merged into a
general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that

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seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks

previously, on that hot August day, such bodies had filled
the dirty pond beside the Smolensk road. Yes, it was the
same flesh, the same chair a canon, the sight of which had
even then filled him with horror, as by a presentiment.
There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were
occupied, and on the third they placed Prince Andrew.
For a little while he was left alone and involuntarily
witnessed what was taking place on the other two tables.
On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack,
judging by the uniform thrown down beside him. Four
soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was
cutting into his muscular brown back.
‘Ooh, ooh, ooh!’ grunted the Tartar, and suddenly
lifting up his swarthy snub-nosed face with its high
cheekbones, and baring his white teeth, he began to
wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, ringing,
and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which
many people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on
his back with his head thrown back. His curly hair, its
color, and the shape of his head seemed strangely familiar
to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were pressing on his
chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg
twitched rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The

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man was sobbing and choking convulsively. Two doctors-

one of whom was pale and trembling- were silently doing
something to this man’s other, gory leg. When he had
finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an
overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince
Andrew, wiping his hands.
He glanced at Prince Andrew’s face and quickly turned
away.
‘Undress him! What are you waiting for?’ he cried
angrily to the dressers.
His very first, remotest recollections of childhood
came back to Prince Andrew’s mind when the dresser
with sleeves rolled up began hastily to undo the buttons of
his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent down over
the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign
to someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused
Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he came to
himself the splintered portions of his thighbone had been
extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the wound
bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his face. As soon
as Prince Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent over,
kissed him silently on the lips, and hurried away.
After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince
Andrew enjoyed a blissful feeling such as he had not

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experienced for a long time. All the best and happiest

moments of his life- especially his earliest childhood,
when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when
leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he,
burying his head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere
consciousness of life- returned to his memory, not merely
as something past but as something present.
The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded
man the shape of whose head seemed familiar to Prince
Andrew: they were lifting him up and trying to quiet him.
‘Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!’ his
frightened moans could be heard, subdued by suffering
and broken by sobs.
Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted Andrew
wanted to weep. Whether because he was dying without
glory, or because he was sorry to part with life, or because
of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or
because he was suffering and others were suffering and
that man near him was groaning so piteously- he felt like
weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.
The wounded man was shown his amputated leg
stained with clotted blood and with the boot still on.
‘Oh! Oh, ooh!’ he sobbed, like a woman.

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The doctor who had been standing beside him,

preventing Prince Andrew from seeing his face, moved
away.
‘My God! What is this? Why is he here?’ said Prince
Andrew to himself.
In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg
had just been amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin.
Men were supporting him in their arms and offering him a
glass of water, but his trembling, swollen lips could not
grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. ‘Yes, it is
he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully
connected with me,’ thought Prince Andrew, not yet
clearly grasping what he saw before him. ‘What is the
connection of that man with my childhood and life?’ he
asked himself without finding an answer. And suddenly a
new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and
loving childhood presented itself to him. He remembered
Natasha as he had seen her for the first time at the ball in
1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a
frightened happy face ready for rapture, and love and
tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever,
awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection
that existed between himself and this man who was dimly
gazing at him through tears that filled his swollen eyes.

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He remembered everything, and ecstatic pity and love for

that man overflowed his happy heart.
Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and
wept tender loving tears for his fellow men, for himself,
and for his own and their errors.
‘Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love
us and for those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes,
that love which God preached on earth and which
Princess Mary taught me and I did not understand- that is
what made me sorry to part with life, that is what
remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know
it!’

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Chapter XXXVIII

The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with

dead and wounded, together with the heaviness of his
head and the news that some twenty generals he knew
personally had been killed or wounded, and the
consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm,
produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who
usually liked to look at the killed and wounded, thereby,
he considered, testing his strength of mind. This day the
horrible appearance of the battlefield overcame that
strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit
and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the battlefield
and returned to the Shevardino knoll, where he sat on his
campstool, his sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes
dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily
listening, with downcast eyes, to the sounds of firing.
With painful dejection he awaited the end of this action,
in which he regarded himself as a participant and which
he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a
brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of
life he had served so long. He felt in his own person the
sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield.

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The heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the

possibility of suffering and death for himself. At that
moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory
(what need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he
wished for was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when
he had been on the Semenovsk heights the artillery
commander had proposed to him to bring several batteries
of artillery up to those heights to strengthen the fire on the
Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon
had assented and had given orders that news should be
brought to him of the effect those batteries produced.
An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of
two hundred guns had been concentrated on the Russians,
as he had ordered, but that they still held their ground.
‘Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they
hold on,’ said the adjutant.
‘They want more!...’ said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.
‘Sire?’ asked the adjutant who had not heard the
remark.
‘They want more!’ croaked Napoleon frowning. ‘Let
them have it!’
Even before he gave that order the thing he did not
desire, and for which he gave the order only because he
thought it was expected of him, was being done. And he

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fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary greatness,

and again- as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing
something for itself- he submissively fulfilled the cruel,
sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him.
And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and
conscience darkened of this man on whom the
responsibility for what was happening lay more than on
all the others who took part in it. Never to the end of his
life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the
significance of his actions which were too contrary to
goodness and truth, too remote from everything human,
for him ever to be able to grasp their meaning. He could
not disavow his actions, belauded as they were by half the
world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all
humanity.
Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield
strewn with men killed and maimed (by his will as he
believed), did he reckon as he looked at them how many
Russians there were for each Frenchman and, deceiving
himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that
there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on
that day alone did he write in a letter to Paris that ‘the
battle field was superb,’ because fifty thousand corpses
lay there, but even on the island of St. Helena in the

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peaceful solitude where he said he intended to devote his

leisure to an account of the great deeds he had done, he
wrote:
The Russian war should have been the most popular
war of modern times: it was a war of good sense, for real
interests, for the tranquillity and security of all; it was
purely pacific and conservative.
It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties
and the beginning of security. A new horizon and new
labors were opening out, full of well-being and prosperity
for all. The European system was already founded; all that
remained was to organize it.
Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility
everywhere, I too should have had my Congress and my
Holy Alliance. Those ideas were stolen from me. In that
reunion of great sovereigns we should have discussed our
interests like one family, and have rendered account to the
peoples as clerk to master.
Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but
one people, and anyone who traveled anywhere would
have found himself always in the common fatherland. I
should have demanded the freedom of all navigable rivers
for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and

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that the great standing armies should be reduced

henceforth to mere guards for the sovereigns.
On returning to France, to the bosom of the great,
strong, magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I
should have proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all
future wars purely defensive, all aggrandizement
antinational. I should have associated my son in the
Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and
his constitutional reign would have begun.
Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the
French the envy of the nations!
My leisure then, and my old age, would have been
devoted, in company with the Empress and during the
royal apprenticeship of my son, to leisurely visiting, with
our own horses and like a true country couple, every
corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing
wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions
on all sides and everywhere.
Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy
role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the
aim of his actions had been the peoples’ welfare and that
he could control the fate of millions and by the
employment of power confer benefactions.

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‘Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula,’

he wrote further of the Russian war, ‘half were Austrians,
Prussians, Saxons, Poles, Bavarians, Wurttembergers,
Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and Neapolitans.
The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third
composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of
the Rhine, Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans,
Romans, inhabitants of the Thirty-second Military
Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on: it included
scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French.
The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty
thousand men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna
to Moscow lost in the various battles four times more men
than the French army; the burning of Moscow cost the
lives of a hundred thousand Russians who died of cold
and want in the woods; finally, in its march from Moscow
to the Oder the Russian army also suffered from the
severity of the season; so that by the the time it reached
Vilna it numbered only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less
than eighteen thousand.’
He imagined that the war with Russia came about by
his will, and the horrors that occurred did not stagger his
soul. He boldly took the whole responsibility for what
happened, and his darkened mind found justification in

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the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who

perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and
Bavarians.

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Chapter XXXIX

Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse

postures and various uniforms on the fields and meadows
belonging to the Davydov family and to the crown serfs-
those fields and meadows where for hundreds of years the
peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and Semenovsk
had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At the
dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with
blood for a space of some three acres around. Crowds of
men of various arms, wounded and unwounded, with
frightened faces, dragged themselves back to Mozhaysk
from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other.
Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by
their officers. Others held their ground and continued to
fire.
Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with
the glitter of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the
morning sun, there now spread a mist of damp and smoke
and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood. Clouds
gathered and drops of rain began to fall on the dead and
wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and hesitating

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men, as if to say: ‘Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink

yourselves! What are you doing?’
To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of
food and rest, it began equally to appear doubtful whether
they should continue to slaughter one another; all the
faces expressed hesitation, and the question arose in every
soul: ‘For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?...
You may go and kill whom you please, but I don’t want
to do so anymore!’ By evening this thought had ripened in
every soul. At any moment these men might have been
seized with horror at what they were doing and might
have thrown up everything and run away anywhere.
But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all
the horror of what they were doing, though they would
have been glad to leave off, some incomprehensible,
mysterious power continued to control them, and they still
brought up the charges, loaded, aimed, and applied the
match, though only one artilleryman survived out of every
three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,
perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The
cannon balls flew just as swiftly and cruelly from both
sides, crushing human bodies, and that terrible work
which was not done by the will of a man but at the will of
Him who governs men and worlds continued.

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Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian

army would have said that, if only the French made one
more slight effort, it would disappear; and anyone looking
at the rear of the French army would have said that the
Russians need only make one more slight effort and the
French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor the
Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned
slowly out.
The Russians did not make that effort because they
were not attacking the French. At the beginning of the
battle they stood blocking the way to Moscow and they
still did so at the end of the battle as at the beginning. But
even had the aim of the Russians been to drive the French
from their positions, they could not have made this last
effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken up, there
was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in
the battle, and though still holding their positions they had
lost ONE HALF of their army.
The French, with the memory of all their former
victories during fifteen years, with the assurance of
Napoleon’s invincibility, with the consciousness that they
had captured part of the battlefield and had lost only a
quarter of their men and still had their Guards intact,
twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that

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effort. The French had attacked the Russian army in order

to drive it from its position ought to have made that effort,
for as long as the Russians continued to block the road to
Moscow as before, the aim of the French had not been
attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain. But
the French did not make that effort. Some historians say
that Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who
were intact, and the battle would have been won. To
speak of what would have happened had Napoleon sent
his Guards is like talking of what would happen if autumn
became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give his
Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it
could not be done. All the generals, officers. and soldiers
of the French army knew it could not be done, because the
flagging spirit of the troops would not permitit.
It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that
nightmare feeling of the mighty arm being stricken
powerless, but all the generals and soldiers of his army
whether they had taken part in the battle or not, after all
their experience of previous battles- when after one tenth
of such efforts the enemy had fled- experienced a similar
feeling of terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF
his men, stood as threateningly at the end as at the
beginning of the battle. The moral force of the attacking

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French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory

which is defined by the capture of pieces of material
fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on
which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral
victory that convinces the enemy of the moral superiority
of his opponent and of his own impotence was gained by
the Russians at Borodino. The French invaders, like an
infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received a
mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not
stop, any more than the Russian army, weaker by one
half, could help swerving. By impetus gained, the French
army was still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there,
without further effort on the part of the Russians, it had to
perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at
Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of
Borodino was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow,
his retreat along the old Smolensk road, the destruction of
the invading army of five hundred thousand men, and the
downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for
the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit
had been laid.

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BOOK ELEVEN: 1812

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Chapter I

Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to

the human mind. Laws of motion of any kind become
comprehensible to man only when he examines arbitrarily
selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a
large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary
division of continuous motion into discontinuous
elements. There is a well known, so-called sophism of the
ancients consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch
up with a tortoise he was following, in spite of the fact
that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By the
time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him
from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of
that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered
that tenth, the tortoise has covered another one hundredth,
and so on forever. This problem seemed to the ancients
insoluble. The absurd answer (that Achilles could never
overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was
arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas
the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was
continuous.
By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion
we only approach a solution of the problem, but never

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reach it. Only when we have admitted the conception of

the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical
progression with a common ratio of one tenth, and have
found the sum of this progression to infinity, do we reach
a solution of the problem.
A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the
art of dealing with the infinitely small can now yield
solutions in other more complex problems of motion
which used to appear insoluble.
This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the
ancients, when dealing with problems of motion admits
the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to
the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and
thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human
mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements
of motion instead of examining continuous motion.
In seeking the laws of historical movement just the
same thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising
as it does from innumerable arbitrary human wills, is
continuous.
To understand the laws of this continuous movement is
the aim of history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting
from the sum of all those human wills, man’s mind
postulates arbitrary and disconnected units. The first

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method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected series

of continuous events and examine it apart from others,
though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for
one event always flows uninterruptedly from another.
The second method is to consider the actions of some
one man- a king or a commander- as equivalent to the
sum of many individual wills; whereas the sum of
individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a
single historic personage.
Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to
truth continually takes smaller and smaller units for
examination. But however small the units it takes, we feel
that to take any unit disconnected from others, or to
assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the
will of many men is expressed by the actions of any one
historic personage, is in itself false.
It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust
any deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary
to select some larger or smaller unit as the subject of
observation- as criticism has every right to do, seeing that
whatever unit history observes must always be arbitrarily
selected.
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for
observation (the differential of history, that is, the

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individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of

integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these
infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of
history.
The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in
Europe present an extraordinary movement of millions of
people. Men leave their customary pursuits, hasten from
one side of Europe to the other, plunder and slaughter one
another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some
years the whole course of life is altered and presents an
intensive movement which first increases and then
slackens. What was the cause of this movement, by what
laws was it governed? asks the mind of man.
The historians, replying to this question, lay before us
the sayings and doings of a few dozen men in a building
in the city of Paris, calling these sayings and doings ‘the
Revolution"; then they give a detailed biography of
Napoleon and of certain people favorable or hostile to
him; tell of the influence some of these people had on
others, and say: that is why this movement took place and
those are its laws.
But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this
explanation, but plainly says that this method of
explanation is fallacious, because in it a weaker

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phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. The sum

of human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon,
and only the sum of those wills first tolerated and then
destroyed them.
‘But every time there have been conquests there have
been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution
in any state there have been great men,’ says history. And,
indeed, human reason replies: every time conquerors
appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that
the conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to
find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a single
man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to
ten, I hear the bells of the neighboring church; but
because the bells begin to ring when the hands of the
clock reach ten, I have no right to assume that the
movement of the bells is caused by the position of the
hands of the watch.
Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear
the whistle and see the valves opening and wheels
turning; but I have no right to conclude that the whistling
and the turning of wheels are the cause of the movement
of the engine.
The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring
because the oaks are budding, and really every spring cold

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winds do blow when the oak is budding. But though I do

not know what causes the cold winds to blow when the
oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the
unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind,
for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the
buds. I see only a coincidence of occurrences such as
happens with all the phenomena of life, and I see that
however much and however carefully I observe the hands
of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and
the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing,
the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I
must entirely change my point of view and study the laws
of the movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind.
History must do the same. And attempts in this direction
have already been made.
To study the laws of history we must completely
change the subject of our observation, must leave aside
kings, ministers, and generals, and the common,
infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are
moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to
advance in this way toward an understanding of the laws
of history; but it is evident that only along that path does
the possibility of discovering the laws of history lie, and
that as yet not a millionth part as much mental effort has

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been applied in this direction by historians as has been

devoted to describing the actions of various kings,
commanders, and ministers and propounding the
historians’ own reflections concerning these actions.

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Chapter II

The forces of a dozen European nations burst into

Russia. The Russian army and people avoided a collision
till Smolensk was reached, and again from Smolensk to
Borodino. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its
goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just
as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches
the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-
stricken, hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles
separating it from its goal. Every soldier in Napoleon’s
army felt this and the invasion moved on by its own
momentum.
The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely
a spirit of hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it
retreated the army increased and consolidated. At
Borodino a collision took place. Neither army was broken
up, but the Russian army retreated immediately after the
collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with
another having a greater momentum, and with equal
inevitability the ball of invasion that had advanced with
such momentum rolled on for some distance, though the
collision had deprived it of all its force.

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The Russians retreated eighty miles- to beyond

Moscow- and the French reached Moscow and there came
to a standstill. For five weeks after that there was not a
single battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding,
mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained
inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with
no fresh reason, fled back: they made a dash for the
Kaluga road, and (after a victory- for at Malo-Yaroslavets
the field of conflict again remained theirs) without
undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more
rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond the
Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov
and the whole Russian army were convinced that the
battle of Borodino was a victory. Kutuzov reported so to
the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a fresh
conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive
anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was beaten,
as everyone who had taken part in the battle knew it.
But all that evening and next day reports came in one
after another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the
army, and a fresh battle proved physically impossible.
It was impossible to give battle before information had
been collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of

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ammunition replenished, the slain reckoned up, new

officers appointed to replace those who had been killed,
and before the men had had food and sleep. And
meanwhile, the very next morning after the battle, the
French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried
forward by the force of its own momentum now
seemingly increased in inverse proportion to the square of
the distance from its aim. Kutuzov’s wish was to attack
next day, and the whole army desired to do so. But to
make an attack the wish to do so is not sufficient, there
must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility
did not exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day’s
march, and then in the same way it was impossible not to
retreat another and a third day’s march, and at last, on the
first of September when the army drew near Moscow-
despite the strength of the feeling that had arisen in all
ranks- the force of circumstances compelled it to retire
beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last,
day’s march, and abandoned Moscow to the enemy.
For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign
and battles are made by generals- as any one of us sitting
over a map in his study may imagine how he would have
arranged things in this or that battle- the questions present
themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the retreat not do

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this or that? Why did he not take up a position before

reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga
road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed
to think in that way forget, or do not know, the inevitable
conditions which always limit the activities of any
commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief
does not all resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves
when we sit at case in our studies examining some
campaign on the map, with a certain number of troops on
this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin
our plans from some given moment. A commander in
chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event- the
position from which we always contemplate it. The
commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of
shifting events and so he never can at any moment
consider the whole import of an event that is occurring.
Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping
itself, and at every moment of this continuous,
uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in chief is
in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries,
contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and
deceptions and is continually obliged to reply to
innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly
conflict with one another.

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Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that

Kutuzov should have moved his army to the Kaluga road
long before reaching Fili, and that somebody actually
submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander in
chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always before
him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all
these proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict
each other.
A commander in chief’s business, it would seem, is
simply to choose one of these projects. But even that he
cannot do. Events and time do not wait. For instance, on
the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to cross to the
Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from
Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French
or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant.
And the order to retreat carries us past the turn to the
Kaluga road. And after the adjutant comes the
commissary general asking where the stores are to be
taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks where the
wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg brings a
letter from the sovereign which does not admit of the
possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander in
chief’s rival, the man who is undermining him (and there
are always not merely one but several such), presents a

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new project diametrically opposed to that of turning to the

Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs
sleep and refreshment to maintain his energy and a
respectable general who has been overlooked in the
distribution of rewards comes to complain, and the
inhabitants of the district pray to be defended, and an
officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and gives a
report quite contrary to what was said by the officer
previously sent; and a spy, a prisoner, and a general who
has been on reconnaissance, all describe the position of
the enemy’s army differently. People accustomed to
misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a
commander in chief’s actions describe to us, for instance,
the position of the army at Fili and assume that the
commander in chief could, on the first of September,
quite freely decide whether to abandon Moscow or defend
it; whereas, with the Russian army less than four miles
from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that
question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and
most palpably of all on the twenty-fourth of August at
Shevardino and on the twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each
day and hour and minute of the retreat from Borodino to
Fili.

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Chapter III

When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to

inspect the position, told the field marshal that it was
impossible to fight there before Moscow and that they
must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.
‘Give me your hand,’ said he and, turning it over so as
to feel the pulse, added: ‘You are not well, my dear
fellow. Think what you are saying!’
Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of
retreating beyond Moscow without a battle.
On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the
Dorogomilov gate of Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his
carriage and sat down on a bench by the roadside. A great
crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count
Rostopchin, who had come out from Moscow, joined
them. This brilliant company separated into several
groups who all discussed the advantages and
disadvantages of the position, the state of the army, the
plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military
questions generally. Though they had not been summoned
for the purpose, and though it was not so called, they all
felt that this was really a council of war. The

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conversations all dealt with public questions. If anyone

gave or asked for personal news, it was done in a whisper
and they immediately reverted to general matters. No
jokes, or laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all
these men. They evidently all made an effort to hold
themselves at the height the situation demanded. And all
these groups, while talking among themselves, tried to
keep near the commander in chief (whose bench formed
the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might
overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what
was being said and sometimes asked them to repeat their
remarks, but did not himself take part in the conversations
or express any opinion. After hearing what was being said
by one or other of these groups he generally turned away
with an air of disappointment, as though they were not
speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed
the position that had been chosen, criticizing not the
position itself so much as the mental capacity of those
who had chosen it. Others argued that a mistake had been
made earlier and that a battle should have been fought two
days before. Others again spoke of the battle of
Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly
arrived Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This
Frenchman and one of the German princes serving with

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the Russian army were discussing the siege of Saragossa

and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in a
similar manner.) Count Rostopchin was telling a fourth
group that he was prepared to die with the city train bands
under the walls of the capital, but that he still could not
help regretting having been left in ignorance of what was
happening, and that had he known it sooner things would
have been different.... A fifth group, displaying the
profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed the
direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth
group was talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov’s
expression grew more and more preoccupied and gloomy.
From all this talk he saw only one thing: that to defend
Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning
of those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if
any senseless commander were to give orders to fight,
confusion would result but the battle would still not take
place. It would not take place because the commanders
not merely all recognized the position to be impossible,
but in their conversations were only discussing what
would happen after its inevitable abandonment. How
could the commanders lead their troops to a field of battle
they considered it impossible to hold? The lower-grade
officers and even the soldiers (who too reason) also

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considered the position impossible and therefore could

not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If
Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and
others still discussed it, the question was no longer
important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and
intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well.
Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly
displayed his Russian patriotism (Kutuzov could not
listen to this without wincing) by insisting that Moscow
must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight to
Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on
Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow
Hills without giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the
success as his own; or if battle were not given, to clear
himself of the crime of abandoning Moscow. But this
intrigue did not now occupy the old man’s mind. One
terrible question absorbed him and to that question he
heard no reply from anyone. The question for him now
was: ‘Have I really allowed Napoleon to reach Moscow,
and when did I do so? When was it decided? Can it have
been yesterday when I ordered Platov to retreat, or was it
the evening before, when I had a nap and told Bennigsen
to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when was
this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned.

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The army must retreat and the order to do so must be

given.’ To give that terrible order seemed to him
equivalent to resigning the command of the army. And
not only did he love power to which he was accustomed
(the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski, under whom
he had served in Turkey, galled him), but he was
convinced that he was destined to save Russia and that
that was why, against the Emperor’s wish and by the will
of the people, he had been chosen commander in chief.
He was convinced that he alone could maintain command
of the army in these difficult circumstances, and that in all
the world he alone could encounter the invincible
Napoleon without fear, and he was horrified at the
thought of the order he had to issue. But something had to
be decided, and these conversations around him which
were assuming too free a character must be stopped.
He called the most important generals to him.
‘My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself,’
said he, rising from the bench, and he rode to Fili where
his carriages were waiting.
CHAPTERIV IV
The Council of War began to assemble at two in the
afternoon in the better and roomier part of Andrew
Savostyanov’s hut. The men, women, and children of the

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large peasant family crowded into the back room across

the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew’s six-year-old
granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and
to whom he had given a lump of sugar while drinking his
tea, remained on the top of the brick oven in the larger
room. Malasha looked down from the oven with shy
delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the
generals, who one after another came into the room and
sat down on the broad benches in the corner under the
icons. ‘Granddad’ himself, as Malasha in her own mind
called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner behind the oven.
He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and continually
cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat
which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his
neck. Those who entered went up one by one to the field
marshal; he pressed the hands of some and nodded to
others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to draw back the
curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter
moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his
Serene Highness did not wish his face to be seen.
Round the peasant’s deal table, on which lay maps,
plans, pencils, and papers, so many people gathered that
the orderlies brought in another bench and put it beside
the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and Toll, who had just

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arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost place,

immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his
high forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St.
George’s Cross round his neck and looked pale and ill. He
had been feverish for two days and was now shivering
and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who with rapid
gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking
in low tones as they all did. Chubby little Dokhturov was
listening attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded
on his stomach. On the other side sat Count Ostermann-
Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. His
broad head with its bold features and glittering eyes was
resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward the black
hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at
Kutuzov and now at the door with a look of impatience.
Konovnitsyn’s firm, handsome, and kindly face was lit up
by a tender, sly smile. His glance met Malasha’s, and the
expression of his eyes caused the little girl to smile.
They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the
pretext of inspecting the position was finishing his savory
dinner. They waited for him from four till six o’clock and
did not begin their deliberations all that time talked in low
tones of other matters.

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Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov

leave his corner and draw toward the table, but not near
enough for the candles that had been placed there to light
up his face.
Bennigsen opened the council with the question: ‘Are
we to abandon Russia’s ancient and sacred capital without
a struggle, or are we to defend it?’ A prolonged and
general silence followed. There was a frown on every face
and only Kutuzov’s angry grunts and occasional cough
broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha
too looked at ‘Granddad.’ She was nearest to him and saw
how his face puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this
did not last long.
‘Russia’s ancient and sacred capital!’ he suddenly said,
repeating Bennigsen’s words in an angry voice and
thereby drawing attention to the false note in them.
‘Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that that question
has no meaning for a Russian.’ (He lurched his heavy
body forward.) ‘Such a question cannot be put; it is
senseless! The question I have asked these gentlemen to
meet to discuss is a military one. The question is that of
saving Russia. Is it better to give up Moscow without a
battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army as

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well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want

your opinion,’ and he sank back in his chair.
The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider
his game lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others
that a defensive battle at Fili was impossible, but imbued
with Russian patriotism and the love of Moscow, he
proposed to move troops from the right to the left flank
during the night and attack the French right flank the
following day. Opinions were divided, and arguments
were advanced for and against that project. Ermolov,
Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed with Bennigsen. Whether
feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice before abandoning
the capital or guided by other, personal considerations,
these generals seemed not to understand that this council
could not alter the inevitable course of events and that
Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other
generals, however, understood it and, leaving aside the
question of Moscow, of the direction the army should take
in its retreat. Malasha, who kept her eyes fixed on what
was going on before her, understood the meaning of the
council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a
personal struggle between ‘Granddad’ and ‘Long-coat’ as
she termed Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful
when they spoke to one another, and in her heart she sided

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with ‘Granddad.’ In the midst of the conversation she

noticed ‘Granddad’ give Bennigsen a quick, subtle
glance, and then to her joys he saw that ‘Granddad’ said
something to ‘Long-coat’ which settled him. Bennigsen
suddenly reddened and paced angrily up and down the
room. What so affected him was Kutuzov’s calm and
quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of
Bennigsen’s proposal to move troops by night from the
right to the left flank to attack the French right wing.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Kutuzov, ‘I cannot approve of the
count’s plan. Moving troops in close proximity to an
enemy is always dangerous, and military history supports
that view. For instance...’ Kutuzov seemed to reflect,
searching for an example, then with a clear, naive look at
Bennigsen he added: ‘Oh yes; take the battle of Friedland,
which I think the count well remembers, and which was...
not fully successful, only because our troops were
rearranged too near the enemy..’
There followed a momentary pause, which seemed
very long to them all.
The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently
occurred and they all felt that there was no more to be
said.

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During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep

sigh as if preparing to speak. They all looked at him.
‘Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay
for the broken crockery,’ said he, and rising slowly he
moved to the table. ‘Gentlemen, I have heard your views.
Some of you will not agree with me. But I,’ he paused,
‘by the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and
country, order a retreat.’
After that the generals began to disperse with the
solemnity and circumspect silence of people who are
leaving, after a funeral.
Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very
different from the way they had spoken during the
council, communicated something to their commander in
chief.
Malasha, who had long been expected for supper,
climbed carefully backwards down from the oven, her
bare little feet catching at its projections, and slipping
between the legs of the generals she darted out of the
room.
When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a
long time with his elbows on the table, thinking always of
the same terrible question: ‘When, when did the
abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? When was

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that done which settled the matter? And who was to

blame for it?’
‘I did not expect this,’ said he to his adjutant Schneider
when the latter came in late that night. ‘I did not expect
this! I did not think this would happen.’
‘You should take some rest, your Serene Highness,’
replied Schneider.
‘But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!’
exclaimed Kutuzov without replying, striking the table
with his podgy fist. ‘They shall too, if only..’

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Chapter V

At that very time, in circumstances even more

important than retreating without a battle, namely the
evacuation and burning of Moscow, Rostopchin, who is
usually represented as being the instigator of that event,
acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.
After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and
burning of Moscow was as inevitable as the retreat of the
army beyond Moscow without fighting.
Every Russian might have predicted it, not by
reasoning but by the feeling implanted in each of us and
in our fathers.
The same thing that took place in Moscow had
happened in all the towns and villages on Russian soil
beginning with Smolensk, without the participation of
Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The people
awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become
excited or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling
within it the strength to find what it should do at that most
difficult moment. And as soon as the enemy drew near the
wealthy classes went away abandoning their property,

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while the poorer remained and burned and destroyed what

was left.
The consciousness that this would be so and would
always be so was and is present in the heart of every
Russian. And a consciousness of this, and a foreboding
that Moscow would be taken, was present in Russian
Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow
already in July and at the beginning of August showed
that they expected this. Those who went away, taking
what they could and abandoning their houses and half
their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism which
expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one’s children
to save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but
unobtrusively, simply, organically, and therefore in the
way that always produces the most powerful results.
‘It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only
cowards are running away from Moscow,’ they were told.
In his broadsheets Rostopchin impressed on them that to
leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed to be
called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left,
knowing it had to be done. Why did they go? It is
impossible to suppose that Rostopchin had scared them by
his accounts of horrors Napoleon had committed in
conquered countries. The first people to go away were the

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rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna

and Berlin had remained intact and that during
Napoleon’s occupation the inhabitants had spent their
time pleasantly in the company of the charming
Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the
Russian ladies, then liked so much.
They went away because for Russians there could be
no question as to whether things would go well or ill
under French rule in Moscow. It was out of the question
to be under French rule, it would be the worst thing that
could happen. They went away even before the battle of
Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite
Rostopchin’s calls to defend Moscow or the
announcement of his intention to take the wonder-
working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to
fight, or of the balloons that were to destroy the French,
and despite all the nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his
broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to fight,
and that if it could not succeed it would not do to take
young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter of
Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away,
sorry as they were to abandon their property to
destruction. They went away without thinking of the
tremendous significance of that immense and wealthy city

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being given over to destruction, for a great city with

wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its
inhabitants to be burned. They went away each on his
own account, and yet it was only in consequence of their
going away that the momentous event was accomplished
that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian
people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count
Rostopchin’s orders, had already in June moved with her
Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her
Saratov estate, with a vague consciousness that she was
not Bonaparte’s servant, was really, simply, and truly
carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But
Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left
Moscow and now had the government offices removed;
now distributed quite useless weapons to the drunken
rabble; now had processions displaying the icons, and
now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics
of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and
on one hundred and thirty-six of them removed the
balloon that was being constructed by Leppich; now
hinted that he would burn Moscow and related how he
had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation
to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having
destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of

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having hinted that he would burn Moscow and now

repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch all
spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them
for doing so; now expelled all the French residents from
Moscow, and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalme (the
center of the whole French colony in Moscow) to remain,
but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to
be arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now
assembled the people at the Three Hills to fight the
French and now, to get rid of them, handed over to them a
man to be killed and himself drove away by a back gate;
now declared that he would not survive the fall of
Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums
concerning his share in the affair- this man did not
understand the meaning of what was happening but
merely wanted to do something himself that would
astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat;
and like a child he made sport of the momentous, and
unavoidable event- the abandonment and burning of
Moscow- and tried with his puny hand now to speed and
now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him
along with it.

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Chapter VI

Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to

Petersburg, found herself in a difficult position.
In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of
a grandee who occupied one of the highest posts in the
Empire. In Vilna she had formed an intimacy with a
young foreign prince. When she returned to Petersburg
both the magnate and the prince were there, and both
claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problem-
how to preserve her intimacy with both without offending
either.
What would have seemed difficult or even impossible
to another woman did not cause the least embarrassment
to Countess Bezukhova, who evidently deserved her
reputation of being a very clever woman. Had she
attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from
her awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled
her case by acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene,
like a really great man who can do whatever he pleases, at
once assumed her own position to be correct, as she
sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else was to
blame.

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The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to

reproach her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half
turning to him, said firmly: ‘That’s just like a man- selfish
and cruel! I expected nothing else. A woman sacrifices
herself for you, she suffers, and this is her reward! What
right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my
attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been
more than a father to me!’ The prince was about to say
something, but Helene interrupted him.
‘Well, yes,’ said she, ‘it may be that he has other
sentiments for me than those of a father, but that is not a
reason for me to shut my door on him. I am not a man,
that I should repay kindness with ingratitude! Know,
monseigneur, that in all that relates to my intimate
feelings I render account only to God and to my
conscience,’ she concluded, laying her hand on her
beautiful, fully expanded bosom and looking up to
heaven.
‘But for heaven’s sake listen to me!’
‘Marry me, and I will be your slave!’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘You won’t deign to demean yourself by marrying me,
you...’ said Helene, beginning to cry.

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The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite

distraught, said through her tears that there was nothing to
prevent her marrying, that there were precedents (there
were up to that time very few, but she mentioned
Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she
had never been her husband’s wife, and that she had been
sacrificed.
‘But the law, religion...’ said the prince, already
yielding.
‘The law, religion... What have they been invented for
if they can’t arrange that?’ said Helene.
The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not
occurred to him, and he applied for advice to the holy
brethren of the Society of Jesus, with whom he was on
intimate terms.
A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which
Helene gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the
charming Monsieur de Jobert, a man no longer young,
with snow white hair and brilliant black eyes, a Jesuit a
robe courte* was presented to her, and in the garden by
the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music
talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ,
of the Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true
Catholic religion affords in this world and the next.

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Helene was touched, and more than once tears rose to her
eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices
trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek
her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur
de conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert
came to see Helene when she was alone, and after that
often came again.
*Lay member of the Society of Jesus.
One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic
church, where she knelt down before the altar to which
she was led. The enchanting, middle-aged Frenchman laid
his hands on her head and, as she herself afterward
described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze wafted
into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la
grace.
After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She
confessed to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next
day she received a box containing the Sacred Host, which
was left at her house for her to partake of. A few days
later Helene learned with pleasure that she had now been
admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few
days the Pope himself would hear of her and would send
her a certain document.

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All that was done around her and to her at this time, all
the attention devoted to her by so many clever men and
expressed in such pleasant, refined ways, and the state of
dove-like purity she was now in (she wore only white
dresses and white ribbons all that time) gave her pleasure,
but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment to forget
her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning
that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones,
Helene- having realized that the main object of all these
words and all this trouble was, after converting her to
Catholicism, to obtain money from her for Jesuit
institutions (as to which she received indications)- before
parting with her money insisted that the various
operations necessary to free her from her husband should
be performed. In her view the aim of every religion was
merely to preserve certain proprieties while affording
satisfaction to human desires. And with this aim, in one of
her talks with her Father Confessor, she insisted on an
answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her
marriage?
They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the
drawing room. The scent of flowers came in at the
window. Helene was wearing a white dress, transparent
over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a well-fed man

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with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth,

and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to
Helene and, with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful
look of delight at her beauty, occasionally glanced at her
face as he explained his opinion on the subject. Helene
with an uneasy smile looked at his curly hair and his
plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every moment
expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the
abbe, though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his
companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the matter.
The course of the Father Confessor’s arguments ran as
follows: ‘Ignorant of the import of what you were
undertaking, you made a vow of conjugal fidelity to a
man who on his part, by entering the married state
without faith in the religious significance of marriage,
committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the
dual significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this
your vow was binding. You swerved from it. What did
you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin? A
venial sin, for you acted without evil intention. If now you
married again with the object of bearing children, your sin
might be forgiven. But the question is again a twofold
one: firstly..’

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But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with

one of her bewitching smiles: ‘But I think that having
espoused the true religion I cannot be bound by what a
false religion laid upon me.’
The director of her conscience was astounded at
having the case presented to him thus with the simplicity
of Columbus’ egg. He was delighted at the unexpected
rapidity of his pupil’s progress, but could not abandon the
edifice of argument he had laboriously constructed.
‘Let us understand one another, Countess,’ said he
with a smile, and began refuting his spiritual daughter’s
arguments.

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Chapter VII

Helene understood that the question was very simple

and easy from the ecclesiastical point of view, and that
her directors were making difficulties only because they
were apprehensive as to how the matter would be
regarded by the secular authorities.
So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the
opinion of society. She provoked the jealousy of the
elderly magnate and told him what she had told her other
suitor; that is, she put the matter so that the only way for
him to obtain a right over her was to marry her. The
elderly magnate was at first as much taken aback by this
suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was
alive, as the younger man had been, but Helene’s
imperturbable conviction that it was as simple and natural
as marrying a maiden had its effect on him too. Had
Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame,
or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been lost; but
not only did she show no signs of secrecy or shame, on
the contrary, with good-natured naivete she told her
intimate friends (and these were all Petersburg) that both

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the prince and the magnate had proposed to her and that
she loved both and was afraid of grieving either.
A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that
Helene wanted to be divorced from her husband (had such
a report spread many would have opposed so illegal an
intention) but simply that the unfortunate and interesting
Helene was in doubt which of the two men she should
marry. The question was no longer whether this was
possible, but only which was the better match and how
the matter would be regarded at court. There were, it is
true, some rigid individuals unable to rise to the height of
such a question, who saw in the project a desecration of
the sacrament of marriage, but there were not many such
and they remained silent, while the majority were
interested in Helene’s good fortune and in the question
which match would be the more advantageous. Whether it
was right or wrong to remarry while one had a husband
living they did not discuss, for that question had evidently
been settled by people ‘wiser than you or me,’ as they
said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would
be to risk exposing one’s stupidity and incapacity to live
in society.
Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to
Petersburg that summer to see one of her sons, allowed

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herself plainly to express an opinion contrary to the

general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she stopped her in
the middle of the room and, amid general silence, said in
her gruff voice: ‘So wives of living men have started
marrying again! Perhaps you think you have invented a
novelty? You have been forestalled, my dear! It was
thought of long ago. It is done in all the brothels,’ and
with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her wide
sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing
sternly round, moved across the room.
Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she
was regarded in Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what
she had said they only noticed, and repeated in a whisper,
the one coarse word she had used, supposing the whole
sting of her remark to lie in that word.
Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he
had said and repeated one and the same thing a hundred
times, remarked to his daughter whenever he chanced to
see her:
‘Helene, I have a word to say to you,’ and he would
lead her aside, drawing her hand downward. ‘I have heard
of certain projects concerning... you know. Well my dear
child, you know how your father’s heart rejoices to know
that you... You have suffered so much.... But, my dear

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child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to

say,’ and concealing his unvarying emotion he would
press his cheek against his daughter’s and move away.
Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an
exceedingly clever man, and who was one of one of the
disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as Helene
always has- men friends who can never change into
lovers- once gave her his view of the matter at a small and
intimate gathering.
‘Listen, Bilibin,’ said Helene (she always called
friends of that sort by their surnames), and she touched
his coat sleeve with her white, beringed fingers. ‘Tell me,
as you would a sister, what I ought to do. Which of the
two?’
Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and
pondered, with a smile on his lips.
‘You are not taking me unawares, you know,’ said he.
‘As a true friend, I have thought and thought again about
your affair. You see, if you marry the prince’- he meant
the younger man- and he crooked one finger, ‘you forever
lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will
displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind
of connection.) But if you marry the old count you will
make his last days happy, and as widow of the Grand...

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the prince would no longer be making a mesalliance by

marrying you,’ and Bilibin smoothed out his forehead.
‘That’s a true friend!’ said Helene beaming, and again
touching Bilibin’s sleeve. ‘But I love them, you know,
and don’t want to distress either of them. I would give my
life for the happiness of them both.’
Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that
not even he could help in that difficulty.
‘Une maitresse-femme!* That’s what is called putting
things squarely. She would like to be married to all three
at the same time,’ thought he.
*A masterly woman.
‘But tell me, how will your husband look at the
matter?’ Bilibin asked, his reputation being so well
established that he did not fear to ask so naive a question.
‘Will he agree?’
‘Oh, he loves me so!’ said Helene, who for some
reason imagined that Pierre too loved her. ‘He will do
anything for me.’
Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something
witty.
‘Even divorce you?’ said he.
Helene laughed.

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Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability

of the proposed marriage was Helene’s mother, Princess
Kuragina. She was continually tormented by jealousy of
her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a subject
near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to
the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the
possibility of divorce and remarriage during a husband’s
lifetime, and the priest told her that it was impossible, and
to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel which (as it
seemed to him) plainly remarriage while the husband is
alive.
Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her
unanswerable, she drove to her daughter’s early one
morning so as to find her alone.
Having listened to her mother’s objections, Helene
smiled blandly and ironically.
‘But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced...’’ said the old princess.
‘Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne
comprenez rein. Dans ma position j’ai des devoirs,’* said
Helene changing from Russian, in which language she
always felt that her case did not sound quite clear, into
French which suited it better.

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*"Oh, Mamma, don’t talk nonsense! You don’t

understand anything. In my position I have obligations.
‘But, my dear...’
‘Oh, Mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the
Holy Father, who has the right to grant dispensations..’
Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene
came in to announce that His Highness was in the
ballroom and wished to see her.
‘Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis
furieuse contre lui, parce qu’il m’ a manque parole.’*
*"No, tell him I don’t wish to see him, I am furious
with him for not keeping his word to me.’
‘Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,’* said a fair-
haired young man with a long face and nose, as he entered
the room.
*"Countess, there is mercy for every sin.’
The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The
young man who had entered took no notice of her. The
princess nodded to her daughter and sidled out of the
room.
‘Yes, she is right,’ thought the old princess, all her
convictions dissipated by the appearance of His Highness.
‘She is right, but how is it that we in our irrecoverable

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youth did not know it? Yet it is so simple,’ she thought as

she got into her carriage.
By the beginning of August Helene’s affairs were
clearly defined and she wrote a letter to her husband-
who, as she imagined, loved her very much- informing
him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having
embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out
all the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would
be explained to him by the bearer of the letter.
And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy
and powerful keeping- Your friend Helene.
This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was
on the field of Borodino.

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Chapter VIII

Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre,

having run down from Raevski’s battery a second time,
made his way through a gully to Knyazkovo with a crowd
of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and seeing blood
and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in
the crowds of soldiers.
The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was
to get away quickly from the terrible sensations amid
which he had lived that day and return to ordinary
conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own
bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life
would he be able to understand himself and all he had
seen and felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were
nowhere to be found.
Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road
along which he was going, still on all sides there was
what there had been on the field of battle. There were still
the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes strangely
indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers’
overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant

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now, still aroused terror, and besides this there were the
foul air and the dust.
Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk
road, Pierre sat down by the roadside.
Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre
lay leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the
shadows that moved past him in the darkness. He was
continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying
toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered
and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In
the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought
some firewood, settled down near him and began lighting
a fire.
The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got
the fire to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which
they broke some dried bread and put a little dripping. The
pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with the smell of
smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were
eating and talking among themselves, taking no notice of
him.
‘And who may you be?’ one of them suddenly asked
Pierre, evidently meaning what Pierre himself had in
mind, namely: ‘If you want to eat we’ll give you some
food, only let us know whether you are an honest man.’

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‘I, I...’ said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his

social position as much as possible so as to be nearer to
the soldiers and better understood by them. ‘By rights I
am a militia officer, but my men are not here. I came to
the battle and have lost them.’
‘There now!’ said one of the soldiers.
Another shook his head.
‘Would you like a little mash?’ the first soldier asked,
and handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.
Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash,
as they called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it
more delicious than any food he had ever tasted. As he sat
bending greedily over it, helping himself to large
spoonfuls and chewing one after another, his was lit up by
the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.
‘Where have you to go to? Tell us!’ said one of them.
‘To Mozhaysk.’
‘You’re a gentleman, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Peter Kirilych.’
‘Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we’ll
take you there.’

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In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to

Mozhaysk.
By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began
ascending the steep hill into the town, the cocks were
already crowing. Pierre went on with the soldiers, quite
forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill and
that he had already passed it. He would not soon have
remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had
he not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who
had been to look for him in the town and was returning to
the inn. The groom recognized Pierre in the darkness by
his white hat.
‘Your excellency!’ he said. ‘Why, we were beginning
to despair! How is it you are on foot? And where are you
going, please?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Pierre.
The soldiers stopped.
‘So you’ve found your folk?’ said one of them. ‘Well,
good-by, Peter Kirilych- isn’t it?’
‘Good-by, Peter Kirilych!’ Pierre heard the other
voices repeat.
‘Good-by!’ he said and turned with his groom toward
the inn.

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‘I ought to give them something!’ he thought, and felt

in his pocket. ‘No, better not!’ said another, inner voice.
There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were
all occupied. Pierre went out into the yard and, covering
himself up head and all, lay down in his carriage.

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Chapter IX

Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before

he felt himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with
the distinctness of reality, he heard the boom, boom,
boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans and cries,
and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror
and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he
opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak.
All was tranquil in the yard. Only someone’s orderly
passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud,
and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre’s head some
pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in
sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse.
The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful
smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment.
He could see the clear starry sky between the dark roofs
of two penthouses.
‘Thank God, there is no more of that!’ he thought,
covering up his head again. ‘Oh, what a terrible thing is
fear, and how shamefully I yielded to it! But they... they
were steady and calm all the time, to the end...’ thought
he.

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They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who

had been at the battery, those who had given him food,
and those who had prayed before the icon. They, those
strange men he had not previously known, stood out
clearly and sharply from everyone else.
‘To be a soldier, just a soldier!’ thought Pierre as he
fell asleep, ‘to enter communal life completely, to be
imbued by what makes them what they are. But how cast
off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man?
There was a time when I could have done it. I could have
run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have
been sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with
Dolokhov.’ And the memory of the dinner at the English
Club when he had challenged Dolokhov flashed through
Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at
Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the
lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at
the English Club and someone near and dear to him sat at
the end of the table. ‘Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor.
But he died!’ thought Pierre. ‘Yes, he died, and I did not
know he was alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how
glad I am that he is alive again!’ On one side of the table
sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others
like them (in his dream the category to which these men

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belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the

category of those he termed they), and he heard those
people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and singing
loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his
benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound
of his words was as weighty and uninterrupted as the
booming on the battlefield, but pleasant and comforting.
Pierre did not understand what his benefactor was saying,
but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and
the possibility of being what they were. And they with
their simple, kind, firm faces surrounded his benefactor
on all sides. But though they were kindly they did not
look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to speak
and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment
his legs grew cold and bare. He felt ashamed, and with
one arm covered his legs from which his cloak had in fact
slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak
Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs,
posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and
glittering with frost or dew.
‘It is dawn,’ thought Pierre. ‘But that’s not what I
want. I want to hear and understand my benefactor’s
words.’ Again he covered himself up with his cloak, but

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now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there. There
were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts
that someone was uttering or that he himself was
formulating.
Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was
convinced that someone outside himself had spoken them,
though the impressions of that day had evoked them. He
had never, it seemed to him, been able to think and
express his thoughts like that when awake.
‘To endure war is the most difficult subordination of
man’s freedom to the law of God,’ the voice had said.
‘Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you cannot
escape from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk,
but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is
golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears
death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there
were no suffering, man would not know his limitations,
would not know himself. The hardest thing [Pierre went
on thinking, or hearing, in his dream] is to be able in your
soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all?’ he asked
himself. ‘No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but
to harness all these thoughts together is what we need!
Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!’ he
repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these

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words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say

and solved the question that tormented him.
‘Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness.’
‘Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency!
Your excellency!’ some voice was repeating. ‘We must
harness, it is time to harness...’
It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The
sun shone straight into Pierre’s face. He glanced at the
dirty innyard in the middle of which soldiers were
watering their lean horses at the pump while carts were
passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the
carriage seat. ‘No, I don’t want that, I don’t want to see
and understand that. I want to understand what was
revealing itself to me in my dream. One second more and
I should have understood it all! But what am I to do?
Harness, but how can I harness everything?’ and Pierre
felt with horror that the meaning of all he had seen and
thought in the dream had been destroyed.
The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told
Pierre that an officer had come with news that the French
were already near Mozhaysk and that our men were
leaving it.

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Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and

overtake him, went on foot through the town.
The troops were moving on, leaving about ten
thousand wounded behind them. There were wounded in
the yards, at the windows of the houses, and the streets
were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that
were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses,
and blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his
carriage, which had overtaken him, to a wounded general
he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the way
Pierre was told of the death of his brother-in-law Anatole
and of that of Prince Andrew.

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Chapter X

On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow.

Close to the gates of the city he was met by Count
Rostopchin’s adjutant.
‘We have been looking for you everywhere,’ said the
adjutant. ‘The count wants to see you particularly. He
asks you to come to him at once on a very important
matter.’
Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to
see the Moscow commander in chief.
Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to
town from his summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom
and reception room of his house were full of officials who
had been summoned or had come for orders. Vasilchikov
and Platov had already seen the count and explained to
him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it
would have to be surrendered. Though this news was
being concealed from the inhabitants, the officials- the
heads of the various government departments- knew that
Moscow would soon be in the enemy’s hands, just as
Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape personal

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responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask

how they were to deal with their various departments.
As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier
from the army came out of Rostopchin’s private room.
In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the
courier made a despairing gesture with his hand and
passed through the room.
While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary
eyes watched the various officials, old and young,
military and civilian, who were there. They all seemed
dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of men,
one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they
continued their conversation.
‘If they’re sent out and brought back again later on it
will do no harm, but as things are now one can’t answer
for anything.’
‘But you see what he writes...’ said another, pointing to
a printed sheet he held in his hand.
‘That’s another matter. That’s necessary for the
people,’ said the first.
‘What is it?’ asked Pierre.
‘Oh, it’s a fresh broadsheet.’
Pierre took it and began reading.

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His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in

order to join up with the troops moving toward him and
has taken up a strong position where the enemy will not
soon attack him. Forty eight guns with ammunition have
been sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he
will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is even
ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that
the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order,
and we will deal with villains in our own way! When the
time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and
will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are
not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a
hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be
best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye.
Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the
Mother of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital
where we will have some water blessed. That will help
them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now: one of my
eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.
‘But military men have told me that it is impossible to
fight in the town,’ said Pierre, ‘and that the position..’
‘Well, of course! That’s what we were saying,’ replied
the first speaker.

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‘And what does he mean by ‘One of my eyes was sore

but now I am on the lookout with both’?’ asked Pierre.
‘The count had a sty,’ replied the adjutant smiling,
‘and was very much upset when I told him people had
come to ask what was the matter with him. By the by,
Count,’ he added suddenly, addressing Pierre with a
smile, ‘we heard that you have family troubles and that
the countess, your wife..’
‘I have heard nothing,’ Pierre replied unconcernedly.
‘But what have you heard?’
‘Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only
say what I heard.’
‘But what did you hear?’
‘Well, they say,’ continued the adjutant with the same
smile, ‘that the countess, your wife, is preparing to go
abroad. I expect it’s nonsense...’
‘Possibly,’ remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-
mindedly. ‘And who is that?’ he asked, indicating a short
old man in a clean blue peasant overcoat, with a big
snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy face.
‘He? That’s a tradesman, that is to say, he’s the
restaurant keeper, Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard
of that affair with the proclamation.’

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‘Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!’ said Pierre, looking at

the firm, calm face of the old man and seeking any
indication of his being a traitor.
‘That’s not he himself, that’s the father of the fellow
who wrote the proclamation,’ said the adjutant. ‘The
young man is in prison and I expect it will go hard with
him.’
An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a
German wearing a cross round his neck, approached the
speaker.
‘It’s a complicated story, you know,’ said the adjutant.
‘That proclamation appeared about two months ago. The
count was informed of it. He gave orders to investigate
the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich here made the inquiries.
The proclamation had passed through exactly sixty-three
hands. He asked one, ‘From whom did you get it?’ ‘From
so-and-so.’ He went to the next one. ‘From whom did you
get it?’ and so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half
educated tradesman, you know, ‘a pet of a trader,’’ said
the adjutant smiling. ‘They asked him, ‘Who gave it
you?’ And the point is that we knew whom he had it
from. He could only have had it from the Postmaster. But
evidently they had come to some understanding. He
replied: ‘From no one; I made it up myself.’ They

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threatened and questioned him, but he stuck to that: ‘I

made it up myself.’ And so it was reported to the count,
who sent for the man. ‘From whom did you get the
proclamation?’ ‘I wrote it myself.’ Well, you know the
count,’ said the adjutant cheerfully, with a smile of pride,
‘he flared up dreadfully- and just think of the fellow’s
audacity, lying, and obstinacy!’
‘And the count wanted him to say it was from
Klyucharev? I understand!’ said Pierre.
‘Not at all,’ rejoined the adjutant in dismay.
‘Klyucharev had his own sins to answer for without that
and that is why he has been banished. But the point is that
the count was much annoyed. ‘How could you have
written it yourself?’ said he, and he took up the Hamburg
Gazette that was lying on the table. ‘Here it is! You did
not write it yourself but translated it, and translated it
abominably, because you don’t even know French, you
fool.’ And what do you think? ‘No,’ said he, ‘I have not
read any papers, I made it up myself.’ ‘If that’s so, you’re
a traitor and I’ll have you tried, and you’ll be hanged! Say
from whom you had it.’ ‘I have seen no papers, I made it
up myself.’ And that was the end of it. The count had the
father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for
trial and condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the

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father has come to intercede for him. But he’s a good-for-

nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman’s son, a
dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures
somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match for
him. That’s the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a
cookshop here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there
was a large icon of God Almighty painted with a scepter
in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that
icon home with him for a few days and what did he do?
He found some scoundrel of a painter..’

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Chapter XI

In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to

the commander in chief.
When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin,
puckering his face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes
with his hand. A short man was saying something, but
when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went out.
‘Ah, how do you do, great warrior?’ said Rostopchin
as soon as the short man had left the room. ‘We have
heard of your prowess. But that’s not the point. Between
ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to the Masons?’ he
went on severely, as though there were something wrong
about it which he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre
remained silent. ‘I am well informed, my friend, but I am
aware that there are Masons and Masons and I hope that
you are not one of those who on pretense of saving
mankind wish to ruin Russia.’
‘Yes, I am a Mason,’ Pierre replied.
‘There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that
Messrs. Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to
their proper place. Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the
same way, and so have others who on the plea of building

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up the temple of Solomon have tried to destroy the temple

of their fatherland. You can understand that there are
reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the
Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now
come to my knowledge that you lent him your carriage for
his removal from town, and that you have even accepted
papers from him for safe custody. I like you and don’t
wish you any harm and- as you are only half my age- I
advise you, as a father would, to cease all communication
with men of that stamp and to leave here as soon as
possible.’
‘But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?’ asked
Pierre.
‘That is for me to know, but not for you to ask,’
shouted Rostopchin.
‘If he is accused of circulating Napoleon’s
proclamation it is not proved that he did so,’ said Pierre
without looking at Rostopchin, ‘and Vereshchagin..’
‘There we are!’ Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder
than before, frowning suddenly. ‘Vereshchagin is a
renegade and a traitor who will be punished as he
deserves,’ said he with the vindictive heat with which
people speak when recalling an insult. ‘But I did not
summon you to discuss my actions, but to give you

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advice- or an order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the

town and break off all communication with such men as
Klyucharev. And I will knock the nonsense out of
anybody’- but probably realizing that he was shouting at
Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he
added, taking Pierre’s hand in a friendly manner, ‘We are
on the eve of a public disaster and I haven’t time to be
polite to everybody who has business with me. My head
is sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon cher, what are you
doing personally?’
‘Why, nothing,’ answered Pierre without raising his
eyes or changing the thoughtful expression of his face.
The count frowned.
‘A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon
as you can, that’s all I have to tell you. Happy he who has
ears to hear. Good-by, my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!’ he
shouted through the doorway after Pierre, ‘is it true that
the countess has fallen into the clutches of the holy fathers
of the Society of Jesus?’
Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin’s room more
sullen and angry than he had ever before shown himself.
When he reached home it was already getting dark.
Some eight people had come to see him that evening: the
secretary of a committee, the colonel of his battalion, his

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steward, his major-domo, and various petitioners. They all

had business with Pierre and wanted decisions from him.
Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of
these questions and only answered them in order to get rid
of these people. When left alone at last he opened and
read his wife’s letter.
‘They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew
killed... that old man... Simplicity is submission to God.
Suffering is necessary... the meaning of all... one must
harness... my wife is getting married... One must forget
and understand...’ And going to his bed he threw himself
on it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.
When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to
inform him that a special messenger, a police officer, had
come from Count Rostopchin to know whether Count
Bezukhov had left or was leaving the town.
A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were
awaiting him in the drawing room. Pierre dressed
hurriedly and, instead of going to see them, went to the
back porch and out through the gate.
From that time till the end of the destruction of
Moscow no one of Bezukhov’s household, despite all the
search they made, saw Pierre again or knew where he
was.

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Chapter XII

The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of

September, that is, till the eve of the enemy’s entry into
the city.
After Petya had joined Obolenski’s regiment of
Cossacks and left for Belaya Tserkov where that regiment
was forming, the countess was seized with terror. The
thought that both her sons were at the war, had both gone
from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or
both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of
her acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first
time with cruel clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back
and wished to go herself to join Petya, or to get him an
appointment somewhere in Petersburg, but neither of
these proved possible. Petya could not return unless his
regiment did so or unless he was transferred to another
regiment on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with
the army and had not sent a word since his last letter, in
which he had given a detailed account of his meeting with
Princess Mary. The countess did not sleep at night, or
when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her sons
lying dead. After many consultations and conversations,

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the count at last devised means to tranquillize her. He got

Petya transferred from Obolenski’s regiment to
Bezukhov’s, which was in training near Moscow. Though
Petya would remain in the service, this transfer would
give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of
her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters
for her Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get
him appointed to places where he could not possibly take
part in a battle. As long as Nicholas alone was in danger
the countess imagined that she loved her first-born more
than all her other children and even reproached herself for
it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been
bad at lessons, was always breaking things in the house
and making himself a nuisance to everybody, that snub-
nosed Petya with his merry black eyes and fresh rosy
cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show-
when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men
who were fighting somewhere about something and
apparently finding pleasure in it- then his mother thought
she loved him more, much more, than all her other
children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return, the
more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she
would never live to see such happiness. The presence of
Sonya, of her beloved Natasha, or even of her husband

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irritated her. ‘What do I want with them? I want no one

but Petya,’ she thought.
At the end of August the Rostovs received another
letter from Nicholas. He wrote from the province of
Voronezh where he had been sent to procure remounts,
but that letter did not set the countess at ease. Knowing
that one son was out of danger she became the more
anxious about Petya.
Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the
Rostovs’ acquaintances had left Moscow, and though
everybody tried to persuade the countess to get away as
quickly as possible, she would not bear of leaving before
her treasure, her adored Petya, returned. On the twenty-
eighth of August he arrived. The passionate tenderness
with which his mother received him did not please the
sixteen-year-old officer. Though she concealed from him
her intention of keeping him under her wing, Petya
guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing that he
might give way to emotion when with her- might ‘become
womanish’ as he termed it to himself- he treated her
coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow
attached himself exclusively to Natasha for whom he had
always had a particularly brotherly tenderness, almost
lover-like.

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Owing to the count’s customary carelessness nothing

was ready for their departure by the twenty-eighth of
August and the carts that were to come from their Ryazan
and Moscow estates to remove their household
belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.
From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow
was in a bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of
men wounded at Borodino were brought in by the
Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts of Moscow,
and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their
possessions out by the other gates. In spite of
Rostopchin’s broadsheets, or because of them or
independently of them, the strangest and most
contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some said
that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on
the contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of
the churches and everybody was to be ordered to leave.
Some said there had been another battle after Borodino at
which the French had been routed, while others on the
contrary reported that the Russian army bad been
destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which,
preceded by the clergy, would go to the Three Hills;
others whispered that Augustin had been forbidden to
leave, that traitors had been seized, that the peasants were

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rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow,

and so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the
Council of Fili, at which it was decided to abandon
Moscow, had not yet been held) both those who went
away and those who remained behind felt, though they
did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be
abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly as
possible and save their belongings. It was felt that
everything would suddenly break up and change, but up
to the first of September nothing had done so. As a
criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must
die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens
the cap that is awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily
continued its wonted life, though it knew that the time of
its destruction was near when the conditions of life to
which its people were accustomed to submit would be
completely upset.
During the three days preceding the occupation of
Moscow the whole Rostov family was absorbed in
various activities. The head of the family, Count Ilya
Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting the
current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and
hasty orders at home about the preparations for their
departure.

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The countess watched the things being packed, was

dissatisfied with everything, was constantly in pursuit of
Petya who was always running away from her, and was
jealous of Natasha with whom he spent all his time.
Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by
getting things packed. But of late Sonya had been
particularly sad and silent. Nicholas’ letter in which he
mentioned Princess Mary had elicited, in her presence,
joyous comments from the countess, who saw an
intervention of Providence in this meeting of the princess
and Nicholas.
‘I was never pleased at Bolkonski’s engagement to
Natasha,’ said the countess, ‘but I always wanted
Nicholas to marry the princess, and had a presentiment
that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!’
Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of
retrieving the Rostovs’ affairs was by Nicholas marrying
a rich woman, and that the princess was a good match. It
was very bitter for her. But despite her grief, or perhaps
just because of it, she took on herself all the difficult work
of directing the storing and packing of their things and
was busy for whole days. The count and countess turned
to her when they had any orders to give. Petya and
Natasha on the contrary, far from helping their parents,

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were generally a nuisance and a hindrance to everyone.

Almost all day long the house resounded with their
running feet, their cries, and their spontaneous laughter.
They laughed and were gay not because there was any
reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in
their hearts and so everything that happened was a cause
for gaiety and laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits
because having left home a boy he had returned (as
everybody told him) a fine young man, because he was at
home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where there
was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come
to Moscow where there was to be fighting in a few days,
and chiefly because Natasha, whose lead he always
followed, was in high spirits. Natasha was gay because
she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her
of the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling
well. She was also happy because she had someone to
adore her: the adoration of others was a lubricant the
wheels of her machine needed to make them run freely-
and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because
there was a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at
the town gates, arms were being given out, everybody
was escaping- going away somewhere, and in general

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something extraordinary was happening, and that is

always exciting, especially to the young.

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Chapter XIII

On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in

the Rostovs’ house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors
were open, all the furniture was being carried out or
moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken
down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping
paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and
house serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily
on the parquet floors. The yard was crowded with peasant
carts, some loaded high and already corded up, others still
empty.
The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of
the peasants who had come with the carts resounded as
they shouted to one another in the yard and in the house.
The count bad been out since morning. The countess had
a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil and
was lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar
compress on her head. Petya was not at home, he had
gone to visit a friend with whom he meant to obtain a
transfer from the militia to the active army. Sonya was in
the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass and
china. Natasha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled

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room with dresses, ribbons, and scarves strewn all about

her, gazing fixedly at the floor and holding in her hands
the old ball dress (already out of fashion) which she had
worn at her first Petersburg ball.
Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone
else was so busy, and several times that morning had tried
to set to work, but her heart was not in it, and she could
not and did not know how to do anything except with all
her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood
beside Sonya while the china was being packed and tried
to help, but soon gave it up and went to her room to pack
her own things. At first she found it amusing to give away
dresses and ribbons to the maids, but when that was done
and what was left had still to be packed, she found it dull.
‘Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won’t you, dear?’ And
when Dunyasha willingly promised to do it all for her,
Natasha sat down on the floor, took her old ball dress, and
fell into a reverie quite unrelated to what ought to have
occupied her thoughts now. She was roused from her
reverie by the talk of the maids in the next room (which
was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried footsteps
going to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of
the window. An enormously long row of carts full of
wounded men had stopped in the street.

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The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen,

maids, footmen, postilions, and scullions stood at the gate,
staring at the wounded.
Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over
her hair and holding an end of it in each hand, went out
into the street.
The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had
stepped out of the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart
with a hood constructed of bast mats, and was speaking to
a pale young officer who lay inside. Natasha moved a few
steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her
handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was
saying.
‘Then you have nobody in Moscow?’ she was saying.
‘You would be more comfortable somewhere in a house...
in ours, for instance... the family are leaving.’
‘I don’t know if it would be allowed,’ replied the
officer in a weak voice. ‘Here is our commanding
officer... ask him,’ and he pointed to a stout major who
was walking back along the street past the row of carts.
Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the
wounded officer and at once went to meet the major.
‘May the wounded men stay in our house?’ she asked.
The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.

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‘Which one do you want, Ma’am’selle?’ said he,

screwing up his eyes and smiling.
Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and
whole manner were so serious, though she was still
holding the ends of her handkerchief, that the major
ceased smiling and after some reflection- as if considering
in how far the thing was possible- replied in the
affirmative.
‘Oh yes, why not? They may,’ he said.
With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped
back quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking
compassionately to the officer.
‘They may. He says they may!’ whispered Natasha.
The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the
Rostovs’ yard, and dozens of carts with wounded men
began at the invitation of the townsfolk to turn into the
yards and to draw up at the entrances of the houses in
Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be
dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of
her life. She and Mavra Kuzminichna tried to get as many
of the wounded as possible into their yard.
‘Your Papa must be told, though,’ said Mavra
Kuzminichna.

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‘Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one

day we can move into the drawing room. They can have
all our half of the house.’
‘There now, young lady, you do take things into your
head! Even if we put them into the wing, the men’s room,
or the nurse’s room, we must ask permission.’
‘Well, I’ll ask.’
Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through
the half-open door into the sitting room, where there was
a smell of vinegar and Hoffman’s drops.
‘Are you asleep, Mamma?’
‘Oh, what sleep-?’ said the countess, waking up just as
she was dropping into a doze.
‘Mamma darling!’ said Natasha, kneeling by her
mother and bringing her face close to her mother’s, ‘I am
sorry, forgive me, I’ll never do it again; I woke you up!
Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have brought some
wounded here- officers. Will you let them come? They
have nowhere to go. I knew you’d let them come!’ she
said quickly all in one breath.
‘What officers? Whom have they brought? I don’t
understand anything about it,’ said the countess.
Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.

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‘I knew you’d give permission... so I’ll tell them,’ and,

having kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the
door.
In the hall she met her father, who had returned with
bad news.
‘We’ve stayed too long!’ said the count with
involuntary vexation. ‘The Club is closed and the police
are leaving.’
‘Papa, is it all right- I’ve invited some of the wounded
into the house?’ said Natasha.
‘Of course it is,’ he answered absently. ‘That’s not the
point. I beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help
to pack, and tomorrow we must go, go, go!...’
And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo
and the servants.
At dinner Petya having returned home told them the
news he had heard. He said the people had been getting
arms in the Kremlin, and that though Rostopchin’s
broadsheet had said that he would sound a call two or
three days in advance, the order had certainly already
been given for everyone to go armed to the Three Hills
tomorrow, and that there would be a big battle there.
The countess looked with timid horror at her son’s
eager, excited face as he said this. She realized that if she

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said a word about his not going to the battle (she knew he
enjoyed the thought of the impending engagement) he
would say something about men, honor, and the
fatherland- something senseless, masculine, and obstinate
which there would be no contradicting, and her plans
would be spoiled; and so, hoping to arrange to leave
before then and take Petya with her as their protector and
defender, she did not answer him, but after dinner called
the count aside and implored him with tears to take her
away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman’s
involuntary loving cunning she, who till then had not
shown any alarm, said that she would die of fright if they
did not leave that very night. Without any pretense she
was now afraid of everything.

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Chapter XIV

Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her

daughter, increased the countess’ fears still more by
telling what she had seen at a spirit dealer’s in Myasnitski
Street. When returning by that street she had been unable
to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the
shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side
street and the cabman had told her that the people were
breaking open the barrels at the drink store, having
received orders to do so.
After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work
with enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and
preparing for their departure. The old count, suddenly
setting to work, kept passing from the yard to the house
and back again, shouting confused instructions to the
hurrying people, and flurrying them still more. Petya
directed things in the yard. Sonya, owing to the count’s
contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what
to do. The servants ran noisily about the house and yard,
shouting and disputing. Natasha, with the ardor
characteristic of all she did suddenly set to work too. At
first her intervention in the business of packing was

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received skeptically. Everybody expected some prank

from her and did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely
and passionately demanded obedience, grew angry and
nearly cried because they did not heed her, and at last
succeeded in making them believe her. Her first exploit,
which cost her immense effort and established her
authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had
valuable Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the
house. When Natasha set to work two cases were standing
open in the ballroom, one almost full up with crockery,
the other with carpets. There was also much china
standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in
from the storeroom. A third case was needed and servants
had gone to fetch it.
‘Sonya, wait a bit- we’ll pack everything into these,’
said Natasha.
‘You can’t, Miss, we have tried to,’ said the butler’s
assistant.
‘No, wait a minute, please.’
And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case
dishes and plates wrapped in paper.
‘The dishes must go in here among the carpets,’ said
she.

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‘Why, it’s a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into

three cases,’ said the butler’s assistant.
‘Oh, wait, please!’ And Natasha began rapidly and
deftly sorting out the things. ‘These aren’t needed,’ said
she, putting aside some plates of Kiev ware. ‘These- yes,
these must go among the carpets,’ she said, referring to
the Saxony china dishes.
‘Don’t, Natasha! Leave it alone! We’ll get it all
packed,’ urged Sonya reproachfully.
‘What a young lady she is!’ remarked the major-domo.
But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything
out and began quickly repacking, deciding that the
inferior Russian carpets and unnecessary crockery should
not be taken at all. When everything had been taken out of
the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned out
that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly
all been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into
the two cases. Only the lid of the case containing the
carpets would not shut down. A few more things might
have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on having her
own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the
butler’s assistant and Petya- whom she had drawn into the
business of packing- press on the lid, and made desperate
efforts herself.

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‘That’s enough, Natasha,’ said Sonya. ‘I see you were

right, but just take out the top one.’
‘I won’t!’ cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back
the hair that hung over her perspiring face, while with the
other she pressed down the carpets. ‘Now press, Petya!
Press, Vasilich, press hard!’ she cried.
The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha,
clapping her hands, screamed with delight and tears fell
from her eyes. But this only lasted a moment. She at once
set to work afresh and they now trusted her completely.
The count was not angry even when they told him that
Natasha had countermanded an order of his, and the
servants now came to her to ask whether a cart was
sufficiently loaded, and whether it might be corded up.
Thanks to Natasha’s directions the work now went on
expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most
valuable packed as compactly as possible.
But hard as they all worked till quite late that night,
they could not get everything packed. The countess had
fallen asleep and the count, having put off their departure
till next morning, went to bed.
Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without
undressing.

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That night another wounded man was driven down the

Povarskaya, and Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing
at the gate, had him brought into the Rostovs’ yard.
Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very
important man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with
a raised hood, and was quite covered by an apron. On the
box beside the driver sat a venerable old attendant. A
doctor and two soldiers followed the carriage in a cart.
‘Please come in here. The masters are going away and
the whole house will be empty,’ said the old woman to the
old attendant.
‘Well, perhaps,’ said he with a sigh. ‘We don’t expect
to get him home alive! We have a house of our own in
Moscow, but it’s a long way from here, and there’s
nobody living in it.’
‘Do us the honor to come in, there’s plenty of
everything in the master’s house. Come in,’ said Mavra
Kuzminichna. ‘Is he very ill?’ she asked.
The attendant made a hopeless gesture.
‘We don’t expect to get him home! We must ask the
doctor.’
And the old servant got down from the box and went
up to the cart.
‘All right!’ said the doctor.

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The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it,

shook his head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into
the yard, and stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna.
‘O, Lord Jesus Christ!’ she murmured.
She invited them to take the wounded man into the
house.
‘The masters won’t object...’ she said.
But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so
they took him into the wing and put him in the room that
had been Madame Schoss’.
This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.

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Chapter XV

Moscow’s last day had come. It was a clear bright

autumn day, a Sunday. The church bells everywhere were
ringing for service, just as usual on Sundays. Nobody
seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.
Only two things indicated the social condition of
Moscow- the rabble, that is the poor people, and the price
of commodities. An enormous crowd of factory hands,
house serfs, and peasants, with whom some officials,
seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone early that
morning to the Three Hills. Having waited there for
Rostopchin who did not turn up, they became convinced
that Moscow would be surrendered, and then dispersed all
about the town to the public houses and cookshops. Prices
too that day indicated the state of affairs. The price of
weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept rising, but the
value of paper money and city articles kept falling, so that
by midday there were instances of carters removing
valuable goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a
half of what they carted, while peasant horses were
fetching five hundred rubles each, and furniture, mirrors,
and bronzes were being given away for nothing.

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In the Rostovs’ staid old-fashioned house the

dissolution of former conditions of life was but little
noticeable. As to the serfs the only indication was that
three out of their huge retinue disappeared during the
night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the value of their
possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come in from
their estates and which many people envied proved to be
extremely valuable and they were offered enormous sums
of money for them. Not only were huge sums offered for
the horses and carts, but on the previous evening and
early in the morning of the first of September, orderlies
and servants sent by wounded officers came to the
Rostovs’ and wounded men dragged themselves there
from the Rostovs’ and from neighboring houses where
they were accommodated, entreating the servants to try to
get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo to whom
these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for
the wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not
even mention the matter to the count. Pity these wounded
men as one might, it was evident that if they were given
one cart there would be no reason to refuse another, or all
the carts and one’s own carriages as well. Thirty carts
could not save all the wounded and in the general
catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one’s

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own family. So thought the major-domo on his master’s

behalf.
On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his
bedroom softly, so as not to wake the countess who had
fallen asleep only toward morning, and came out to the
porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In the yard stood the
carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front porch.
The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly
orderly and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm.
On seeing the count the major-domo made a significant
and stern gesture to them both to go away.
‘Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?’ asked the count,
and stroking his bald head he looked good-naturedly at
the officer and the orderly and nodded to them. (He liked
to see new faces.)
‘We can harness at once, your excellency.’
‘Well, that’s right. As soon as the countess wakes we’ll
be off, God willing! What is it, gentlemen?’ he added,
turning to the officer. ‘Are you staying in my house?’
The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed
crimson.
‘Count, be so good as to allow me... for God’s sake, to
get into some corner of one of your carts! I have nothing
here with me.... I shall be all right on a loaded cart..’

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Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly

made the same request on behalf of his master.
‘Oh, yes, yes,yes!’ said the count hastily. ‘I shall be
very pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you’ll see to it. Just
unload one or two carts. Well, what of it... do what’s
necessary...’ said the count, muttering some indefinite
order.
But at the same moment an expression of warm
gratitude on the officer’s face had already sealed the
order. The count looked around him. In the yard, at the
gates, at the window of the wings, wounded officers and
their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at
the count and moving toward the porch.
‘Please step into the gallery, your excellency,’ said the
major-domo. ‘What are your orders about the pictures?’
The count went into the house with him, repeating his
order not to refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.
‘Well, never mind, some of the things can be
unloaded,’ he added in a soft, confidential voice, as
though afraid of being overheard.
At nine o’clock the countess woke up, and Matrena
Timofeevna, who had been her lady’s maid before her
marriage and now performed a sort of chief gendarme’s
duty for her, came to say that Madame Schoss was much

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offended and the young ladies’ summer dresses could not

be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that
Madame Schoss was offended because her trunk had been
taken down from its cart, and all the loads were being
uncorded and the luggage taken out of the carts to make
room for wounded men whom the count in the simplicity
of his heart had ordered that they should take with them.
The countess sent for her husband.
‘What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being
unloaded.’
‘You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess
dear... an officer came to me to ask for a few carts for the
wounded. After all, ours are things that can be bought but
think what being left behind means to them!... Really
now, in our own yard- we asked them in ourselves and
there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my
dear... let them be taken... where’s the hurry?’
The count spoke timidly, as he always did when
talking of money matters. The countess was accustomed
to this tone as a precursor of news of something
detrimental to the children’s interests, such as the building
of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a
private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed

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always to oppose anything announced in that timid tone

and considered it her duty to do so.
She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said
to her husband: ‘Listen to me, Count, you have managed
matters so that we are getting nothing for the house, and
now you wish to throw away all our- all the children’s
property! You said yourself that we have a hundred
thousand rubles’ worth of things in the house. I don’t
consent, my dear, I don’t! Do as you please! It’s the
government’s business to look after the wounded; they
know that. Look at the Lopukhins opposite, they cleared
out everything two days ago. That’s what other people do.
It’s only we who are such fools. If you have no pity on
me, have some for the children.’
Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room
without replying.
‘Papa, what are you doing that for?’ asked Natasha,
who had followed him into her mother’s room.
‘Nothing! What business is it of yours?’ muttered the
count angrily.
‘But I heard,’ said Natasha. ‘Why does Mamma
object?’
‘What business is it of yours?’ cried the count.
Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.

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‘Papa! Here’s Berg coming to see us,’ said she,

looking out of the window.

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Chapter XVI

Berg, the Rostovs’ son-in-law, was already a colonel

wearing the orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still
filled the quiet and agreeable post of assistant to the head
of the staff of the assistant commander of the first division
of the Second Army.
On the first of September he had come to Moscow
from the army.
He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed
that everyone in the army was asking for leave to visit
Moscow and had something to do there. So he considered
it necessary to ask for leave of absence for family and
domestic reasons.
Berg drove up to his father-in-law’s house in his
spruce little trap with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like
those of a certain prince. He looked attentively at the carts
in the yard and while going up to the porch took out a
clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.
From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though
impatient steps into the drawing room, where he
embraced the count, kissed the hands of Natasha and
Sonya, and hastened to inquire after ‘Mamma’s’ health.

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‘Health, at a time like this?’ said the count. ‘Come, tell

us the news! Is the army retreating or will there be
another battle?’
‘God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our
fatherland, Papa,’ said Berg. ‘The army is burning with a
spirit of heroism and the leaders, so to say, have now
assembled in council. No one knows what is coming. But
in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic spirit,
the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which they-
which it’ (he corrected himself) ‘has shown or displayed
in the battle of the twenty-sixth- there are no words
worthy to do it justice! I tell you, Papa’ (he smote himself
on the breast as a general he had heard speaking had done,
but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have struck his
breast at the words ‘Russian army’), ‘I tell you frankly
that we, the commanders, far from having to urge the men
on or anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those...
those... yes, those exploits of antique valor,’ he went on
rapidly. ‘General Barclay de Tolly risked his life
everywhere at the head of the troops, I can assure you.
Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!’
And Berg related all that he remembered of the various
tales he had heard those days. Natasha watched him with

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an intent gaze that confused him, as if she were trying to

find in his face the answer to some question.
‘Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the
Russian warriors cannot be imagined or adequately
praised!’ said Berg, glancing round at Natasha, and as if
anxious to conciliate her, replying to her intent look with
a smile. ‘‘Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in the hearts
of her sons!’ Isn’t it so, Papa?’ said he.
Just then the countess came in from the sitting room
with a weary and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly
jumped up, kissed her hand, asked about her health, and,
swaying his head from side to side to express sympathy,
remained standing beside her.
‘Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard
and sad times for every Russian. But why are you so
anxious? You have still time to get away...’
‘I can’t think what the servants are about,’ said the
countess, turning to her husband. ‘I have just been told
that nothing is ready yet. Somebody after all must see to
things. One misses Mitenka at such times. There won’t be
any end to it.’
The count was about to say something, but evidently
restrained himself. He got up from his chair and went to
the door.

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At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to

blow his nose and, seeing the knot in it, pondered,
shaking his head sadly and significantly.
‘And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa,’ said he.
‘Hm...’ said the count, and stopped.
‘I was driving past Yusupov’s house just now,’ said
Berg with a laugh, ‘when the steward, a man I know, ran
out and asked me whether I wouldn’t buy something. I
went in out of curiosity, you know, and there is a small
chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear Vera
wanted a chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute
about it.’ (At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing
table Berg involuntarily changed his tone to one of
pleasure at his admirable domestic arrangements.) ‘And
it’s such a beauty! It pulls out and has a secret English
drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted one. I
wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of
those peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I
will pay the man well, and..’
The count frowned and coughed.
‘Ask the countess, I don’t give orders.’
‘If it’s inconvenient, please don’t,’ said Berg. ‘Only I
so wanted it, for dear Vera’s sake.’

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‘Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil,

the devil...’ cried the old count. ‘My head’s in a whirl!’
And he left the room. The countess began to cry.
‘Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!’ said
Berg.
Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding
it difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and
then ran downstairs.
Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons
to the servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded
carts were still standing in the yard. Two of them had
been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing into
one of them helped by an orderly.
‘Do you know what it’s about?’ Petya asked Natasha.
She understood that he meant what were their parents
quarreling about. She did not answer.
‘It’s because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the
wounded,’ said Petya. ‘Vasilich told me. I consider..’
‘I consider,’ Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning
her angry face to Petya, ‘I consider it so horrid, so
abominable, so... I don’t know what. Are we despicable
Germans?’

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Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of

weakening and letting the force of her anger run to waste,
she turned and rushed headlong up the stairs.
Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with
the respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in
hand, was pacing up and down the room, when Natasha,
her face distorted by anger, burst in like a tempest and
approached her mother with rapid steps.
‘It’s horrid! It’s abominable! she screamed. ‘You can’t
possibly have ordered it!’
Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and
frightened. The count stood still at the window and
listened.
‘Mamma, it’s impossible: see what is going on in the
yard!’ she cried. ‘They will be left!..’
‘What’s the matter with you? Who are ‘they’? What do
you want?’
‘Why, the wounded! It’s impossible, Mamma. It’s
monstrous!... No, Mamma darling, it’s not the thing.
Please forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what does it matter
what we take away? Only look what is going on in the
yard... Mamma!... It’s impossible!’

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The count stood by the window and listened without

turning round. Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer
to the window.
The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full
of shame for her mother, saw her agitation, and
understood why her husband did not turn to look at her
now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.
‘Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?’ she said,
not surrendering at once.
‘Mamma, darling, forgive me!’
But the countess pushed her daughter away and went
up to her husband.
‘My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don’t
understand about it,’ said she, dropping her eyes
shamefacedly.
‘The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen,’ muttered
the count through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife
who was glad to hide her look of shame on his breast.
‘Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?...’ asked
Natasha. ‘We will still take all the most necessary things.’
The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the
rapid pace at which she used to run when playing at tag,
ran through the ballroom to the anteroom and downstairs
into the yard.

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The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not

believe the strange order she brought them until the count
himself, in his wife’s name, confirmed the order to give
up all the carts to the wounded and take the trunks to the
storerooms. When they understood that order the servants
set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no
longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it
seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter
of an hour before it had not seemed strange to anyone that
the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted
away but that had seemed the only thing to do.
The whole household, as if to atone for not having
done it sooner, set eagerly to work at the new task of
placing the wounded in the carts. The wounded dragged
themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but
happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to
be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which
wounded men began to come into the Rostovs’ yard.
Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts
but only to let them sit on the top of the things. But the
work of unloading, once started, could not be arrested. It
seemed not to matter whether all or only half the things
were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures,
and mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night

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before now lay about the yard, and still they went on
searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or
that and letting the wounded have another and yet another
cart.
‘We can take four more men,’ said the steward. ‘They
can have my trap, or else what is to become of them?’
‘Let them have my wardrobe cart,’ said the countess.
‘Dunyasha can go with me in the carriage.’
They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take
wounded men from a house two doors off. The whole
household, servants included, was bright and animated.
Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement such as she
had not known for a long time.
‘What could we fasten this onto?’ asked the servants,
trying to fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a
carriage. ‘We must keep at least one cart.’
‘What’s in it?’ asked Natasha.
‘The count’s books.’
‘Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It’s not wanted.’
The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt
as to where Count Peter could sit.
‘On the box. You’ll sit on the box, won’t you, Petya?’
cried Natasha.

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Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her
efforts was quite different from Natasha’s. She was
putting away the things that had to be left behind and
making a list of them as the countess wished, and she
tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.

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Chapter XVII

Before two o’clock in the afternoon the Rostovs’ four

carriages, packed full and with the horses harnessed,
stood at the front door. One by one the carts with the
wounded had moved out of the yard.
The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken
attracted Sonya’s attention as it passed the front porch.
With the help of a maid she was arranging a seat for the
countess in the huge high coach that stood at the entrance.
‘Whose caleche is that?’ she inquired, leaning out of
the carriage window.
‘Why, didn’t you know, Miss?’ replied the maid. ‘The
wounded prince: he spent the night in our house and is
going with us.’
‘But who is it? What’s his name?’
‘It’s our intended that was- Prince Bolkonski himself!
They say he is dying,’ replied the maid with a sigh.
Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess.
The countess, tired out and already dressed in shawl and
bonnet for her journey, was pacing up and down the
drawing room, waiting for the household to assemble for

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the usual silent prayer with closed doors before starting.

Natasha was not in the room.
‘Mamma,’ said Sonya, ‘Prince Andrew is here,
mortally wounded. He is going with us.’
The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing
Sonya’s arm, glanced around.
‘Natasha?’ she murmured.
At that moment this news had only one significance for
both of them. They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to
what would happen if she heard this news stifled all
sympathy for the man they both liked.
‘Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us,’
said Sonya.
‘You say he is dying?’
Sonya nodded.
The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to
cry.
‘The ways of God are past finding out!’ she thought,
feeling that the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was
becoming manifest in all that was now taking place.
‘Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What’s the
matter?’ asked Natasha, as with animated face she ran
into the room.

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‘Nothing,’ answered the countess. ‘If everything is

ready let us start.’
And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her
agitated face. Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.
Natasha looked at her inquiringly.
‘What is it? What has happened?’
‘Nothing... No..’
‘Is it something very bad for me? What is it?’ persisted
Natasha with her quick intuition.
Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya,
Madame Schoss, Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came
into the drawing room and, having closed the doors, they
all sat down and remained for some moments silently
seated without looking at one another.
The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh
crossed himself before the icon. All the others did the
same. Then the count embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and
Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow, and while they
caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted their
backs lightly with some vaguely affectionate and
comforting words. The countess went into the oratory and
there Sonya found her on her knees before the icons that
had been left here and there hanging on the wall. (The

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most precious ones, with which some family tradition was

connected, were being taken with them.)
In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had
armed with swords and daggers, with trousers tucked
inside their high boots and with belts and girdles
tightened, were taking leave of those remaining behind.
As is always the case at a departure, much had been
forgotten or put in the wrong place, and for a long time
two menservants stood one on each side of the open door
and the carriage steps waiting to help the countess in,
while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the
house to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back
again.
‘They always will forget everything!’ said the
countess. ‘Don’t you know I can’t sit like that?’
And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying
but with an aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the
coach to rearrange the seat.
‘Oh, those servants!’ said the count, swaying his head.
Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the
countess trusted to drive her, sat perched up high on the
box and did not so much as glance round at what was
going on behind him. From thirty years’ experience he
knew it would be some time yet before the order, ‘Be off,

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in God’s name!’ would be given him: and he knew that

even when it was said he would be stopped once or twice
more while they sent back to fetch something that had
been forgotten, and even after that he would again be
stopped and the countess herself would lean out of the
window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive
carefully down the hill. He knew all this and therefore
waited calmly for what would happen, with more patience
than the horses, especially the near one, the chestnut
Falcon, who was pawing the ground and champing his bit.
At last all were seated, the carriage steps were folded and
pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a
traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what
she had to say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and
began crossing himself. The postilion and all the other
servants did the same. ‘Off, in God’s name!’ said Efim,
putting on his hat. ‘Start!’ The postilion started the horses,
the off pole horse tugged at his collar, the high springs
creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as
it passed out of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the
other vehicles jolted in their turn, and the procession of
carriages moved up the street. In the carriages, the
caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as they

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passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to

remain in Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles
seeing the travelers off.
Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as
now, sitting in the carriage beside the countess and gazing
at the slowly receding walls of forsaken, agitated
Moscow. Occasionally she leaned out of the carriage
window and looked back and then forward at the long
train of wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of
the line she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew’s
caleche. She did not know who was in it, but each time
she looked at the procession her eyes sought that caleche.
She knew it was right in front.
In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and
Podnovinsk Streets came several other trains of vehicles
similar to the Rostovs’, and as they passed along the
Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts formed two rows
abreast.
As they were going round the Sukharev water tower
Natasha, who was inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing
the people driving or walking past, suddenly cried out in
joyful surprise:
‘Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it’s he!’
‘Who? Who?’

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‘Look! Yes, on my word, it’s Bezukhov!’ said

Natasha, putting her head out of the carriage and staring
at a tall, stout man in a coachman’s long coat, who from
his manner of walking and moving was evidently a
gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the
arch of the Sukharev tower accompanied by a small,
sallow-faced, beardless old man in a frieze coat.
‘Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman’s coat, with
a queer-looking old boy. Really,’ said Natasha, ‘look,
look!’
‘No, it’s not he. How can you talk such nonsense?’
‘Mamma,’ screamed Natasha, ‘I’ll stake my head it’s
he! I assure you! Stop, stop!’ she cried to the coachman.
But the coachman could not stop, for from the
Meshchanski Street came more carts and carriages, and
the Rostovs were being shouted at to move on and not
block the way.
In fact, however, though now much farther off than
before, the Rostovs all saw Pierre- or someone
extraordinarily like him- in a coachman’s coat, going
down the street with head bent and a serious face beside a
small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That
old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window
gazing at them, and respectfully touching Pierre’s elbow

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said something to him and pointed to the carriage. Pierre,

evidently engrossed in thought, could not at first
understand him. At length when he had understood and
looked in the direction the old man indicated, he
recognized Natasha, and following his first impulse
stepped instantly and rapidly toward the coach. But
having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember
something and stopped.
Natasha’s face, leaning out of the window, beamed
with quizzical kindliness.
‘Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized
you! This is wonderful!’ she cried, holding out her hand
to him. ‘What are you doing? Why are you like this?’
Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it
awkwardly as he walked along beside her while the coach
still moved on.
‘What is the matter, Count?’ asked the countess in a
surprised and commiserating tone.
‘What? What? Why? Don’t ask me,’ said Pierre, and
looked round at Natasha whose radiant, happy expression-
of which he was conscious without looking at her- filled
him with enchantment.
‘Are you remaining in Moscow, then?’
Pierre hesitated.

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‘In Moscow?’ he said in a questioning tone. ‘Yes, in

Moscow. Goodby!’
‘Ah, if only I were a man? I’d certainly stay with you.
How splendid!’ said Natasha. ‘Mamma, if you’ll let me,
I’ll stay!’
Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to
say something, but the countess interrupted him.
‘You were at the battle, we heard.’
‘Yes, I was,’ Pierre answered. ‘There will be another
battle tomorrow...’ he began, but Natasha interrupted him.
‘But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not
like yourself...’
‘Oh, don’t ask me, don’t ask me! I don’t know myself.
Tomorrow... But no! Good-by, good-by!’ he muttered.
‘It’s an awful time!’ and dropping behind the carriage he
stepped onto the pavement.
Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long
time, beaming at him with her kindly, slightly quizzical,
happy smile.

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Chapter XVIII

For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre
had been living in the empty house of his deceased
benefactor, Bazdeev. This is how it happened.
When he woke up on the morning after his return to
Moscow and his interview with Count Rostopchin, he
could not for some time make out where he was and what
was expected of him. When he was informed that among
others awaiting him in his reception room there was a
Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the
Countess Helene, he felt suddenly overcome by that sense
of confusion and hopelessness to which he was apt to
succumb. He felt that everything was now at an end, all
was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, that nobody
was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was
no escape from this position. Smiling unnaturally and
muttering to himself, he first sat down on the sofa in an
attitude of despair, then rose, went to the door of the
reception room and peeped through the crack, returned
flourishing his arms, and took up a book. His major-domo
came in a second time to say that the Frenchman who had
brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to

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see him if only for a minute, and that someone from

Bazdeev’s widow had called to ask Pierre to take charge
of her husband’s books, as she herself was leaving for the
country.
‘Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go
and say I will come directly,’ Pierre replied to the major-
domo.
But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took
up his hat which was lying on the table and went out of
his study by the other door. There was no one in the
passage. He went along the whole length of this passage
to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his forehead with
both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The hall
porter was standing at the front door. From the landing
where Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to
the back entrance. He went down that staircase and out
into the yard. No one had seen him. But there were some
carriages waiting, and as soon as Pierre stepped out of the
gate the coachmen and the yard porter noticed him and
raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being
looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head
in a bush in order not to be seen: he hung his head and
quickening his pace went down the street.

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Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of

Joseph Bazdeev’s books and papers appeared to him the
most necessary.
He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go
to the Patriarch’s Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev’s
house was.
Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded
carts that were making their way from all sides out of
Moscow, and balancing his bulky body so as not to slip
out of the ramshackle old vehicle, Pierre, experiencing the
joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school, began to
talk to his driver.
The man told him that arms were being distributed
today at the Kremlin and that tomorrow everyone would
be sent out beyond the Three Hills gates and a great battle
would be fought there.
Having reached the Patriarch’s Ponds Pierre found the
Bazdeevs’ house, where he had not been for a long time
past. He went up to the gate. Gerasim, that sallow
beardless old man Pierre had seen at Torzhok five years
before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to his
knock.
‘At home?’ asked Pierre.

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‘Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna

has gone to the Torzhok estate with the children, your
excellency.’
‘I will come in all the same, I have to look through the
books,’ said Pierre.
‘Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the
brother of my late master- may the kingdom of heaven be
his- has remained here, but he is in a weak state as you
know,’ said the old servant.
Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph
Bazdeev’s half-insane brother and a hard drinker.
‘Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in...’ said Pierre and
entered the house.
A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a
dressing gown and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in
the anteroom. On seeing Pierre he muttered something
angrily and went away along the passage.
‘He was a very clever man but has now grown quite
feeble, as your honor sees,’ said Gerasim. ‘Will you step
into the study?’ Pierre nodded. ‘As it was sealed up so it
has remained, but Sophia Danilovna gave orders that if
anyone should come from you they were to have the
books.’

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Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had

entered with such trepidation in his benefactor’s lifetime.
The room, dusty and untouched since the death of Joseph
Bazdeev was now even gloomier.
Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room
on tiptoe. Pierre went round the study, approached the
cupboard in which the manuscripts were kept, and took
out what had once been one of the most important, the
holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic Scotch
Acts with Bazdeev’s notes and explanations. He sat down
at the dusty writing table, and, having laid the
manuscripts before him, opened them out, closed them,
finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his
hand sank into meditation.
Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times
and saw Pierre always sitting in the same attitude.
More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the
liberty of making a slight noise at the door to attract his
attention, but Pierre did not hear him.
‘Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?’
‘Oh yes!’ said Pierre, rousing himself and rising
hurriedly. ‘Look here,’ he added, taking Gerasim by a
button of his coat and looking down at the old man with

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moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, ‘I say, do you know that

there is going to be a battle tomorrow?’
‘We heard so,’ replied the man.
‘I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what
I ask you.’
‘Yes, your excellency,’ replied Gerasim. ‘Will you
have something to eat?’
‘No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes
and a pistol,’ said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.
‘Yes, your excellency,’ said Gerasim after thinking for
a moment.
All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his
benefactor’s study, and Gerasim heard him pacing
restlessly from one corner to another and talking to
himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him
there.
Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen
many strange things, accepted Pierre’s taking up his
residence in the house without surprise, and seemed
pleased to have someone to wait on. That same evening-
without even asking himself what they were wanted for-
he procured a coachman’s coat and cap for Pierre, and
promised to get him the pistol next day. Makar
Alexeevich came twice that evening shuffling along in his

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galoshes as far as the door and stopped and looked

ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned
toward him he wrapped his dressing gown around him
with a shamefaced and angry look and hurried away. It
was when Pierre (wearing the coachman’s coat which
Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected by
steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol
at the Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.

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Chapter XIX

Kutuzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the

Ryazan road was issued at night on the first of September.
The first troops started at once, and during the night
they marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At
daybreak, however, those nearing the town at the
Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of
soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge,
ascending on the opposite side and blocking the streets
and alleys, while endless masses of troops were bearing
down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and
alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward to the
bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov
himself had driven round by side streets to the other side
of Moscow.
By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of
September, only the rear guard remained in the
Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample room. The
main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.
At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second
of September, Napoleon was standing among his troops
on the Poklonny Hill looking at the panorama spread out

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before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to the

second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino
to the entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole
of that agitating, memorable week, there had been the
extraordinary autumn weather that always comes as a
surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the
rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs
are strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the aromatic
autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in
those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and delight us
continually by falling from the sky.
At ten in the morning of the second of September this
weather still held.
The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow
seen from the Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out
with her river, her gardens, and her churches, and she
seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas glittering
like stars in the sunlight.
The view of the strange city with its peculiar
architecture, such as he had never seen before, filled
Napoleon with the rather envious and uneasy curiosity
men feel when they see an alien form of life that has no
knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with

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the full force of its own life. By the indefinite signs

which, even at a distance, distinguish a living body from a
dead one, Napoleon from the Poklonny Hill perceived the
throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the breathing
of that great and beautiful body.
Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a
mother; every foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of
her significance as the mother city, must feel her feminine
character, and Napoleon felt it.
‘Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises,
Moscou la sainte. La voila done enfin, cette fameuse
ville! Il etait temps,’* said he, and dismounting he
ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him,
and summoned Lelorgne d’Ideville, the interpreter.
*"That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was
high time.’
‘A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has
lost her honor,’ thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at
Smolensk). From that point of view he gazed at the
Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed strange
to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed
unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear
morning light he gazed now at the city and now at the

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plan, considering its details, and the assurance of

possessing it agitated and awed him.
‘But could it be otherwise?’ he thought. ‘Here is this
capital at my feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what
is he thinking? A strange, beautiful, and majestic city; and
a strange and majestic moment! In what light must I
appear to them!’ thought he, thinking of his troops. ‘Here
she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men,’ he
reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops
who were approaching and forming up. ‘One word from
me, one movement of my hand, and that ancient capital of
the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready
to descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous
and truly great. But no, it can’t be true that I am in
Moscow,’ he suddenly thought. ‘Yet here she is lying at
my feet, with her golden domes and crosses scintillating
and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On
the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will
inscribe great words of justice and mercy.... It is just this
which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him.’ (It
seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was
taking place lay in the personal struggle between himself
and Alexander.) ‘From the height of the Kremlin- yes,
there is the Kremlin, yes- I will give them just laws; I will

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teach them the meaning of true civilization, I will make

generations of boyars remember their conqueror with
love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do not,
desire war, that I have waged war only against the false
policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander
and that in Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of
myself and of my people. I do not wish to utilize the
fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch.
‘Boyars,’ I will say to them, ‘I do not desire war, I desire
the peace and welfare of all my subjects.’ However, I
know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to
them as I always do: clearly, impressively, and
majestically. But can it be true that I am in Moscow? Yes,
there she lies.’
‘Qu’on m’amene les boyars,’* said he to his suite.
*"Bring the boyars to me.’
A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to
fetch the boyars.
Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was
again standing in the same place on the Poklonny Hill
awaiting the deputation. His speech to the boyars had
already taken definite shape in his imagination. That
speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon
understood it.

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He was himself carried away by the tone of

magnanimity he intended to adopt toward Moscow. In his
imagination he appointed days for assemblies at the
palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and his
own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor,
one who would win the hearts of the people. Having
learned that there were many charitable institutions in
Moscow he mentally decided that he would shower favors
on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he had to put on
a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must be
beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the
hearts of the Russians- and being like all Frenchmen
unable to imagine anything sentimental without a
reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma pauvre mere* - he
decided that he would place an inscription on all these
establishments in large letters: ‘This establishment is
dedicated to my dear mother.’ Or no, it should be simply:
Maison de ma Mere,*[2] he concluded. ‘But am I really in
Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me, but why is the
deputation from the city so long in appearing?’ he
wondered.
*"My dear, my tender, my poor mother.’
*[2] ‘House of my Mother.’

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Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried

on in whispers among his generals and marshals at the
rear of his suite. Those sent to fetch the deputation had
returned with the news that Moscow was empty, that
everyone had left it. The faces of those who were not
conferring together were pale and perturbed. They were
not alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned
by its inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the
question how to tell the Emperor- without putting him in
the terrible position of appearing ridiculous- that he had
been awaiting the boyars so long in vain: that there were
drunken mobs left in Moscow but no one else. Some said
that a deputation of some sort must be scraped together,
others disputed that opinion and maintained that the
Emperor should first be carefully and skillfully prepared,
and then told the truth.
‘He will have to be told, all the same,’ said some
gentlemen of the suite. ‘But, gentlemen..’
The position was the more awkward because the
Emperor, meditating upon his magnanimous plans, was
pacing patiently up and down before the outspread map,
occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from
under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.

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‘But it’s impossible...’ declared the gentlemen of the

suite, shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter
the implied word- le ridicule...
At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his
actor’s instinct suggesting to him that the sublime
moment having been too long drawn out was beginning to
lose its sublimity, gave a sign with his hand. A single
report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops, who
were already spread out on different sides of Moscow,
moved into the city through Tver, Kaluga, and
Dorogomilov gates. Faster and faster, vying with one
another, they moved at the double or at a trot, vanishing
amid the clouds of dust they raised and making the air
ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts.
Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon
rode with them as far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there
again stopped and, dismounting from his horse, paced for
a long time by the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting
the deputation.
CHAPTER XX
Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still
people in it, perhaps a fiftieth part of its former
inhabitants had remained, but it was empty. It was empty
in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.

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In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial

glance it seems as much alive as other hives.
The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot
beams of the midday sun as gaily as around the living
hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the others,
and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one has only
to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any
life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell
and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same.
To the beekeeper’s tap on the wall of the sick hive,
instead of the former instant unanimous humming of tens
of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly
compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their
wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a
disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted
hive. From the alighting board, instead of the former
spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the
warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness
and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are no
longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens
raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no
longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity,
like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant
sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long black

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robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily.

They do not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly
only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they
flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper
opens the lower part of the hive and peers in. Instead of
black, glossy bees- tamed by toil, clinging to one
another’s legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless
hum of labor- that used to hang in long clusters down to
the floor of the hive, drowsy shriveled bees crawl about
separately in various directions on the floor and walls of
the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor, swept by the bees
with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor littered
with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving
their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.
The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and
examines the super. Instead of serried rows of bees
sealing up every gap in the combs and keeping the brood
warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the
combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is
neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and
stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home
bees, shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep
slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers, having
lost all motive and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees,

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wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls

of the hive in their flight. Here and there among the cells
containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can
sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by
force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells,
with efforts beyond their strength laboriously drag away a
dead bee or bumblebee without knowing why they do it.
In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting, or
cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without
themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or
hostile intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing
one another, attack some victim and fight and smother it,
and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops from above
slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of
corpses. The keeper opens the two center partitions to
examine the brood cells. In place of the former close dark
circles formed by thousands of bees sitting back to back
and guarding the high mystery of generation, he sees
hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They
have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary
they had guarded and which is now no more. They reek of
decay and death. Only a few of them still move, rise, and
feebly fly to settle on the enemy’s hand, lacking the spirit
to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall as lightly as

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fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark

on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and
burns it clean.
So in the same way Moscow was empty when
Napoleon, weary, uneasy, and morose, paced up and
down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting
what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal,
observance of the proprieties- a deputation.
In various corners of Moscow there still remained a
few people aimlessly moving about, following their old
habits and hardly aware of what they were doing.
When with due circumspection Napoleon was
informed that Moscow was empty, he looked angrily at
his informant, turned away, and silently continued to walk
to and fro.
‘My carriage!’ he said.
He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and
drove into the suburb. ‘Moscow deserted!’ he said to
himself. ‘What an incredible event!’
He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in
the Dorogomilov suburb.
The coup de theatre had not come off.

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Chapter XXI

The Russian troops were passing through Moscow

from two o’clock at night till two in the afternoon and
bore away with them the wounded and the last of the
inhabitants who were leaving.
The greatest crush during the movement of the troops
took place at the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.
While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing
around the Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the
Stone bridges, a great many soldiers, taking advantage of
the stoppage and congestion, turned back from the bridges
and slipped stealthily and silently past the church of
Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back
up the hill to the Red Square where some instinct told
them they could easily take things not belonging to them.
Crowds of the kind seen at cheap sales filled all the
passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were no
dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting
customers to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual
motley crowd of female purchasers- but only soldiers, in
uniforms and overcoats though without muskets, entering
the Bazaar empty-handed and silently making their way

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out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen and

their assistants (of whom there were but few) moved
about among the soldiers quite bewildered. They
unlocked their shops and locked them up again, and
themselves carried goods away with the help their
assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were
drummers beating the muster call. But the roll of the
drums did not make the looting soldiers run in the
direction of the drum as formerly, but made them, on the
contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in the
shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray
coats, with closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a
scarf over his uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray
horse, the other in an overcoat and on foot, stood at the
corner of Ilyinka Street, talking. A third officer galloped
up to them.
‘The general orders them all to be driven out at once,
without fail. This is outrageous! Half the men have
dispersed.’
‘Where are you off to?... Where?...’ he shouted to three
infantrymen without muskets who, holding up the skirts
of their overcoats, were slipping past him into the Bazaar
passage. ‘Stop, you rascals!’

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‘But how are you going to stop them?’ replied another

officer. ‘There is no getting them together. The army
should push on before the rest bolt, that’s all!’
‘How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged
on the bridge, and don’t move. Shouldn’t we put a cordon
round to prevent the rest from running away?’
‘Come, go in there and drive them out!’ shouted the
senior officer.
The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a
drummer, and went with him into the arcade. Some
soldiers started running away in a group. A shopkeeper
with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose, and a calm,
persistent, calculating expression on his plump face,
hurriedly and ostentatiously approached the officer,
swinging his arms.
‘Your honor!’ said he. ‘Be so good as to protect us!
We won’t grudge trifles, you are welcome to anything-
we shall be delighted! Pray!... I’ll fetch a piece of cloth at
once for such an honorable gentleman, or even two pieces
with pleasure. For we feel how it is; but what’s all this-
sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be placed if
only to let us close the shop...’
Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.

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‘Eh, what twaddle!’ said one of them, a thin, stern-

looking man. ‘When one’s head is gone one doesn’t weep
for one’s hair! Take what any of you like!’ And
flourishing his arm energetically he turned sideways to
the officer.
‘It’s all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk,’ said
the first tradesman angrily. ‘Please step inside, your
honor!’
‘Talk indeed!’ cried the thin one. ‘In my three shops
here I have a hundred thousand rubles’ worth of goods.
Can they be saved when the army has gone? Eh, what
people! ‘Against God’s might our hands can’t fight.’’
‘Come inside, your honor!’ repeated the tradesman,
bowing.
The officer stood perplexed and his face showed
indecision.
‘It’s not my business!’ he exclaimed, and strode on
quickly down one of the passages.
From one open shop came the sound of blows and
vituperation, and just as the officer came up to it a man in
a gray coat with a shaven head was flung out violently.
This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and
the officer. The officer pounced on the soldiers who were
in the shops, but at that moment fearful screams reached

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them from the huge crowd on the Moskva bridge and the
officer ran out into the square.
‘What is it? What is it?’ he asked, but his comrade was
already galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the
direction from which the screams came.
The officer mounted his horse and rode after him.
When he reached the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns,
the infantry crossing the bridge, several overturned carts,
and frightened and laughing faces among the troops.
Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two
horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were
pressing close to the wheels. The cart was loaded high,
and at the very top, beside a child’s chair with its legs in
the air, sat a peasant woman uttering piercing and
desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers that
the screams of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman
were due to the fact that General Ermolov, coming up to
the crowd and learning that soldiers were dispersing
among the shops while crowds of civilians blocked the
bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered and made
a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one
another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing
desperately, had cleared off the bridge and the troops
were now moving forward.

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Chapter XXII

Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was

hardly anyone in the streets. The gates and shops were all
closed, only here and there round the taverns solitary
shouts or drunken songs could be heard. Nobody drove
through the streets and footsteps were rarely heard. The
Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge
courtyard of the Rostovs’ house was littered with wisps of
hay and with dung from the horses, and not a soul was to
be seen there. In the great drawing room of the house,
which had been left with all it contained, were two
people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the page boy
Mishka, Vasilich’s grandson who had stayed in Moscow
with his grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord
and was strumming on it with one finger. The yard porter,
his arms akimbo, stood smiling with satisfaction before
the large mirror.
‘Isn’t it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?’ said the boy, suddenly
beginning to strike the keyboard with both hands.
‘Only fancy!’ answered Ignat, surprised at the
broadening grin on his face in the mirror.

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‘Impudence! Impudence!’ they heard behind them the

voice of Mavra Kuzminichna who had entered silently.
‘How he’s grinning, the fat mug! Is that what you’re here
for? Nothing’s cleared away down there and Vasilich is
worn out. Just you wait a bit!’
Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of
the room with meekly downcast eyes.
‘Aunt, I did it gently,’ said the boy.
‘I’ll give you something gently, you monkey you!’
cried Mavra Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly.
‘Go and get the samovar to boil for your grandfather.’
Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord
and closed it, and with a deep sigh left the drawing room
and locked its main door.
Going out into the yard she paused to consider where
she should go next- to drink tea in the servants’ wing with
Vasilich, or into the storeroom to put away what still lay
about.
She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet
street. Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled
as someone tried to open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to
the gate.
‘Who do you want?’
‘The count- Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov.’

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‘And who are you?’

‘An officer, I have to see him,’ came the reply in a
pleasant, well-bred Russian voice.
Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of
eighteen, with the round face of a Rostov, entered the
yard.
‘They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at
vespertime,’ said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.
The young officer standing in the gateway, as if
hesitating whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue.
‘Ah, how annoying!’ he muttered. ‘I should have come
yesterday.... Ah, what a pity.’
Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and
sympathetically examining the familiar Rostov features of
the young man’s face, his tattered coat and trodden-down
boots.
‘What did you want to see the count for?’ she asked.
‘Oh well... it can’t be helped!’ said he in a tone of
vexation and placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.
He again paused in indecision.
‘You see,’ he suddenly said, ‘I am a kinsman of the
count’s and he has been very kind to me. As you see’ (he
glanced with an amused air and good-natured smile at his

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coat and boots) ‘my things are worn out and I have no
money, so I was going to ask the count..’
Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.
‘Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment,’ said she.
And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she
turned and, hurrying away on her old legs, went through
the back yard to the servants’ quarters.
While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room
the officer walked about the yard gazing at his worn-out
boots with lowered head and a faint smile on his lips.
‘What a pity I’ve missed Uncle! What a nice old woman!
Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the
nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now
be getting near the Rogozhski gate?’ thought he. Just then
Mavra Kuzminichna appeared from behind the corner of
the house with a frightened yet resolute look, carrying a
rolled-up check kerchief in her hand. While still a few
steps from the officer she unfolded the kerchief and took
out of it a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily
handed it to him.
‘If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he
would of course... but as it is..’

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Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The

officer did not decline, but took the note quietly and
thanked her.
‘If the count had been at home...’ Mavra Kuzminichna
went on apologetically. ‘Christ be with you, sir! May God
preserve you!’ said she, bowing as she saw him out.
Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself,
the officer ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets
toward the Yauza bridge to overtake his regiment.
But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for
some time with moist eyes, pensively swaying her head
and feeling an unexpected flow of motherly tenderness
and pity for the unknown young officer.

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Chapter XXIII

From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground

floor of which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and
songs. On benches round the tables in a dirty little room
sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring, with
dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were all laboriously
singing some song or other. They were singing
discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently
not because they wished to sing, but because they wanted
to show they were drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-
haired lad in a clean blue coat, was standing over the
others. His face with its fine straight nose would have
been handsome had it not been for his thin, compressed,
twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes. Evidently
possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were
singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their
heads his white arm with the sleeve turned up to the
elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out his dirty fingers.
The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he always
carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it were
most important that the sinewy white arm he was
flourishing should be bare. In the midst of the song cries

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were heard, and fighting and blows in the passage and

porch. The tall lad waved his arm.
‘Stop it!’ he exclaimed peremptorily. ‘There’s a fight,
lads!’ And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the
porch.
The factory hands followed him. These men, who
under the leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the
dramshop that morning, had brought the publican some
skins from the factory and for this had had drink served
them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring smithy,
hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing
it to have been broken into, wished to force their way in
too and a fight in the porch had resulted.
The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the
door, and when the workmen came out the smith,
wrenching himself free from the tavern keeper, fell face
downward on the pavement.
Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing
against the publican with his chest.
The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a
blow in the face and cried wildly: ‘They’re fighting us,
lads!’

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At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching

his bruised face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful
voice: ‘Police! Murder!... They’ve killed a man, lads!’
‘Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death- killed!...’
screamed a woman coming out of a gate close by.
A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.
‘Haven’t you robbed people enough- taking their last
shirts?’ said a voice addressing the publican. ‘What have
you killed a man for, you thief?’
The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared
eyes from the publican to the smith and back again as if
considering whom he ought to fight now.
‘Murderer!’ he shouted suddenly to the publican. ‘Bind
him, lads!’
‘I daresay you would like to bind me!’ shouted the
publican, pushing away the men advancing on him, and
snatching his cap from his head he flung it on the ground.
As if this action had some mysterious and menacing
significance, the workmen surrounding the publican
paused in indecision.
‘I know the law very well, mates! I’ll take the matter to
the captain of police. You think I won’t get to him?
Robbery is not permitted to anybody now a days!’
shouted the publican, picking up his cap.

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‘Come along then! Come along then!’ the publican and

the tall young fellow repeated one after the other, and
they moved up the street together.
The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory
hands and others followed behind, talking and shouting.
At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house
with closed shutters and bearing a bootmaker’s signboard,
stood a score of thin, worn-out, gloomy-faced
bootmakers, wearing overalls and long tattered coats.
‘He should pay folks off properly,’ a thin workingman,
with frowning brows and a straggly beard, was saying.
‘But he’s sucked our blood and now he thinks he’s quit
of us. He’s been misleading us all the week and now that
he’s brought us to this pass he’s made off.’
On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the
workman ceased speaking, and with eager curiosity all the
bootmakers joined the moving crowd.
‘Where are all the folks going?’
‘Why, to the police, of course!’
‘I say, is it true that we have been beaten?’ ‘And what
did you think? Look what folks are saying.’
Questions and answers were heard. The publican,
taking advantage of the increased crowd, dropped behind
and returned to his tavern.

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The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his

foe, waved his bare arm and went on talking incessantly,
attracting general attention to himself. It was around him
that the people chiefly crowded, expecting answers from
him to the questions that occupied all their minds.
‘He must keep order, keep the law, that’s what the
government is there for. Am I not right, good Christians?’
said the tall youth, with a scarcely perceptible smile. ‘He
thinks there’s no government! How can one do without
government? Or else there would be plenty who’d rob us.’
‘Why talk nonsense?’ rejoined voices in the crowd.
‘Will they give up Moscow like this? They told you that
for fun, and you believed it! Aren’t there plenty of troops
on the march? Let him in, indeed! That’s what the
government is for. You’d better listen to what people are
saying,’ said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.
By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people
were gathered round a man in a frieze coat who held a
paper in his hand.
‘An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an
ukase!’ cried voices in the crowd, and the people rushed
toward the reader.
The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet
of August 31 When the crowd collected round him he

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seemed confused, but at the demand of the tall lad who

had pushed his way up to him, he began in a rather
tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.
‘Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness,’ he
read ("Sirin Highness,’ said the tall fellow with a
triumphant smile on his lips and a frown on his brow), ‘to
consult with him to act, and to aid the army to exterminate
these scoundrels. We too will take part...’ the reader went
on, and then paused ("Do you see,’ shouted the youth
victoriously, ‘he’s going to clear up the whole affair for
you....’), ‘in destroying them, and will send these visitors
to the devil. I will come back to dinner, and we’ll set to
work. We will do, completely do, and undo these
scoundrels.’
The last words were read out in the midst of complete
silence. The tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was
evident that no one had understood the last part. In
particular, the words ‘I will come back to dinner,’
evidently displeased both reader and audience. The
people’s minds were tuned to a high pitch and this was
too simple and needlessly comprehensible- it was what
any one of them might have said and therefore was what
an ukase emanating from the highest authority should not
say.

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They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth

moved his lips and swayed from side to side.
‘We should ask him... that’s he himself?’... ‘Yes, ask
him indeed!... Why not? He’ll explain"... voices in the
rear of the crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the
general attention turned to the police superintendent’s trap
which drove into the square attended by two mounted
dragoons.
The superintendent of police, who had that morning by
Count Rostopchin’s orders to burn the barges and had in
connection with that matter acquired a large sum of
money which was at that moment in his pocket, on seeing
a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to
stop.
‘What people are these?’ he shouted to the men, who
were moving singly and timidly in the direction of his
trap.
‘What people are these?’ he shouted again, receiving
no answer.
‘Your honor...’ replied the shopman in the frieze coat,
‘your honor, in accord with the proclamation of his
highest excellency the count, they desire to serve, not
sparing their lives, and it is not any kind of riot, but as his
highest excellence said..’

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‘The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be

issued concerning you,’ said the superintendent of police.
‘Go on!’ he ordered his coachman.
The crowd halted, pressing around those who had
heard what the superintendent had said, and looking at the
departing trap.
The superintendent of police turned round at that
moment with a scared look, said something to his
coachman, and his horses increased their speed.
‘It’s a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!’
shouted the tall youth. ‘Don’t let him go, lads! Let him
answer us! Keep him!’ shouted different people and the
people dashed in pursuit of the trap.
Following the superintendent of police and talking
loudly the crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka
Street.
‘There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away
and left us to perish. Do they think we’re dogs?’ voices in
the crowd were heard saying more and more frequently.

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Chapter XXIV

On the evening of the first of September, after his

interview with Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned
to Moscow mortified and offended because he had not
been invited to attend the council of war, and because
Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in
the defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook
revealed to him at the camp, which treated the tranquillity
of the capital and its patriotic fervor as not merely
secondary but quite irrelevant and unimportant matters.
Distressed, offended, and surprised by all this, Rostopchin
had returned to Moscow. After supper he lay down on a
sofa without undressing, and was awakened soon after
midnight by a courier bringing him a letter from Kutuzov.
This letter requested the count to send police officers to
guide the troops through the town, as the army was
retreating to the Ryazan road beyond Moscow. This was
not news to Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow
would be abandoned not merely since his interview the
previous day with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but ever
since the battle of Borodino, for all the generals who
came to Moscow after that battle had said unanimously

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that it was impossible to fight another battle, and since

then the government property had been removed every
night, and half the inhabitants had left the city with
Rostopchin’s own permission. Yet all the same this
information astonished and irritated the count, coming as
it did in the form of a simple note with an order from
Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his beauty
sleep.
When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin
explained his actions at this time, he repeatedly says that
he was then actuated by two important considerations: to
maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the
departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold
aim all Rostopchin’s actions appear irreproachable. ‘Why
were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder,
and stores of corn not removed? Why were thousands of
inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would
not be given up- and thereby ruined?’ ‘To presence the
tranquillity of the city,’ explains Count Rostopchin. ‘Why
were bundles of useless papers from the government
offices, and Leppich’s balloon and other articles
removed?’ ‘To leave the town empty,’ explains Count
Rostopchin. One need only admit that public tranquillity
is in danger and any action finds a justification.

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All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only

on solicitude for public tranquillity.
On what, then, was Count Rostopchin’s fear for the
tranquillity of Moscow based in 1812? What reason was
there for assuming any probability of an uprising in the
city? The inhabitants were leaving it and the retreating
troops were filling it. Why should that cause the masses to
riot?
Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did
anything resembling an insurrection ever occur when the
enemy entered a town. More than ten thousand people
were still in Moscow on the first and second of
September, and except for a mob in the governor’s
courtyard, assembled there at his bidding, nothing
happened. It is obvious that there would have been even
less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if
after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of
Moscow became certain or at least probable, Rostopchin
instead of exciting the people by distributing arms and
broadsheets had taken steps to remove all the holy relics,
the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and had told the
population plainly that the town would be abandoned.
Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a
sanguine and impulsive man who had always moved in

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the highest administrative circles and had no

understanding at all of the people he supposed himself to
be guiding. Ever since the enemy’s entry into Smolensk
he had in imagination been playing the role of director of
the popular feeling of ‘the heart of Russia.’ Not only did it
seem to him (as to all administrators) that he controlled
the external actions of Moscow’s inhabitants, but he also
thought he controlled their mental attitude by means of
his broadsheets and posters, written in a coarse tone
which the people despise in their own class and do not
understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so
pleased with the fine role of leader of popular feeling, and
had grown so used to it, that the necessity of relinquishing
that role and abandoning Moscow without any heroic
display took him unawares and he suddenly felt the
ground slip away from under his feet, so that he positively
did not know what to do. Though he knew it was coming,
he did not till the last moment wholeheartedly believe that
Moscow would be abandoned, and did not prepare for it.
The inhabitants left against his wishes. If the government
offices were removed, this was only done on the demand
of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly. He was
absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is
often the case with those gifted with an ardent

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imagination, though he had long known that Moscow

would be abandoned he knew it only with his intellect, he
did not believe it in his heart and did not adapt himself
mentally to this new position of affairs.
All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it
was useful and had any effect on the people is another
question) had been simply directed toward arousing in the
masses his own feeling of patriotic hatred of the French.
But when events assumed their true historical
character, when expressing hatred for the French in words
proved insufficient, when it was not even possible to
express that hatred by fighting a battle, when self-
confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question
before Moscow, when the whole population streamed out
of Moscow as one man, abandoning their belongings and
proving by that negative action all the depth of their
national feeling, then the role chosen by Rostopchin
suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt
himself ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no ground to
stand on.
When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold,
peremptory note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated
the more he felt himself to blame. All that he had been
specially put in charge of, the state property which he

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should have removed, was still in Moscow and it was no

longer possible to take the whole of it away.
‘Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to
such a pass?’ he ruminated. ‘Not I, of course. I had
everything ready. I had Moscow firmly in hand. And this
is what they have let it come to! Villains! Traitors!’ he
thought, without clearly defining who the villains and
traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors
whoever they might be who were to blame for the false
and ridiculous position in which he found himself.
All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for
which people came to him from all parts of Moscow.
Those about him had never seen the count so morose and
irritable.
‘Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar’s
Department has sent for instructions... From the
Consistory, from the Senate, from the University, from
the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent... asking
for information.... What are your orders about the Fire
Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the
superintendent of the lunatic asylum...’ All night long
such announcements were continually being received by
the count.

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To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies

indicating that orders from him were not now needed, that
the whole affair, carefully prepared by him, had now been
ruined by somebody, and that that somebody would have
to bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.
‘Oh, tell that blockhead,’ he said in reply to the
question from the Registrar’s Department, ‘that he should
remain to guard his documents. Now why are you asking
silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They have horses,
let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the
French.’
‘Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic
asylum has come: what are your commands?’
‘My commands? Let them go away, that’s all.... And
let the lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command
our armies God evidently means these other madmen to
be free.’
In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison,
Count Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:
‘Do you expect me to give you two battalions- which
we have not got- for a convoy? Release them, that’s all
about it!’
‘Your excellency, there are some political prisoners,
Meshkov, Vereshchagin..’

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‘Vereshchagin! Hasn’t he been hanged yet?’ shouted

Rostopchin. ‘Bring him to me!’

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Chapter XXV

Toward nine o’clock in the morning, when the troops

were already moving through Moscow, nobody came to
the count any more for instructions. Those who were able
to get away were going of their own accord, those who
remained behind decided for themselves what they must
do.
The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to
Sokolniki, and sat in his study with folded hands, morose,
sallow, and taciturn.
In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every
administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole
population under his rule is kept going, and in this
consciousness of being indispensable every administrator
finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the
sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his
frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the
people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his
efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a
storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to
move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship
moves independently with its own enormous motion, the

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boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and

suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler
and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless,
feeble man.
Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated
him.
The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had
stopped, went in to see him at the same time as an
adjutant who informed the count that the horses were
harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent of
police, after reporting that he had executed the
instructions he had received, informed the count that an
immense crowd had collected in the courtyard and wished
to see him.
Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked
hastily to his light, luxurious drawing room, went to the
balcony door, took hold of the handle, let it go again, and
went to the window from which he had a better view of
the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in front,
flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern
look. The blood stained smith stood beside him with a
gloomy face. A drone of voices was audible through the
closed window.

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‘Is my carriage ready?’ asked Rostopchin, stepping

back from the window.
‘It is, your excellency,’ replied the adjutant.
Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.
‘But what do they want?’ he asked the superintendent
of police.
‘Your excellency, they say they have got ready,
according to your orders, to go against the French, and
they shouted something about treachery. But it is a
turbulent crowd, your excellency- I hardly managed to get
away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..’
‘You may go. I don’t need you to tell me what to do!’
exclaimed Rostopchin angrily.
He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.
‘This is what they have done with Russia! This is what
they have done with me!’ thought he, full of an
irrepressible fury that welled up within him against the
someone to whom what was happening might be
attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he
was mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on
which to vent it. ‘Here is that mob, the dregs of the
people,’ he thought as he gazed at the crowd: ‘this rabble
they have roused by their folly! They want a victim,’ he
thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his arm.

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And this thought occurred to him just because he himself

desired a victim, something on which to vent his rage.
‘Is the carriage ready?’ he asked again.
‘Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about
Vereshchagin? He is waiting at the porch,’ said the
adjutant.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an
unexpected recollection.
And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out
onto the balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and
caps were doffed, and all eyes were raised to the count.
‘Good morning, lads!’ said the count briskly and
loudly. ‘Thank you for coming. I’ll come out to you in a
moment, but we must first settle with the villain. We must
punish the villain who has caused the ruin of Moscow.
Wait for me!’
And the count stepped as briskly back into the room
and slammed the door behind him.
A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through
the crowd. ‘He’ll settle with all the villains, you’ll see!
And you said the French... He’ll show you what law is!’
the mob were saying as if reproving one another for their
lack of confidence.

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A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of

the front door, gave an order, and the dragoons formed up
in line. The crowd moved eagerly from the balcony
toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out there with
quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking
someone.
‘Where is he?’ he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a
young man coming round the corner of the house between
two dragoons. He had a long thin neck, and his head, that
had been half shaved, was again covered by short hair.
This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue cloth
coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and
dirty hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his
thin, dirty, trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs
were heavy chains which hampered his irresolute
movements.
‘Ah!’ said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes
from the young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to
the bottom step of the porch. ‘Put him there.’
The young man in his clattering chains stepped
clumsily to the spot indicated, holding away with one
finger the coat collar which chafed his neck, turned his
long neck twice this way and that, sighed, and

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submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to

work.
For several seconds while the young man was taking
his place on the step the silence continued. Only among
the back rows of the people, who were all pressing toward
the one spot, could sighs, groans, and the shuffling of feet
be heard.
While waiting for the young man to take his place on
the step Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face
with his hand.
‘Lads!’ said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. ‘This
man, Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing
Moscow is perishing.’
The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little,
stood in a submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before
him. His emaciated young face, disfigured by the half-
shaven head, hung down hopelessly. At the count’s first
words he raised it slowly and looked up at him as if
wishing to say something or at least to meet his eye. But
Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young
man’s long thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue
behind the ear, and suddenly his face flushed.
All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd,
and rendered more hopeful by the expression he read on

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the faces there, he smiled sadly and timidly, and lowering

his head shifted his feet on the step.
‘He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone
over to Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has
disgraced the Russian name, he has caused Moscow to
perish,’ said Rostopchin in a sharp, even voice, but
suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who
continued to stand in the same submissive attitude. As if
inflamed by the sight, he raised his arm and addressed the
people, almost shouting:
‘Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to
you.’
The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and
closer to one another. To keep one another back, to
breathe in that stifling atmosphere, to be unable to stir,
and to await something unknown, uncomprehended, and
terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those standing in
front, who had seen and heard what had taken place
before them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths,
straining with all their strength, and held back the crowd
that was pushing behind them.
‘Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the
Russian name!’ shouted Rostopchin. ‘Cut him down. I
command it.’

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Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of

Rostopchin’s voice, the crowd moaned and heaved
forward, but again paused.
‘Count!’ exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of
Vereshchagin in the midst of the momentary silence that
ensued, ‘Count! One God is above us both....’ He lifted
his head and again the thick vein in his thin neck filled
with blood and the color rapidly came and went in his
face.
He did not finish what he wished to say.
‘Cut him down! I command it...’ shouted Rostopchin,
suddenly growing pale like Vereshchagin.
‘Draw sabers!’ cried the dragoon officer, drawing his
own.
Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd
and reaching the front ranks carried it swaying to the very
steps of the porch. The tall youth, with a stony look on his
face, and rigid and uplifted arm, stood beside
Vereshchagin.
‘Saber him!’ the dragoon officer almost whispered.
And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted
with fury, struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt
side of his saber.

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‘Ah!’ cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking

round with a frightened glance as if not understanding
why this was done to him. A similar moan of surprise and
horror ran through the crowd. ‘O Lord!’ exclaimed a
sorrowful voice.
But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped
from Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and
that cry was fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained
to the utmost, that had held the crowd in check suddenly
broke. The crime had begun and must now be completed.
The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by the
threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh
and last wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible
wave burst from the rear and reached the front ranks,
carrying them off their feet and engulfing them all. The
dragoon was about to repeat his blow. Vereshchagin with
a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands, rushed
toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he
stumbled, seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling
wildly, fell with him under the feet of the pressing,
struggling crowd.
Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall
youth. And the screams of those that were being trampled
on and of those who tried to rescue the tall lad only

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increased the fury of the crowd. It was a long time before

the dragoons could extricate the bleeding youth, beaten
almost to death. And for a long time, despite the feverish
haste with which the mob tried to end the work that had
been begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and
tearing at Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the
crowd pressed from all sides, swaying as one mass with
them in the center and rendering it impossible for them
either to kill him or let him go.
‘Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold
Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture
serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What- still alive?’
Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries
changed to a long-drawn, measured death rattle did the
crowd around his prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly
to change places. Each one came up, glanced at what had
been done, and with horror, reproach, and astonishment
pushed back again.
‘O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could
he be alive?’ voices in the crowd could be heard saying.
‘Quite a young fellow too... must have been a merchant’s
son. What men!... and they say he’s not the right one....
How not the right one?... O Lord! And there’s another has
been beaten too- they say he’s nearly done for.... Oh, the

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people... Aren’t they afraid of sinning?...’ said the same

mob now, looking with pained distress at the dead body
with its long, thin, half-severed neck and its livid face
stained with blood and dust.
A painstaking police officer, considering the presence
of a corpse in his excellency’s courtyard unseemly, told
the dragoons to take it away. Two dragoons took it by its
distorted legs and dragged it along the ground. The gory,
dust-stained, half-shaven head with its long neck trailed
twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back from it.
At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd
closed in with savage yells and swayed about him,
Rostopchin suddenly turned pale and, instead of going to
the back entrance where his carriage awaited him, went
with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing where and
why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the
ground floor. The count’s face was white and he could not
control the feverish twitching of his lower jaw.
‘This way, your excellency... Where are you going?...
This way, please...’ said a trembling, frightened voice
behind him.
Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning
obediently, went in the direction indicated. At the back
entrance stood his caleche. The distant roar of the yelling

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crowd was audible even there. He hastily took his seat

and told the coachman to drive him to his country house
in Sokolniki.
When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no
longer hear the shouts of the mob, the count began to
repent. He remembered with dissatisfaction the agitation
and fear he had betrayed before his subordinates. ‘The
mob is terrible- disgusting,’ he said to himself in French.
‘They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can
appease.’ ‘Count! One God is above us both!’-
Vereshchagin’s words suddenly recurred to him, and a
disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this was only
a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled
disdainfully at himself. ‘I had other duties,’ thought he.
‘The people had to be appeased. Many other victims have
perished and are perishing for the public good’- and he
began thinking of his social duties to his family and to the
city entrusted to him, and of himself- not himself as
Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that
Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself
for the public good) but himself as governor, the
representative of authority and of the Tsar. ‘Had I been
simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action would

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have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard

my life and dignity as commander in chief.’
Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage
and no longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd,
Rostopchin grew physically calm and, as always happens,
as soon as he became physically tranquil his mind devised
reasons why he should be mentally tranquil too. The
thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new
one. Since the world began and men have killed one
another no one has ever committed such a crime against
his fellow man without comforting himself with this same
idea. This idea is le bien public, the hypothetical welfare
of other people.
To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never
certain, but he who commits such a crime always knows
just where that welfare lies. And Rostopchin now knew it.
Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he
had done, but he even found cause for self-satisfaction in
having so successfully contrived to avail himself of a
convenient opportunity to punish a criminal and at the
same time pacify the mob.
‘Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death,’
thought Rostopchin (though the Senate had only
condemned Vereshchagin to hard labor), ‘he was a traitor

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and a spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have

killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave
them a victim and at the same time punished a miscreant.’
Having reached his country house and begun to give
orders about domestic arrangements, the count grew quite
tranquil.
Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses
across the Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had
occurred but considering what was to come. He was
driving to the Yauza bridge where he had heard that
Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing
the angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to
Kutuzov for his deception. He would make that foxy old
courtier feel that the responsibility for all the calamities
that would follow the abandonment of the city and the
ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded it) would fall upon
his doting old head. Planning beforehand what he would
say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche
and gazed sternly from side to side.
The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it,
in front of the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be
seen some people in white and others like them walking
singly across the field shouting and gesticulating.

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One of these was running to cross the path of Count

Rostopchin’s carriage, and the count himself, his
coachman, and his dragoons looked with vague horror
and curiosity at these released lunatics and especially at
the one running toward them.
Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his
fluttering dressing gown, this lunatic was running
impetuously, his gaze fixed on Rostopchin, shouting
something in a hoarse voice and making signs to him to
stop. The lunatic’s solemn, gloomy face was thin and
yellow, with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black,
agate pupils with saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly
near the lower eyelids.
‘Stop! Pull up, I tell you!’ he cried in a piercing voice,
and again shouted something breathlessly with emphatic
intonations and gestures.
Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.
‘Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the
dead. They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall
rise... shall rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of
God will be overthrown... Thrice will I overthrow it and
thrice re-establish it!’ he cried, raising his voice higher
and higher.

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Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done

when the crowd closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned
away. ‘Go fas... faster!’ he cried in a trembling voice to
his coachman. The caleche flew over the ground as fast as
the horses could draw it, but for a long time Count
Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams
growing fainter in the distance, while his eyes saw
nothing but the astonished, frightened, bloodstained face
of ‘the traitor’ in the fur-lined coat.
Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already
felt that it had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood.
Even now he felt clearly that the gory trace of that
recollection would not pass with time, but that the terrible
memory would, on the contrary, dwell in his heart ever
more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He
seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: ‘Cut him
down! I command it...’
‘Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident
I said them.... I need not have said them,’ he thought.
‘And then nothing would have happened.’ He saw the
frightened and then infuriated face of the dragoon who
dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid reproach that boy
in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. ‘But I did not

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do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The

mob, the traitor... the public welfare,’ thought he.
Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was
hot. Kutuzov, dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by
the bridge toying with his whip in the sand when a
caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a general’s uniform
with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said
something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told
Kutuzov that he had come because Moscow, the capital,
was no more and only the army remained.
‘Things would have been different if your Serene
Highness had not told me that you would not abandon
Moscow without another battle; all this would not have
happened,’ he said.
Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what
was said to him, he was trying to read something peculiar
written at that moment on the face of the man addressing
him. Rostopchin grew confused and became silent.
Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his
penetrating gaze from Rostopchin’s face muttered softly:
‘No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!’
Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely
different when he spoke those words, or uttered them
purposely, knowing them to be meaningless, at any rate

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Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left him. And

strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count
Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the
bridge where he began with shouts to drive on the carts
that blocked the way.

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Chapter XXVI

Toward four o’clock in the afternoon Murat’s troops

were entering Moscow. In front rode a detachment of
Wurttemberg hussars and behind them rode the King of
Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church
of the Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to
await news from the advanced detachment as to the
condition in which they had found the citadel, le Kremlin.
Around Murat gathered a group of those who had
remained in Moscow. They all stared in timid
bewilderment at the strange, long-haired commander
dressed up in feathers and gold.
‘Is that their Tsar himself? He’s not bad!’ low voices
could be heard saying.
An interpreter rode up to the group.
‘Take off your cap... your caps!’ These words went
from one to another in the crowd. The interpreter
addressed an old porter and asked if it was far to the
Kremlin. The porter, listening in perplexity to the
unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that the

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interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what

was being said to him and slipped behind the others.
Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask
where the Russian army was. One of the Russians
understood what was asked and several voices at once
began answering the interpreter. A French officer,
returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to
Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been
barricaded and that there was probably an ambuscade
there.
‘Good!’ said Murat and, turning to one of the
gentlemen in his suite, ordered four light guns to be
moved forward to fire at the gates.
The guns emerged at a trot from the column following
Murat and advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the
end of the Vozdvizhenka Street they halted and drew in
the Square. Several French officers superintended the
placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin through
field glasses.
The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and
this sound troubled the French. They imagined it to be a
call to arms. A few infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate.
Beams and wooden screens had been put there, and two
musket shots rang out from under the gate as soon as an

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officer and men began to run toward it. A general who

was standing by the guns shouted some words of
command to the officer, and the latter ran back again with
his men.
The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
One shot struck a French soldier’s foot, and from
behind the screens came the strange sound of a few voices
shouting. Instantly as at a word of command the
expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of the French
general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of
them from the marshal to the least soldier, that place was
not the Vozdvizhenka, Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street,
nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in Moscow), but a
new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary.
And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the
gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen
blew the ash off their linstocks, and an officer gave the
word ‘Fire!’ This was followed by two whistling sounds
of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled against
the stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams and
screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over the
Square.

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A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding

over the stone-built Kremlin had died away the French
heard a strange sound above their head. Thousands of
crows rose above the walls and circled in the air, cawing
and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound
came a solitary human cry from the gateway and amid the
smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a
peasant’s coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the
French. ‘Fire!’ repeated the officer once more, and the
reports of a musket and of two cannon shots were heard
simultaneously. The gate again hidden by smoke.
Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the
French infantry soldiers and officers advanced to the gate.
In the gateway lay three wounded and four dead. Two
men in peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall,
toward the Znamenka.
‘Clear that away!’ said the officer, pointing to the
beams and the corpses, and the French soldiers, after
dispatching the wounded, threw the corpses over the
parapet.
Who these men were nobody knew. ‘Clear that away!’
was all that was said of them, and they were thrown over
the parapet and removed later on that they might not
stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent lines to their

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memory: ‘These wretches had occupied the sacred citadel,

having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,
and fired’ (the wretches) ‘at the French. Some of them
were sabered and the Kremlin was purged of their
presence.’
Murat was informed that the way had been cleared.
The French entered the gates and began pitching their
camp in the Senate Square. Out of the windows of the
Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the Square for
fuel and kindled fires there.
Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and
encamped along the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and
Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered themselves along the
Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy Streets. No
masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French
were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns
but lived in it as in a camp.
Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a
third of their original number, the French entered Moscow
in good marching order. It was a weary and famished, but
still a fighting and menacing army. But it remained an
army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their
different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various
regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and

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deserted houses, the army was lost forever and there came
into being something nondescript, neither citizens nor
soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five
weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer
formed an army. They were a mob of marauders, each
carrying a quantity of articles which seemed to him
valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left
Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but
merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey
which puts its paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and
having seized a handful of nuts will not open its fist for
fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes, the
French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish
because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon
what they had stolen was as impossible for them as it is
for the monkey to open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten
minutes after each regiment had entered a Moscow
district, not a soldier or officer was left. Men in military
uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the
windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In
cellars and storerooms similar men were busy among the
provisions, and in the yards unlocking or breaking open
coach house and stable doors, lighting fires in kitchens
and kneading and baking bread with rolled-up sleeves,

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and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or caressing women

and children. There were many such men both in the
shops and houses- but there was no army.
Order after order was issued by the French
commanders that day forbidding the men to disperse
about the town, sternly forbidding any violence to the
inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a roll call for
that very evening. But despite all these measures the men,
who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the
wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful
supplies. As a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together
when crossing a barren field, but gets out of hand and at
once disperses uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich
pastures, so did the army disperse all over the wealthy
city.
No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers-
like water percolating through sand- spread irresistibly
through the city in all directions from the Kremlin into
which they had first marched. The cavalry, on entering a
merchant’s house that had been abandoned and finding
there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went
on, all the same, to the next house which seemed to them
better. Many of them appropriated several houses,
chalked their names on them, and quarreled and even

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fought with other companies for them. Before they had

had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the
streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had
been abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to
be had for the taking. The officers followed to check the
soldiers and were involuntarily drawn into doing the
same. In Carriage Row carriages had been left in the
shops, and generals flocked there to select caleches and
coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had
remained invited commanding officers to their houses,
hoping thereby to secure themselves from being
plundered. There were masses of wealth and there seemed
no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the
French were other regions still unexplored and
unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might
be found. And Moscow engulfed the army ever deeper
and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground both the
dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and
in the same way the entry of the famished army into the
rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the
destruction of both the army and the wealthy city.
The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au
patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine,* the Russians to the
barbarity of the French. In reality, however, it was not,

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and could not be, possible to explain the burning of

Moscow by making any individual, or any group of
people, responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it
found itself in a position in which any town built of wood
was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it had, or had
not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted
Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings
has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several
days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes
without conflagrations when the house owners are in
residence and a police force is present, cannot help
burning when its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied
by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of the
Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves
meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to
billet troops in the villages of any district and the number
of fires in that district immediately increases. How much
then must the probability of fire be increased in an
abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are
quartered. ‘Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine’ and the
barbarity of the French were not to blame in the matter.
Moscow was set on fire by the soldiers’ pipes, kitchens,
and campfires, and by the carelessness of enemy soldiers
occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any

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arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason

to burn the houses- in any case a troublesome and
dangerous thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the
cause, for the same thing would have happened without
any incendiarism.
*To Rostopchin’s ferocious patriotism.
However tempting it might be for the French to blame
Rostopchin’s ferocity and for Russians to blame the
scoundrel Bonaparte, or later on to place an heroic torch
in the hands of their own people, it is impossible not to
see that there could be no such direct cause of the fire, for
Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house
must burn which is left by its owners and in which
strangers are allowed to live and cook their porridge.
Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, it is true, but by
those who had abandoned it and not by those who
remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did
not remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns,
simply because its inhabitants abandoned it and did not
welcome the French with bread and salt, nor bring them
the keys of the city.

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Chapter XXVII

The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating

starwise as it did, only reached the quarter where Pierre
was staying by the evening of the second of September.
After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual
circumstances, Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity.
He was completely obsessed by one persistent thought.
He did not know how or when this thought had taken such
possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past,
understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and
heard appeared to him like a dream.
He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of
life’s demands that enmeshed him, and which in his
present condition he was unable to unravel. He had gone
to Joseph Alexeevich’s house, on the plea of sorting the
deceased’s books and papers, only in search of rest from
life’s turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph
Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal,
solemn, and calm thoughts, quite contrary to the restless
confusion into which he felt himself being drawn. He
sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph Alexeevich’s study
he really found it. When he sat with his elbows on the

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dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study,

calm and significant memories of the last few days rose
one after another in his imagination, particularly of the
battle of Borodino and of that vague sense of his own
insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth,
simplicity, and strength of the class of men he mentally
classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his
reverie the idea occurred to him of taking part in the
popular defense of Moscow which he knew was
projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim to
get him a peasant’s coat and a pistol, confiding to him his
intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich’s house and
keeping his name secret. Then during the first day spent
in inaction and solitude (he tried several times to fix his
attention on the Masonic manuscripts, but was unable to
do so) the idea that had previously occurred to him of the
cabalistic significance of his name in connection with
Bonaparte’s more than once vaguely presented itself. But
the idea that he, L’russe Besuhof, was destined to set a
limit to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the
fancies that often passed through his mind and left no
trace behind.
When, having bought the coat merely with the object
of taking part among the people in the defense of

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Moscow, Pierre had met the Rostovs and Natasha had

said to him: ‘Are you remaining in Moscow?... How
splendid!’ the thought flashed into his mind that it really
would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for
him to remain there and do what he was predestined to do.
Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and
not lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the
Three Hills gate. But when he returned to the house
convinced that Moscow would not be defended, he
suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely
a possibility had now become absolutely necessary and
inevitable. He must remain in Moscow, concealing his
name, and must meet Napoleon and kill him, and either
perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe- which it
seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon.
Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on
Bonaparte’s life in 1809 by a German student in Vienna,
and knew that the student had been shot. And the risk to
which he would expose his life by carrying out his design
excited him still more.
Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to
this purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of
sacrifice and suffering in view of the common calamity,
the same feeling that had caused him to go to Mozhaysk

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on the twenty-fifth and to make his way to the very thick

of the battle and had now caused him to run away from
his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which
he was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without
undressing and eat the same food as Gerasim. The other
was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for
everything conventional, artificial, and human- for
everything the majority of men regard as the greatest
good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this
strange and fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace,
when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and life- all
that men so painstakingly acquire and guard- if it has any
worth has so only by reason the joy with which it can all
be renounced.
It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to
spend his last penny on drink, and a drunken man to
smash mirrors or glasses for no apparent reason and
knowing that it will cost him all the money he possesses:
the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which
from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it
were, his personal power and strength, affirming the
existence of a higher, nonhuman criterion of life.
From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling
for the first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been

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continuously under its influence, but only now found full

satisfaction for it. Moreover, at this moment Pierre was
supported in his design and prevented from renouncing it
by what he had already done in that direction. If he were
now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from
home, the peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement
to the Rostovs that he would remain in Moscow would all
become not merely meaningless but contemptible and
ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very sensitive.
Pierre’s physical condition, as is always the case,
corresponded to his mental state. The unaccustomed
coarse food, the vodka he drank during those days, the
absence of wine and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen,
two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa without
bedding- all this kept him in a state of excitement
bordering on insanity.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The French had
already entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of
acting he only thought about his undertaking, going over
its minutest details in his mind. In his fancy he did not
clearly picture to himself either the striking of the blow or
the death of Napoleon, but with extraordinary vividness
and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own destruction
and heroic endurance.

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‘Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!’

he thought. ‘Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly...
with pistol or dagger? But that is all the same! ‘It is not I
but the hand of Providence that punishes thee,’ I shall
say,’ thought he, imagining what he would say when
killing Napoleon. ‘Well then, take me and execute me!’
he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head with
a sad but firm expression.
While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was
talking to himself in this way, the study door opened and
on the threshold appeared the figure of Makar
Alexeevich, always so timid before but now quite
transformed.
His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and
distorted. He was obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he
grew confused at first, but noticing embarrassment on
Pierre’s face immediately grew bold and, staggering on
his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.
‘They’re frightened,’ he said confidentially in a hoarse
voice. ‘I say I won’t surrender, I say... Am I not right,
sir?’
He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the
table seized it with unexpected rapidity and ran out into
the corridor.

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Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar

Alexeevich, stopped him in the vestibule and tried to take
the pistol from him. Pierre, coming out into the corridor,
looked with pity and repulsion at the half-crazy old man.
Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held on to the
pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic
fancy in his head.
‘To arms! Board them! No, you shan’t get it,’ he
yelled.
‘That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness-
please, sir, to let go! Please, sir...’ pleaded Gerasim, trying
carefully to steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to
the door.
‘Who are you? Bonaparte!...’ shouted Makar
Alexeevich.
‘That’s not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and
rest. Allow me to have the pistol.’
‘Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?’
shouted Makar Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. ‘Board
them!’
‘Catch hold!’ whispered Gerasim to the porter.
They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and
dragged him to the door.

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The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of

a struggle and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.
Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream,
reverberated from the porch and the cook came running
into the vestibule.
‘It’s them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them,
horsemen!’ she cried.
Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and
in the now silent corridor the sound of several hands
knocking at the front door could be heard.

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Chapter XXVIII

Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his

design he would disclose neither his identity nor his
knowledge of French, stood at the half-open door of the
corridor, intending to conceal himself as soon as the
French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre did
not retire- an irresistible curiosity kept him there.
There were two of them. One was an officer- a tall,
soldierly, handsome man- the other evidently a private or
an orderly, sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks
and a dull expression. The officer walked in front, leaning
on a stick and slightly limping. When he had advanced a
few steps he stopped, having apparently decided that
these were good quarters, turned round to the soldiers
standing at the entrance, and in a loud voice of command
ordered them to put up the horses. Having done that, the
officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
mustache and lightly touched his hat.
‘Bonjour, la compagnie!’* said he gaily, smiling and
looking about him.
*"Good day, everybody!’
No one gave any reply.

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‘Vous etes le bourgeois?’* the officer asked Gerasim.

*"Are you the master here?’
Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and
inquiring look.
‘Quartier, quartier, logement!’ said the officer, looking
down at the little man with a condescending and good-
natured smile. ‘Les francais sont de bons enfants. Que
diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons pas, mon vieux!’*
added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim on the
shoulder. ‘Well, does no one speak French in this
establishment?’ he asked again in French, looking around
and meeting Pierre’s eyes. Pierre moved away from the
door.
*"Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good
fellows. What the devil! There, don’t let us be cross, old
fellow!’
Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to
show him the rooms in the house.
‘Master, not here- don’t understand... me, you...’ said
Gerasim, trying to render his words more comprehensible
by contorting them.
Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands
before Gerasim’s nose, intimating that he did not
understand him either, and moved, limping, to the door at

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which Pierre was standing. Pierre wished to go away and

conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar
Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the
pistol in his hand. With a madman’s cunning, Makar
Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his pistol, and
took aim.
‘Board them!’ yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the
trigger. Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at
the same moment Pierre threw himself on the drunkard.
Just when Pierre snatched at and struck up the pistol
Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the trigger,
there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a
cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to
the door.
Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of
French, Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it
down, ran up to the officer and addressed him in French.
‘You are not wounded?’ he asked.
‘I think not,’ answered the Frenchman, feeling himself
over. ‘But I have had a lucky escape this time,’ he added,
pointing to the damaged plaster of the wall. ‘Who is that
man?’ said he, looking sternly at Pierre.
‘Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred,’ said
Pierre rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to

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play. ‘He is an unfortunate madman who did not know

what he was doing.’
The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him
by the collar.
Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips,
swaying, as if about to fall asleep, as he leaned against the
wall.
‘Brigand! You shall pay for this,’ said the Frenchman,
letting go of him. ‘We French are merciful after victory,
but we do not pardon traitors,’ he added, with a look of
gloomy dignity and a fine energetic gesture.
Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not
to hold that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman
listened in silence with the same gloomy expression, but
suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For a few seconds
he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a
melodramatically gentle expression and he held out his
hand.
‘You have saved my life. You are French,’ said he.
For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only
a Frenchman could perform a great deed, and to save his
life- the life of M. Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light
Regiment- was undoubtedly a very great deed.

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But however indubitable that conclusion and the

officer’s conviction based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary
to disillusion him.
‘I am Russian,’ he said quickly.
‘Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others,’ said the officer,
waving his finger before his nose and smiling. ‘You shall
tell me all about that presently. I am delighted to meet a
compatriot. Well, and what are we to do with this man?’
he added, addressing himself to Pierre as to a brother.
Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once
received that loftiest of human appellations he could not
renounce it, said the officer’s look and tone. In reply to
his last question Pierre again explained who Makar
Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival that
drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they
had not had time to recover from him, and begged the
officer to let the deed go unpunished.
The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a
majestic gesture with his arm.
‘You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his
pardon? I grant it you. Lead that man away!’ said he
quickly and energetically, and taking the arm of Pierre
whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his
life, he went with him into the room.

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The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into

the passage asking what had happened, and expressed
their readiness to punish the culprits, but the officer
sternly checked them.
‘You will be called in when you are wanted,’ he said.
The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had
meanwhile had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his
officer.
‘Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the
kitchen,’ said he. ‘Shall I serve them up?’
‘Yes, and some wine,’ answered the captain.

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Chapter XXIX

When the French officer went into the room with

Pierre the latter again thought it his duty to assure him
that he was not French and wished to go away, but the
officer would not hear of it. He was so very polite,
amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre
for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse,
and sat down with him in the parlor- the first room they
entered. To Pierre’s assurances that he was not a
Frenchman, the captain, evidently not understanding how
anyone could decline so flattering an appellation,
shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre absolutely
insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all
that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for
saving his life.
Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity
for perceiving the feelings of others, and had he at all
understood what Pierre’s feelings were, the latter would
probably have left him, but the man’s animated
obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed
Pierre.

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‘A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito,’ said the

officer, looking at Pierre’s fine though dirty linen and at
the ring on his finger. ‘I owe my life to you and offer you
my friendship. A Frenchman never forgets either an insult
or a service. I offer you my friendship. That is all I can
say.’
There was so much good nature and nobility (in the
French sense of the word) in the officer’s voice, in the
expression of his face and in his gestures, that Pierre,
unconsciously smiling in response to the Frenchman’s
smile, pressed the hand held out to him.
‘Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment,
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for the affair on the
seventh of September,’ he introduced himself, a self-
satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under his
mustache. ‘Will you now be so good as to tell me with
whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly,
instead of being in the ambulance with that maniac’s
bullet in my body?’
Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and,
blushing, began to try to invent a name and to say
something about his reason for concealing it, but the
Frenchman hastily interrupted him.

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‘Oh, please!’ said he. ‘I understand your reasons. You

are an officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have
borne arms against us. That’s not my business. I owe you
my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at your service.
You belong to the gentry?’ he concluded with a shade of
inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. ‘Your baptismal
name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre,
you say.... That’s all I want to know.’
When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a
samovar and vodka brought, with some wine which the
French had taken from a Russian cellar and brought with
them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and
himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy
and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his
strong teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating-
‘Excellent! Delicious!’ His face grew red and was
covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared
the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought
some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of claret
in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the
kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known
to the French and had been given a special name. They
called it limonade de cochon (pig’s lemonade), and Morel
spoke well of the limonade de cochon he had found in the

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kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had taken
while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel
and applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He
wrapped the bottle up to its neck in a table napkin and
poured out wine for himself and for Pierre. The
satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the
captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all
through dinner.
‘Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive
candle for saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have
bullets enough in my body already. Here is one I got at
Wagram’ (he touched his side) ‘and a second at
Smolensk’- he showed a scar on his cheek- ‘and this leg
which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the
seventh at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It
was splendid! That deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was
a tough job you set us there, my word! You may be proud
of it! And on my honor, in spite of the cough I caught
there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who
did not see it.’
‘I was there,’ said Pierre.
‘Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly
brave foes. The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!’
continued the Frenchman. ‘And you made us pay dear for

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it. I was at it three times- sure as I sit here. Three times we

reached the guns and three times we were thrown back
like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur
Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw
them close up their ranks six times in succession and
march as if on parade. Fine fellows! Our King of Naples,
who knows what’s what, cried ‘Bravo!’ Ha, ha! So you
are one of us soldiers!’ he added, smiling, after a
momentary pause. ‘So much the better, so much the
better, Monsieur Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with
the fair’ (he winked and smiled), ‘that’s what the French
are, Monsieur Pierre, aren’t they?’
The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay,
so real, and so pleased with himself that Pierre almost
winked back as he looked merrily at him. Probably the
word ‘gallant’ turned the captain’s thoughts to the state of
Moscow.
‘Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have
all left Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be
afraid of?’
‘Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the
Russians entered it?’ asked Pierre.

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‘Ha, ha, ha!’ The Frenchman emitted a merry,

sanguine chuckle, patting Pierre on the shoulder. ‘What a
thing to say!’ he exclaimed. ‘Paris?... But Paris, Paris..’
‘Paris- the capital of the world,’ Pierre finished his
remark for him.
The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of
stopping short in the middle of his talk and gazing intently
with his laughing, kindly eyes.
‘Well, if you hadn’t told me you were Russian, I
should have wagered that you were Parisian! You have
that... I don’t know what, that...’ and having uttered this
compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.
‘I have been in Paris. I spent years there,’ said Pierre.
‘Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who
doesn’t know Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian
two leagues off. Paris is Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the
Sorbonne, the boulevards,’ and noticing that his
conclusion was weaker than what had gone before, he
added quickly: ‘There is only one Paris in the world. You
have been to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I
don’t esteem you the less for it.’
Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after
the days he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts,

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Pierre involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and

good-natured man.
‘To return to your ladies- I hear they are lovely. What
a wretched idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes
when the French army is in Moscow. What a chance those
girls have missed! Your peasants, now- that’s another
thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know us
better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples,
Rome, Warsaw, all the world’s capitals.... We are feared,
but we are loved. We are nice to know. And then the
Emperor...’ he began, but Pierre interrupted him.
‘The Emperor,’ Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly
became sad and embarrassed, ‘is the Emperor...?’
‘The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order,
genius- that’s what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who
tell you so.... I assure you I was his enemy eight years
ago. My father was an emigrant count.... But that man has
vanquished me. He has taken hold of me. I could not
resist the sight of the grandeur and glory with which he
has covered France. When I understood what he wanted-
when I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us,
you know, I said to myself: ‘That is a monarch,’ and I
devoted myself to him! So there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is
the greatest man of the ages past or future.’

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‘Is he in Moscow?’ Pierre stammered with a guilty

look.
The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.
‘No, he will make his entry tomorrow,’ he replied, and
continued his talk.
Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of
several voices at the gate and by Morel, who came to say
that some Wurttemberg hussars had come and wanted to
put up their horses in the yard where the captain’s horses
were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because the
hussars did not understand what was said to them in
French.
The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a
stern voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who
was his commanding officer, and by what right he
allowed himself to claim quarters that were already
occupied. The German who knew little French, answered
the two first questions by giving the names of his
regiment and of his commanding officer, but in reply to
the third question which he did not understand said,
introducing broken French into his own German, that he
was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander
had ordered him to occupy all the houses one after
another. Pierre, who knew German, translated what the

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German said to the captain and gave the captain’s reply to

the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had
understood what was said to him, the German submitted
and took his men elsewhere. The captain went out into the
porch and gave some orders in a loud voice.
When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the
same place as before, with his head in his hands. His face
expressed suffering. He really was suffering at that
moment. When the captain went out and he was left
alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the
position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken
or that the happy conquerors were masters in it and were
patronizing him. Painful as that was it was not that which
tormented Pierre at the moment. He was tormented by the
consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of
wine he had drunk and the conversation with this good-
natured man had destroyed the mood of concentrated
gloom in which he had spent the last few days and which
was essential for the execution of his design. The pistol,
dagger, and peasant coat were ready. Napoleon was to
enter the town next day. Pierre still considered that it
would be a useful and worthy action to slay the evildoer,
but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know
why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not carry out

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his intention. He struggled against the confession of his

weakness but dimly felt that he could not overcome it and
that his former gloomy frame of mind, concerning
vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice, had been dispersed
like dust by contact with the first man he met.
The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and
whistling a tune.
The Frenchman’s chatter which had previously amused
Pierre now repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his
gait, and the gesture with which he twirled his mustache,
all now seemed offensive. ‘I will go away immediately. I
won’t say another word to him,’ thought Pierre. He
thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange
feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get
up and go away, but could not do so.
The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful.
He paced up and down the room twice. His eyes shone
and his mustache twitched as if he were smiling to
himself at some amusing thought.
‘The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful,’ he
suddenly said. ‘He’s a German, but a nice fellow all the
same.... But he’s a German.’ He sat down facing Pierre.
‘By the way, you know German, then?’
Pierre looked at him in silence.

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‘What is the German for ‘shelter’?’

‘Shelter?’ Pierre repeated. ‘The German for shelter is
Unterkunft.’
‘How do you say it?’ the captain asked quickly and
doubtfully.
‘Unterkunft,’ Pierre repeated.
‘Onterkoff,’ said the captain and looked at Pierre for
some seconds with laughing eyes. ‘These Germans are
first-rate fools, don’t you think so, Monsieur Pierre?’ he
concluded.
‘Well, let’s have another bottle of this Moscow
Bordeaux, shall we? Morel will warm us up another little
bottle. Morel!’ he called out gaily.
Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The
captain looked at Pierre by the candlelight and was
evidently struck by the troubled expression on his
companion’s face. Ramballe, with genuine distress and
sympathy in his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.
‘There now, we’re sad,’ said he, touching Pierre’s
hand. ‘Have I upset you? No, really, have you anything
against me?’ he asked Pierre. ‘Perhaps it’s the state of
affairs?’

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Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the

Frenchman’s eyes whose expression of sympathy was
pleasing to him.
‘Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel
friendship for you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of
me. It is for life and death. I say it with my hand on my
heart!’ said he, striking his chest.
‘Thank you,’ said Pierre.
The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when
he learned that ‘shelter’ was Unterkunft in German, and
his face suddenly brightened.
‘Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!’ he cried
gaily, filling two glasses with wine.
Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe
emptied his too, again pressed Pierre’s hand, and leaned
his elbows on the table in a pensive attitude.
‘Yes, my dear friend,’ he began, ‘such is fortune’s
caprice. Who would have said that I should be a soldier
and a captain of dragoons in the service of Bonaparte, as
we used to call him? Yet here I am in Moscow with him. I
must tell you, mon cher,’ he continued in the sad and
measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story,
‘that our name is one of the most ancient in France.’

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And with a Frenchman’s easy and naive frankness the

captain told Pierre the story of his ancestors, his
childhood, youth, and manhood, and all about his
relations and his financial and family affairs, ‘ma pauvre
mere’ playing of course an important part in the story.
‘But all that is only life’s setting, the real thing is love-
love! Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?’ said he, growing
animated. ‘Another glass?’
Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a
third.
‘Oh, women, women!’ and the captain, looking with
glistening eyes at Pierre, began talking of love and of his
love affairs.
There were very many of these, as one could easily
believe, looking at the officer’s handsome, self-satisfied
face, and noting the eager enthusiasm with which he
spoke of women. Though all Ramballe’s love stories had
the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the
special charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story
with such sincere conviction that he alone had
experienced and known all the charm of love and he
described women so alluringly that Pierre listened to him
with curiosity.

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It was plain that l’amour which the Frenchman was so

fond of was not that low and simple kind that Pierre had
once felt for his wife, nor was it the romantic love
stimulated by himself that he experienced for Natasha.
(Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the
one he considered the ‘love of clodhoppers’ and the other
the ‘love of simpletons.’) L’amour which the Frenchman
worshiped consisted principally in the unnaturalness of
his relation to the woman and in a combination of
incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.
Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his
love for a fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the
same time for a charming, innocent child of seventeen,
daughter of the bewitching marquise. The conflict of
magnanimity between the mother and the daughter,
ending in the mother’s sacrificing herself and offering her
daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the
captain, though it was the memory of a distant past. Then
he recounted an episode in which the husband played the
part of the lover, and he- the lover- assumed the role of
the husband, as well as several droll incidents from his
recollections of Germany, where ‘shelter’ is called
Unterkunft and where the husbands eat sauerkraut and the
young girls are ‘too blonde.’

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Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the

captain’s memory, and which he narrated with rapid
gestures and glowing face, was of how he had saved the
life of a Pole (in general, the saving of life continually
occurred in the captain’s stories) and the Pole had
entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur)
while himself entering the French service. The captain
was happy, the enchanting Polish lady wished to elope
with him, but, prompted by magnanimity, the captain
restored the wife to the husband, saying as he did so: ‘I
have saved your life, and I save your honor!’ Having
repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave
himself a shake, as if driving away the weakness which
assailed him at this touching recollection.
Listening to the captain’s tales, Pierre- as often
happens late in the evening and under the influence of
wine- followed all that was told him, understood it all,
and at the same time followed a train of personal
memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his
mind. While listening to these love stories his own love
for Natasha unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over
the pictures of that love in his imagination he mentally
compared them with Ramballe’s tales. Listening to the
story of the struggle between love and duty, Pierre saw

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before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting

with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At
the time of that meeting it had not produced an effect
upon him- he had not even once recalled it. But now it
seemed to him that that meeting had had in it something
very important and poetic.
‘Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized
you,’ he now seemed to hear the words she had uttered
and to see before him her eyes, her smile, her traveling
hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and there seemed to
him something pathetic and touching in all this.
Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish
lady, the captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a
similar impulse to sacrifice himself for love and a feeling
of envy of the legitimate husband.
Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and
felt a need to express the thoughts that filled his mind. He
began to explain that he understood love for a women
somewhat differently. He said that in all his life he had
loved and still loved only one woman, and that she could
never be his.
‘Tiens!’ said the captain.
Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman
from his earliest years, but that he had not dared to think

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of her because she was too young, and because he had

been an illegitimate son without a name. Afterwards when
he had received a name and wealth he dared not think of
her because he loved her too well, placing her far above
everything in the world, and especially therefore above
himself.
When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the
captain whether he understood that.
The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he
did not understand it he begged Pierre to continue.
‘Platonic love, clouds...’ he muttered.
Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse
of frankness, or the thought that this man did not, and
never would, know any of those who played a part in his
story, or whether it was all these things together,
something loosened Pierre’s tongue. Speaking thickly and
with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he told the whole
story of his life: his marriage, Natasha’s love for his best
friend, her betrayal of him, and all his own simple
relations with her. Urged on by Ramballe’s questions he
also told what he had at first concealed- his own position
and even his name.
More than anything else in Pierre’s story the captain
was impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had

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two mansions in Moscow, and that he had abandoned

everything and not left the city, but remained there
concealing his name and station.
When it was late at night they went out together into
the street. The night was warm and light. To the left of the
house on the Pokrovka a fire glowed- the first of those
that were beginning in Moscow. To the right and high up
in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and opposite
to it hung that bright comet which was connected in
Pierre’s heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim,
the cook, and two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their
mutually incomprehensible remarks in two languages
could be heard. They were looking at the glow seen in the
town.
There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire
in the immense city.
Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the
comet, and at the glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a
joyful emotion. ‘There now, how good it is, what more
does one need?’ thought he. And suddenly remembering
his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he leaned
against the fence to save himself from falling.

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Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the

gate with unsteady steps and returning to his room lay
down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.

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Chapter XXX

The glow of the first fire that began on the second of

September was watched from the various roads by the
fugitive Muscovites and by the retreating troops, with
many different feelings.
The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen
miles from Moscow. They had started so late on the first
of September, the road had been so blocked by vehicles
and troops, so many things had been forgotten for which
servants were sent back, that they had decided to spend
that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next
morning they woke late and were again delayed so often
that they only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten
o’clock that evening the Rostov family and the wounded
traveling with them were all distributed in the yards and
huts of that large village. The Rostovs’ servants and
coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after
attending to their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and
came out into the porches.
In a neighboring hut lay Raevski’s adjutant with a
fractured wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him
moan incessantly and piteously, and his moaning sounded

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terrible in the darkness of the autumn night. He had spent

the first night in the same yard as the Rostovs. The
countess said she had been unable to close her eyes on
account of his moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into
a worse hut simply to be farther away from the wounded
man.
In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed,
above the high body of a coach standing before the porch,
the small glow of another fire. One glow had long been
visible and everybody knew that it was Little Mytishchi
burning- set on fire by Mamonov’s Cossacks.
‘But look here, brothers, there’s another fire!’
remarked an orderly.
All turned their attention to the glow.
‘But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire
by Mamonov’s Cossacks.’
‘But that’s not Mytishchi, it’s farther away.’
‘Look, it must be in Moscow!’
Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the
coach and sat down on its steps.
‘It’s more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over
there, and this is right on the other side.’
Several men joined the first two.

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‘See how it’s flaring,’ said one. ‘That’s a fire in

Moscow: either in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski
quarter.’
No one replied to this remark and for some time they
all gazed silently at the spreading flames of the second
fire in the distance.
Old Daniel Terentich, the count’s valet (as he was
called), came up to the group and shouted at Mishka.
‘What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The
count will be calling and there’s nobody there; go and
gather the clothes together.’
‘I only ran out to get some water,’ said Mishka.
‘But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn’t it
look as if that glow were in Moscow?’ remarked one of
the footmen.
Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long
time they were all silent. The glow spread, rising and
failing, farther and farther still.
‘God have mercy.... It’s windy and dry...’ said another
voice.
‘Just look! See what it’s doing now. O Lord! You can
even see the crows flying. Lord have mercy on us
sinners!’
‘They’ll put it out, no fear!’

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‘Who’s to put it out?’ Daniel Terentich, who had

hitherto been silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm
and deliberate. ‘Moscow it is, brothers,’ said he. ‘Mother
Moscow, the white...’ his voice faltered, and he gave way
to an old man’s sob.
And it was as if they had all only waited for this to
realize the significance for them of the glow they were
watching. Sighs were heard, words of prayer, and the
sobbing of the count’s old valet.

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Chapter XXXI

The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count

that Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing
gown and went out to look. Sonya and Madame Schoss,
who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only
Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya
was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his
regiment which was making for Troitsa.
The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire,
began to cry. Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting
on the bench under the icons just where she had sat down
on arriving and paid no attention to her father’s words.
She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the
adjutant, three houses off.
‘Oh, how terrible,’ said Sonya returning from the yard
chilled and frightened. ‘I believe the whole of Moscow
will burn, there’s an awful glow! Natasha, do look! You
can see it from the window,’ she said to her cousin,
evidently wishing to distract her mind.
But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what
was said to her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of
the stove. She had been in this condition of stupor since

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the morning, when Sonya, to the surprise and annoyance

of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found
it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew’s wound
and of his being with their party. The countess had
seldom been so angry with anyone as she was with Sonya.
Sonya had cried and begged to be forgiven and now, as if
trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing attention to
her cousin.
‘Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!’ said she.
‘What’s burning?’ asked Natasha. ‘Oh, yes, Moscow.’
And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of
her, she turned her face to the window, looked out in such
a way that it was evident that she could not see anything,
and again settled down in her former attitude.
‘But you didn’t see it!’
‘Yes, really I did,’ Natasha replied in a voice that
pleaded to be left in peace.
Both the countess and Sonya understood that,
naturally, neither Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor
anything else could seem of importance to Natasha.
The count returned and lay down behind the partition.
The countess went up to her daughter and touched her
head with the back of her hand as she was wont to do
when Natasha was ill, then touched her forehead with her

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lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and finally

kissed her.
‘You are cold. You are trembling all over. You’d better
lie down,’ said the countess.
‘Lie down? All right, I will. I’ll lie down at once,’ said
Natasha.
When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince
Andrew was seriously wounded and was traveling with
their party, she had at first asked many questions: Where
was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious?
And could she see him? But after she had been told that
she could not see him, that he was seriously wounded but
that his life was not in danger, she ceased to ask questions
or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving what they told
her, and convinced that say what she might she would still
be told the same. All the way she had sat motionless in a
corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the
expression in them which the countess knew so well and
feared so much, and now she sat in the same way on the
bench where she had seated herself on arriving. She was
planning something and either deciding or had already
decided something in her mind. The countess knew this,
but what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed
and tormented her.

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‘Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed.’

A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess
only. Madame Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on
some hay on the floor.
‘No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor,’
Natasha replied irritably and she went to the window and
opened it. Through the open window the moans of the
adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put her head
out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her slim
neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window
frame. Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was
moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in the same yard
as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage;
but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The
countess exchanged a look with Sonya.
‘Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet,’ said the
countess, softly touching Natasha’s shoulders. ‘Come, lie
down.’
‘Oh, yes... I’ll lie down at once,’ said Natasha, and
began hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her
petticoat.
When she had thrown off her dress and put on a
dressing jacket, she sat down with her foot under her on
the bed that had been made up on the floor, jerked her

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thin and rather short plait of hair to the front, and began
replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly
unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved
from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly
wide, looked fixedly before her. When her toilet for the
night was finished she sank gently onto the sheet spread
over the hay on the side nearest the door.
‘Natasha, you’d better lie in the middle,’ said Sonya.
‘I’ll stay here,’ muttered Natasha. ‘Do lie down,’ she
added crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.
The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed
hastily and lay down. The small lamp in front of the icons
was the only light left in the room. But in the yard there
was a light from the fire at Little Mytishchi a mile and a
half away, and through the night came the noise of people
shouting at a tavern Mamonov’s Cossacks had set up
across the street, and the adjutant’s unceasing moans
could still be heard.
For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the
sounds that reached her from inside and outside the room
and did not move. First she heard her mother praying and
sighing and the creaking of her bed under her, then
Madame Schoss’ familiar whistling snore and Sonya’s

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gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha.

Natasha did not answer.
‘I think she’s asleep, Mamma,’ said Sonya softly.
After short silence the countess spoke again but this
time no one replied.
Soon after that Natasha heard her mother’s even
breathing. Natasha did not move, though her little bare
foot, thrust out from under the quilt, was growing cold on
the bare floor.
As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket
chirped in a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and
another replied near by. The shouting in the tavern had
died down; only the moaning of the adjutant was heard.
Natasha sat up.
‘Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?’ she whispered.
No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully,
crossed herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and
dirty floor with her slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of
the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one foot to
the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and
grasped the cold door handle.
It seemed to her that something heavy was beating
rhythmically against all the walls of the room: it was her

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own heart, sinking with alarm and terror and overflowing

with love.
She opened the door and stepped across the threshold
and onto the cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The
cold she felt refreshed her. With her bare feet she touched
a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened the door
into the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was
dark in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench beside a
bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle
with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.
From the moment she had been told that of Prince
Andrew’s wound and his presence there, Natasha had
resolved to see him. She did not know why she had to, she
knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the more
convinced that it was necessary.
All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that
night. But now that the moment had come she was filled
with dread of what she might see. How was he maimed?
What was left of him? Was he like that incessant moaning
of the adjutant’s? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her
imagination he was that terrible moaning personified.
When she saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and
mistook his knees raised under the quilt for his shoulders,
she imagined a horrible body there, and stood still in

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terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She

cautiously took one step and then another, and found
herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage.
Another man- Timokhin- was lying in a corner on the
benches beneath the icons, and two others- the doctor and
a valet- lay on the floor.
The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin,
kept awake by the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with
wide-open eyes at this strange apparition of a girl in a
white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap. The valet’s
sleepy, frightened exclamation, ‘What do you want?
What’s the matter?’ made Natasha approach more swiftly
to what was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as
that body looked, she must see him. She passed the valet,
the snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw Prince
Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and such
as she had always seen him.
He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his
face, his glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and
especially his neck, delicate as a child’s, revealed by the
turn-down collar of his shirt, gave him a peculiarly
innocent, childlike look, such as she had never seen on
him before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible,
youthful movement dropped on her knees.

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He smiled and held out his hand to her.

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Chapter XXXII

Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found

himself in the ambulance station on the field of Borodino.
His feverish state and the inflammation of his bowels,
which were injured, were in the doctor’s opinion sure to
carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with pleasure
a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that
his temperature was lower. He had regained
consciousness that morning. The first night after they left
Moscow had been fairly warm and he had remained in the
caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked
to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by
his removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and
again lose consciousness. When he had been placed on his
camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with closed
eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: ‘And
the tea?’ His remembering such a small detail of everyday
life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew’s pulse,
and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had
improved. He was dissatisfied because he knew by
experience that if his patient did not die now, he would do
so a little later with greater suffering. Timokhin, the red-

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nosed major of Prince Andrew’s regiment, had joined him

in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having
been wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They
were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s valet, his
coach. man, and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it
eagerly, looking with feverish eyes at the door in front of
him as if trying to understand and remember something.
‘I don’t want any more. Is Timokhin here?’ he asked.
Timokhin crept along the bench to him.
‘I am here, your excellency.’
‘How’s your wound?’
‘Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?’
Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to
remember something.
‘Couldn’t one get a book?’ he asked.
‘What book?’
‘The Gospels. I haven’t one.’
The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to
ask how he was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his
questions reluctantly but reasonably, and then said he
wanted a bolster placed under him as he was
uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet
lifted the cloak with which he was covered and, making

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wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that

came from the wound, began examining that dreadful
place. The doctor was very much displeased about
something and made a change in the dressings, turning the
wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew
unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking
them to get him the book and put it under him.
‘What trouble would it be to you?’ he said. ‘I have not
got one. Please get it for me and put it under for a
moment,’ he pleaded in a piteous voice.
The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
‘You fellows have no conscience,’ said he to the valet
who was pouring water over his hands. ‘For just one
moment I didn’t look after you... It’s such pain, you
know, that I wonder how he can bear it.’
‘By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put
something under him!’ said the valet.
The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was
and what was the matter with him and remembered being
wounded and how was when he asked to be carried into
the hut after his caleche had stopped at Mytishchi. After
growing confused from pain while being carried into the
hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking
tea once more recalled all that had happened to him, and

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above all vividly remembered the moment at the

ambulance station when, at the sight of the sufferings of a
man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to him
which promised him happiness. And those thoughts,
though now vague and indefinite, again possessed his
soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of
happiness and that this happiness had something to do
with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of
them. The uncomfortable position in which they had put
him and turned him over again confused his thoughts, and
when he came to himself a third time it was in the
complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him was
sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage;
someone was shouting and singing in the street;
cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on the
walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and
around the candle beside him, the wick of which was
charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.
His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man
usually thinks of, feels, and remembers innumerable
things simultaneously, but has the power and will to select
one sequence of thoughts or events on which to fix his
whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away
from the deepest reflections to say a civil word to

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someone who comes in and can then return again to his

own thoughts. But Prince Andrew’s mind was not in a
normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind
were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted
apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images
occupied him simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly
began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had
never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the
midst of its work it would turn to some unexpected idea
and he had not the strength to turn it back again.
‘Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which
man cannot be deprived,’ he thought as he lay in the semi-
darkness of the quiet hut, gazing fixedly before him with
feverish wide open eyes. ‘A happiness lying beyond
material forces, outside the material influences that act on
man- a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of
loving. Every man can understand it, but to conceive it
and enjoin it was possible only for God. But how did God
enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?’
And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke
off, and Prince Andrew heard (without knowing whether
it was a delusion or reality) a soft whispering voice
incessantly and rhythmically repeating ‘piti-piti-piti,’ and
then ‘titi,’ and then again ‘piti-piti-piti,’ and ‘ti-ti’ once

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more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was
being erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the
sound of this whispered music. He felt that he had to
balance carefully (though it was difficult) so that this airy
structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept
collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of
whispered rhythmic music- ‘it stretches, stretches,
spreading out and stretching,’ said Prince Andrew to
himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling the
sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this
edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo
round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches
and the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow
and his face. Each time the fly touched his face it gave
him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not
destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very
region of his face where it was rising. But besides this
there was something else of importance. It was something
white by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also
oppressed him.
‘But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,’ he thought,
‘and that’s my legs, and that is the door, but why is it
always stretching and drawing itself out, and ‘piti-piti-

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piti’ and ‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...? That’s enough, please

leave off!’ Prince Andrew painfully entreated someone.
And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the
surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and force.
‘Yes- love,’ he thought again quite clearly. ‘But not
love which loves for something, for some quality, for
some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I-
while dying- first experienced when I saw my enemy and
yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is
the very essence of the soul and does not require an
object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one’s
neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love everything, to
love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love
someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can
only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced
such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has
become of him? Is he alive?...
‘When loving with human love one may pass from
love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither
death nor anything else can destroy it. It is the very
essence of the soul. Yet how many people have I hated in
my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did
her.’ And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as
he had done in the past with nothing but her charms

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which gave him delight, but for the first time picturing to
himself her soul. And he understood her feelings, her
sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for
the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the
cruelty of his rupture with her. ‘If only it were possible
for me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those
eyes to say..’
‘Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!’ flopped
the fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into
another world, a world of reality and delirium in which
something particular was happening. In that world some
structure was still being erected and did not fall,
something was still stretching out, and the candle with its
red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx
lay near the door; but besides all this something creaked,
there was a whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx
appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had the
pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of whom
he had just been thinking.
‘Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,’
thought Prince Andrew, trying to drive that face from his
imagination. But the face remained before him with the
force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew wished to
return that former world of pure thought, but he could not,

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and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft
whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur,
something oppressed him and stretched out, and the
strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a
little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a
dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he
lost consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha,
that same living Natasha whom of all people he most
longed to love with this new pure divine love that had
been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He
realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not
surprised but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her
knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes
riveted on him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was
pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it something
quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out
his hand.
‘You?’ he said. ‘How fortunate!’
With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew
nearer to him on her knees and, taking his hand carefully,
bent her face over it and began kissing it, just touching it
lightly with her lips.

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‘Forgive me!’ she whispered, raising her head and

glancing at him. ‘Forgive me!’
‘I love you,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Forgive...!’
‘Forgive what?’ he asked.
‘Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!’ faltered Natasha
in a scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing
his hand more rapidly, just touching it with her lips.
‘I love you more, better than before,’ said Prince
Andrew, lifting her face with his hand so as to look into
her eyes.
Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him
timidly, compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha’s
thin pale face, with its swollen lips, was more than plain-
it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew did not see that, he
saw her shining eyes which were beautiful. They heard
the sound of voices behind them.
Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused
the doctor. Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of
the pain in his leg, had long been watching all that was
going on, carefully covering his bare body with the sheet
as he huddled up on his bench.
‘What’s this?’ said the doctor, rising from his bed.
‘Please go away, madam!’

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At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had

noticed her daughter’s absence, knocked at the door.
Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha
went out of the room and, returning to her hut, fell
sobbing on her bed.
From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs’
journey, at every halting place and wherever they spent a
night, Natasha never left the wounded Bolkonski, and the
doctor had to admit that he had not expected from a
young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a
wounded man.
Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should
Prince Andrew die in her daughter’s arms during the
journey- as, judging by what the doctor said, it seemed
might easily happen- she could not oppose Natasha.
Though with the intimacy now established between the
wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that
should he recover their former engagement would be
renewed, no one- least of all Natasha and Prince Andrew-
spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and death,
which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia,
shut out all other considerations.

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Chapter XXXIII

On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head

was aching, the clothes in which he had slept without
undressing felt uncomfortable on his body, and his mind
had a dim consciousness of something shameful he had
done the day before. That something shameful was his
yesterday’s conversation with Captain Ramballe.
It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly
dark out of doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing
the pistol with an engraved stock which Gerasim had
replaced on the writing table, he remembered where he
was and what lay before him that very day.
‘Am I not too late?’ he thought. ‘No, probably he
won’t make his entry into Moscow before noon.’
Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay
before him, but hastened to act.
After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was
about to go out. But it then occurred to him for the first
time that he certainly could not carry the weapon in his
hand through the streets. It was difficult to hide such a big
pistol even under his wide coat. He could not carry it
unnoticed in his belt or under his arm. Besides, it had

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been discharged, and he had not had time to reload it. ‘No
matter, dagger will do,’ he said to himself, though when
planning his design he had more than once come to the
conclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in
1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But
as his chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design,
but in proving to himself that he would not abandon his
intention and was doing all he could to achieve it, Pierre
hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a green sheath
which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the
pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.
Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap
low on his head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to
avoid making a noise or meeting the captain, and passed
out into the street.
The conflagration, at which he had looked with so
much indifference the evening before, had greatly
increased during the night. Moscow was on fire in several
places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river, in
the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the barges on the
Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov
Bridge, were all ablaze.
Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskoy
and from there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat,

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where he had long before decided that the deed should

should be done. The gates of most of the houses were
locked and the shutters up. The streets and lanes were
deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of
burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and
timid faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but
of the camp, walking in the middle of the streets. Both the
Russians and the French looked at Pierre with surprise.
Besides his height and stoutness, and the strange morose
look of suffering in his face and whole figure, the
Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out
to what class he could belong. The French followed him
with astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre,
unlike all the other Russians who gazed at the French with
fear and curiosity, paid no attention to them. At the gate
of one house three Frenchmen, who were explaining
something to some Russians who did not understand
them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.
Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side
street a sentinel standing beside a green caisson shouted at
him, but only when the shout was threateningly repeated
and he heard the click of the man’s musket as he raised it
did Pierre understand that he had to pass on the other side
of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what

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went on around him. He carried his resolution within

himself in terror and haste, like something dreadful and
alien to him, for, after the previous night’s experience, he
was afraid of losing it. But he was not destined to bring
his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not
been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could
not now have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed
the Arbat more than four hours previously on his way
from the Dorogomilov suburb to the Kremlin, and was
now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal
study in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as
to measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the
fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the inhabitants.
But Pierre did not know this; he was entirely absorbed in
what lay before him, and was tortured- as those are who
obstinately undertake a task that is impossible for them
not because of its difficulty but because of its
incompatibility with their natures- by the fear of
weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his self-
esteem.
Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found
his way by instinct and did not go wrong in the side
streets that led to the Povarskoy.

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As Pierre approached that street the smoke became

denser and denser- he even felt the heat of the fire.
Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose from under the
roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets and
they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that
something unusual was happening around him, did not
realize that he was approaching the fire. As he was going
along a foot path across a wide-open space adjoining the
Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of Prince
Gruzinski’s house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the
desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped
as if awakening from a dream and lifted his head.
By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts
of household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar,
icons, and trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a
thin woman no longer young, with long, prominent upper
teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman,
swaying to and fro and muttering something, was choking
with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in
dirty short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother
with a look of stupefaction on their pale frightened faces.
The youngest child, a boy of about seven, who wore an
overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was
crying in his old nurse’s arms. A dirty, barefooted maid

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was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-

colored plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her
singed hair. The woman’s husband, a short, round-
shouldered man in the undress uniform of a civilian
official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and showing under
his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward over
his temples, with expressionless face was moving the
trunks, which were placed one on another, and was
dragging some garments from under them.
As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw
herself at his feet.
‘Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear
friends... help us, somebody,’ she muttered between her
sobs. ‘My girl... My daughter! My youngest daughter is
left behind. She’s burned! Ooh! Was it for this I nursed
you.... Ooh!’
‘Don’t, Mary Nikolievna!’ said her husband to her in a
low voice, evidently only to justify himself before the
stranger. ‘Sister must have taken her, or else where can
she be?’ he added.
‘Monster! Villain!’ shouted the woman angrily,
suddenly ceasing to weep. ‘You have no heart, you don’t
feel for your own child! Another man would have rescued
her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a man

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nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man,’ she went
on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. ‘The fire
broke out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called
out ‘Fire!’ and we rushed to collect our things. We ran out
just as we were.... This is what we have brought away....
The icons, and my dowry bed, all the rest is lost. We
seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!...’ and
again she began to sob. ‘My child, my dear one! Burned,
burned!’
‘But where was she left?’ asked Pierre.
From the expression of his animated face the woman
saw that this man might help her.
‘Oh, dear sir!’ she cried, seizing him by the legs. ‘My
benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid
girl, show him the way!’ she cried to the maid, angrily
opening her mouth and still farther exposing her long
teeth.
‘Show me the way, show me, I... I’ll do it,’ gasped
Pierre rapidly.
The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk,
put up her plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet
along the path. Pierre felt as if he had come back to life
after a heavy swoon. He held his head higher, his eyes
shone with the light of life, and with swift steps he

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followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the

Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black
smoke. Tongues of flame here and there broke through
that cloud. A great number of people crowded in front of
the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a
French general saying something to those around him.
Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the
spot where the general stood, but the French soldiers
stopped him.
‘On ne passe pas!’* cried a voice.
*"You can’t pass!
‘This way, uncle,’ cried the girl. ‘We’ll pass through
the side street, by the Nikulins’!’
Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to
keep up with her. She ran across the street, turned down a
side street to the left, and, passing three houses, turned
into a yard on the right.
‘It’s here, close by,’ said she and, running across the
yard, opened a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping,
pointed out to him a small wooden wing of the house,
which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its sides
had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames
issued from the openings of the windows and from under
the roof.

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As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was

enveloped by hot air and involuntarily stopped.
‘Which is it? Which is your house?’ he asked.
‘Ooh!’ wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. ‘That’s it,
that was our lodging. You’ve burned to death, our
treasure, Katie, my precious little missy! Ooh!’ lamented
Aniska, who at the sight of the fire felt that she too must
give expression to her feelings.
Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that
he involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon
the large house that was as yet burning only at one end,
just below the roof, and around which swarmed a crowd
of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize what these
men, who were dragging something out, were about; but
seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a
blunt saber and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he
vaguely understood that looting was going on there, but
he had no time to dwell on that idea.
The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls
and ceilings, the whistle and hiss of the flames, the
excited shouts of the people, and the sight of the swaying
smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds and now
soaring up with glittering sparks, with here and there
dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish

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scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke
and rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual
animating effects of a conflagration. It had a peculiarly
strong effect on him because at the sight of the fire he felt
himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed
him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He
ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to
dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just
above his head he heard several voices shouting and then
a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling
close beside him.
Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large
house some Frenchmen who had just thrown out the
drawer of a chest, filled with metal articles. Other French
soldiers standing below went up to the drawer.
‘What does this fellow want?’ shouted one of them
referring to Pierre.
‘There’s a child in that house. Haven’t you seen a
child?’ cried Pierre.
‘What’s he talking about? Get along!’ said several
voices, and one of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre
might want to take from them some of the plate and
bronzes that were in the drawer, moved threateningly
toward him.

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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...’
‘Where is it? Where?’ said Pierre.
‘There! There!’ shouted the Frenchman at the window,
pointing to the garden at the back of the house. ‘Wait a
bit- I’m coming down.’
And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed
fellow with a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did
jump out of a window on the ground floor, and clapping
Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the garden.
‘Hurry up, you others!’ he called out to his comrades.
‘It’s getting hot.’
When they reached a gravel path behind the house the
Frenchman pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a
round, graveled space where a three-year-old girl in a
pink dress was lying under a seat.
‘There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!’
said the Frenchman. ‘Good-by, Fatty. We must be human,
we are all mortal you know!’ and the Frenchman with the
spot on his cheek ran back to his comrades.
Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was
going to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the

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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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Chapter XXXIV

Having run through different yards and side streets,

Pierre got back with his little burden to the Gruzinski
garden at the corner of the Povarskoy. He did not at first
recognize the place from which he had set out to look for
the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods
that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian
families who had taken refuge here from the fire with
their belongings, there were several French soldiers in a
variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He
hurried to find the family of that civil servant in order to
restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone
else. Pierre felt that he had still much to do and to do
quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he felt
at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of
youth, animation, and determination that had come on
him when he ran to save the child. She had now become
quiet and, clinging with her little hands to Pierre’s coat,
sat on his arm gazing about her like some little wild
animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight smile.
He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
frightened, sickly little face.

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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.
‘Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You’re of the
gentry yourself, aren’t you? Whose child is it?’ they asked
him.
Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a
black coat who had been sitting there with her other
children, and he asked whether anyone knew where she
had gone.
‘Why, that must be the Anferovs,’ said an old deacon,
addressing a pockmarked peasant woman. ‘Lord have
mercy, Lord have mercy!’ he added in his customary
bass.
‘The Anferovs? No,’ said the woman. ‘They left in the
morning. That must be either Mary Nikolievna’s or the
Ivanovs’!’
‘He says ‘a woman,’ and Mary Nikolievna is a lady,’
remarked a house serf.
‘Do you know her? She’s thin, with long teeth,’ said
Pierre.
‘That’s Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden
when these wolves swooped down,’ said the woman,
pointing to the French soldiers.

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‘O Lord, have mercy!’ added the deacon.

‘Go over that way, they’re there. It’s she! She kept on
lamenting and crying,’ continued the woman. ‘It’s she.
Here, this way!’
But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for
some seconds been intently watching what was going on a
few steps away. He was looking at the Armenian family
and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them. One
of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied
round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his
head and his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance
particularly struck Pierre, was a long, lank, round-
shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements and
with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman’s
loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian
boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat
went up to the Armenians and, saying something,
immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old
man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the
frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian
girl and with his hands in his pockets stood staring at her,
motionless and silent.
‘Here, take the child!’ said Pierre peremptorily and
hurriedly to the woman, handing the little girl to her.

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‘Give her back to them, give her back!’ he almost

shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the
ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the
Armenian family.
The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little
Frenchman had secured his second boot and was slapping
one boot against the other. The old man was saying
something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre caught
but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to
the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile,
swaying slowly from side to side, had drawn nearer to the
young woman and taking his hands from his pockets had
seized her by the neck.
The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the
same attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did
not see or feel what the soldier was doing to her.
While Pierre was running the few steps that separated
him from the Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze
gown was already tearing from her neck the necklace the
young Armenian was wearing, and the young woman,
clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
‘Let that woman alone!’ exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a
furious voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders
and throwing him aside.

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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.
‘Voyons, Pas de betises!’* he cried.
*"Look here, no nonsense!’
Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he
remembered nothing and his strength increased tenfold.
He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman and, before the
latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his
feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval
were heard from the crowd around, and at the same
moment a mounted patrol of French Uhlans appeared
from round the corner. The Uhlans came up at a trot to
Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them. Pierre
remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only
remembered beating someone and being beaten and
finally feeling that his hands were bound and that a crowd
of French soldiers stood around him and were searching
him.
‘Lieutenant, he has a dagger,’ were the first words
Pierre understood.
‘Ah, a weapon?’ said the officer and turned to the
barefooted soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. ‘All

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right, you can tell all about it at the court-martial.’ Then

he turned to Pierre. ‘Do you speak French?’
Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did
not reply. His face probably looked very terrible, for the
officer said something in a whisper and four more Uhlans
left the ranks and placed themselves on both sides of
Pierre.
‘Do you speak French?’ the officer asked again,
keeping at a distance from Pierre. ‘Call the interpreter.’
A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from
the ranks, and by his clothes and manner of speaking
Pierre at once knew him to be a French salesman from
one of the Moscow shops.
‘He does not look like a common man,’ said the
interpreter, after a searching look at Pierre.
‘Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary,’ remarked
the officer. ‘And ask him who he is,’ he added.
‘Who are you?’ asked the interpreter in poor Russian.
‘You must answer the chief.’
‘I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner- take
me!’ Pierre suddenly replied in French.
‘Ah, ah!’ muttered the officer with a frown. ‘Well
then, march!’

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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.
‘Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?’ said
she. ‘And the little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with
her if she’s not theirs?’ said the woman.
‘What does that woman want?’ asked the officer.
Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the
sight of the little girl he had saved.
‘What does she want?’ he murmured. ‘She is bringing
me my daughter whom I have just saved from the flames,’
said he. ‘Good-by!’ And without knowing how this
aimless lie had escaped him, he went along with resolute
and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.
The French patrol was one of those sent out through
the various streets of Moscow by Durosnel’s order to put
a stop to the pillage, and especially to catch the
incendiaries who, according to the general opinion which
had that day originated among the higher French officers,
were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching
through a number of streets the patrol arrested five more
Russian suspects: a small shopkeeper, two seminary
students, a peasant, and a house serf, besides several
looters. But of all these various suspected characters,

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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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BOOK TWELVE: 1812

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Chapter I

In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was

being carried on with greater heat than ever in the highest
circles, between the parties of Rumyantsev, the French,
Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich, and others, drowned as
usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But the calm,
luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about
phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old
way and made it hard, except by a great effort, to realize
the danger and the difficult position of the Russian
people. There were the same receptions and balls, the
same French theater, the same court interests and service
interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the very highest
circles were attempts made to keep in mind the
difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered
of how differently the two Empresses behaved in these
difficult circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned
for the welfare of the charitable and educational
institutions under her patronage, had given directions that
they should all be removed to Kazan, and the things
belonging to these institutions had already been packed
up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what
instructions she would be pleased to give- with her

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characteristic Russian patriotism had replied that she

could give no directions about state institutions for that
was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she
personally was concerned she would be the last to quit
Petersburg.
At Anna Pavlovna’s on the twenty-sixth of August, the
very day of the battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the
chief feature of which was to be the reading of a letter
from His Lordship the Bishop when sending the Emperor
an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was regarded as a
model of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince Vasili
himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used
to read at the Empress’.) The art of his reading was
supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite
independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong
voice alternating between a despairing wail and a tender
murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word
and the murmur on another. This reading, as was always
the case at Anna Pavlovna’s soirees, had a political
significance. That evening she expected several important
personages who had to be made ashamed of their visits to
the French theater and aroused to a patriotic temper. A
good many people had already arrived, but Anna
Pavlovna, not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in

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her drawing room, did not let the reading begin but
wound up the springs of a general conversation.
The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of
Countess Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a
few days previously, had missed several gatherings of
which she was usually ornament, and was said to be
receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated Petersburg
doctors who usually attended her had entrusted herself to
some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and
unusual way.
They all knew very well that the enchanting countess’
illness arose from an inconvenience resulting from
marrying two husbands at the same time, and that the
Italian’s cure consisted in removing such inconvenience;
but in Anna Pavlovna’s presence no one dared to think of
this or even appear to know it.
‘They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says
it is angina pectoris.’
‘Angina? Oh, that’s a terrible illness!’
‘They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the
angina...’ and the word angina was repeated with great
satisfaction.
‘The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child
when the doctor told him the case was dangerous.’

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‘Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting

woman.’
‘You are speaking of the poor countess?’ said Anna
Pavlovna, coming up just then. ‘I sent to ask for news,
and hear that she is a little better. Oh, she is certainly the
most charming woman in the world,’ she went on, with a
smile at her own enthusiasm. ‘We belong to different
camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she
deserves. She is very unfortunate!’ added Anna Pavlovna.
Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was
somewhat lifting the veil from the secret of the countess’
malady, an unwary young man ventured to express
surprise that well known doctors had not been called in
and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan
who might employ dangerous remedies.
‘Your information maybe better than mine,’ Anna
Pavlovna suddenly and venomously retorted on the
inexperienced young man, ‘but I know on good authority
that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He is
private physician to the Queen of Spain.’
And having thus demolished the young man, Anna
Pavlovna turned to another group where Bilibin was
talking about the Austrians: having wrinkled up his face

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he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again and

utter one of his mots.
‘I think it is delightful,’ he said, referring to a
diplomatic note that had been sent to Vienna with some
Austrian banners captured from the French by
Wittgenstein, ‘the hero of Petropol’ as he was then called
in Petersburg.
‘What? What’s that?’ asked Anna Pavlovna, securing
silence for the mot, which she had heard before.
And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the
diplomatic dispatch, which he had himself composed.
‘The Emperor returns these Austrian banners,’ said
Bilibin, ‘friendly banners gone astray and found on a
wrong path,’ and his brow became smooth again.
‘Charming, charming!’ observed Prince Vasili.
‘The path to Warsaw, perhaps,’ Prince Hippolyte
remarked loudly and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at
him, understanding what he meant. Prince Hippolyte
himself glanced around with amused surprise. He knew
no more than the others what his words meant. During his
diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such
utterances were received as very witty, and at every
opportunity he uttered in that way the first words that
entered his head. ‘It may turn out very well,’ he thought,

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‘but if not, they’ll know how to arrange matters.’ And

really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that
insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna
Pavlovna had been waiting for and wished to convert, and
she, smiling and shaking a finger at Hippolyte, invited
Prince Vasili to the table and bringing him two candles
and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone
became silent.
‘Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor! ‘ Prince
Vasili sternly declaimed, looking round at his audience as
if to inquire whether anyone had anything to say to the
contrary. But no one said anything. ‘Moscow, our ancient
capital, the New Jerusalem, receives her Christ’- he
placed a sudden emphasis on the word her- ‘as a mother
receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the
gathering mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule,
sings in exultation, ‘Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!’’
Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful
voice.
Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of
those present appeared intimidated, as if asking in what
they were to blame. Anna Pavlovna whispered the next
words in advance, like an old woman muttering the prayer

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at Communion: ‘Let the bold and insolent Goliath...’ she

whispered.
Prince Vasili continued.
‘Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of
France encompass the realms of Russia with death-
bearing terrors; humble Faith, the sling of the Russian
David, shall suddenly smite his head in his blood-thirsty
pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of
God and zealous champion of old of our country’s weal,
is offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my
waning strength prevents rejoicing in the sight of your
most gracious presence. I raise fervent prayers to Heaven
that the Almighty may exalt the race of the just, and
mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty.’
‘What force! What a style!’ was uttered in approval
both of reader and of author.
Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna’s guests
talked for a long time of the state of the fatherland and
offered various conjectures as to the result of the battle to
be fought in a few days.
‘You will see,’ said Anna Pavlovna, ‘that tomorrow,
on the Emperor’s birthday, we shall receive news. I have
a favorable presentiment!’

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Chapter II

Anna Pavlovna’s presentiment was in fact fulfilled.

Next day during the service at the palace church in honor
of the Emperor’s birthday, Prince Volkonski was called
out of the church and received a dispatch from Prince
Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov’s report, written from
Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that
the Russians had not retreated a step, that the French
losses were much heavier than ours, and that he was
writing in haste from the field of battle before collecting
full information. It followed that there must have been a
victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks
were rendered to the Creator for His help and for the
victory.
Anna Pavlovna’s presentiment was justified, and all
that morning a joyously festive mood reigned in the city.
Everyone believed the victory to have been complete, and
some even spoke of Napoleon’s having been captured, of
his deposition, and of the choice of a new ruler for
France.
It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real
strength and completeness amid the conditions of court

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life and far from the scene of action. General events

involuntarily group themselves around some particular
incident. So now the courtiers’ pleasure was based as
much on the fact that the news had arrived on the
Emperor’s birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It
was like a successfully arranged surprise. Mention was
made in Kutuzov’s report of the Russian losses, among
which figured the names of Tuchkov, Bagration, and
Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world this sad side of the
affair again involuntarily centered round a single incident:
Kutaysov’s death. Everybody knew him, the Emperor
liked him, and he was young and interesting. That day
everyone met with the words:
‘What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the
service. But what a loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!’
‘What did I tell about Kutuzov?’ Prince Vasili now
said with a prophet’s pride. ‘I always said he was the only
man capable of defeating Napoleon.’
But next day no news arrived from the army and the
public mood grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because
of the suffering the suspense occasioned the Emperor.
‘Fancy the Emperor’s position!’ said they, and instead
of extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before,
they condemned him as the cause of the Emperor’s

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anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no longer boasted of his

protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the
commander in chief was mentioned. Moreover, toward
evening, as if everything conspired to make Petersburg
society anxious and uneasy, a terrible piece of news was
added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had suddenly died of
that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to mention.
Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that
Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible attack of
angina pectoris, but in intimate circles details were
mentioned of how the private physician of the Queen of
Spain had prescribed small doses of a certain drug to
produce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by the fact
that the old count suspected her and that her husband to
whom she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre)
had not replied, had suddenly taken a very large dose of
the drug, and had died in agony before assistance could be
rendered her. It was said that Prince Vasili and the old
count had turned upon the Italian, but the latter had
produced such letters from the unfortunate deceased that
they had immediately let the matter drop.
Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts:
the Emperor’s lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the
death of Helene.

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On the third day after Kutuzov’s report a country

gentleman arrived from Moscow, and news of the
surrender of Moscow to the French spread through the
whole town. This was terrible! What a position for the
Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili
during the visits of condolence paid to him on the
occasion of his daughter’s death said of Kutuzov, whom
he had formerly praised (it was excusable for him in his
grief to forget what he had said), that it was impossible to
expect anything else from a blind and depraved old man.
‘I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been
entrusted to such a man.’
As long as this news remained unofficial it was
possible to doubt it, but the next day the following
communication was received from Count Rostopchin:
Prince Kutuzov’s adjutant has brought me a letter in
which he demands police officers to guide the army to the
Ryazan road. He writes that he is regretfully abandoning
Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov’s action decides the fate of the
capital and of your empire! Russia will shudder to learn of
the abandonment of the city in which her greatness is
centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I
shall follow the army. I have had everything removed,

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and it only remains for me to weep over the fate of my

fatherland.
On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince
Volkonski to Kutuzov with the following rescript:
Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of
August I have received no communication from you, yet
on the first of September I received from the commander
in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad news that you,
with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You
can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me,
and your silence increases my astonishment. I am sending
this by Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from
you the situation of the army and the reasons that have
induced you to take this melancholy decision.

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Chapter III

Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a

messenger from Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the
official announcement of that event. This messenger was
Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but
who was quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d’ame,* as
he said of himself.
*Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.
The Emperor at once received this messenger in his
study at the palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had
never seen Moscow before the campaign and who did not
know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as he wrote) when
he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain* with
the news of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes
eclairaient sa route.*[2]
*Our most gracious sovereign.
*[2] Whose flames illumined his route.
Though the source of M. Michaud’s chagrin must have
been different from that which caused Russians to grieve,
he had such a sad face when shown into the Emperor’s
study that the latter at once asked:
‘Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?’

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‘Very sad, sire,’ replied Michaud, lowering his eyes

with a sigh. ‘The abandonment of Moscow.’
‘Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a
battle?’ asked the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly
flushing.
Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov
had entrusted to him, which was that it had been
impossible to fight before Moscow, and that as the only
remaining choice was between losing the army as well as
Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal had
to choose the latter.
The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at
Michaud.
‘Has the enemy entered the city?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in
flames,’ replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing
at the Emperor he was frightened by what he had done.
The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his
lower lip trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine
blue eyes.
But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned,
as if blaming himself for his weakness, and raising his
head addressed Michaud in a firm voice:

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‘I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that

Providence requires great sacrifices of us... I am ready to
submit myself in all things to His will; but tell me,
Michaud, how did you leave the army when it saw my
ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did you not
notice discouragement?..’
Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once
more, Michaud also grew calm, but was not immediately
ready to reply to the Emperor’s direct and relevant
question which required a direct answer.
‘Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a
loyal soldier?’ he asked to gain time.
‘Colonel, I always require it,’ replied the Emperor.
‘Conceal nothing from me, I wish to know absolutely how
things are.’
‘Sire!’ said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible
smile on his lips, having now prepared a well-phrased
reply, ‘sire, I left the whole army, from its chiefs to the
lowest soldier, without exception in desperate and
agonized terror..’
‘How is that?’ the Emperor interrupted him, frowning
sternly. ‘Would misfortune make my Russians lose
heart?... Never!’

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Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the

phrase he had prepared.
‘Sire,’ he said, with respectful playfulness, ‘they are
only afraid lest Your Majesty, in the goodness of your
heart, should allow yourself to be persuaded to make
peace. They are burning for the combat,’ declared this
representative of the Russian nation, ‘and to prove to
Your Majesty by the sacrifice of their lives how devoted
they are...’
‘Ah!’ said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly
gleam in his eyes, he patted Michaud on the shoulder.
‘You set me at ease, Colonel.’
He bent his head and was silent for some time.
‘Well, then, go back to the army,’ he said, drawing
himself up to his full height and addressing Michaud with
a gracious and majestic gesture, ‘and tell our brave men
and all my good subjects wherever you go that when I
have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the head of my
beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last
resources of my empire. It still offers me more than my
enemies suppose,’ said the Emperor growing more and
more animated; ‘but should it ever be ordained by Divine
Providence,’ he continued, raising to heaven his fine eyes
shining with emotion, ‘that my dynasty should cease to

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reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting

all the means at my command, I shall let my beard grow
to here’ (he pointed halfway down his chest) ‘and go and
eat potatoes with the meanest of my peasants, rather than
sign the disgrace of my country and of my beloved people
whose sacrifices I know how to appreciate.’
Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the
Emperor suddenly turned away as if to hide from
Michaud the tears that rose to his eyes, and went to the
further end of his study. Having stood there a few
moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm
below the elbow with a vigorous movement. The
Emperor’s mild and handsome face was flushed and his
eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.
‘Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you
here, perhaps we may recall it with pleasure someday...
Napoleon or I,’ said the Emperor, touching his breast.
‘We can no longer both reign together. I have learned to
know him, and he will not deceive me any more...’
And the Emperor paused, with a frown.
When he heard these words and saw the expression of
firm resolution in the Emperor’s eyes, Michaud- quoique
etranger, russe de coeur et d’ame- at that solemn moment
felt himself enraptured by all that he had heard (as he

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used afterwards to say), and gave expression to his own

feelings and those of the Russian people whose
representative he considered himself to be, in the
following words:
‘Sire!’ said he, ‘Your Majesty is at this moment
signing the glory of the nation and the salvation of
Europe!’
With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed
him.

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Chapter IV

It is natural for us who were not living in those days to

imagine that when half Russia had been conquered and
the inhabitants were ficeing to distant provinces, and one
levy after another was being raised for the defense of the
fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least were
solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving their
fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and
descriptions of that time without exception speak only of
the self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and
the heroism of the Russians. But it was not really so. It
appears so to us because we see only the general historic
interest of that time and do not see all the personal human
interests that people had. Yet in reality those personal
interests of the moment so much transcend the general
interests that they always prevent the public interest from
being felt or even noticed. Most of the people at that time
paid no attention to the general progress of events but
were guided only by their private interests, and they were
the very people whose activities at that period were most
useful.

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Those who tried to understand the general course of

events and to take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism
were the most useless members of society, they saw
everything upside down, and all they did for the common
good turned out to be useless and foolish- like Pierre’s
and Mamonov’s regiments which looted Russian villages,
and the lint the young ladies prepared and that never
reached the wounded, and so on. Even those, fond of
intellectual talk and of expressing their feelings, who
discussed Russia’s position at the time involuntarily
introduced into their conversation either a shade of
pretense and falsehood or useless condemnation and
anger directed against people accused of actions no one
could possibly be guilty of. In historic events the rule
forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
is specially applicable. Only unconscious action bears
fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never
understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his
efforts are fruitless.
The more closely a man was engaged in the events
then taking place in Russia the less did he realize their
significance. In Petersburg and in the provinces at a
distance from Moscow, ladies, and gentlemen in militia
uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital and

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talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which

retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of
Moscow, and when they caught sight of its burned ruins
no one swore to be avenged on the French, but they
thought about their next pay, their next quarters, of
Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters.
As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas
Rostov took a close and prolonged part in the defense of
his country, but did so casually, without any aim at self-
sacrifice, and he therefore looked at what was going on in
Russia without despair and without dismally racking his
brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the
state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his
business to think about it, that Kutuzov and others were
there for that purpose, but that he had heard that the
regiments were to be made up to their full strength, that
fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, and
that things being so it was quite likely he might be in
command of a regiment in a couple of years’ time.
As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that
he was being sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his
division, not only without regret at being prevented from
taking part in the coming battle, but with the greatest

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pleasure- which he did not conceal and which his

comrades fully understood.
A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas
received the necessary money and warrants, and having
sent some hussars on in advance, he set out with post
horses for Voronezh.
Only a man who has experienced it- that is, has passed
some months continuously in an atmosphere of
campaigning and war- can understand the delight
Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by
the army’s foraging operations, provision trains, and
hospitals. When- free from soldiers, wagons, and the
filthy traces of a camp- he saw villages with peasants and
peasant women, gentlemen’s country houses, fields where
cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep
in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this for the first
time. What for a long while specially surprised and
delighted him were the women, young and healthy,
without a dozen officers making up to each of them;
women, too, who were pleased and flattered that a passing
officer should joke with them.
In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a
hotel in Voronezh, ordered things he had long been
deprived of in camp, and next day, very clean-shaven and

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in a full-dress uniform he had not worn for a long time,

went to present himself to the authorities.
The commander of the militia was a civilian general,
an old man who was evidently pleased with his military
designation and rank. He received Nicholas brusquely
(imagining this to be characteristically military) and
questioned him with an important air, as if considering the
general progress of affairs and approving and
disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in
such good spirits that this merely amused him.
From the commander of the militia he drove to the
governor. The governor was a brisk little man, very
simple and affable. He indicated the stud farms at which
Nicholas might procure horses, recommended to him a
horse dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles
out of town who had the best horses, and promised to
assist him in every way.
‘You are Count Ilya Rostov’s son? My wife was a
great friend of your mother’s. We are at home on
Thursdays- today is Thursday, so please come and see us
quite informally,’ said the governor, taking leave of him.
Immediately on leaving the governor’s, Nicholas hired
post horses and, taking his squadron quartermaster with
him, drove at a gallop to the landowner, fourteen miles

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away, who had the stud. Everything seemed to him

pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay in
Voronezh and, as usually happens when a man is in a
pleasant state of mind, everything went well and easily.
The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a
bachelor, an old cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman,
the possessor of some century-old brandy and some old
Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery where he smoked,
and who owned some splendid horses.
In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked
stallions for six thousand rubles- to serve, as he said, as
samples of his remounts. After dining and taking rather
too much of the Hungarian wine, Nicholas- having
exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was
already on the friendliest terms- galloped back over
abominable roads, in the brightest frame of mind,
continually urging on the driver so as to be in time for the
governor’s party.
When he had changed, poured water over his head, and
scented himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor’s rather
late, but with the phrase ‘better late than never’ on his
lips.
It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but
everyone knew that Catherine Petrovna would play valses

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and the ecossaise on the clavichord and that there would

be dancing, and so everyone had come as to a ball.
Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but
with this difference, that it was livelier in the towns in
consequence of the arrival of many wealthy families from
Moscow, and as in everything that went on in Russia at
that time a special recklessness was noticeable, an ‘in for
a penny, in for a pound- who cares?’ spirit, and the
inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather
and mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the
army, and Napoleon.
The society gathered together at the governor’s was the
best in Voronezh.
There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas’
Moscow acquaintances, but there were no men who could
at all vie with the cavalier of St. George, the hussar
remount officer, the good-natured and well-bred Count
Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner, an
officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the
presence of that prisoner enhanced his own importance as
a Russian hero. The Italian was, as it were, a war trophy.
Nicholas felt this, it seemed to him that everyone regarded
the Italian in the same light, and he treated him cordially
though with dignity and restraint.

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As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform,

diffusing around him a fragrance of perfume and wine,
and had uttered the words ‘better late than never’ and
heard them repeated several times by others, people
clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt
at once that he had entered into his proper position in the
province- that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant
position, and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At
posting stations, at inns, and in the landowner’s snuggery,
maidservants had been flattered by his notice, and here
too at the governor’s party there were (as it seemed to
Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of pretty young
women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his
notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from
the first day, the people concerned themselves to get this
fine young daredevil of an hussar married and settled
down. Among these was the governor’s wife herself, who
welcomed Rostov as a near relative and called him
‘Nicholas.’
Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the
ecossaise, and dancing began in which Nicholas still
further captivated the provincial society by his agility. His
particularly free manner of dancing even surprised them
all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised at the way he

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danced that evening. He had never danced like that in

Moscow and would even have considered such a very free
and easy manner improper and in bad form, but here he
felt it incumbent on him to astonish them all by something
unusual, something they would have to accept as the
regular thing in the capital though new to them in the
provinces.
All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed,
plump and pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the
provincial officials. With the naive conviction of young
men in a merry mood that other men’s wives were created
for them, Rostov did not leave the lady’s side and treated
her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if,
without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas
and the lady would get on together. The husband,
however, did not seem to share that conviction and tried
to behave morosely with Rostov. But the latter’s good-
natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even he
involuntarily yielded to Nicholas’ good humor. Toward
the end of the evening, however, as the wife’s face grew
more flushed and animated, the husband’s became more
and more melancholy and solemn, as though there were
but a given amount of animation between them and as the
wife’s share increased the husband’s diminished.

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Chapter V

Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair,

bending closely over the blonde lady and paying her
mythological compliments with a smile that never left his
face. Jauntily shifting the position of his legs in their tight
riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and
admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his
legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the
blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady
here in Voronezh.
‘Which lady?’
‘A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes’ (Nicholas
looked at his partner) ‘are blue, her mouth coral and
ivory; her figure’ (he glanced at her shoulders) ‘like
Diana’s...’
The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what
she was talking about.
‘Ah, Nikita Ivanych!’ cried Nicholas, rising politely,
and as if wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he
began to tell him of his intention to elope with a blonde
lady.

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The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The

governor’s good-natured wife came up with a look of
disapproval.
‘Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas,’ said
she, pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once
understood that Anna Ignatyevna was a very important
person. ‘Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you
so?’
‘Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?’
‘Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her
niece how you rescued her... Can you guess?’
‘I rescued such a lot of them!’ said Nicholas.
‘Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in
Voronezh with her aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why,
are...?’
‘Not a bit! Please don’t, Aunt!’
‘Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!’
The governor’s wife led him up to a tall and very stout
old lady with a blue headdress, who had just finished her
game of cards with the most important personages of the
town. This was Malvintseva, Princess Mary’s aunt on her
mother’s side, a rich, childless widow who always lived
in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was
standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and,

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screwing up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the

general who had won from her.
‘Very pleased, mon cher,’ she then said, holding out
her hand to Nicholas. ‘Pray come and see me.’
After a few words about Princess Mary and her late
father, whom Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and
having asked what Nicholas knew of Prince Andrew, who
also was evidently no favorite of hers, the important old
lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation to
come to see her.
Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he
bowed. At the mention of Princess Mary he experienced a
feeling of shyness and even of fear, which he himself did
not understand.
When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas
wished to return to the dancing, but the governor’s little
wife placed her plump hand on his sleeve and, saying that
she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to her sitting
room, from which those who were there immediately
withdrew so as not to be in her way.
‘Do you know, dear boy,’ began the governor’s wife
with a serious expression on her kind little face, ‘that
really would be the match for you: would you like me to
arrange it?’

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‘Whom do you mean, Aunt?’ asked Nicholas.

‘I will make a match for you with the princess.
Catherine Petrovna speaks of Lily, but I say, no- the
princess! Do you want me to do it? I am sure your mother
will be grateful to me. What a charming girl she is, really!
And she is not at all so plain, either.’
‘Not at all,’ replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea.
‘As befits a soldier, Aunt, I don’t force myself on anyone
or refuse anything,’ he said before he had time to consider
what he was saying.
‘Well then, remember, this is not a joke!’
‘Of course not!’
‘Yes, yes,’ the governor’s wife said as if talking to
herself. ‘But, my dear boy, among other things you are
too attentive to the other, the blonde. One is sorry for the
husband, really...’
‘Oh no, we are good friends with him,’ said Nicholas
in the simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that
a pastime so pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to
someone else.
‘But what nonsense I have been saying to the
governor’s wife!’ thought Nicholas suddenly at supper.
‘She will really begin to arrange a match... and Soyna...?’
And on taking leave of the governor’s wife, when she

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again smilingly said to him, ‘Well then, remember!’ he

drew her aside.
‘But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..’
‘What is it, my dear? Come, let’s sit down here,’ said
she.
Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his
most intimate thoughts (which he would not have told to
his mother, his sister, or his friend) to this woman who
was almost a stranger. When he afterwards recalled that
impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which
had very important results for him, it seemed to him- as it
seems to everyone in such cases- that it was merely some
silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness,
together with other trifling events, had immense
consequences for him and for all his family.
‘You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry
an heiress, but the very idea of marrying for money is
repugnant to me.’
‘Oh yes, I understand,’ said the governor’s wife.
‘But Princess Bolkonskaya- that’s another matter. I
will tell you the truth. In the first place I like her very
much, I feel drawn to her; and then, after I met her under
such circumstances- so strangely, the idea often occurred
to me: ‘This is fate.’ Especially if you remember that

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Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never

happened to meet her before, somehow it had always
happened that we did not meet. And as long as my sister
Natasha was engaged to her brother it was of course out
of the question for me to think of marrying her. And it
must needs happen that I should meet her just when
Natasha’s engagement had been broken off... and then
everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and
never will, only to you.’
The governor’s wife pressed his elbow gratefully.
‘You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and
promised to marry her, and will do so.... So you see there
can be no question about-’ said Nicholas incoherently and
blushing.
‘My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know
Sonya has nothing and you yourself say your Papa’s
affairs are in a very bad way. And what about your
mother? It would kill her, that’s one thing. And what sort
of life would it be for Sonya- if she’s a girl with a heart?
Your mother in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my
dear, you and Sonya ought to understand that.’
Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear
these arguments.

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‘All the same, Aunt, it is impossible,’ he rejoined with

a sigh, after a short pause. ‘Besides, would the princess
have me? And besides, she is now in mourning. How can
one think of it!’
‘But you don’t suppose I’m going to get you married at
once? There is always a right way of doing things,’
replied the governor’s wife.
‘What a matchmaker you are, Aunt...’ said Nicholas,
kissing her plump little hand.

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Chapter VI

On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov,

Princess Mary had found her nephew there with his tutor,
and a letter from Prince Andrew giving her instructions
how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at Voronezh. That
feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during
her father’s illness, since his death, and especially since
her meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements
for the journey, anxiety about her brother, settling in a
new house, meeting new people, and attending to her
nephew’s education. She was sad. Now, after a month
passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more
deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her
mind with the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and
incessantly tortured by the thought of the dangers to
which her brother, the only intimate person now
remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about
her nephew’s education for which she had always felt
herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt
at peace- a peace arising from consciousness of having
stifled those personal dreams and hopes that had been on

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the point of awakening within her and were related to her

meeting with Rostov.
The day after her party the governor’s wife came to see
Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt,
remarked that though under present circumstances a
formal betrothal was, of course, not to be thought of, all
the same the young people might be brought together and
could get to know one another. Malvintseva expressed
approval, and the governor’s wife began to speak of
Rostov in Mary’s presence, praising him and telling how
he had blushed when Princess Mary’s name was
mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a painful
rather than a joyful feeling- her mental tranquillity was
destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes
reawoke.
During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called,
Princess Mary continually thought of how she ought to
behave to him. First she decided not to come to the
drawing room when he called to see her aunt- that it
would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to
receive visitors; then she thought this would be rude after
what he had done for her; then it occurred to her that her
aunt and the governor’s wife had intentions concerning
herself and Rostov- their looks and words at times seemed

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to confirm this supposition- then she told herself that only

she, with her sinful nature, could think this of them: they
could not forget that situated as she was, while still
wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an
insult to her and to her father’s memory. Assuming that
she did go down to see him, Princess Mary imagined the
words he would say to her and what she would say to
him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly
cold and then to mean too much. More than anything she
feared lest the confusion she felt might overwhelm her
and betray her as soon as she saw him.
But when on Sunday after church the footman
announced in the drawing room that Count Rostov had
called, the princess showed no confusion, only a slight
blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new
and radiant light.
‘You have met him, Aunt?’ said she in a calm voice,
unable herself to understand that she could be outwardly
so calm and natural.
When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped
her eyes for an instant, as if to give the visitor time to
greet her aunt, and then just as Nicholas turned to her she
raised her head and met his look with shining eyes. With a
movement full of dignity and grace she half rose with a

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smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate hand to

him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first
time new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle
Bourienne, who was in the drawing room, looked at
Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a
consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered
better on meeting a man she wished to attract.
‘Either black is particularly becoming to her or she
really has greatly improved without my having noticed it.
And above all, what tact and grace!’ thought
Mademoiselle Bourienne.
Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that
moment, she would have been more surprised than
Mademoiselle Bourienne at the change that had taken
place in herself. From the moment she recognized that
dear, loved face, a new life force took possession of her
and compelled her to speak and act apart from her own
will. From the time Rostov entered, her face became
suddenly transformed. It was as if a light had been
kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the intricate,
skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously seemed
dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in
unexpected and striking beauty. For the first time all that
pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived

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appeared on the surface. All her inward labor, her

dissatisfaction with herself, her sufferings, her strivings
after goodness, her meekness, love, and self-sacrifice- all
this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her delicate smile,
and in every trait of her gentle face.
Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her
whole life. He felt that the being before him was quite
different from, and better than, anyone he had met before,
and above all better than himself.
Their conversation was very simple and unimportant.
They spoke of the war, and like everyone else
unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow about it; they
spoke of their last meeting- Nicholas trying to change the
subject- they talked of the governor’s kind wife, of
Nicholas’ relations, and of Princess Mary’s.
She did not talk about her brother, diverting the
conversation as soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew.
Evidently she could speak of Russia’s misfortunes with a
certain artificiality, but her brother was too near her heart
and she neither could nor would speak lightly of him.
Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade of
Princess Mary’s character with an observation unusual to
him, and everything confirmed his conviction that she
was a quite unusual and extraordinary being. Nicholas

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blushed and was confused when people spoke to him

about the princess (as she did when he was mentioned)
and even when he thought of her, but in her presence he
felt quite at ease, and said not at all what he had prepared,
but what, quite appropriately, occurred to him at the
moment.
When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas,
as is usual when there are children, turned to Prince
Andrew’s little son, caressing him and asking whether he
would like to be an hussar. He took the boy on his knee,
played with him, and looked round at Princess Mary.
With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the boy
she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also
noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with
pleasure and began to kiss the boy with good natured
playfulness.
As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out
into society, and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing
to visit her again; but all the same the governor’s wife
went on with her matchmaking, passing on to Nicholas
the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and vice
versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess
Mary. For this purpose she arranged a meeting between
the young people at the bishop’s house before Mass.

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Though Rostov told the governeor’s wife that he

would not make any declaration to Princess Mary, he
promised to go.
As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt
that what everybody considered right was right, so now,
after a short but sincere struggle between his effort to
arrange his life by his own sense of justice, and in
obedient submission to circumstances, he chose the latter
and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly carrying him
he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to
Sonya it would be what he deemed base to declare his
feelings to Princess Mary. And he knew that he would
never act basely. But he also knew (or rather felt at the
bottom of his heart) that by resigning himself now to the
force of circumstances and to those who were guiding
him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing
something very important- more important than anything
he had ever done in his life.
After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his
life went on externally as before, all his former
amusements lost their charm for him and he often thought
about her. But he never thought about her as he had
thought of all the young ladies without exception whom
he had met in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at

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one time rapturously, thought about Sonya. He had

pictured each of those young ladies as almost all honest-
hearted young men do, that is, as a possible wife, adapting
her in his imagination to all the conditions of married life:
a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his wife’s
carriage, little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to
her, and so on- and these pictures of the future had given
him pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were
trying to get him engaged, he could never picture
anything of future married life. If he tried, his pictures
seemed incongruous and false. It made him afraid.

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Chapter VII

The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our

losses in killed and wounded, and the still more terrible
news of the loss of Moscow reached Voronezh in the
middle of September. Princess Mary, having learned of
her brother’s wound only from the Gazette and having no
definite news of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had
not seen her again himself) to set off in search of Prince
Andrew.
When he received the news of the battle of Borodino
and the abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized
with despair, anger, the desire for vengeance, or any
feeling of that kind, but everything in Voronezh suddenly
seemed to him dull and tiresome, and he experienced an
indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The
conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did
not know how to judge all these affairs and felt that only
in the regiment would everything again become clear to
him. He made haste to finish buying the horses, and often
became unreasonably angry with his servant and squadron
quartermaster.

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A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving,

at which Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral
for the Russian victory. He stood a little behind the
governor and held himself with military decorum through
the service, meditating on a great variety of subjects.
When the service was over the governor’s wife beckoned
him to her.
‘Have you seen the princess?’ she asked, indicating
with a movement of her head a lady standing on the
opposite side, beyond the choir.
Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so
much by the profile he saw under her bonnet as by the
feeling of solicitude, timidity, and pity that immediately
overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed by her
thoughts, was crossing herself for the last time before
leaving the church.
Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the
same face he had seen before, there was the same general
expression of refined, inner, spiritual labor, but now it
was quite differently lit up. There was a pathetic
expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had
occurred before when she was present, Nicholas went up
to her without waiting to be prompted by the governor’s
wife and not asking himself whether or not it was right

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and proper to address her here in church, and told her he

had heard of her trouble and sympathized with his whole
soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow kindled
in her face, lighting up both her sorrow and her joy.
‘There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess,’ said
Rostov. ‘It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew
Nikolievich, were not living, it would have been at once
announced in the Gazette, as he is a colonel.’
The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was
saying, but cheered by the expression of regretful
sympathy on his face.
‘And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound’
(the Gazette said it was a shell) ‘either proving fatal at
once or being very slight,’ continued Nicholas. ‘We must
hope for the best, and I am sure..’
Princess Mary interrupted him.
‘Oh, that would be so dread...’ she began and,
prevented by agitation from finishing, she bent her head
with a movement as graceful as everything she did in his
presence and, looking up at him gratefully, went out,
following her aunt.
That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at
home to settle some accounts with the horse dealers.
When he had finished that business it was already too late

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to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed, and for a

long time he paced up and down the room, reflecting on
his life, a thing he rarely did.
Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on
him when he had met her in Smolensk province. His
having encountered her in such exceptional
circumstances, and his mother having at one time
mentioned her to him as a good match, had drawn his
particular attention to her. When he met her again in
Voronezh the impression she made on him was not
merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been struck
by the peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this
time. He was, however, preparing to go away and it had
not entered his head to regret that he was thus depriving
himself of chances of meeting her. But that day’s
encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than was
desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined
face, that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and
especially the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her
features agitated him and evoked his sympathy. In men
Rostov could not bear to see the expression of a higher
spiritual life (that was why he did not like Prince Andrew)
and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy and
dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which

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revealed the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to

him was an irresistible attraction.
‘She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!’ he
said to himself. ‘Why am I not free? Why was I in such a
hurry with Sonya?’ And he involuntarily compared the
two: the lack of spirituality in the one and the abundance
of it in the other- a spirituality he himself lacked and
therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what
would happen were he free. How he would propose to her
and how she would become his wife. But no, he could not
imagine that. He felt awed, and no clear picture presented
itself to his mind. He had long ago pictured to himself a
future with Sonya, and that was all clear and simple just
because it had all been thought out and he knew all there
was in Sonya, but it was impossible to picture a future
with Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but
simply loved her.
Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and
playful in them, but to dream of Princess Mary was
always difficult and a little frightening.
‘How she prayed!’ he thought. ‘It was plain that her
whole soul was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer
that moves mountains, and I am sure her prayer will be
answered. Why don’t I pray for what I want?’ he

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suddenly thought. ‘What do I want? To be free, released

from Sonya... She was right,’ he thought, remembering
what the governor’s wife had said: ‘Nothing but
misfortune can come of marrying Sonya. Muddles, grief
for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible
muddles! Besides, I don’t love her- not as I should. O,
God! release me from this dreadful, inextricable position!’
he suddenly began to pray. ‘Yes, prayer can move
mountains, but one must have faith and not pray as
Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might
turn into sugar- and then run out into the yard to see
whether it had done so. No, but I am not praying for
trifles now,’ he thought as he put his pipe down in a
corner, and folding his hands placed himself before the
icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to
pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his
eyes and in his throat when the door opened and
Lavrushka came in with some papers.
‘Blockhead! Why do you come in without being
called?’ cried Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude.
‘From the governor,’ said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice.
‘A courier has arrived and there’s a letter for you.’
‘Well, all right, thanks. You can go!’

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Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from

his mother and the other from Sonya. He recognized them
by the handwriting and opened Sonya’s first. He had read
only a few lines when he turned pale and his eyes opened
wide with fear and joy.
‘No, it’s not possible!’ he cried aloud.
Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room
holding the letter and reading it. He glanced through it,
then read it again, and then again, and standing still in the
middle of the room he raised his shoulders, stretching out
his hands, with his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed.
What he had just been praying for with confidence that
God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was
as much astonished as if it were something extraordinary
and unexpected, and as if the very fact that it had
happened so quickly proved that it had not come from
God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary
coincidence.
This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite
voluntary letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that
fettered him and from which there had seemed no escape.
She wrote that the last unfortunate events- the loss of
almost the whole of the Rostovs’ Moscow property- and
the countess’ repeatedly expressed wish that Nicholas

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should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his

silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her
decide to release him from his promise and set him
completely free.
It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a
cause of sorrow or discord in the family that has been so
good to me (she wrote), and my love has no aim but the
happiness of those I love; so, Nicholas, I beg you to
consider yourself free, and to be assured that, in spite of
everything, no one can love you more than does
Your Sonya
Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from
the countess, described their last days in Moscow, their
departure, the fire, and the destruction of all their
property. In this letter the countess also mentioned that
Prince Andrew was among the wounded traveling with
them; his state was very critical, but the doctor said there
was now more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing
him.
Next day Nicholas took his mother’s letter and went to
see Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about
what ‘Natasha nursing him’ might mean, but thanks to
this letter Nicholas suddenly became almost as intimate
with the princess as if they were relations.

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The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her

journey to Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his
regiment.

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Chapter VIII

Sonya’s letter written from Troitsa, which had come as

an answer to Nicholas’ prayer, was prompted by this: the
thought of getting Nicholas married to an heiress
occupied the old countess’ mind more and more. She
knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this happening,
and Sonya’s life in the countess’ house had grown harder
and harder, especially after they had received a letter from
Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in
Bogucharovo. The countess let no occasion slip of
making humiliating or cruel allusions to Sonya.
But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and
excited by all that was going on, she called Sonya to her
and, instead of reproaching and making demands on her,
tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself and repay all
that the family had done for her by breaking off her
engagement with Nicholas.
‘I shall not be at peace till you promise me this.’
Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through
her sobs that she would do anything and was prepared for
anything, but gave no actual promise and could not bring
herself to decide to do what was demanded of her. She

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must sacrifice herself for the family that had reared and
brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was
Sonya’s habit. Her position in the house was such that
only by sacrifice could she show her worth, and she was
accustomed to this and loved doing it. But in all her
former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily
conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in
that of others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas
whom she loved more than anything in the world. But
now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing that
constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice and the
whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt
bitterness against those who had been her benefactors
only to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of
Natasha who had never experienced anything of this sort,
had never needed to sacrifice herself, but made others
sacrifice themselves for her and yet was beloved by
everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt that out of
her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was
beginning to grow up which was stronger than principle,
virtue, or religion. Under the influence of this feeling
Sonya, whose life of dependence had taught her
involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the
countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her

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and resolved to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in

order to set him free but on the contrary at that meeting to
bind him to her forever.
The bustle and terror of the Rostovs’ last days in
Moscow stifled the gloomy thoughts that oppressed
Sonya. She was glad to find escape from them in practical
activity. But when she heard of Prince Andrew’s presence
in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and for
Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious
feeling that God did not intend her to be separated from
Nicholas. She knew that Natasha loved no one but Prince
Andrew and had never ceased to love him. She knew that
being thrown together again under such terrible
circumstances they would again fall in love with one
another, and that Nicholas would then not be able to
marry Princess Mary as they would be within the
prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror of
what had happened during those last days and during the
first days of their journey, this feeling that Providence
was intervening in her personal affairs cheered Sonya.
At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their
journey for a whole day.
Three large rooms were assigned to them in the
monastery hostelry, one of which was occupied by Prince

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Andrew. The wounded man was much better that day and
Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat the
count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior,
who was calling on them as old acquaintances and
benefactors of the monastery. Sonya was there too,
tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew and
Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their
voices through the door. That door opened and Natasha
came out, looking excited. Not noticing the monk, who
had risen to greet her and was drawing back the wide
sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya and took
her hand.
‘Natasha, what are you about? Come here!’ said the
countess.
Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and
advised her to pray for aid to God and His saint.
As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend
by the hand and went with her into the unoccupied room.
‘Sonya, will he live?’ she asked. ‘Sonya, how happy I
am, and how unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it
used to be. If only he lives! He cannot... because...
because... of’ and Natasha burst into tears.
‘Yes! I knew it! Thank God!’ murmured Sonya. ‘He
will live.’

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Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the

latter’s fear and grief and by her own personal feelings
which she shared with no one. Sobbing, she kissed and
comforted Natasha. ‘If only he lives!’ she thought.
Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two
friends went together to Prince Andrew’s door. Natasha
opened it cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya
standing beside her at the half-open door.
Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows.
His pale face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could
see his regular breathing.
‘O, Natasha!’ Sonya suddenly almost screamed,
catching her companion’s arm and stepping back from the
door.
‘What? What is it?’ asked Natasha.
‘It’s that, that...’ said Sonya, with a white face and
trembling lips.
Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to
the window, not yet understanding what the latter was
telling her.
‘You remember,’ said Sonya with a solemn and
frightened expression. ‘You remember when I looked in
the mirror for you... at Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you
remember what I saw?’

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‘Yes, yes!’ cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and

vaguely recalling that Sonya had told her something about
Prince Andrew whom she had seen lying down.
‘You remember?’ Sonya went on. ‘I saw it then and
told everybody, you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a
bed,’ said she, making a gesture with her hand and a lifted
finger at each detail, ‘and that he had his eyes closed and
was covered just with a pink quilt, and that his hands were
folded,’ she concluded, convincing herself that the details
she had just seen were exactly what she had seen in the
mirror.
She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned
the first thing that came into her head, but what she had
invented then seemed to her now as real as any other
recollection. She not only remembered what she had then
said- that he turned to look at her and smiled and was
covered with something red- but was firmly convinced
that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a
pink quilt and that his eyes were closed.
‘Yes, yes, it really was pink!’ cried Natasha, who now
thought she too remembered the word pink being used,
and saw in this the most extraordinary and mysterious
part of the prediction.
‘But what does it mean?’ she added meditatively.

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‘Oh, I don’t know, it is all so strange,’ replied Sonya,

clutching at her head.
A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha
went to him, but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and
touched, remained at the window thinking about the
strangeness of what had occurred.
They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the
army, and the countess was writing to her son.
‘Sonya!’ said the countess, raising her eyes from her
letter as her niece passed, ‘Sonya, won’t you write to
Nicholas?’ She spoke in a soft, tremulous voice, and in
the weary eyes that looked over her spectacles Sonya read
all that the countess meant to convey with these words.
Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask,
fear of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in
case of such refusal.
Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down,
kissed her hand.
‘Yes, Mamma, I will write,’ said she.
Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that
had occurred that day, especially by the mysterious
fulfillment she had just seen of her vision. Now that she
knew that the renewal of Natasha’s relations with Prince
Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying Princess

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Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a return of that self-

sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and
loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of
performing a magnanimous deed- interrupted several
times by the tears that dimmed her velvety black eyes- she
wrote that touching letter the arrival of which had so
amazed Nicholas.

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Chapter IX

The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre

treated him with hostility but yet with respect, in the
guardhouse to which he was taken. In their attitude
toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as to who
he might be- perhaps a very important person- and
hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with
him.
But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre
felt that for the new guard- both officers and men- he was
not as interesting as he had been to his captors; and in fact
the guard of the second day did not recognize in this big,
stout man in a peasant coat the vigorous person who had
fought so desperately with the marauder and the convoy
and had uttered those solemn words about saving a child;
they saw in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians,
arrested and detained for some reason by order of the
Higher Command. If they noticed anything remarkable
about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative
concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke
French, which struck them as surprisingly good. In spite
of this he was placed that day with the other arrested

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suspects, as the separate room he had occupied was

required by an officer.
All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the
lowest class and, recognizing him as a gentleman, they all
avoided him, more especially as he spoke French. Pierre
felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.
That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he,
probably, among them) were to be tried for incendiarism.
On the third day he was taken with the others to a house
where a French general with a white mustache sat with
two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on their
arms. With the precision and definiteness customary in
addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude
human frailty, Pierre like the others was questioned as to
who he was, where he had been, with what object, and so
on.
These questions, like questions put at trials generally,
left the essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility
of that essence’s being revealed, and were designed only
to form a channel through which the judges wished the
answers of the accused to flow so as to lead to the desired
result, namely a conviction. As soon as Pierre began to
say anything that did not fit in with that aim, the channel
was removed and the water could flow to waste. Pierre

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felt, moreover, what the accused always feel at their trial,

perplexity as to why these questions were put to him. He
had a feeling that it was only out of condescension or a
kind of civility that this device of placing a channel was
employed. He knew he was in these men’s power, that
only by force had they brought him there, that force alone
gave them the right to demand answers to their questions,
and that the sole object of that assembly was to inculpate
him. And so, as they had the power and wish to inculpate
him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed
unnecessary. It was evident that any answer would lead to
conviction. When asked what he was doing when he was
arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he
was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the
flames. Why had he fought the marauder? Pierre
answered that he ‘was protecting a woman,’ and that ‘to
protect a woman who was being insulted was the duty of
every man; that...’ They interrupted him, for this was not
to the point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house
where witnesses had seen him? He replied that he had
gone out to see what was happening in Moscow. Again
they interrupted him: they had not asked where he was
going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he?
they asked, repeating their first question, which he had

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declined to answer. Again he replied that he could not

answer it.
‘Put that down, that’s bad... very bad,’ sternly
remarked the general with the white mustache and red
flushed face.
On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski
rampart.
Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach
house of a merchant’s house near the Crimean bridge. On
his way through the streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke
which seemed to hang over the whole city. Fires were
visible on all sides. He did not then realize the
significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the
fires with horror.
He passed four days in the coach house near the
Crimean bridge and during that time learned, from the
talk of the French soldiers, that all those confined there
were awaiting a decision which might come any day from
the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn
from the soldiers. Evidently for them ‘the marshal’
represented a very high and rather mysterious power.
These first days, before the eighth of September when
the prisoners were had up for a second examination, were
the hardest of all for Pierre.

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Chapter X

On the eighth of September an officer- a very

important one judging by the respect the guards showed
him- entered the coach house where the prisoners were.
This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding a
paper in his hand, and called over all the Russians there,
naming Pierre as ‘the man who does not give his name.’
Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners,
he ordered the officer in charge to have them decently
dressed and tidied up before taking them to the marshal.
An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with
thirteen others was led to the Virgin’s Field. It was a fine
day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The
smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had
been taken from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart,
but rose through the pure air in columns. No flames were
seen, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and all
Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast charred
ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only
stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and here and
there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre
gazed at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had

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known well. Here and there he could see churches that

had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not
destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers
and the belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New
Convent of the Virgin glittered brightly and its bells were
ringing particularly clearly. These bells reminded Pierre
that it was Sunday and the feast of the Nativity of the
Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this
holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few
Russians to be seen were tattered and frightened people
who tried to hide when they saw the French.
It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and
destroyed, but in place of the Russian order of life that
had been destroyed, Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite
different, firm, French order had been established over
this ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of the soldiers
who, marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were
escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the
looks of an important French official in a carriage and
pair driven by a soldier, whom they met on the way. He
felt it in the merry sounds of regimental music he heard
from the left side of the field, and felt and realized it
especially from the list of prisoners the French officer had
read out when he came that morning. Pierre had been

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taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to
another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed
that they might have forgotten him, or confused him with
the others. But no: the answers he had given when
questioned had come back to him in his designation as
‘the man who does not give his name,’ and under that
appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were
now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance
on their faces that he and all the other prisoners were
exactly the ones they wanted and that they were being
taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be an
insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine
whose action he did not understand but which was
working well.
He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side
of the Virgin’s Field, to a large white house with an
immense garden not far from the convent. This was
Prince Shcherbitov’s house, where Pierre had often been
in other days, and which, as he learned from the talk of
the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke
of Eckmuhl (Davout).
They were taken to the entrance and led into the house
one by one. Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was
conducted through a glass gallery, an anteroom, and a

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hall, which were familiar to him, into a long low study at

the door of which stood an adjutant.
Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the
further end of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but
Davout, evidently consulting a paper that lay before him,
did not look up. Without raising his eyes, he said in a low
voice:
‘Who are you?’
Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering
a word. To him Davout was not merely a French general,
but a man notorious for his cruelty. Looking at his cold
face, as he sat like a stern schoolmaster who was prepared
to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every instant
of delay might cost him his life; but he did not know what
to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his
first examination, yet to disclose his rank and position
was dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent. But
before he had decided what to do, Davout raised his head,
pushed his spectacles back on his forehead, screwed up
his eyes, and looked intently at him.
‘I know that man,’ he said in a cold, measured tone,
evidently calculated to frighten Pierre.
The chill that had been running down Pierre’s back
now seized his head as in a vise.

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‘You cannot know me, General, I have never seen

you..’
‘He is a Russian spy,’ Davout interrupted, addressing
another general who was present, but whom Pierre had
not noticed.
Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation
in his voice Pierre rapidly began:
‘No, monseigneur,’ he said, suddenly remembering
that Davout was a duke. ‘No, monseigneur, you cannot
have known me. I am a militia officer and have not
quitted Moscow.’
‘Your name?’ asked Davout.
‘Bezukhov.’
‘What proof have I that you are not lying?’
‘Monseigneur!’ exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended
but in a pleading voice.
Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some
seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved
Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look
established human relations between the two men. At that
moment an immense number of things passed dimly
through both their minds, and they realized that they were
both children of humanity and were brothers.

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At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his

head from the papers where human affairs and lives were
indicated by numbers, Pierre was merely a circumstance,
and Davout could have shot him without burdening his
conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a
human being. He reflected for a moment.
‘How can you show me that you are telling the truth?’
said Davout coldly.
Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his
regiment and the street where the house was.
‘You are not what you say,’ returned Davout.
In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing
proofs of the truth of his statements.
But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported
something to Davout.
Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought,
and began buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had
quite forgotten Pierre.
When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he
jerked his head in Pierre’s direction with a frown and
ordered him to be led away. But where they were to take
him Pierre did not know: back to the coach house or to the
place of execution his companions had pointed out to him
as they crossed the Virgin’s Field.

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He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was

putting another question to Davout.
‘Yes, of course!’ replied Davout, but what this ‘yes’
meant, Pierre did not know.
Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went,
whether it was far, or in which direction. His faculties
were quite numbed, he was stupefied, and noticing
nothing around him went on moving his legs as the others
did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only
thought in his mind at that time was: who was it that had
really sentenced him to death? Not the men on the
commission that had first examined him- not one of them
wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not
Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In
another moment Davout would have realized that he was
doing wrong, but just then the adjutant had come in and
interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had evidently had no
evil intent though he might have refrained from coming
in. Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving
him of life- him, Pierre, with all his memories,
aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this?
And Pierre felt that it was no one.
It was a system- a concurrence of circumstances.

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A system of some sort was killing him- Pierre-

depriving him of life, of everything, annihilating him.

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Chapter XI

From Prince Shcherbatov’s house the prisoners were

led straight down the Virgin’s Field, to the left of the
nunnery, as far as a kitchen garden in which a post had
been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit had been dug in
the ground, and near the post and the pit a large crowd
stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few
Russians and many of Napoleon’s soldiers who were not
on duty- Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen, in a variety
of uniforms. To the right and left of the post stood rows of
French troops in blue uniforms with red epaulets and high
boots and shakos.
The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according
to the list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post.
Several drums suddenly began to beat on both sides of
them, and at that sound Pierre felt as if part of his soul had
been torn away. He lost the power of thinking or
understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had
only one wish- that the frightful thing that had to happen
should happen quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow
prisoners and scrutinized them.

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The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One

was tall and thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with
a flat nose. The third was a domestic serf, about forty-five
years old, with grizzled hair and a plump, well-nourished
body. The fourth was a peasant, a very handsome man
with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes. The fifth
was a factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen in
a loose coat.
Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot
them separately or two at a time. ‘In couples,’ replied the
officer in command in a calm voice. There was a stir in
the ranks of the soldiers and it was evident that they were
all hurrying- not as men hurry to do something they
understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary but
unpleasant and incomprehensible task.
A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right
of the row of prisoners and read out the sentence in
Russian and in French.
Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals
and at the officer’s command took the two convicts who
stood first in the row. The convicts stopped when they
reached the post and, while sacks were being brought,
looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at an
approaching huntsman. One crossed himself continually,

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the other scratched his back and made a movement of the

lips resembling a smile. With hurried hands the soldiers
blindfolded them, drawing the sacks over their heads, and
bound them to the post.
Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the
ranks with a firm regular tread and halted eight paces
from the post. Pierre turned away to avoid seeing what
was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling, rolling noise
was heard which seemed to him louder than the most
terrific thunder, and he looked round. There was some
smoke, and the Frenchmen were doing something near the
pit, with pale faces and trembling hands. Two more
prisoners were led up. In the same way and with similar
looks, these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with only
a silent appeal for protection in their eyes, evidently
unable to understand or believe what was going to happen
to them. They could not believe it because they alone
knew what their life meant to them, and so they neither
understood nor believed that it could be taken from them.
Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned
away; but again the sound as of a frightful explosion
struck his ear, and at the same moment he saw smoke,
blood, and the pale, scared faces of the Frenchmen who
were again doing something by the post, their trembling

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hands impeding one another. Pierre, breathing heavily,

looked around as if asking what it meant. The same
question was expressed in all the looks that met his.
On the faces of all the Russians and of the French
soldiers and officers without exception, he read the same
dismay, horror, and conflict that were in his own heart.
‘But who, after all, is doing this? They are all suffering as
I am. Who then is it? Who?’ flashed for an instant through
his mind.
‘Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!’ shouted
someone. The fifth prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was
led away- alone. Pierre did not understand that he was
saved, that he and the rest had been brought there only to
witness the execution. With ever-growing horror, and no
sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place.
The fifth man was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The
moment they laid hands on him he sprang aside in terror
and clutched at Pierre. (Pierre shuddered and shook
himself free.) The lad was unable to walk. They dragged
him along, holding him up under the arms, and he
screamed. When they got him to the post he grew quiet,
as if he suddenly understood something. Whether he
understood that screaming was useless or whether he
thought it incredible that men should kill him, at any rate

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he took his stand at the post, waiting to be blindfolded

like the others, and like a wounded animal looked around
him with glittering eyes.
Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his
eyes. His curiosity and agitation, like that of the whole
crowd, reached the highest pitch at this fifth murder. Like
the others this fifth man seemed calm; he wrapped his
loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare foot with the
other.
When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted
the knot which hurt the back of his head; then when they
propped him against the bloodstained post, he leaned back
and, not being comfortable in that position, straightened
himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned back again more
comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and
did not miss his slightest movement.
Probably a word of command was given and was
followed by the reports of eight muskets; but try as he
would Pierre could not afterwards remember having heard
the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw how the
workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him,
how blood showed itself in two places, how the ropes
slackened under the weight of the hanging body, and how
the workman sat down, his head hanging unnaturally and

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one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the post. No one
hindered him. Pale, frightened people were doing
something around the workman. The lower jaw of an old
Frenchman with a thick mustache trembled as he untied
the ropes. The body collapsed. The soldiers dragged it
awkwardly from the post and began pushing it into the
pit.
They all plainly and certainly knew that they were
criminals who must hide the traces of their guilt as
quickly as possible.
Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad
was lying with his knees close up to his head and one
shoulder higher than the other. That shoulder rose and fell
rhythmically and convulsively, but spadefuls of earth
were already being thrown over the whole body. One of
the soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and
angrily at Pierre to go back. But Pierre did not understand
him and remained near the post, and no one drove him
away.
When the pit had been filled up a command was given.
Pierre was taken back to his place, and the rows of troops
on both sides of the post made a half turn and went past it
at a measured pace. The twenty-four sharpshooters with

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discharged muskets, standing in the center of the circle,

ran back to their places as the companies passed by.
Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these
sharpshooters who ran in couples out of the circle. All but
one rejoined their companies. This one, a young soldier,
his face deadly pale, his shako pushed back, and his
musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit at the
spot from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken
man, taking some steps forward and back to save himself
from falling. An old, noncommissioned officer ran out of
the ranks and taking him by the elbow dragged him to his
company. The crowd of Russians and Frenchmen began
to disperse. They all went away silently and with
drooping heads.
‘That will teach them to start fires,’ said one of the
Frenchmen.
Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was
a soldier who was trying to find some relief after what
had been done, but was not able to do so. Without
finishing what he had begun to say he made a hopeless
movement with his arm and went away.

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Chapter XII

After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest

of the prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and
befouled church.
Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered
with two soldiers and told him that he had been pardoned
and would now go to the barracks for the prisoners of
war. Without understanding what was said to him, Pierre
got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the
upper end of the field, where there were some sheds built
of charred planks, beams, and battens, and led him into
one of them. In the darkness some twenty different men
surrounded Pierre. He looked at them without
understanding who they were, why they were there, or
what they wanted of him. He heard what they said, but
did not understand the meaning of the words and made no
kind of deduction from or application of them. He replied
to questions they put to him, but did not consider who was
listening to his replies, nor how they would understand
them. He looked at their faces and figures, but they all
seemed to him equally meaningless.

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From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible

murders committed by men who did not wish to commit
them, it was as if the mainspring of his life, on which
everything depended and which made everything appear
alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything
had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though
he did not acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right
ordering of the universe, in humanity, in his own soul,
and in God, had been destroyed. He had experienced this
before, but never so strongly as now. When similar doubts
had assailed him before, they had been the result of his
own wrongdoing, and at the bottom of his heart he had
felt that relief from his despair and from those doubts was
to be found within himself. But now he felt that the
universe had crumbled before his eyes and only
meaningless ruins remained, and this not by any fault of
his own. He felt that it was not in his power to regain faith
in the meaning of life.
Around him in the darkness men were standing and
evidently something about him interested them greatly.
They were telling him something and asking him
something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at
last he found himself in a corner of the shed among men
who were laughing and talking on all sides.

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‘Well, then, mates... that very prince who...’ some

voice at the other end of the shed was saying, with a
strong emphasis on the word who.
Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against
the wall, Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed
his eyes. But as soon as he closed them he saw before him
the dreadful face of the factory lad- especially dreadful
because of its simplicity- and the faces of the murderers,
even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he
opened his eyes again and stared vacantly into the
darkness around him.
Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of
whose presence he was first made aware by a strong smell
of perspiration which came from him every time he
moved. This man was doing something to his legs in the
darkness, and though Pierre could not see his face he felt
that the man continually glanced at him. On growing used
to the darkness Pierre saw that the man was taking off his
leg bands, and the way he did it aroused Pierre’s interest.
Having unwound the string that tied the band on one
leg, he carefully coiled it up and immediately set to work
on the other leg, glancing up at Pierre. While one hand
hung up the first string the other was already unwinding
the band on the second leg. In this way, having carefully

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removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his arm

following one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the
leg bands up on some pegs fixed above his head. Then he
took out a knife, cut something, closed the knife, placed it
under the head of his bed, and, seating himself
comfortably, clasped his arms round his lifted knees and
fixed his eyes on Pierre. The latter was conscious of
something pleasant, comforting, and well rounded in
these deft movements, in the man’s well-ordered
arrangements in his corner, and even in his very smell,
and he looked at the man without taking his eyes from
him.
‘You’ve seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?’ the little man
suddenly said.
And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his
singsong voice that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw
trembled and he felt tears rising to his eyes. The little
fellow, giving Pierre no time to betray his confusion,
instantly continued in the same pleasant tones:
‘Eh, lad, don’t fret!’ said he, in the tender singsong
caressing voice old Russian peasant women employ.
‘Don’t fret, friend- ‘suffer an hour, live for an age!’ that’s
how it is, my dear fellow. And here we live, thank
heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are

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good men as well as bad,’ said he, and still speaking, he

turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up,
coughed, and went off to another part of the shed.
‘Eh, you rascal!’ Pierre heard the same kind voice
saying at the other end of the shed. ‘So you’ve come, you
rascal? She remembers... Now, now, that’ll do!’
And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was
jumping up at him, returned to his place and sat down. In
his hands he had something wrapped in a rag.
‘Here, eat a bit, sir,’ said he, resuming his former
respectful tone as he unwrapped and offered Pierre some
baked potatoes. ‘We had soup for dinner and the potatoes
are grand!’
Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the
potatoes seemed extremely pleasant to him. He thanked
the soldier and began to eat.
‘Well, are they all right?’ said the soldier with a smile.
‘You should do like this.’
He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the
potato into two equal halves on the palm of his hand,
sprinkled some salt on it from the rag, and handed it to
Pierre.
‘The potatoes are grand!’ he said once more. ‘Eat some
like that!’

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Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted

better.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ said he, ‘but why did they shoot
those poor fellows? The last one was hardly twenty.’
‘Tss, tt...!’ said the little man. ‘Ah, what a sin... what a
sin!’ he added quickly, and as if his words were always
waiting ready in his mouth and flew out involuntarily he
went on: ‘How was it, sir, that you stayed in Moscow?’
‘I didn’t think they would come so soon. I stayed
accidentally,’ replied Pierre.
‘And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your
house?’
‘No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me
there, and tried me as an incendiary.’
‘Where there’s law there’s injustice,’ put in the little
man.
‘And have you been here long?’ Pierre asked as he
munched the last of the potato.
‘I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in
Moscow.’
‘Why, are you a soldier then?’
‘Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was
dying of fever. We weren’t told anything. There were

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some twenty of us lying there. We had no idea, never

guessed at all.’
‘And do you feel sad here?’ Pierre inquired.
‘How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the
surname is Karataev,’ he added, evidently wishing to
make it easier for Pierre to address him. ‘They call me
‘little falcon’ in the regiment. How is one to help feeling
sad? Moscow- she’s the mother of cities. How can one
see all this and not feel sad? But ‘the maggot gnaws the
cabbage, yet dies first’; that’s what the old folks used to
tell us,’ he added rapidly.
‘What? What did you say?’ asked Pierre.
‘Who? I?’ said Karataev. ‘I say things happen not as
we plan but as God judges,’ he replied, thinking that he
was repeating what he had said before, and immediately
continued:
‘Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a
house? So you have abundance, then? And a housewife?
And your old parents, are they still living?’ he asked.
And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt
that a suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the
soldier’s lips as he put these questions. He seemed
grieved that Pierre had no parents, especially that he had
no mother.

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‘A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but

there’s none as dear as one’s own mother!’ said he. ‘Well,
and have you little ones?’ he went on asking.
Again Pierre’s negative answer seemed to distress him,
and he hastened to add:
‘Never mind! You’re young folks yet, and please God
may still have some. The great thing is to live in
harmony...’
‘But it’s all the same now,’ Pierre could not help
saying.
‘Ah, my dear fellow!’ rejoined Karataev, ‘never
decline a prison or a beggar’s sack!’
He seated himself more comfortably and coughed,
evidently preparing to tell a long story.
‘Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home,’ he
began. ‘We had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land,
we peasants lived well and our house was one to thank
God for. When Father and we went out mowing there
were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It
so happened..’
And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had
gone into someone’s copse to take wood, how he had
been caught by the keeper, had been tried, flogged, and
sent to serve as a soldier.

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‘Well, lad,’ and a smile changed the tone of his voice

‘we thought it was a misfortune but it turned out a
blessing! If it had not been for my sin, my brother would
have had to go as a soldier. But he, my younger brother,
had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a wife
behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I
went as a soldier. I come home on leave and I’ll tell you
how it was, I look and see that they are living better than
before. The yard full of cattle, the women at home, two
brothers away earning wages, and only Michael the
youngest, at home. Father, he says, ‘All my children are
the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets
bitten. But if Platon hadn’t been shaved for a soldier,
Michael would have had to go.’ called us all to him and,
will you believe it, placed us in front of the icons.
‘Michael,’ he says, ‘come here and bow down to his feet;
and you, young woman, you bow down too; and you,
grandchildren, also bow down before him! Do you
understand?’ he says. That’s how it is, dear fellow. Fate
looks for a head. But we are always judging, ‘that’s not
well- that’s not right!’ Our luck is like water in a dragnet:
you pull at it and it bulges, but when you’ve drawn it out
it’s empty! That’s how it is.’
And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.

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After a short silence he rose.

‘Well, I think you must be sleepy,’ said he, and began
rapidly crossing himself and repeating:
‘Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and
Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and
Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and save us!’
he concluded, then bowed to the ground, got up, sighed,
and sat down again on his heap of straw. ‘That’s the way.
Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a
loaf,’ he muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over
him.
‘What prayer was that you were saying?’ asked Pierre.
‘Eh?’ murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep.
‘What was I saying? I was praying. Don’t you pray?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Pierre. ‘But what was that you said:
Frola and Lavra?’
‘Well, of course,’ replied Platon quickly, ‘the horses’
saints. One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now
you’ve curled up and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!’
said Karataev, touching the dog that lay at his feet, and
again turning over he fell asleep immediately.
Sounds of crying and screaming came from
somewhere in the distance outside, and flames were
visible through the cracks of the shed, but inside it was

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quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep, but
lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular
snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the
world that had been shattered was once more stirring in
his soul with a new beauty and on new and unshakable
foundations.

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Chapter XIII

Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials

were confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed
and where he remained for four weeks.
When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all
seemed misty figures to him except Platon Karataev, who
always remained in his mind a most vivid and precious
memory and the personification of everything Russian,
kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next
morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of
something round, was fully confirmed: Platon’s whole
figure- in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a
soldier’s cap, and bast shoes- was round. His head was
quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms,
which he held as if ever ready to embrace something,
were rounded, his pleasant smile and his large, gentle
brown eyes were also round.
Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his
stories of campaigns he had been in, told as by an old
soldier. He did not himself know his age and was quite
unable to determine it. But his brilliantly white, strong
teeth which showed in two unbroken semicircles when he

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laughed- as he often did- were all sound and good, there

was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his
whole body gave an impression of suppleness and
especially of firmness and endurance.
His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an
expression of innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant
and musical. But the chief peculiarity of his speech was
its directness and appositeness. It was evident that he
never considered what he had said or was going to say,
and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation
had an irresistible persuasiveness.
His physical strength and agility during the first days
of his imprisonment were such that he seemed not to
know what fatigue and sickness meant. Every night
before lying down, he said: ‘Lord, lay me down as a stone
and raise me up as a loaf!’ and every morning on getting
up, he said: ‘I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake
myself.’ And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall
asleep like a stone, and he only had to shake himself, to
be ready without a moment’s delay for some work, just as
children are ready to play directly they awake. He could
do everything, not very well but not badly. He baked,
cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was always
busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation- of

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which he was fond- and songs. He did not sing like a

trained singer who knows he is listened to, but like the
birds, evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same way
that one stretches oneself or walks about to get rid of
stiffness, and the sounds were always high-pitched,
mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at
such times was very serious.
Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to
grow, he seemed to have thrown off all that had been
forced upon him- everything military and alien to himself-
and had returned to his former peasant habits.
‘A soldier on leave- a shirt outside breeches,’ he would
say.
He did not like talking about his life as a soldier,
though he did not complain, and often mentioned that he
had not been flogged once during the whole of his army
service. When he related anything it was generally some
old and evidently precious memory of his ‘Christian’ life,
as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which
his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and
indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings
which taken without a context seem so insignificant, but
when used appositely suddenly acquire a significance of
profound wisdom.

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He would often say the exact opposite of what he had

said on a previous occasion, yet both would be right. He
liked to talk and he talked well, adorning his speech with
terms of endearment and with folk sayings which Pierre
thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his
talk lay in the fact that the commonest events- sometimes
just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of
them- assumed in Karataev’s a character of solemn
fitness. He liked to hear the folk tales one of the soldiers
used to tell of an evening (they were always the same),
but most of all he liked to hear stories of real life. He
would smile joyfully when listening to such stories, now
and then putting in a word or asking a question to make
the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself.
Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as
Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately
with everything life brought him in contact with,
particularly with man- not any particular man, but those
with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his
comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor,
but Pierre felt that in spite of Karataev’s affectionate
tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave
Pierre’s spiritual life its due) he would not have grieved

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for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to

feel in the same way toward Karataev.
To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a
most ordinary soldier. They called him ‘little falcon’ or
‘Platosha,’ chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on
errands. But to Pierre he always remained what he had
seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal
personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth.
Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his
prayers. When he began to speak he seemed not to know
how he would conclude.
Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words,
would ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never
recall what he had said a moment before, just as he never
could repeat to Pierre the words of his favorite song:
native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in it,
but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got
out of it. He did not, and could not, understand the
meaning of words apart from their context. Every word
and action of his was the manifestation of an activity
unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he
regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had
meaning only as part of a whole of which he was always
conscious. His words and actions flowed from him as

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evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance

exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value
or significance of any word or deed taken separately.

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Chapter XIV

When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her

brother was with the Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once
prepared to go there, in spite of her aunt’s efforts to
dissuade her- and not merely to go herself but to take her
nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy,
possible or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to
know: it was her duty not only herself to be near her
brother who was perhaps dying, but to do everything
possible to take his son to him, and so she prepared to set
off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew himself,
Princess Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or
to his considering the long journey too hard and too
dangerous for her and his son.
In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her
equipages were the huge family coach in which she had
traveled to Voronezh, a semiopen trap, and a baggage
cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle Bourienne, little
Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three maids, Tikhon,
and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to
accompany her.

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The usual route through Moscow could not be thought

of, and the roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to
take through Lipetsk, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was
very long and, as post horses were not everywhere
obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the
French were said to have shown themselves was even
dangerous.
During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Dessalles, and Princess Mary’s servants were astonished
at her energy and firmness of spirit. She went to bed later
and rose earlier than any of them, and no difficulties
daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy, which
infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl
by the end of the second week.
The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the
happiest of her life. Her love for Rostov no longer
tormented or agitated her. It filled her whole soul, had
become an integral part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced
that she loved and was beloved, though she never said this
definitely to herself in words. She had become convinced
of it at her last interview with Nicholas, when he had
come to tell her that her brother was with the Rostovs.
Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the fact that

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Prince Andrew’s relations with Natasha might, if he

recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face
that he knew and thought of this.
Yet in spite of that, his relation to her- considerate,
delicate, and loving- not only remained unchanged, but it
sometimes seemed to Princess Mary that he was even
glad that the family connection between them allowed
him to express his friendship more freely. She knew that
she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt
that she was beloved, and was happy in regard to it.
But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature
did not prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full
force; on the contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one
side made it the more possible for her to give full play to
her feeling for her brother. That feeling was so strong at
the moment of leaving Voronezh that those who saw her
off, as they looked at her careworn, despairing face, felt
sure she would fall ill on the journey. But the very
difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she
took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from her
grief and gave her strength.
As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary
thought only of the journey itself, forgetting its object.
But as she approached Yaroslavl the thought of what

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might await her there- not after many days, but that very
evening- again presented itself to her and her agitation
increased to its utmost limit.
The courier who had been sent on in advance to find
out where the Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in
what condition Prince Andrew was, when he met the big
coach just entering the town gates was appalled by the
terrible pallor of the princess’ face that looked out at him
from the window.
‘I have found out everything, your excellency: the
Rostovs are staying at the merchant Bronnikov’s house, in
the Square not far from here, right above the Volga,’ said
the courier.
Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry,
not understanding why he did not reply to what she
chiefly wanted to know: how was her brother?
Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.
‘How is the prince?’ she asked.
‘His excellency is staying in the same house with
them.’
‘Then he is alive,’ thought Princess Mary, and asked in
a low voice: ‘How is he?’
‘The servants say he is still the same.’

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What ‘still the same’ might mean Princess Mary did

not ask, but with an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-
old Nicholas, who was sitting in front of her looking with
pleasure at the town, she bowed her head and did not raise
it again till the heavy coach, rumbling, shaking and
swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as
they were let down.
The carriage door was opened. On the left there was
water- a great river- and on the right a porch. There were
people at the entrance: servants, and a rosy girl with a
large plait of black hair, smiling as it seemed to Princess
Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This was Sonya.)
Princess Mary ran up the steps. ‘This way, this way!’ said
the girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess
found herself in the hall facing an elderly woman of
Oriental type, who came rapidly to meet her with a look
of emotion. This was the countess. She embraced Princess
Mary and kissed her.
‘Mon enfant!’ she muttered, ‘je vous aime et vous
connais depuis longtemps.’*
*"My child! I love you and have known you a long
time.’
Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that
this was the countess and that it was necessary to say

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something to her. Hardly knowing how she did it, she

contrived to utter a few polite phrases in French in the
same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and
asked: ‘How is he?’
‘The doctor says that he is not in danger,’ said the
countess, but as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh,
and her gesture conveyed a contradiction of her words.
‘Where is he? Can I see him- can I?’ asked the
princess.
‘One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this
his son?’ said the countess, turning to little Nicholas who
was coming in with Dessalles. ‘There will be room for
everybody, this is a big house. Oh, what a lovely boy!’
The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing
room, where Sonya was talking to Mademoiselle
Bourienne. The countess caressed the boy, and the old
count came in and welcomed the princess. He had
changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen
him. Then he had been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old
man; now he seemed a pitiful, bewildered person. While
talking to Princess Mary he continually looked round as if
asking everyone whether he was doing the right thing.
After the destruction of Moscow and of his property,
thrown out of his accustomed groove he seemed to have

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lost the sense of his own significance and to feel that there
was no longer a place for him in life.
In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as
possible, and her vexation that at the moment when all
she wanted was to see him they should be trying to
entertain her and pretending to admire her nephew, the
princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt
the necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order
of things which she had entered. She knew it to be
necessary, and though it was hard for her she was not
vexed with these people.
‘This is my niece,’ said the count, introducing Sonya-
‘You don’t know her, Princess?’
Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the
hostile feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed
her. But she felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of
everyone around her was so far from what was in her own
heart.
‘Where is he?’ she asked again, addressing them all.
‘He is downstairs. Natasha is with him,’ answered
Sonya, flushing. ‘We have sent to ask. I think you must be
tired, Princess.’
Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess
Mary’s eyes. She turned away and was about to ask the

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countess again how to go to him, when light, impetuous,

and seemingly buoyant steps were heard at the door. The
princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in, almost
running- that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their
meeting in Moscow long since.
But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha’s face
before she realized that here was a real comrade in her
grief, and consequently a friend. She ran to meet her,
embraced her, and began to cry on her shoulder.
As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince
Andrew’s bed, heard of Princess Mary’s arrival, she softly
left his room and hastened to her with those swift steps
that had sounded buoyant to Princess Mary.
There was only one expression on her agitated face
when she ran into the drawing room- that of love-
boundless love for him, for her, and for all that was near
to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for others, and
passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping them.
It was plain that at that moment there was in Natasha’s
heart no thought of herself or of her own relations with
Prince Andrew.
Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood
all this at the first glance at Natasha’s face, and wept on
her shoulder with sorrowful pleasure.

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‘Come, come to him, Mary,’ said Natasha, leading her

into the other room.
Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and
turned to Natasha. She felt that from her she would be
able to understand and learn everything.
‘How...’ she began her question but stopped short.
She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in
words. Natasha’s face eyes would eyes would have to tell
her all more clearly and profoundly.
Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in
doubt whether to say all she knew or not; she seemed to
feel that before those luminous eyes which penetrated into
the very depths of her heart, it was impossible not to tell
the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly, Natasha’s
lips twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth,
and covering her face with her hands she burst into sobs.
Princess Mary understood.
But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did
not trust:
‘But how is his wound? What is his general
condition?’
‘You, you... will see,’ was all Natasha could say.

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They sat a little while downstairs near his room till

they had left off crying and were able to go to him with
calm faces.
‘How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he
grew worse? When did this happen?’ Princess Mary
inquired.
Natasha told her that at first there had been danger
from his feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but
at Troitsa that had passed and the doctor had only been
afraid of gangrene. That danger had also passed. When
they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to fester
(Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the
doctor had said that the festering might take a normal
course. Then fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever
was not very serious.
‘But two days ago this suddenly happened,’ said
Natasha, struggling with her sobs. ‘I don’t know why, but
you will see what he is like.’
‘Is he weaker? Thinner?’ asked the princess.
‘No, it’s not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he
is too good, he cannot, cannot live, because..’

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Chapter XV

When Natasha opened Prince Andrew’s door with a

familiar movement and let Princess Mary pass into the
room before her, the princess felt the sobs in her throat.
Hard as she had tried to prepare herself, and now tried to
remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to
look at him without tears.
The princess understood what Natasha had meant by
the words: ‘two days ago this suddenly happened.’ She
understood those words to mean that he had suddenly
softened and that this softening and gentleness were signs
of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she
already saw in imagination Andrew’s face as she
remembered it in childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic
face which he had rarely shown, and which therefore
affected her very strongly. She was sure he would speak
soft, tender words to her such as her father had uttered
before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it
and would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or
later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher
and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly
distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to

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make out his features, and then she saw his face and met
his gaze.
He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a
divan, surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In
one thin, translucently white hand he held a handkerchief,
while with the other he stroked the delicate mustache he
had grown, moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at
them as they entered.
On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess
Mary’s pace suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up
and her sobs ceased. She suddenly felt guilty and grew
timid on catching the expression of his face and eyes.
‘But in what am I to blame?’ she asked herself. And
his cold, stern look replied: ‘Because you are alive and
thinking of the living, while I..’
In the deep the deep gaze that seemed to look not
outwards but inwards there was an almost hostile
expression as he slowly regarded his sister and Natasha.
He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was
their wont.
‘How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get
here?’ said he in a voice as calm and aloof as his look.

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Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have

struck such horror into Princess Mary’s heart as the tone
of his voice.
‘And have you brought little Nicholas?’ he asked in the
same slow, quiet manner and with an obvious effort to
remember.
‘How are you now?’ said Princess Mary, herself
surprised at what she was saying.
‘That, my dear, you must ask the doctor,’ he replied,
and again making an evident effort to be affectionate, he
said with his lips only (his words clearly did not
correspond to his thoughts):
‘Merci, chere amie, d’etre venue.’*
*"Thank you for coming, my dear.’
Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made
him wince just perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not
know what to say. She now understood what had
happened to him two days before. In his words, his tone,
and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look
could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging
to this world, terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only
with an effort did he understand anything living; but it
was obvious that he failed to understand, not because he
lacked the power to do so but because he understood

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something else- something the living did not and could

not understand- and which wholly occupied his mind.
‘There, you see how strangely fate has brought us
together,’ said he, breaking the silence and pointing to
Natasha. ‘She looks after me all the time.’
Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how
he could say such a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince
Andrew, how could he say that, before her whom he
loved and who loved him? Had he expected to live he
could not have said those words in that offensively cold
tone. If he had not known that he was dying, how could
he have failed to pity her and how could he speak like that
in her presence? The only explanation was that he was
indifferent, because something else, much more
important, had been revealed to him.
The conversation was cold and disconnected and
continually broke off.
‘Mary came by way of Ryazan,’ said Natasha.
Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister
Mary, and only after calling her so in his presence did
Natasha notice it herself.
‘Really?’ he asked.
‘They told her that all Moscow has been burned down,
and that..’

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Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain

that he was making an effort to listen, but could not do so.
‘Yes, they say it’s burned,’ he said. ‘It’s a great pity,’
and he gazed straight before him, absently stroking his
mustache with his fingers.
‘And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?’ Prince
Andrew suddenly said, evidently wishing to speak
pleasantly to them. ‘He wrote here that he took a great
liking to you,’ he went on simply and calmly, evidently
unable to understand all the complex significance his
words had for living people. ‘If you liked him too, it
would be a good thing for you to get married,’ he added
rather more quickly, as if pleased at having found words
he had long been seeking.
Princess Mary heard his words but they had no
meaning for her, except as a proof of how far away he
now was from everything living.
‘Why talk of me?’ she said quietly and glanced at
Natasha.
Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All
three were again silent.
‘Andrew, would you like...’ Princess Mary suddenly
said in a trembling voice, ‘would you like to see little
Nicholas? He is always talking about you!’

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Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first

time, but Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw
with horror that he did not smile with pleasure or
affection for his son, but with quiet, gentle irony because
he thought she was trying what she believed to be the last
means of arousing him.
‘Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?’
When little Nicholas was brought into Prince
Andrew’s room he looked at his father with frightened
eyes, but did not cry, because no one else was crying.
Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know
what to say to him.
When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary
again went up to her brother, kissed him, and unable to
restrain her tears any longer began to cry.
He looked at her attentively.
‘Is it about Nicholas?’ he asked.
Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.
‘Mary, you know the Gosp...’ but he broke off.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. You mustn’t cry here,’ he said, looking at
her with the same cold expression.
When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that
she was crying at the thought that little Nicholas would be

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left without a father. With a great effort he tried to return

to life and to see things from their point of view.
‘Yes, to them it must seem sad!’ he thought. ‘But how
simple it is.
‘The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet
your Father feedeth them,’ he said to himself and wished
to say to Princess Mary; ‘but no, they will take it their
own way, they won’t understand! They can’t understand
that all those feelings they prize so- all our feelings, all
those ideas that seem so important to us, are unnecessary.
We cannot understand one another,’ and he remained
silent.
Prince Andrew’s little son was seven. He could
scarcely read, and knew nothing. After that day he lived
through many things, gaining knowledge, observation,
and experience, but had he possessed all the faculties he
afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or
more profound understanding of the meaning of the scene
he had witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natasha,
than he had then. He understood it completely, and,
leaving the room without crying, went silently up to
Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly at
her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted,

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rosy upper lip trembled and leaning his head against her
he began to cry.
After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who
caressed him and either sat alone or came timidly to
Princess Mary, or to Natasha of whom he seemed even
fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and
shyly.
When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully
understood what Natasha’s face had told her. She did not
speak any more to Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She
took turns with her beside his sofa, and did not cry any
more, but prayed continually, turning in soul to that
Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the
dying man was now so evident.

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Chapter XVI

Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he

felt that he was dying and was already half dead. He was
conscious of an aloofness from everything earthly and a
strange and joyous lightness of existence. Without haste
or agitation he awaited what was coming. That
inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of
which he had felt continually all his life- was now near to
him and, by the strange lightness he experienced, almost
comprehensible and palpable...
Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice
experienced that terribly tormenting fear of death- the
end- but now he no longer understood that fear.
He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like
a top before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the
bushes, and the sky, and knew that he was face to face
with death. When he came to himself after being wounded
and the flower of eternal, unfettered love had instantly
unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage of
life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and
ceased to think about it.

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During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial

delirium he spent after he was wounded, the more deeply
he penetrated into the new principle of eternal love
revealed to him, the more he unconsciously detached
himself from earthly life. To love everything and
everybody and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant
not to love anyone, not to live this earthly life. And the
more imbued he became with that principle of love, the
more he renounced life and the more completely he
destroyed that dreadful barrier which- in the absence of
such love- stands between life and death. When during
those first days he remembered that he would have to die,
he said to himself: ‘Well, what of it? So much the better!’
But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious,
he had seen her for whom he longed appear before him
and, having pressed her hand to his lips, had shed gentle,
happy tears, love for a particular woman again crept
unobserved into his heart and once more bound him to
life. And joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy
his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station
when he had seen Kuragin, he could not now regain the
feeling he then had, but was tormented by the question
whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared not inquire.

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His illness pursued its normal physical course, but

what Natasha referred to when she said: ‘This suddenly
happened,’ had occurred two days before Princess Mary
arrived. It was the last spiritual struggle between life and
death, in which death gained the victory. It was the
unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life
as presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha,
and a last, though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror
before the unknown.
It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly
feverish, and his thoughts were preternaturally clear.
Sonya was sitting by the table. He began to doze.
Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him.
‘Ah, she has come!’ thought he.
And so it was: in Sonya’s place sat Natasha who had
just come in noiselessly.
Since she had begun looking after him, he had always
experienced this physical consciousness of her nearness.
She was sitting in an armchair placed sideways, screening
the light of the candle from him, and was knitting a
stocking. She had learned to knit stockings since Prince
Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the
sick so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that
there is something soothing in the knitting of stockings.

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The needles clicked lightly in her slender, rapidly moving

hands, and he could clearly see the thoughtful profile of
her drooping face. She moved, and the ball rolled off her
knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening
the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple
and exact movement, picked up the ball, and regained her
former position.
He looked at her without moving and saw that she
wanted to draw a deep breath after stooping, but refrained
from doing so and breathed cautiously.
At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past,
and he had told her that if he lived he would always thank
God for his wound which had brought them together
again, but after that they never spoke of the future.
‘Can it or can it not be?’ he now thought as he looked
at her and listened to the light click of the steel needles.
‘Can fate have brought me to her so strangely only for me
to die?... Is it possible that the truth of life has been
revealed to me only to show me that I have spent my life
in falsity? I love her more than anything in the world! But
what am I to do if I love her?’ he thought, and he
involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his
sufferings.

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On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking,

leaned nearer to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining
eyes, stepped lightly up to him and bent over him.
‘You are not asleep?’
‘No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you
come in. No one else gives me that sense of soft
tranquillity that you do... that light. I want to weep for
joy.’
Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with
rapturous joy.
‘Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in
the world.’
‘And I!’- She turned away for an instant. ‘Why too
much?’ she asked.
‘Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you
feel in your soul, your whole soul- shall I live? What do
you think?’
‘I am sure of it, sure!’ Natasha almost shouted, taking
hold of both his hands with a passionate movement.
He remained silent awhile.
‘How good it would be!’ and taking her hand he kissed
it.

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Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once

remembered that this would not do and that he had to be
quiet.
‘But you have not slept,’ she said, repressing her joy.
‘Try to sleep... please!’
He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back
to the candle and sat down again in her former position.
Twice she turned and looked at him, and her eyes met his
beaming at her. She set herself a task on her stocking and
resolved not to turn round till it was finished.
Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not
sleep long and suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold
perspiration.
As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the
subject that now always occupied his mind- about life and
death, and chiefly about death. He felt himself nearer to it.
‘Love? What is love?’ he thought.
‘Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I
understand, I understand only because I love. Everything
is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is
united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a
particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal
source.’ These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But
they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them,

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they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal

and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and
obscurity. He fell asleep.
He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really
was in, but that he was quite well and unwounded. Many
various, indifferent, and insignificant people appeared
before him. He talked to them and discussed something
trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and
that he had more important cares, but he continued to
speak, surprising them by empty witticisms. Gradually,
unnoticed, all these persons began to disappear and a
single question, that of the closed door, superseded all
else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it.
Everything depended on whether he was, or was not, in
time to lock it. He went, and tried to hurry, but his legs
refused to move and he knew he would not be in time to
lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers.
He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the
fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he
was clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful
something on the other side was already pressing against
it and forcing its way in. Something not human- death-
was breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out.

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He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it back-

to lock it was no longer possible- but his efforts were
weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by
that terror, opened and closed again.
Once again it pushed from outside. His last
superhuman efforts were vain and both halves of the door
noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was death, and
Prince Andrew died.
But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered
that he was asleep, and at the very instant he died, having
made an effort, he awoke.
‘Yes, it was death! I died- and woke up. Yes, death is
an awakening!’ And all at once it grew light in his soul
and the veil that had till then concealed the unknown was
lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as if powers till
then confined within him had been liberated, and that
strange lightness did not again leave him.
When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the
divan, Natasha went up and asked him what was the
matter. He did not answer and looked at her strangely, not
understanding.
That was what had happened to him two days before
Princess Mary’s arrival. From that day, as the doctor
expressed it, the wasting fever assumed a malignant

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character, but what the doctor said did not interest

Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to
her were more convincing.
From that day an awakening from life came to Prince
Andrew together with his awakening from sleep. And
compared to the duration of life it did not seem to him
slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the
duration of a dream.
There was nothing terrible or violent in this
comparatively slow awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and
simple way. Both Princess Mary and Natasha, who did
not leave him, felt this. They did not weep or shudder and
during these last days they themselves felt that they were
not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left
them) but on what reminded them most closely of him-
his body. Both felt this so strongly that the outward and
terrible side of death did not affect them and they did not
feel it necessary to foment their grief. Neither in his
presence nor out of it did they weep, nor did they ever
talk to one another about him. They felt that they could
not express in words what they understood.

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They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly,

deeper and deeper, away from them, and they both knew
that this had to be so and that it was right.
He confessed, and received communion: everyone
came to take leave of him. When they brought his son to
him, he pressed his lips to the boy’s and turned away, not
because he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and
Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it
was all that was required of him, but when they told him
to bless the boy, he did what was demanded and looked
round as if asking whether there was anything else he
should do.
When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit
was leaving, occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were
present.
‘Is it over?’ said Princess Mary when his body had for
a few minutes lain motionless, growing cold before them.
Natasha went up, looked at the dead eyes, and hastened to
close them. She closed them but did not kiss them, but
clung to that which reminded her most nearly of him- his
body.
‘Where has he gone? Where is he now?..’

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When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin

on a table, everyone came to take leave of him and they
all wept.
Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by
painful perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from
pity for Natasha and because he was no more. The old
count cried because he felt that before long, he, too, must
take the same terrible step.
Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not
because of their own personal grief; they wept with a
reverent and softening emotion which had taken
possession of their souls at the consciousness of the
simple and solemn mystery of death that had been
accomplished in their presence.

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BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812

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Chapter I

Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their

completeness, but the desire to find those causes is
implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the
multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of
which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he
snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems
to him intelligible and says: ‘This is the cause!’ In
historical events (where the actions of men are the subject
of observation) the first and most primitive approximation
to present itself was the will of the gods and, after that,
the will of those who stood in the most prominent
position- the heroes of history. But we need only
penetrate to the essence of any historic event- which lies
in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in
it- to be convinced that the will of the historic hero does
not control the actions of the mass but is itself continually
controlled. It may seem to be a matter of indifference
whether we understand the meaning of historical events
this way or that; yet there is the same difference between
a man who says that the people of the West moved on the
East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that
this happened because it had to happen, as there is

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between those who declared that the earth was stationary

and that the planets moved round it and those who
admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth,
but knew there were laws directing its movement and that
of the other planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an
historical event except the one cause of all causes. But
there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
are known to us while we are conscious of others we
cannot comprehend. The discovery of these laws is only
possible when possible when we have quite abandoned
the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the
planets was possible only when men abandoned the
conception of the fixity of the earth.
The historians consider that, next to the battle of
Borodino and the occupation of Moscow by the enemy
and its destruction by fire, the most important episode of
the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian army
from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino
camp- the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya
Pakhra River. They ascribe the glory of that achievement
of genius to different men and dispute as to whom the
honor is due. Even foreign historians, including the
French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian

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commanders when they speak of that flank march. But it

is hard to understand why military writers, and following
them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
conception of some one man who saved Russia and
destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to
understand where the profundity and genius of this
movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to
see that the best position for an army when it is not being
attacked is where there are most provisions; and even a
dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best
position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812
was on the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand
by what reasoning the historians reach the conclusion that
this maneuver was a profound one. And it is even more
difficult to understand just why they think that this
maneuver was calculated to save Russia and destroy the
French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,
accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might
have proved ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the
French. If the position of the Russian army really began to
improve from the time of that march, it does not at all
follow that the march was the cause of it.
That flank march might not only have failed to give
any advantage to the Russian army, but might in other

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circumstances have led to its destruction. What would

have happened had Moscow not burned down? If Murat
had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not
remained inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya
Pakhra had given battle as Bennigsen and Barclay
advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond
the Pakhra? What would have happened if on approaching
Tarutino, Napoleon had attacked the Russians with but a
tenth of the energy he had shown when he attacked them
at Smolensk? What would have happened had the French
moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the
flank march that brought salvation might have proved
disastrous.
The third and most incomprehensible thing is that
people studying history deliberately avoid seeing that this
flank march cannot be attributed to any one man, that no
one ever foresaw it, and that in reality, like the retreat
from Fili, it did not suggest itself to anyone in its entirety,
but resulted- moment by moment, step by step, event by
event- from an endless number of most diverse
circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it
had been accomplished and belonged to the past.

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At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the

minds of the Russian commanders was the one naturally
suggesting itself, namely, a direct retreat by the Nizhni
road. In proof of this there is the fact that the majority of
the council voted for such a retreat, and above all there is
the well-known conversation after the council, between
the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge
of the commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the
commander in chief that the army supplies were for the
most part stored along the Oka in the Tula and Ryazan
provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni the army
would be separated from its supplies by the broad river
Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was
the first indication of the necessity of deviating from what
had previously seemed the most natural course- a direct
retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. The army turned more to the
south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to its supplies.
Subsequently the in activity of the French (who even lost
sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the
arsenal at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing
nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn still further
south to the Tula road. Having crossed over, by a forced
march, to the Tula road beyond the Pakhra, the Russian
commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had no

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thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable

circumstances and the reappearance of French troops who
had for a time lost touch with the Russians, and projects
of giving battle, and above all the abundance of
provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn
still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the
Kaluga road and go to Tarutino, which was between the
roads along which those supplies lay. Just as it is
impossible to say when it was decided to abandon
Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by
whom, it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the
army had got there, as the result of innumerable and
varying forces, did people begin to assure themselves that
they had desired this movement and long ago foreseen its
result.

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Chapter II

The famous flank movement merely consisted in this:

after the advance of the French had ceased, the Russian
army, which had been continually retreating straight back
from the invaders, deviated from that direct course and,
not finding itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the
district where supplies were abundant.
If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of
genius leading the Russian army, we picture that army
without any leaders, it could not have done anything but
make a return movement toward Moscow, describing an
arc in the direction where most provisions were to be
found and where the country was richest.
That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula,
and Kaluga roads was so natural that even the Russian
marauders moved in that direction, and demands were
sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take his army that
way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a
reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army
along the Ryazan road, and the Emperor’s letter indicated
to him the very position he had already occupied near
Kaluga.

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Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus

given by the whole campaign and by the battle of
Borodino, the Russian army- when the strength of that
impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was received-
assumed the position natural to it.
Kutuzov’s merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of
genius, as it is called, but in the fact that he alone
understood the significance of what had happened. He
alone then understood the meaning of the French army’s
inactivity, he alone continued to assert that the battle of
Borodino had been a victory, he alone- who as
commander in chief might have been expected to be eager
to attack- employed his whole strength to restrain the
Russian army from useless engagements.
The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the
fleeing hunter had left him; but whether he was still alive,
whether he was strong and merely lying low, the hunter
did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard to moan.
The moan of that wounded beast (the French army)
which betrayed its calamitous condition was the sending
of Lauriston to Kutuzov’s camp with overtures for peace.
Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever
entered his head was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first

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words that occurred to him, though they were

meaningless.
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am
sending one of my adjutants-general to discuss several
interesting questions with you. I beg your Highness to
credit what he says to you, especially when he expresses
the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long
entertained for your person. This letter having no other
object, I pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep
you in His holy and gracious protection!
NAPOLEON
MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812
Kutuzov replied: ‘I should be cursed by posterity were
I looked on as the initiator of a settlement of any sort.
Such is the present spirit of my nation.’ But he continued
to exert all his powers to restrain his troops from
attacking.
During the month that the French troops were pillaging
in Moscow and the Russian troops were quietly encamped
at Tarutino, a change had taken place in the relative
strength of the two armies- both in spirit and in number-
as a result of which the superiority had passed to the
Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the
French army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as

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that change occurred the need of attacking at once showed

itself by countless signs. These signs were: Lauriston’s
mission; the abundance of provisions at Tarutino; the
reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and
disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our
regiments; the fine weather; the long rest the Russian
soldiers had enjoyed, and the impatience to do what they
had been assembled for, which usually shows itself in an
army that has been resting; curiosity as to what the French
army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with
which our outposts now scouted close up to the French
stationed at Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained
by peasants and guerrilla troops over the French, the envy
aroused by this; the desire for revenge that lay in the heart
of every Russian as long as the French were in Moscow,
and (above all) a dim consciousness in every soldier’s
mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed
and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a
substantial change in the relative strength, and an advance
had become inevitable. And at once, as a clock begins to
strike and chime as soon as the minute hand has
completed a full circle, this change was shown by an
increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher
spheres.

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Chapter III

The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and

his staff, and also by the Emperor from Petersburg.
Before the news of the abandonment of Moscow had been
received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole
campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his
guidance. Though this plan had been drawn up on the
supposition that Moscow was still in our hands, it was
approved by the staff and accepted as a basis for action.
Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from a
distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh
instructions were sent for the solution of difficulties that
might be encountered, as well as fresh people who were
to watch Kutuzov’s actions and report upon them.
Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was
now reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who
had been killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in
dudgeon, had to be filled. Very serious consideration was
given to the question whether it would be better to put A
in B’s place and B in D’s, or on the contrary to put D in
A’s place, and so on- as if anything more than A’s or B’s
satisfaction depended on this.

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As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and

Bennigsen, his Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential
representatives of the Emperor, and these transfers, a
more than usually complicated play of parties was going
on among the staff of the army. A was undermining B, D
was undermining C, and so on in all possible
combinations and permutations. In all these plottings the
subject of intrigue was generally the conduct of the war,
which all these men believed they were directing; but this
affair of the war went on independently of them, as it had
to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but
flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses.
Only in the highest spheres did all these schemes,
crossings, and interminglings appear to be a true
reflection of what had to happen.
Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on
the second of October in a letter that reached Kutuzov
after the battle at Tarutino) Since September 2 Moscow
has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last reports
were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not
only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the
relief of the ancient capital, but according to your last
report you have even retreated farther. Serpukhov is
already occupied by an enemy detachment and Tula with

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its famous arsenal so indispensable to the army, is in

danger. From General Wintzingerode’s reports, I see that
an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the
Petersburg road. Another corps of several thousand men
is moving on Dmitrov. A third has advanced along the
Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather considerable
detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk.
Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-
fifth. In view of all this information, when the enemy has
scattered his forces in large detachments, and with
Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it possible that
the enemy’s forces confronting you are so considerable as
not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary,
he is probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most
with an army corps much weaker than the army entrusted
to you. It would seem that, availing yourself of these
circumstances, you might advantageously attack a weaker
one and annihilate him, or at least oblige him to retreat,
retaining in our hands an important part of the provinces
now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger
from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be
responsible if the enemy is able to direct a force of any
size against Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it
has not been possible to retain many troops; for with the

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army entrusted to you, and acting with resolution and

energy, you have ample means to avert this fresh
calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our
offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have
experienced my readiness to reward you. That readiness
will not weaken in me, but I and Russia have a right to
expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and success which
your intellect, military talent, and the courage of the
troops you command justify us in expecting.
But by the time this letter, which proved that the real
relation of the forces had already made itself felt in
Petersburg, was dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself
unable any longer to restrain the army he commanded
from attacking and a battle had taken place.
On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who
was out scouting, killed one hare and wounded another.
Following the wounded hare he made his way far into the
forest and came upon the left flank of Murat’s army,
encamped there without any precautions. The Cossack
laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen
into the hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story,
informed his commander.
The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack
officers wished to take advantage of this chance to

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capture some horses, but one of the superior officers, who

was acquainted with the higher authorities, reported the
incident to a general on the staff. The state of things on
the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov
had been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had
entreated him to use his influence with the commander in
chief to induce him to take the offensive.
‘If I did not know you I should think you did not want
what you are asking for. I need only advise anything and
his Highness is sure to do the opposite,’ replied
Bennigsen.
The Cossack’s report, confirmed by horse patrols who
were sent out, was the final proof that events had matured.
The tightly coiled spring was released, the clock began to
whirr and the chimes to play. Despite all his supposed
power, his intellect, his experience, and his knowledge of
men, Kutuzov- having taken into consideration the
Cossack’s report, a note from Bennigsen who sent
personal reports to the Emperor, the wishes he supposed
the Emperor to hold, and the fact that all the generals
expressed the same wish- could no longer check the
inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he
regarded as useless and harmful- gave his approval, that
is, to the accomplished fact.

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Chapter IV

Bennigsen’s note and the Cossack’s information that

the left flank of the French was unguarded were merely
final indications that it was necessary to order an attack,
and it was fixed for the fifth of October.
On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov
signed the dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking
him to attend to the further arrangements.
‘All right- all right. I haven’t time just now,’ replied
Ermolov, and left the hut.
The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As
in the Austerlitz dispositions, it was written- though not in
German this time:
‘The First Column will march here and here,’ ‘the
Second Column will march there and there,’ and so on;
and on paper, all these columns arrived at their places at
the appointed time and destroyed the enemy. Everything
had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its
place at the appointed time.
When the necessary number of copies of the
dispositions had been prepared, an officer was summoned

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and sent to deliver them to Ermolov to deal with. A young

officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov’s orderly, pleased at
the importance of the mission entrusted to him, went to
Ermolov’s quarters.
‘Gone away,’ said Ermolov’s orderly.
The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with
whom Ermolov was often to be found.
‘No, and the general’s out too.’
The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone
else.
‘No, he’s gone out.’
‘If only they don’t make me responsible for this delay!
What a nuisance it is!’ thought the officer, and he rode
round the whole camp. One man said he had seen
Ermolov ride past with some other generals, others said
he must have returned home. The officer searched till six
o’clock in the evening without even stopping to eat.
Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew
where he was. The officer snatched a little food at a
comrade’s, and rode again to the vanguard to find
Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here he
was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin’s and
that Ermolov was probably there too.
‘But where is it?’

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‘Why, there, over at Echkino,’ said a Cossack officer,

pointing to a country house in the far distance.
‘What, outside our line?’
‘They’ve put two regiments as outposts, and they’re
having such a spree there, it’s awful! Two bands and three
sets of singers!’
The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino.
While still at a distance he heard as he rode the merry
sounds of a soldier’s dance song proceeding from the
house.
‘In the meadows... in the meadows!’ he heard,
accompanied by whistling and the sound of a torban,
drowned every now and then by shouts. These sounds
made his spirits rise, but at the same time he was afraid
that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner
the important order entrusted to him. It was already past
eight o’clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch
of a large country house which had remained intact
between the Russian and French forces. In the
refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling
about with wine and viands. Groups of singers stood
outside the windows. The officer was admitted and
immediately saw all the chief generals of the army
together, and among them Ermolov’s big imposing figure.

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They all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a

semicircle with flushed and animated faces, laughing
loudly. In the middle of the room a short handsome
general with a red face was dancing the trepak with much
spirit and agility.
‘Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!’
The officer felt that by arriving with important orders
at such a moment he was doubly to blame, and he would
have preferred to wait; but one of the generals espied him
and, hearing what he had come about, informed Ermolov.
Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and,
hearing what the officer had to say, took the papers from
him without a word.
‘You think he went off just by chance?’ said a
comrade, who was on the staff that evening, to the officer
of the Horse Guards, referring to Ermolov. ‘It was a trick.
It was done on purpose to get Konovnitsyn into trouble.
You’ll see what a mess there’ll be tomorrow.’

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Chapter V

Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to

be called early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an
unpleasant consciousness of having to direct a battle he
did not approve of, got into his caleche and drove from
Letashovka (a village three and a half miles from
Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns were
to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by
turns, and listening for any sound of firing on the right as
an indication that the action had begun. But all was still
quiet. A damp dull autumn morning was just dawning. On
approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed cavalrymen
leading their horses to water across the road along which
he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly,
stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they
belonged to. They belonged to a column that should have
been far in front and in ambush long before then. ‘It may
be a mistake,’ thought the old commander in chief. But a
little further on he saw infantry regiments with their arms
piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye
porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The

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officer reported that no order to advance had been

received.
‘How! Not rec...’ Kutuzov began, but checked himself
immediately and sent for a senior officer. Getting out of
his caleche, he waited with drooping head and breathing
heavily, pacing silently up and down. When Eykhen, the
officer of the general staff whom he had summoned,
appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because
that officer was to blame for the mistake, but because he
was an object of sufficient importance for him to vent his
wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell into that
state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll on the
ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him with his
hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse.
Another man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up
and who was not at all to blame, suffered the same fate.
‘What sort of another blackguard are you? I’ll have
you shot! Scoundrels!’ yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice,
waving his arms and reeling.
He was suffering physically. He, the commander in
chief, a Serene Highness who everybody said possessed
powers such as no man had ever had in Russia, to be
placed in this position- made the laughingstock of the
whole army! ‘I needn’t have been in such a hurry to pray

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about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over

all night,’ thought he to himself. ‘When I was a chit of an
officer no one would have dared to mock me so... and
now!’ He was in a state of physical suffering as if from
corporal punishment, and could not avoid expressing it by
cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon began to
fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said
much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and
drove back in silence.
His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking
feebly he listened to excuses and self-justifications
(Ermolov did not come to see him till the next day) and to
the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn, and Toll that
the movement that had miscarried should be executed
next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.

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Chapter VI

Next day the troops assembled in their appointed

places in the evening and advanced during the night. It
was an autumn night with dark purple clouds, but no rain.
The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops
advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the
artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden
to talk out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light,
and they tried to prevent their horses neighing. The
secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm and they
marched gaily. Some columns, supposing. they had
reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and settled
down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all
night and arrived at places where they evidently should
not have been.
Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the
least important detachment of all) got to his appointed
place at the right time. This detachment halted at the
outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from the village
of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.
Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed
off, was awakened by a deserter from the French army

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being brought to him. This was a Polish sergeant of

Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had
come over because he had been slighted in the service:
that he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that
he was braver than any of them, and so he had left them
and wished to pay them out. He said that Murat was
spending the night less than a mile from where they were,
and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred
men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov
consulted his fellow officers.
The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone
volunteered to go and everybody advised making the
attempt. After much disputing and arguing, Major-
General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to
go with the Polish sergeant.
‘Now, remember,’ said Count Orlov-Denisov to the
sergeant at parting, ‘if you have been lying I’ll have you
hanged like a dog; but if it’s true you shall have a hundred
gold pieces!’
Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air,
mounted and rode away with Grekov whose men had
quickly assembled. They disappeared into the forest, and
Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen Grekov off, returned,
shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and

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excited by what he had undertaken on his own

responsibility, and began looking at the enemy camp, now
just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying
campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on
an open declivity to his right. He looked in that direction,
but though the columns would have been visible quite far
off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that
things were beginning to stir in the French camp, and his
keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.
‘Oh, it is really too late,’ said Count Orlov, looking at
the camp.
As often happens when someone we have trusted is no
longer before our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and
obvious to him that the sergeant was an impostor, that he
had lied, and that the whole Russian attack would be
ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he
would lead away heaven only knew where. How could
one capture a commander in chief from among such a
mass of troops!
‘I am sure that rascal was lying,’ said the count.
‘They can still be called back,’ said one of his suite,
who like Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure
when he looked at the enemy’s camp.

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‘Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them

go on or not?’
‘Will you have them fetched back?’
‘Fetch them back, fetch them back!’ said Count Orlov
with sudden determination, looking at his watch. ‘It will
be too late. It is quite light.’
And the adjutant galloped through the forest after
Grekov. When Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov,
excited both by the abandoned attempt and by vainly
awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to
advance. All his men felt the same excitement.
‘Mount!’ he commanded in a whisper. The men took
their places and crossed themselves.... ‘Forward, with
God’s aid!’
‘Hurrah-ah-ah!’ reverberated in the forest, and the
Cossack companies, trailing their lances and advancing
one after another as if poured out of a sack, dashed gaily
across the brook toward the camp.
One desperate, frightened yell from the first French
soldier who saw the Cossacks, and all who were in the
camp, undressed and only just waking up, ran off in all
directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.

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Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding

what was behind and around them, they would have
captured Murat and everything there. That was what the
officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and
prisoners. None of them listened to orders. Fifteen
hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were taken on the
spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important
to the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like.
All this had to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns
secured, the booty divided- not without some shouting
and even a little themselves- and it was on this that the
Cossacks all busied themselves.
The French, not being farther pursued, began to
recover themselves: they formed into detachments and
began firing. Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other
columns to arrive, advanced no further.
Meantime, according to the dispositions which said
that ‘the First Column will march’ and so on, the infantry
of the belated columns, commanded by Bennigsen and
directed by Toll, had started in due order and, as always
happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed
places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,
began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of

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confusion, and finally a backward movement. Adjutants

and generals galloped about, shouted, grew angry,
quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late,
gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and
went forward, simply to get somewhere. ‘We shall get
somewhere or other!’ And they did indeed get
somewhere, though not to their right places; a few
eventually even got to their right place, but too late to be
of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this
battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside
down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut’s corps
in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the
corps should long before have joined Orlov-Denisov.
Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing that
someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to
the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him
severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General
Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of placid temperament,
being also upset by all the delay, confusion, and cross-
purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s surprise and
quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable
things to Toll.

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‘I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die

with my men as well as anybody,’ he said, and advanced
with a single division.
Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this
brave general went straight ahead, leading his men under
fire, without considering in his agitation whether going
into action now, with a single division, would be of any
use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just
what he needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets
killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And
his division remained under fire for some time quite
uselessly.

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Chapter VII

Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the

French from the front, but Kutuzov accompanied that
column. He well knew that nothing but confusion would
come of this battle undertaken against his will, and as far
as was in his power held the troops back. He did not
advance.
He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently
answering suggestions that they should attack.
‘The word attack is always on your tongue, but you
don’t see that we are unable to execute complicated
maneuvers,’ said he to Miloradovich who asked
permission to advance.
‘We couldn’t take Murat prisoner this morning or get
to the place in time, and nothing can be done now!’ he
replied to someone else.
When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear-
where according to the reports of the Cossacks there had
previously been nobody- there were now two battalions of
Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov who was
behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the
previous day.

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‘You see! They are asking to attack and making plans

of all kinds, but as soon as one gets to business nothing is
ready, and the enemy, forewarned, takes measures
accordingly.’
Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on
hearing these words. He understood that for him the storm
had blown over, and that Kutuzov would content himself
with that hint.
‘He’s having a little fun at my expense,’ said Ermolov
softly, nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.
Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and
respectfully remarked:
‘It is not too late yet, your Highness- the enemy has
not gone away- if you were to order an attack! If not, the
Guards will not so much as see a little smoke.’
Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him
that Murat’s troops were in retreat he ordered an advance,
though at every hundred paces he halted for three quarters
of an hour.
The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov’s
Cossacks had done: the rest of the army merely lost some
hundreds of men uselessly.
In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a
diamond decoration, and Bennigsen some diamonds and a

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hundred thousand rubles, others also received pleasant

recognitions corresponding to their various grades, and
following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.
‘That’s how everything is done with us, all topsy-
turvy!’ said the Russian officers and generals after the
Tarutino battle, letting it be understood that some fool
there is doing things all wrong but that we ourselves
should not have done so, just as people speak today. But
people who talk like that either do not know what they are
talking about or deliberately deceive themselves. No
battle- Tarutino, Borodino, or Austerlitz- takes place as
those who planned it anticipated. That is an essential
condition.
A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man
freer than during a battle, where it is a question of life and
death) influence the course taken by the fight, and that
course never can be known in advance and never
coincides with the direction of any one force.
If many simultaneously and variously directed forces
act on a given body, the direction of its motion cannot
coincide with any one of those forces, but will always be
a mean- what in mechanics is represented by the diagonal
of a parallelogram of forces.

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If in the descriptions given by historians, especially

French ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in
accordance with previously formed plans, the only
conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions are false.
The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim
Toll had in view- to lead the troops into action in the
order prescribed by the dispositions; nor that which Count
Orlov-Denisov may have had in view- to take Murat
prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the
whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had
in view; nor the aim of the officer who wished to go into
action to distinguish himself; nor that of the Cossack who
wanted more booty than he got, and so on. But if the aim
of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the
Russians of that day desired- to drive the French out of
Russia and destroy their army- it is quite clear that the
battle of Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was
exactly what was wanted at that stage of the campaign. It
would be difficult and even impossible to imagine any
result more opportune than the actual outcome of this
battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant losses,
despite the greatest confusion, the most important results
of the whole campaign were attained: the transition from
retreat to advance, an exposure of the weakness of the

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French, and the administration of that shock which

Napoleon’s army had only awaited to begin its flight.

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Chapter VIII

Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de

la Moskowa; there can be no doubt about the victory for
the battlefield remains in the hands of the French. The
Russians retreat and abandon their ancient capital.
Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon’s hands. The Russian
army, only half the strength of the French, does not make
a single attempt to attack for a whole month. Napoleon’s
position is most brilliant. He can either fall on the Russian
army with double its strength and destroy it; negotiate an
advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal make a
menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a
reverse, return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in
Moscow; in short, no special genius would seem to be
required to retain the brilliant position the French held at
that time. For that, only very simple and easy steps were
necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare
winter clothing- of which there was sufficient in Moscow
for the whole army- and methodically to collect the
provisions, of which (according to the French historians)
there were enough in Moscow to supply the whole army

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for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of all

geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the
army, took none of these steps.
He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the
contrary he used his power to select the most foolish and
ruinous of all the courses open to him. Of all that
Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow,
advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or
retiring by a more northerly or more southerly route (say
by the road Kutuzov afterwards took), nothing more
stupid or disastrous can be imagined than what he actually
did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting the
troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a
garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached
Kutuzov without joining battle, turned to the right and
reached Malo-Yaroslavets, again without attempting to
break through and take the road Kutuzov took, but retiring
instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk road.
Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or
more disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had
Napoleon’s aim been to destroy his army, the most
skillful strategist could hardly have devised any series of
actions that would so completely have accomplished that

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purpose, independently of anything the Russian army

might do.
Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that
he destroyed his army because he wished to, or because
he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he
had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to
and because he was very clever and a genius.
In both cases his personal activity, having no more
force than the personal activity of any soldier, merely
coincided with the laws that guided the event.
The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon’s
faculties as having weakened in Moscow, and do so only
because the results did not justify his actions. He
employed all his ability and strength to do the best he
could for himself and his army, as he had done previously
and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that
time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy,
in Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in
how far his genius was genuine in Egypt- where forty
centuries looked down upon his grandeur- for his great
exploits there are all told us by Frenchmen. We cannot
accurately estimate his genius in Austria or Prussia, for
we have to draw our information from French or German
sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole

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corps without fighting and of fortresses without a siege

must incline Germans to recognize his genius as the only
explanation of the war carried on in Germany. But we,
thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in order
to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at
the matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon
that right.
His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of
genius as elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after
plan were issued by him from the time he entered
Moscow till the time he left it. The absence of citizens
and of a deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did
not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the
welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of
the welfare of the people of Russia, or of the direction of
affairs in Paris, or of diplomatic considerations
concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.

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Chapter IX

With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately

on his entry into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict
orders to observe the movements of the Russian army,
sent army corps out along the different roads, and charged
Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful directions
about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a
brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of
Russia.
With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon
summoned Captain Yakovlev, who had been robbed and
was in rags and did not know how to get out of Moscow,
minutely explained to him his whole policy and his
magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor
Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his
Friend and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs
badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.
Having similarly explained his views and his
magnanimity to Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also
to Petersburg to negotiate.
With regard to legal matters, immediately after the
fires he gave orders to find and execute the incendiaries.

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And the scoundrel Rostopchin was punished by an order

to burn down his houses.
With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was
granted a constitution. A municipality was established and
the following announcement issued:
INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!
Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the
Emperor and King desires to arrest their course. Terrible
examples have taught you how he punishes disobedience
and crime. Strict measures have been taken to put an end
to disorder and to re-establish public security. A paternal
administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form
your municipality or city government. It will take care of
you, of your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will
be distinguished by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder,
and the mayor of the city will wear a white belt as well.
But when not on duty they will only wear a red ribbon
round the left arm.
The city police is established on its former footing, and
better order already prevails in consequence of its
activity. The government has appointed two commissaries
general, or chiefs of police, and twenty commissaries or
captains of wards have been appointed to the different
wards of the city. You will recognize them by the white

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ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several churches of

different denominations are open, and divine service is
performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are
returning every day to their homes. and orders have been
given that they should find in them the help and
protection due to their misfortunes. These are the
measures the government has adopted to re-establish
order and relieve youp condition. But to achieve this aim
it is necessary that you should add your efforts and
should, if possible, forget the misfortunes you have
suffered, should entertain the hope of a less cruel fate,
should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death
awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on
what remains of your property, and finally that you should
not doubt that these will be safeguarded, since such is the
will of the greatest and most just of monarchs. Soldiers
and citizens, of whatever nation you may be, re-establish
public confidence, the source of the welfare of a state, live
like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded,
obey the military and civil authorities, and your tears will
soon cease to flow!
With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon
decreed that all the troops in turn should enter Moscow a

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la maraude* to obtain provisions for themselves, so that

the army might have its future provided for.
*As looters.
With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests
to be brought back and services to be again performed in
the churches.
With regard to commerce and to provisioning the
army, the following was placarded everywhere:
PROCLAMATION!
You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and
workmen whom misfortune has driven from the city, and
you scattered tillers of the soil, still kept out in the fields
by groundless fear, listen! Tranquillity is returning to this
capital and order is being restored in it. Your fellow
countrymen are emerging boldly from their hiding places
on finding that they are respected. Any violence to them
or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the
Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one
among you his enemy except those who disobey his
orders. He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you
to your homes and families. Respond, therefore, to his
benevolent intentions and come to us without fear.
Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You
will soon find means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen

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and industrious artisans, return to your work, your houses,

your shops, where the protection of guards awaits you!
You shall receive proper pay for your work. And lastly
you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are
hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are
established in the city where peasants can bring their
surplus supplies and the products of the soil. The
government has taken the following steps to ensure
freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants,
husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of
Moscow may without any danger bring their supplies of
all kinds to two appointed markets, of which one is on the
Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision Market.
(2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices
as seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable
to obtain a fair price he will be free to take his goods back
to his village and no one may hinder him under any
pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are
appointed as the chief market days and to that end a
sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the
highroads on Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances
from the town as to protect the carts. (4) Similar measures
will be taken that peasants with their carts and horses may

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meet with no hindrance on their return journey. (5) Steps

will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.
Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you,
workingmen and artisans, to whatever nation you belong,
you are called on to carry out the paternal intentions of
His Majesty the Emperor and King and to co-operate with
him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!
With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and
of the people, reviews were constantly held and rewards
distributed. The Emperor rode through the streets to
comfort the inhabitants, and, despite his preoccupation
with state affairs, himself visited the theaters that were
established by his order.
In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of
crowned heads, Napoleon also did all in his power. He
caused the words Maison de ma Mere to be inscribed on
the charitable institutions, thereby combining tender filial
affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans
saved by him to kiss his white hands, graciously
conversed with Tutolmin. Then, as Thiers eloquently
recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in forged
Russian money which he had prepared: ‘Raising the use

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of these means by an act worthy of himself and of the

French army, he let relief be distributed to those who had
been burned out. But as food was too precious to be given
to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies,
Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with
which to purchase food from outside, and had paper
rubles distributed to them.’
With reference to army discipline, orders were
continually being issued to inflict severe punishment for
the nonperformance of military duties and to suppress
robbery.

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Chapter X

But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and

plans- which were not at all worse than others issued in
similar circumstances- did not affect the essence of the
matter but, like the hands of a clock detached from the
mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way
without engaging the cogwheels.
With reference to the military side- the plan of
campaign- that work of genius of which Thiers remarks
that, ‘His genius never devised anything more profound,
more skillful, or more admirable,’ and enters into a
polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius
must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of
October- that plan never was or could be executed, for it
was quite out of touch with the facts of the case. The
fortifying of the Kremlin, for which la Mosquee (as
Napoleon termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to
have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless. The
mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling
Napoleon’s wish that it should be blown up when he left
Moscow- as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt
himself to be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army,

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about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced an

unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with the
Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to
Thiers it was only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the
skill- and apparently the genius- of Murat.
With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon’s
arguments as to his magnanimity and justice, both to
Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief concern was to
obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply
to their embassage.
With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the
supposed incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.
With regard to administrative matters, the
establishment of a municipality did not stop the robberies
and was only of use to certain people who formed part of
that municipality and under pretext of preserving order
looted Moscow or saved their own property from being
looted.
With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters
had so easily been settled by Napoleon’s visit to a
mosque, no results were achieved. Two or three priests
who were found in Moscow did try to carry out
Napoleon’s wish, but one of them was slapped in the face

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by a French soldier while conducting service, and a

French official reported of another that: ‘The priest whom
I found and invited to say Mass cleaned and locked up the
church. That night the doors were again broken open, the
padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and other
disorders perpetrated.’
With reference to commerce, the proclamation to
industrious workmen and to peasants evoked no response.
There were no industrious workmen, and the peasants
caught the commissaries who ventured too far out of town
with the proclamation and killed them.
As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people
and the troops, these did not meet with success either. The
theaters set up in the Kremlin and in Posnyakov’s house
were closed again at once because the actors and actresses
were robbed.
Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The
genuine as well as the false paper money which flooded
Moscow lost its value. The French, collecting booty,
cared only for gold. Not only was the paper money
valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the
unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to
gold.

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But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness

of the orders given by the authorities at that time was
Napoleon’s attempt to stop the looting and re-establish
discipline.
This is what the army authorities were reporting:
‘Looting continues in the city despite the decrees
against it. Order is not yet restored and not a single
merchant is carrying on trade in a lawful manner. The
sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen goods.’
‘The neighborhood of my ward continues to be
pillaged by soldiers of the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied
with taking from the unfortunate inhabitants hiding in the
cellars the little they have left, even have the ferocity to
wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
witnessed.’
‘Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and
pillaging- October 9.’
‘Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of
thieves in our district who ought to be arrested by a strong
force- October 11.’
‘The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the
strict orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards
are continually seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the
Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed more

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violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and

today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked
soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an
example of discipline, carry disobedience to such a point
that they break into the cellars and stores containing army
supplies. Others have disgraced themselves to the extent
of disobeying sentinels and officers, and have abused and
beaten them.’
‘The Grand Marshal of the palace,’ wrote the
governor, ‘complains bitterly that in spite of repeated
orders, the soldiers continue to commit nuisances in all
the courtyards and even under the very windows of the
Emperor.’
That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling
underfoot the provender which might have saved it from
starvation, disintegrated and perished with each additional
day it remained in Moscow. But it did not go away.
It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a
panic caused by the capture of transport trains on the
Smolensk road, and by the battle of Tarutino. The news of
that battle of Tarutino, unexpectedly received by
Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a desire to punish
the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order for
departure which the whole army was demanding.

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Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them

everything they had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away
his own personal tresor, but on seeing the baggage trains
that impeded the army, he was (Thiers says) horror-
struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not
order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had
done with those of a certain marshal when approaching
Moscow. He gazed at the caleches and carriages in which
soldiers were riding and remarked that it was a very good
thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions,
the sick, and the wounded.
The plight of the whole army resembled that of a
wounded animal which feels it is perishing and does not
know what it is doing. To study the skillful tactics and
aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it entered
Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying the dying
leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very
often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight
at the hunter’s gun, runs forward and back again, and
hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his
whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle of
Tarutino frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto
the hunter’s gun, reached him, turned back, and finally-
like any wild beast- ran back along the most

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disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent

was familiar.
During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems
to us to have been the leader of all these movements- as
the figurehead of a ship may seem to a savage to guide the
vessel- acted like a child who, holding a couple of strings
inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.

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Chapter XI

Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre

went out of the shed, and on returning stopped by the door
to play with a little blue-gray dog, with a long body and
short bandy legs, that jumped about him. This little dog
lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karataev at night; it
sometimes made excursions into the town but always
returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it
still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French
called it Azor; the soldier who told stories called it
Femgalka; Karataev and others called it Gray, or
sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of
a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the
blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and
round as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it
would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily
and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all four.
Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back,
yelping with delight, now bask in the sun with a
thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing
with a chip of wood or a straw.

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Pierre’s attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt

(the only remnant of his former clothing), a pair of
soldier’s trousers which by Karataev’s advice he tied with
string round the ankles for warmth, and a peasant coat and
cap. Physically he had changed much during this time. He
no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance
of solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard
and mustache covered the lower part of his face, and a
tangle of hair, infested with lice, curled round his head
like a cap. The look of his eyes was resolute, calm, and
animatedly alert, as never before. The former slackness
which had shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced
by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His
feet were bare.
Pierre first looked down the field across which
vehicles and horsemen were passing that morning, then
into the distance across the river, then at the dog who was
pretending to be in earnest about biting him, and then at
his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in various
positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he
looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-
satisfaction flitted across his face. The sight of them
reminded him of all he had experienced and learned

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during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to

him.
For some days the weather had been calm and clear
with slight frosts in the mornings- what is called an ‘old
wives’ summer.’
In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was
particularly pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the
morning frost still in the air.
On everything- far and near- lay the magic crystal
glitter seen only at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills
were visible in the distance, with the village, the church,
and the large white house. The bare trees, the sand, the
bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire, and
the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood
out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with
unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar
ruins of a half-burned mansion occupied by the French,
with lilac bushes still showing dark green beside the
fence. And even that ruined and befouled house- which in
dull weather was repulsively ugly- seemed quietly
beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance.
A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely
way, a skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth,

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came from behind a corner of the shed and approached

Pierre with a friendly wink.
‘What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!’ (Their name for
Pierre.) ‘Eh? Just like spring!’
And the corporal leaned against the door and offered
Pierre his pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre
always declined it.
‘To be on the march in such weather...’ he began.
Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and
the corporal told him that nearly all the troops were
starting and there ought to be an order about the prisoners
that day. Sokolov, one of the soldiers in the shed with
Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that
something should be done about him. The corporal
replied that Pierre need not worry about that as they had
an ambulance and a permanent hospital and arrangements
would be made for the sick, and that in general everything
that could happen had been foreseen by the authorities.
‘Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word
to the captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets
anything. Speak to the captain when he makes his round,
he will do anything for you.’
(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had
long chats with Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)

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‘‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day.

‘Monsieur Kiril is a man of education, who speaks
French. He is a Russian seigneur who has had
misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what’s what.... If
he wants anything and asks me, he won’t get a refusal.
When one has studied, you see, one likes education and
well-bred people.’ It is for your sake I mention it,
Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been for you
that affair would have ended ill.’
And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went
away. (The affair he had alluded to had happened a few
days before- a fight between the prisoners and the French
soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in pacifying his
comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre
talking to the corporal immediately asked what the
Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he
had been told about the army leaving Moscow, a thin,
sallow, tattered French soldier came up to the door of the
shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his
forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether the
soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was
in that shed.

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A week before the French had had boot leather and

linen issued to them, which they had given out to the
prisoners to make up into boots and shirts for them.
‘Ready, ready, dear fellow!’ said Karataev, coming out
with a neatly folded shirt.
Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for
convenience at work, was wearing only trousers and a
tattered shirt as black as soot. His hair was bound round,
workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast, and his
round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.
‘A promise is own brother to performance! I said
Friday and here it is, ready,’ said Platon, smiling and
unfolding the shirt he had sewn.
The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if
overcoming his hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform
and put on the shirt. He had a long, greasy, flowered silk
waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare body, but no shirt.
He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on would
laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly.
None of the prisoners said a word.
‘See, it fits well!’ Platon kept repeating, pulling the
shirt straight.

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The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands

through, without raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt
and examined the seams.
‘You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I
had no proper tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool
even to kill a louse,’ said Platon with one of his round
smiles, obviously pleased with his work.
‘It’s good, quite good, thank you,’ said the Frenchman,
in French, ‘but there must be some linen left over.
‘It will fit better still when it sets to your body,’ said
Karataev, still admiring his handiwork. ‘You’ll be nice
and comfortable...’
‘Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?’
said the Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an
assignation ruble note and gave it to Karataev. ‘But give
me the pieces that are over.’
Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what
the Frenchman was saying, and he looked on without
interfering. Karataev thanked the Frenchman for the
money and went on admiring his own work. The
Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that
were left over and asked Pierre to translate what he said.
‘What does he want the bits for?’ said Karataev.
‘They’d make fine leg bands for us. Well, never mind.’

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And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened

expression, took a small bundle of scraps from inside his
shirt and gave it to the Frenchman without looking at him.
‘Oh dear!’ muttered Karataev and went away. The
Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment,
then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre’s look
had told him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in
a squeaky voice:
‘Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!’ And
handing back the odd bits he turned and went out.
‘There, look at that,’ said Karataev, swaying his head.
‘People said they were not Christians, but they too have
souls. It’s what the old folk used to say: ‘A sweating
hand’s an open hand, a dry hand’s close.’ He’s naked, but
yet he’s given it back.’
Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile
looking at the pieces.
‘But they’ll make grand leg bands, dear friend,’ he
said, and went back into the shed.

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Chapter XII

Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken

prisoner and though the French had offered to move him
from the men’s to the officers’ shed, he had stayed in the
shed where he was first put.
In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced
almost the extreme limits of privation a man can endure;
but thanks to his physical strength and health, of which he
had till then been unconscious, and thanks especially to
the fact that the privations came so gradually that it was
impossible to say when they began, he endured his
position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time
he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had
formerly striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in
different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner
harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at
the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy,
in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in wine,
in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for
Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning- and all these
quests and experiments had failed him. And now without
thinking about it he had found that peace and inner

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harmony only through the horror of death, through

privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.
Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the
executions had as it were forever washed away from his
imagination and memory the agitating thoughts and
feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did not
now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or
politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these
things were no business of his, and that he was not called
on to judge concerning them and therefore could not do
so. ‘Russia and summer weather are not bound together,’
he thought, repeating words of Karataev’s which he found
strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and
his calculations of the cabalistic number of the beast of
the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even
ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his
name should not be smirched now seemed not merely
trivial but even amusing. What concern was it of his that
somewhere or other that woman was leading the life she
preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and especially
to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner’s
name was Count Bezukhov?
He now often remembered his conversation with
Prince Andrew and quite agreed with him, though he

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understood Prince Andrew’s thoughts somewhat

differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that
happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a
shade of bitterness and irony as though he was really
saying that all desire for positive happiness is implanted
in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But
Pierre believed it without any mental reservation. The
absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s needs and
consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation,
that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be
indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and now for
the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating
when he wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink,
sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth when he
was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to
talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s
needs- good food, cleanliness, and freedom- now that he
was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute
perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is, of
his way of life- now that that was so restricted- seemed to
him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity
of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s
needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation-
such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social

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position had given him in his own life- is just what makes
the choice of occupation insolubly difficult and destroys
the desire and possibility of having an occupation.
All Pierre’s daydreams now turned on the time when
he would be free. Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his
life, he thought and spoke with enthusiasm of that month
of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong, joyful
sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and
inner freedom which he experienced only during those
weeks.
When on the first day he got up early, went out of the
shed at dawn, and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New
Convent of the Virgin still dark at first, the hoarfrost on
the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the wooded banks
above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance,
when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the
noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field,
and when afterwards light gleamed from the east and the
sun’s rim appeared solemnly from behind a cloud, and the
cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the
river, all began to sparkle in the glad light- Pierre felt a
new joy and strength in life such as he had never before
known. And this not only stayed with him during the

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whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as

the hardships of his position increased.
That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything
was still further strengthened in him by the high opinion
his fellow prisoners formed of him soon after his arrival at
the shed. With his knowledge of languages, the respect
shown him by the French, his simplicity, his readiness to
give anything asked of him (he received the allowance of
three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength,
which he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the
walls of the hut; his gentleness to his companions, and his
capacity for sitting still and thinking without doing
anything (which seemed to them incomprehensible), he
appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being.
The very qualities that had been a hindrance, if not
actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in- his
strength, his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-
mindedness and simplicity- here among these people gave
him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt that their
opinion placed responsibilities upon him.

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Chapter XIII

The French evacuation began on the night between the

sixth and seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were
dismantled, carts loaded, and troops and baggage trains
started.
At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching
trim, wearing shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks,
and enormous sacks, stood in front of the sheds, and
animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all
along the lines.
In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod,
and only awaited the order to start. The sick soldier,
Sokolov, pale and thin with dark shadows round his eyes,
alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed. His eyes,
prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed
inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention
to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was
evidently not so much his sufferings that caused him to
moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being left
alone.
Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing
shoes Karataev had made for him from some leather a

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French soldier had torn off a tea chest and brought to have
his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and
squatted down beside him.
‘You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away!
They have a hospital here. You may be better off than we
others,’ said Pierre.
‘O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!’
moaned the man in a louder voice.
‘I’ll go and ask them again directly,’ said Pierre, rising
and going to the door of the shed.
Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had
offered him a pipe the day before came up to it with two
soldiers. The corporal and soldiers were in marching kit
with knapsacks and shakos that had metal straps, and
these changed their familiar faces.
The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the
door. The prisoners had to be counted before being let
out.
‘Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...’
Pierre began.
But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this
was the corporal he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself
did the corporal seem at that moment. Moreover, just as
Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums was suddenly

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heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s

words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the
door. The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of
the drums on two sides drowned the sick man’s groans.
‘There it is!... It again!...’ said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal’s
changed face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and
deafening noise of the drums, he recognized that
mysterious, callous force which compelled people against
their will to kill their fellow men- that force the effect of
which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or
to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or
exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless.
Pierre knew this now. One had to wait and endure. He did
not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but
stood frowning by the door of the hut.
When that door was opened and the prisoners,
crowding against one another like a flock of sheep,
squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed his way forward and
approached that very captain who as the corporal had
assured him was ready to do anything for him. The
captain was also in marching kit, and on his cold face
appeared that same it which Pierre had recognized in the
corporal’s words and in the roll of the drums.

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‘Pass on, pass on!’ the captain reiterated, frowning

sternly, and looking at the prisoners who thronged past
him.
Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt
would be vain.
‘What now?’ the officer asked with a cold look as if
not recognizing Pierre.
Pierre told him about the sick man.
‘He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!’ said the
captain. ‘Pass on, pass on!’ he continued without looking
at Pierre.
‘But he is dying,’ Pierre again began.
‘Be so good...’ shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
‘Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...’ rattled the drums, and
Pierre understood that this mysterious force completely
controlled these men and that it was now useless to say
any more.
The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers
and told to march in front. There were about thirty
officers, with Pierre among them, and about three hundred
men.
The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were
all strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he.
They looked at him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an

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alien. Not far from him walked a fat major with a sallow,
bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazan dressing
grown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed
the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in
which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of
his dressing gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly
with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled
and growled at everybody because he thought he was
being pushed and that they were all hurrying when they
had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at
something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone,
conjecturing where they were now being taken and how
far they would get that day. An official in felt boots and
wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to
side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing
his observations as to what had been burned down and
what this or that part of the city was that they could see. A
third officer, who by his accent was a Pole, disputed with
the commissariat officer, arguing that he was mistaken in
his identification of the different wards of Moscow.
‘What are you disputing about?’ said the major angrily.
‘What does it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St.
Blasius? You see it’s burned down, and there’s an end of

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it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the road wide
enough?’ said he, turning to a man behind him who was
not pushing him at all.
‘Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?’ the prisoners on
one side and another were heard saying as they gazed on
the charred ruins. ‘All beyond the river, and Zubova, and
in the Kremlin.... Just look! There’s not half of it left.
Yes, I told you- the whole quarter beyond the river, and
so it is.’
‘Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of
talking?’ said the major.
As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one
of the few unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass
of prisoners suddenly started to one side and exclamations
of horror and disgust were heard.
‘Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so
he is... And smeared with something!’
Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was
that evoked these exclamations, and dimly made out
something leaning against the palings surrounding the
church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set
upright against the palings with its face smeared with
soot.

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‘Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand

devils!...’ the convoy guards began cursing and the
French soldiers, with fresh virulence, drove away with
their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
the dead man.

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Chapter XIV

Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter

the prisoners marched, followed only by their escort and
the vehicles and wagons belonging to that escort, but
when they reached the supply stores they came among a
huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.
At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front
to get across. From the bridge they had a view of endless
lines of moving baggage trains before and behind them.
To the right, where the Kaluga road turns near
Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched
away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais’
corps which had started before any of the others. Behind,
along the riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were
Ney’s troops and transport.
Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners,
were crossing the Crimean bridge and some were already
debouching into the Kaluga road. But the baggage trains
stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’ train had not
yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kaluga road when

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the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from

the Great Ordynka Street.
When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the
prisoners moved a few steps forward, halted, and again
moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men crowded
closer and closer together. They advanced the few
hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga
road, taking more than an hour to do so, and came out
upon the square where the streets of the Transmoskva
ward and the Kaluga road converge, and the prisoners
jammed close together had to stand for some hours at that
crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were
heard the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant
shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against
the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise which
mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.
To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed
onto the wall of the half-burned house against which
Pierre was leaning.
‘What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve
loaded goods even on the cannon! Look there, those are
furs!’ they exclaimed. ‘Just see what the blackguards have
looted.... There! See what that one has behind in the
cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by

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heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has

loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord,
they’ve even grabbed those chaises!... See that fellow
there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens! They’re fighting.’
‘That’s right, hit him on the snout- on his snout! Like
this, we shan’t get away before evening. Look, look
there.... Why, that must be Napoleon’s own. See what
horses! And the monograms with a crown! It’s like a
portable house.... That fellow’s dropped his sack and
doesn’t see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and
not bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that’s the way
they’ll let you pass... Just look, there’s no end to it.
Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In carriages-
see how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!’
Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of
general curiosity bore all the prisoners forward onto the
road, and Pierre, thanks to his stature, saw over the heads
of the others what so attracted their curiosity. In three
carriages involved among the munition carts, closely
squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed
in glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill
voices.
From the moment Pierre had recognized the
appearance of the mysterious force nothing had seemed to

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him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse smeared with

soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the
burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed
scarcely made an impression on him- as if his soul,
making ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive
impressions that might weaken it.
The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came
more carts, soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages,
carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts, more soldiers, and
now and then women.
Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw
their movement.
All these people and horses seemed driven forward by
some invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched
them they all came flowing from the different streets with
one and the same desire to get on quickly; they all jostled
one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white teeth
gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse
flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same
swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that
had struck Pierre that morning on the corporal’s face
when the drums were beating.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer
commanding the escort collected his men and with shouts

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and quarrels forced his way in among the baggage trains,

and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged onto
the Kaluga road.
They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted
only when the sun began to set. The baggage carts drew
up close together and the men began to prepare for their
night’s rest. They all appeared angry and dissatisfied. For
a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could be
heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort
ran into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its
pole. Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different
sides: some beat the carriage horses on their heads,
turning them aside, others fought among themselves, and
Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the
head by a sword.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped
amid fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening,
experienced one and the same feeling of unpleasant
awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on that
had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all
seemed to understand that they did not yet know where
they were going, and that much that was painful and
difficult awaited them on this journey.

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During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even

worse than they had done at the start. It was here that the
prisoners for the first time received horseflesh for their
meat ration.
From the officer down to the lowest soldier they
showed what seemed like personal spite against each of
the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to their former
friendly relations.
This spite increased still more when, on calling over
the roll of prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of
leaving Moscow one Russian soldier, who had pretended
to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman
beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from the
road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and
threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on
account of the escape of the Russian. To the
noncommissioned officer’s excuse that the prisoner was
ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order
was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that
fatal force which had crushed him during the executions,
but which be had not felt during his imprisonment, now
again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt
that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush

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him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of

life independent of it.
He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh
and chatted with his comrades.
Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they
had seen in Moscow, or of the roughness of their
treatment by the French, or of the order to shoot them
which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
against the worsening of their position they were all
particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal
reminiscences, of amusing scenes they had witnessed
during the campaign, and avoided all talk of their present
situation.
The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here
and there in the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration
spread above the horizon from the rising full moon, and
that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray haze. It
grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not
yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions,
crossing between the campfires to the other side of the
road where he had been told the common soldier
prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered
him back.

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Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the

campfire, but to an unharnessed cart where there was
nobody. Tucking his legs under him and dropping his
head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in
thought. Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad,
good-natured laughter, so loud that men from various
sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
evidently solitary laughter could mean.
‘Ha-ha-ha!’ laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to
himself: ‘The soldier did not let me pass. They took me
and shut me up. They hold me captive. What, me? Me?
My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...’ and he
laughed till tears started to his eyes.
A man got up and came to see what this queer big
fellow was laughing at all by himself. Pierre stopped
laughing, got up, went farther away from the inquisitive
man, and looked around him.
The huge, endless bivouac that had previously
resounded with the crackling of campfires and the voices
of many men had grown quiet, the red campfires were
growing paler and dying down. High up in the light sky
hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp,
unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And

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farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright,

oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre
glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its
faraway depths. ‘And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!’ thought Pierre. ‘And they caught all that
and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!’ He smiled,
and went and lay down to sleep beside his companions.

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Chapter XV

In the early days of October another envoy came to

Kutuzov with a letter from Napoleon proposing peace and
falsely dated from Moscow, though Napoleon was already
not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga road. Kutuzov
replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no
question of peace.
Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov’s
guerrilla detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that
troops of Broussier’s division had been seen at Forminsk
and that being separated from the rest of the French army
they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and officers
again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by
the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino, urged
Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov’s suggestion. Kutuzov did
not consider any offensive necessary. The result was a
compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment
was sent to Forminsk to attack Broussier.
By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to
be a most difficult and important one, was entrusted to
Dokhturov- that same modest little Dokhturov whom no

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one had described to us as drawing up plans of battles,

dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses on
batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was
spoken of as undecided and undiscerning- but whom we
find commanding wherever the position was most
difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last
at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what
was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a
single general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he
went to Smolensk with twenty thousand men to defend
the town against Napoleon’s whole army. In Smolensk, at
the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a
paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the
bombardment of the town- and Smolensk held out all day
long. At the battle of Borodino, when Bagration was
killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank had
fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was
directed against it, the man sent there was this same
irresolute and undiscerning Dokhturov- Kutuzov
hastening to rectify a mistake he had made by sending
someone else there first. And the quiet little Dokhturov
rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of
the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us

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in verse and prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has

been said.
It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk
and from there to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the
last battle with the French was fought and where the
obvious disintegration of the French army began; and we
are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of the
campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said
and that dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is
the clearest testimony to his merit.
It is natural for a man who does not understand the
workings of a machine to imagine that a shaving that has
fallen into it by chance and is interfering with its action
and tossing about in it is its most important part. The man
who does not understand the construction of the machine
cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel
which revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts
of the machine, and not the shaving which merely harms
and hinders the working.
On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone
halfway to Forminsk and stopped at the village of
Aristovo, preparing faithfully to execute the orders he had
received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive
movement, reached Murat’s position apparently in order

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to give battle- suddenly without any reason turned off to

the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter
Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that
time Dokhturov had under his command, besides
Dorokhov’s detachment, the two small guerrilla
detachments of Figner and Seslavin.
On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the
Aristovo headquarters with a French guardsman he had
captured. The prisoner said that the troops that had
entered Forminsk that day were the vanguard of the whole
army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had
left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a
house serf who had come from Borovsk said he had seen
an immense army entering the town. Some Cossacks of
Dokhturov’s detachment reported having sighted the
French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From
all these reports it was evident that where they had
expected to meet a single division there was now the
whole French army marching from Moscow in an
unexpected direction- along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov
was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear
to him now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to
attack Forminsk. But only Broussier had been there at that
time and now the whole French army was there. Ermolov

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wished to act on his own judgment, but Dokhturov

insisted that he must have Kutuzov’s instructions. So it
was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was
chosen, who was to explain the whole affair by word of
mouth, besides delivering a written report. Toward
midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the dispatch and
verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.

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Chapter XVI

It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining

for four days. Having changed horses twice and galloped
twenty miles in an hour and a half over a sticky, muddy
road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka after one o’clock
at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing
down his reins, he entered a dark passage.
‘The general on duty, quick! It’s very important!’ said
he to someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark
passage.
‘He has been very unwell since the evening and this is
the third night he has not slept,’ said the orderly
pleadingly in a whisper. ‘You should wake the captain
first.’
‘But this is very important, from General Dokhturov,’
said Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had
found by feeling in the dark.
The orderly had gone in before him and began waking
somebody.
‘Your honor, your honor! A courier.’

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‘What? What’s that? From whom?’ came a sleepy

voice.
‘From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich.
Napoleon is at Forminsk,’ said Bolkhovitinov, unable to
see in the dark who was speaking but guessing by the
voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.
The man who had wakened yawned and stretched
himself.
‘I don’t like waking him,’ he said, fumbling for
something. ‘He is very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor.’
‘Here is the dispatch,’ said Bolkhovitinov. ‘My orders
are to give it at once to the general on duty.’
‘Wait a moment, I’ll light a candle. You damned
rascal, where do you always hide it?’ said the voice of the
man who was stretching himself, to the orderly. (This was
Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn’s adjutant.) ‘I’ve found it, I’ve
found it!’ he added.
The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was
fumbling for something on the candlestick.
‘Oh, the nasty beasts!’ said he with disgust.
By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw
Shcherbinin’s youthful face as he held the candle, and the
face of another man who was still asleep. This was
Konovnitsyn.

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When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the

tinder burned up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit
the tallow candle, from the candlestick of which the
cockroaches that had been gnawing it were running away,
and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was
bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face
by wiping it with his sleeve.
‘Who gave the report?’ inquired Shcherbinin, taking
the envelope.
‘The news is reliable,’ said Bolkhovitinov. ‘Prisoners,
Cossacks, and the scouts all say the same thing.’
‘There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,’
said Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the
nightcap who lay covered by a greatcoat. ‘Peter
Petrovich!’ said he. (Konovnitsyn did not stir.) ‘To the
General Staff!’ he said with a smile, knowing that those
words would be sure to arouse him.
And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once.
On Konovnitsyn’s handsome, resolute face with cheeks
flushed by fever, there still remained for an instant a
faraway dreamy expression remote from present affairs,
but then he suddenly started and his face assumed its
habitual calm and firm appearance.

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‘Well, what is it? From whom?’ he asked immediately

but without hurry, blinking at the light.
While listening to the officer’s report Konovnitsyn
broke the seal and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done
so before he lowered his legs in their woolen stockings to
the earthen floor and began putting on his boots. Then he
took off his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples,
and donned his cap.
‘Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness.’
Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news
brought was of great importance and that no time must be
lost. He did not consider or ask himself whether the news
was good or bad. That did not interest him. He regarded
the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or
his reason but by something else. There was within him a
deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but
that one must not trust to this and still less speak about it,
but must only attend to one’s own work. And he did his
work, giving his whole strength to the task.
Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to
have been included merely for propriety’s sake in the list
of the so-called heroes of 1812- the Barclays, Raevskis,
Ermolovs, Platovs, and Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov
he had the reputation of being a man of very limited

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capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never

made plans of battle but was always found where the
situation was most difficult. Since his appointment as
general on duty he had always slept with his door open,
giving orders that every messenger should be allowed to
wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that
Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the
front, and like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed
cogwheels that, without clatter or noise, constitute the
most essential part of the machine.
Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night
Konovnitsyn frowned- partly from an increased pain in
his head and partly at the unpleasant thought that occurred
to him, of how all that nest of influential men on the staff
would be stirred up by this news, especially Bennigsen,
who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with
Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel,
issue orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was
disagreeable to him though he knew it could not be
helped.
And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the
news, immediately began to expound his plans to a
general sharing his quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who

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listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must go

to see his Highness.

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Chapter XVII

Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at

night. He often fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime,
but at night, lying on his bed without undressing, he
generally remained awake thinking.
So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy,
scarred head on his plump hand, with his one eye open,
meditating and peering into the darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor
and had more influence than anyone else on the staff, had
begun to avoid him, Kutuzov was more at ease as to the
possibility of himself and his troops being obliged to take
part in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the
Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which Kutuzov
remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some
effect on others too.
‘They must understand that we can only lose by taking
the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my
champions,’ thought Kutuzov. He knew that an apple
should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself
when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the
tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an

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experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was

wounded, and wounded as only the whole strength of
Russia could have wounded it, but whether it was
mortally wounded or not was still an undecided question.
Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been
sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was
almost sure that the wound was mortal. But he needed
further proofs and it was necessary to wait.
‘They want to run to see how they have wounded it.
Wait and we shall see! Continual maneuvers, continual
advances!’ thought he. ‘What for? Only to distinguish
themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are like
children from whom one can’t get any sensible account of
what has happened because they all want to show how
well they can fight. But that’s not what is needed now.
‘And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to
me! It seems to them that when they have thought of two
or three contingencies’ (he remembered the general plan
sent him from Petersburg) ‘they have foreseen everything.
But the contingencies are endless.’
The undecided question as to whether the wound
inflicted at Borodino was mortal or not had hung over
Kutuzov’s head for a whole month. On the one hand the
French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt

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assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which
he and all the Russians had put their whole strength must
have been mortal. But in any case proofs were needed; he
had waited a whole month for them and grew more
impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed during
those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached
those younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of
possible contingencies, just like the younger men, but
with this difference, that he saw thousands of
contingencies instead of two or three and based nothing
on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies
presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of
movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or in
sections- against Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank
him. He thought too of the possibility (which he feared
most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his own
weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov
even imagined that Napoleon’s army might turn back
through Medyn and Yukhnov, but the one thing he could
not foresee was what happened- the insane, convulsive
stampede of Napoleon’s army during its first eleven days
after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible
what Kutuzov had not yet even dared to think of- the
complete extermination of the French. Dorokhov’s report

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about Broussier’s division, the guerrillas’ reports of

distress in Napoleon’s army, rumors of preparations for
leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that the
French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But
these were only suppositions, which seemed important to
the younger men but not to Kutuzov. With his sixty years’
experience he knew what value to attach to rumors, knew
how apt people who desire anything are to group all news
so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he
knew how readily in such cases they omit all that makes
for the contrary. And the more he desired it the less he
allowed himself to believe it. This question absorbed all
his mental powers. All else was to him only life’s
customary routine. To such customary routine belonged
his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from
Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the
distribution of awards, his correspondence with
Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French,
which he alone foresaw, was his heart’s one desire.
On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning
on his arm and thinking of that.
There was a stir in the next room and he heard the
steps of Toll, Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.

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‘Eh, who’s there? Come in, come in! What news?’ the
field marshal called out to them.
While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll
communicated the substance of the news.
‘Who brought it?’ asked Kutuzov with a look which,
when the candle was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.
‘There can be no doubt about it, your Highness.’
‘Call him in, call him here.’
Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the
bed and his big paunch resting against the other which
was doubled under him. He screwed up his seeing eye to
scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to
read in his face what preoccupied his own mind.
‘Tell me, tell me, friend,’ said he to Bolkhovitinov in
his low, aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which
gaped open on his chest, ‘come nearer- nearer. What news
have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon has left
Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?’
Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the
beginning of all he had been told to report.
‘Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!’ Kutuzov
interrupted him.
Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent,
awaiting instructions. Toll was beginning to say

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something but Kutuzov checked him. He tried to say

something, but his face suddenly puckered and wrinkled;
he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side
of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung
there.
‘O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer...’
said he in a tremulous voice with folded hands. ‘Russia is
saved. I thank Thee, O Lord!’ and he wept.

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Chapter XVIII

From the time he received this news to the end of the

campaign all Kutuzov’s activity was directed toward
restraining his troops, by authority, by guile, and by
entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters
with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to Malo-
Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army
and gave orders for the evacuation of Kaluga- a retreat
beyond which town seemed to him quite possible.
Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without
waiting for his retreat fled in the opposite direction.
Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled
maneuvers at Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make
conjectures as to what would have happened had
Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern
provinces.
But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him
from advancing into those southern provinces (for the
Russian army did not bar his way), the historians forget
that nothing could have saved his army, for then already it
bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How could
that army- which had found abundant supplies in Moscow

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and had trampled them underfoot instead of keeping

them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions
instead of storing them- how could that army recuperate
in Kaluga province, which was inhabited by Russians
such as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had
the same property of consuming what was set ablaze?
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle
of Borodino and the pillage of Moscow it had borne
within itself, as it were, the chemical elements of
dissolution.
The members of what had once been an army-
Napoleon himself and all his soldiers fled- without
knowing whither, each concerned only to make his escape
as quickly as possible from this position, of the
hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely
conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Malo-
Yaroslavets, when the generals pretending to confer
together expressed various opinions, all mouths were
closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded
soldier Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt:
that the one thing needful was to get away as quickly as
possible; and no one, not even Napoleon, could say
anything against that truth which they all recognized.

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But though they all realized that it was necessary to get

away, there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting
that they must flee. An external shock was needed to
overcome that shame, and this shock came in due time. It
was what the French called ‘le hourra de l’Empereur.’
The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets
Napoleon rode out early in the morning amid the lines of
his army with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the
pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the
previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks on
the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very
nearly captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture
Napoleon then, what saved him was the very thing that
was destroying the French army, the booty on which the
Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went after plunder,
leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after
the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.
When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken
the Emperor himself in the midst of his army, it was clear
that there was nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible
along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-
year-old stomach understood that hint, not feeling his
former agility and boldness, and under the influence of
the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once agreed

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with Mouton and issued orders- as the historians tell us-

to retreat by the Smolensk road.
That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army
retreated, does not prove that Napoleon caused it to
retreat, but that the forces which influenced the whole
army and directed it along the Mozhaysk (that is, the
Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.

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Chapter XIX

A man in motion always devises an aim for that

motion. To be able to go a thousand miles he must
imagine that something good awaits him at the end of
those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a
promised land to have the strength to move.
The promised land for the French during their advance
had been Moscow, during their retreat it was their native
land. But that native land was too far off, and for a man
going a thousand miles it is absolutely necessary to set
aside his final goal and to say to himself: ‘Today I shall
get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and
spend the night,’ and during the first day’s journey that
resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his
hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single
person are always magnified in a crowd.
For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road,
the final goal- their native land- was too remote, and their
immediate goal was Smolensk, toward which all their
desires and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass,
urged them on. It was not that they knew that much food
and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they

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were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and

Napoleon himself, knew that provisions were scarce
there), but because this alone could give them strength to
move on and endure their present privations. So both
those who knew and those who did not know deceived
themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised
land.
Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with
surprising energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal
they had fixed on. Besides the common impulse which
bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and
supplied them with a certain energy, there was another
cause binding them together- their great numbers. As with
the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the
individual human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of
thousands they moved like a whole nation.
Each of them desired nothing more than to give
himself up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and
misery; but on the one hand the force of this common
attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in
the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could
not surrender to a company, and though the French
availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to
detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent

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pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their very

numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived
them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult
but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to
which the French were directing all their energies.
Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the
body could hasten the process of decomposition.
A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously.
There is a certain limit of time in less than which no
amount of heat can melt the snow. On the contrary the
greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow
becomes.
Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood
this. When the flight of the French army along the
Smolensk road became well defined, what Konovnitsyn
had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October
began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to
distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and
to overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.
Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is
very limited in the case of any commander in chief) to
prevent an attack.
He could not tell them what we say now: ‘Why fight,
why block the road, losing our own men and inhumanly

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slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What is the use of

that, when a third of their army has melted away on the
road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?’ But
drawing from his aged wisdom what they could
understand, he told them of the golden bridge, and they
laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on,
rending and exulting over the dying beast.
Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in
proximity to the French near Vyazma could not resist
their desire to cut off and break up two French corps, and
by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov they sent
him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.
And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our
men attacked, trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments,
we are told, advanced to the attack with music and with
drums beating, and killed and lost thousands of men.
But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the
French army, closing up more firmly at the danger,
continued, while steadily melting away, to pursue its fatal
path to Smolensk.

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BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812

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Chapter I

The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of

Moscow that followed it and the flight of the French
without further conflicts, is one of the most instructive
phenomena in history.
All historians agree that the external activity of states
and nations in their conflicts with one another is
expressed in wars, and that as a direct result of greater or
less success in war the political strength of states and
nations increases or decreases.
Strange as may be the historical account of how some
king or emperor, having quarreled with another, collects
an army, fights his enemy’s army, gains a victory by
killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and subjugates a
kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the
facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of
the statement that the greater or lesser success of one
army against another is the cause, or at least an essential
indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the
nation- even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of
an army- a hundredth part of a nation- should oblige that
whole nation to submit. An army gains a victory, and at
once the rights of the conquering nation have increased to

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the detriment of the defeated. An army has suffered

defeat, and at once a people loses its rights in proportion
to the severity of the reverse, and if its army suffers a
complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.
So according to history it has been found from the
most ancient times, and so it is to our own day. All
Napoleon’s wars serve to confirm this rule. In proportion
to the defeat of the Austrian army Austria loses its rights,
and the rights and the strength of France increase. The
victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy the
independent existence of Prussia.
But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near
Moscow. Moscow is taken and after that, with no further
battles, it is not Russia that ceases to exist, but the French
army of six hundred thousand, and then Napoleonic
France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of history:
to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were
other battles that destroyed Napoleon’s army, is
impossible.
After the French victory at Borodino there was no
general engagement nor any that were at all serious, yet
the French army ceased to exist. What does this mean? If
it were an example taken from the history of China, we

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might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which

is the historians’ usual expedient when anything does not
fit their standards); if the matter concerned some brief
conflict in which only a small number of troops took part,
we might treat it as an exception; but this event occurred
before our fathers’ eyes, and for them it was a question of
the life or death of their fatherland, and it happened in the
greatest of all known wars.
The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of
Borodino to the expulsion of the French proved that the
winning of a battle does not produce a conquest and is not
even an invariable indication of conquest; it proved that
the force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in the
conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in
something else.
The French historians, describing the condition of the
French army before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in
order in the Grand Army, except the cavalry, the artillery,
and the transport- there was no forage for the horses or
the cattle. That was a misfortune no one could remedy, for
the peasants of the district burned their hay rather than let
the French have it.
The victory gained did not bring the usual results
because the peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French

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had evacuated Moscow drove in their carts to pillage the

town, and in general personally failed to manifest any
heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of
such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for the
high price offered them, but burned it instead.
Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a
duel with rapiers according to all the rules of the art of
fencing. The fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly
one of the combatants, feeling himself wounded and
understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his
life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel
that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us
imagine that the combatant who so sensibly employed the
best and simplest means to attain his end was at the same
time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to
conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained
his victory with the rapier according to all the rules of art.
One can imagine what confusion and obscurity would
result from such an account of the duel.
The fencer who demanded a contest according to the
rules of fencing was the French army; his opponent who
threw away the rapier and snatched up the cudgel was the
Russian people; those who try to explain the matter

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according to the rules of fencing are the historians who

have described the event.
After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did
not follow any previous traditions of war. The burning of
towns and villages, the retreats after battles, the blow
dealt at Borodino and the renewed retreat, the burning of
Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of
transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from
the rules.
Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the
correct fencing attitude in Moscow and instead of his
opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel raised above his head, he
did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and to the Emperor
Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to
all the rules- as if there were any rules for killing people.
In spite of the complaints of the French as to the
nonobservance of the rules, in spite of the fact that to
some highly placed Russians it seemed rather disgraceful
to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose
en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to
make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on- the cudgel of
the people’s war was lifted with all its menacing and
majestic strength, and without consulting anyone’s tastes
or rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and fell

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with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the

French till the whole invasion had perished.
And it is well for a people who do not- as the French
did in 1813- salute according to all the rules of art, and,
presenting the hilt of their rapier gracefully and politely,
hand it to their magnanimous conqueror, but at the
moment of trial, without asking what rules others have
adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the
first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the
feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a
feeling of contempt and compassion.

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Chapter II

One of the most obvious and advantageous departures

from the so-called laws of war is the action of scattered
groups against men pressed together in a mass. Such
action always occurs in wars that take on a national
character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing
each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away
when attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when
opportunity offers. This was done by the guerrillas in
Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and by the
Russians in 1812.
People have called this kind of war ‘guerrilla warfare’
and assume that by so calling it they have explained its
meaning. But such a war does not fit in under any rule
and is directly opposed to a well-known rule of tactics
which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an
attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be
stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows)
directly infringes that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military
science assumes the strength of an army to be identical

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with its numbers. Military science says that the more

troops the greater the strength. Les gros bataillons ont
toujours raison.*
*Large battalions are always victorious.
For military science to say this is like defining
momentum in mechanics by reference to the mass only:
stating that momenta are equal or unequal to each other
simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.
Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass
and velocity.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the
product of its mass and some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history innumerable
instances of the fact that the size of any army does not
coincide with its strength and that small detachments
defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of this
unknown factor and tries to discover it- now in a
geometric formation, now in the equipment employed,
now, and most usually, in the genius of the commanders.
But the assignment of these various meanings to the
factor does not yield results which accord with the
historic facts.
Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view
(adopted to gratify the ‘heroes’) of the efficacy of the

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directions issued in wartime by commanders, in order to

find this unknown quantity.
That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is
to say, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face
danger felt by all the men composing an army, quite
independently of whether they are, or are not, fighting
under the command of a genius, in two- or three-line
formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty
times a minute. Men who want to fight will always put
themselves in the most advantageous conditions for
fighting.
The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by
the mass gives the resulting force. To define and express
the significance of this unknown factor- the spirit of an
army- is a problem for science.
This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to
substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under
which that force becomes apparent- such as the
commands of the general, the equipment employed, and
so on- mistaking these for the real significance of the
factor, and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its
entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to fight and to
face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts

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by equations and comparing the relative significance of

this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men,
battalions, or divisions, conquer- that is, kill or take
captive- all the others, while themselves losing four, so
that on the one side four and on the other fifteen were
lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and
therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This
equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor
but gives us a ratio between two unknowns. And by
bringing variously selected historic units (battles,
campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series
of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws
should exist and might be discovered.
The tactical rule that an army should act in masses
when attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat,
unconsciously confirms the truth that the strength of an
army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under
fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement in
masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But this
rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army
continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking
contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the
spirit of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.

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The French, retreating in 1812- though according to

tactics they should have separated into detachments to
defend themselves- congregated into a mass because the
spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass held the
army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought
according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact
they split up into small units, because their spirit had so
risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows
at the French without needing any compulsion to induce
them to expose themselves to hardships and dangers.

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Chapter III

The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the

French into Smolensk.
Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized
by the government, thousands of enemy stragglers,
marauders, and foragers had been destroyed by the
Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off as
instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death.
Denis Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to
recognize the value of this terrible cudgel which
regardless of the rules of military science destroyed the
French, and to him belongs the credit for taking the first
step toward regularizing this method of warfare.
On August 24 Davydov’s first partisan detachment was
formed and then others were recognized. The further the
campaign progressed the more numerous these
detachments became.
The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal.
They gathered the fallen leaves that dropped of
themselves from that withered tree- the French army- and
sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when the
French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were

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hundreds of such companies, of various sizes and

characters. There were some that adopted all the army
methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the
comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack
cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and
horse, and groups of peasants and landowners that
remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party
which captured several hundred prisoners in the course of
a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village
elder, who slew hundreds of the French.
The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the
latter days of October. Its first period had passed: when
the partisans themselves, amazed at their own boldness,
feared every minute to be surrounded and captured by the
French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling, hardly
daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued.
By the end of October this kind of warfare had taken
definite shape: it had become clear to all what could be
ventured against the French and what could not. Now
only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and
moving according to rules at a distance from the French,
still regarded many things as impossible. The small bands
that had started their activities long before and had
already observed the French closely considered things

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possible which the commanders of the big detachments

did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants
who crept in among the French now considered
everything possible.
On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the
irregulars) was with his group at the height of the guerrilla
enthusiasm. Since early morning he and his party had
been on the move. All day long he had been watching
from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French
convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners
separated from the rest of the army, which- as was learned
from spies and prisoners- was moving under a strong
escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and Dolokhov (who
also led a small party and moved in Denisov’s vicinity),
the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also
knew of this convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were
sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the commanders of
large parties- one a Pole and the other a German- sent
invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously, requesting
him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy.
‘No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,’ said
Denisov on reading these documents, and he wrote to the
German that, despite his heartfelt desire to serve under so
valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo that

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pleasure because he was already under the command of

the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the
same effect, informing him that he was already under the
command of the German.
Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov
intended, without reporting matters to the higher
command, to attack and seize that convoy with their own
small forces. On October 22 it was moving from the
village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of
the road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were
large forests, extending in some places up to the road
itself though in others a mile or more back from it.
Through these forests Denisov and his party rode all day,
sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes
coming to the very edge, but never losing sight of the
moving French. That morning, Cossacks of Denisov’s
party had seized and carried off into the forest two
wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in
the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close
to the road. Since then, and until evening, the party had
the movements of the French without attacking. It was
necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo quietly
without alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov
who was to come that evening to a consultation at a

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watchman’s hut in the forest less than a mile from

Shamshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling like an
avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and
capture them all at one blow.
In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where
the forest came right up to the road, six Cossacks were
posted to report if any fresh columns of French should
show themselves.
Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road
in the same way, to find out at what distance there were
other French troops. They reckoned that the convoy had
fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two hundred, and
Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of
numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to
know was what troops these were and to learn that he had
to capture a ‘tongue’- that is, a man from the enemy
column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been
made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had
all been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken
alive, and as he was a straggler he could tell them nothing
definite about the troops in that column.
Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second
attack for fear of putting the whole column on the alert, so
he sent Tikhon Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to

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Shamshevo to try and seize at least one of the French

quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.

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Chapter IV

It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the

horizon were both the color of muddy water. At times a
sort of mist descended, and then suddenly heavy slanting
rain came down.
Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which
the rain ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse
with sunken sides. Like his horse, which turned its head
and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving rain and
gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short,
thick black beard looked angry.
Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov’s fellow
worker, also in felt cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a
large sleek Don horse.
*A captain of Cossacks.
Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as
an arrow, pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes
and with calm self-satisfaction in his face and bearing.
Though it was impossible to say in what the peculiarity of
the horse and rider lay, yet at first glance at the esaul and
Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while

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looking at the esaul one saw that he was as comfortable

and as much at ease as always and that he was not a man
who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one with
his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold
strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to
the skin and wearing a gray peasant coat and a white
knitted cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount
with an enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth,
rode a young officer in a blue French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered
French uniform and blue cap behind him on the crupper
of his horse. The boy held on to the hussar with cold, red
hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him with
surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that
morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest
road came hussars in threes and fours, and then Cossacks:
some in felt cloaks, some in French greatcoats, and some
with horsecloths over their heads. The horses, being
drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or
bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes,
looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes,

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saddles, reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the
ground and the fallen leaves that strewed the road. The
men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the
water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the
fresh cold water that was leaking in under their seats, their
knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of the
outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French
horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had been
hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and
branches and splashed through the water that lay in the
ruts.
Denisov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the
track and bumped his rider’s knee against a tree.
‘Oh, the devil!’ exclaimed Denisov angrily, and
showing his teeth he struck his horse three times with his
whip, splashing himself and his comrades with mud.
Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and
also from hunger (none of them had eaten anything since
morning), and yet more because he still had no news from
Dolokhov and the man sent to capture a ‘tongue’ had not
returned.
‘There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a
transport as today. It’s too risky to attack them by oneself,
and if we put it off till another day one of the big guerrilla

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detachments will snatch the prey from under our noses,’

thought Denisov, continually peering forward, hoping to
see a messenger from Dolokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could
see far to the right, Denisov stopped.
‘There’s someone coming,’ said he.
The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.
‘There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not
presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,’
said the esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks
did not know.
The approaching riders having descended a decline
were no longer visible, but they reappeared a few minutes
later. In front, at a weary gallop and using his leather
whip, rode an officer, disheveled and drenched, whose
trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a
very young lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry
eyes, galloped up to Denisov and handed him a sodden
envelope.
‘From the general,’ said the officer. ‘Please excuse its
not being quite dry.’
Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.

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‘There, they kept telling us: ‘It’s dangerous, it’s

dangerous,’’ said the officer, addressing the esaul while
Denisov was reading the dispatch. ‘But Komarov and I’-
he pointed to the Cossack- ‘were prepared. We have each
of us two pistols.... But what’s this?’ he asked, noticing
the French drummer boy. ‘A prisoner? You’ve already
been in action? May I speak to him?’
‘Wostov! Petya!’ exclaimed Denisov, having run
through the dispatch. ‘Why didn’t you say who you
were?’ and turning with a smile he held out his hand to
the lad.
The officer was Petya Rostov.
All the way Petya had been preparing himself to
behave with Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an
officer- without hinting at their previous acquaintance.
But as soon as Denisov smiled at him Petya brightened
up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he
had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had
already been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain
hussar had distinguished himself there.
‘Well, I am glad to see you,’ Denisov interrupted him,
and his face again assumed its anxious expression.

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‘Michael Feoklitych,’ said he to the esaul, ‘this is again

fwom that German, you know. He’- he indicated Petya-
‘is serving under him.’
And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just
delivered was a repetition of the German general’s
demand that he should join forces with him for an attack
on the transport.
‘If we don’t take it tomowwow, he’ll snatch it fwom
under our noses,’ he added.
While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya- abashed
by Denisov’s cold tone and supposing that it was due to
the condition of his trousers- furtively tried to pull them
down under his greatcoat so that no one should notice it,
while maintaining as martial an air as possible.
‘Will there be any orders, your honor?’ he asked
Denisov, holding his hand at the salute and resuming the
game of adjutant and general for which he had prepared
himself, ‘or shall I remain with your honor?’
‘Orders?’ Denisov repeated thoughtfully. ‘But can you
stay till tomowwow?’
‘Oh, please... May I stay with you?’ cried Petya.
‘But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at
once?’ asked Denisov.
Petya blushed.

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‘He gave me no instructions. I think I could?’ he

returned, inquiringly.
‘Well, all wight,’ said Denisov.
And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to
the halting place arranged near the watchman’s hut in the
forest, and told the officer on the Kirghiz horse (who
performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and find out
where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that
evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul
and Petya to the edge of the forest where it reached out to
Shamshevo, to have a look at the part of the French
bivouac they were to attack next day.
‘Well, old fellow,’ said he to the peasant guide, ‘lead
us to Shamshevo.’
Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some
Cossacks and the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the
left across a ravine to the edge of the forest.

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Chapter V

The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and
drops from the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode
silently, following the peasant in the knitted cap who,
stepping lightly with outturned toes and moving
noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,
silently led them to the edge of the forest.
He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him,
and advanced to where the screen of trees was less dense.
On reaching a large oak tree that had not yet shed its
leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to them
with his hand.
Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot
where the peasant was standing they could see the French.
Immediately beyond the forest, on a downward slope, lay
a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep ravine,
was a small village and a landowner’s house with a
broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by
the well, by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all
along the road uphill from the bridge leading to the
village, not more than five hundred yards away, crowds of
men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their

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un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining

uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could
be clearly heard.
‘Bwing the prisoner here,’ said Denisov in a low voice,
not taking his eyes off the French.
A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took
him to Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov
asked him what these and those of them were. The boy,
thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and lifting his
eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but in spite of an
evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers,
merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him.
Denisov turned away from him frowning and addressed
the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.
Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the
drummer boy, now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now
at the French in the village and along the road, trying not
to miss anything of importance.
‘Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it,
eh?’ said Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.
‘It is a very suitable spot,’ said the esaul.
‘We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,’
Denisov continued. ‘They’ll cweep up to the garden;
you’ll wide up fwom there with the Cossacks’- he pointed

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to a spot in the forest beyond the village- ‘and I with my

hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..’
‘The hollow is impassable- there’s a swamp there,’
said the esaul. ‘The horses would sink. We must ride
round more to the left...’
While they were talking in undertones the crack of a
shot sounded from the low ground by the pond, a puff of
white smoke appeared, then another, and the sound of
hundreds of seemingly merry French voices shouting
together came up from the slope. For a moment Denisov
and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they
thought they were the cause of the firing and shouting.
But the firing and shouting did not relate to them. Down
below, a man wearing something red was running through
the marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting
at him.
‘Why, that’s our Tikhon,’ said the esaul.
‘So it is! It is!’
‘The wascal!’ said Denisov.
‘He’ll get away!’ said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the
stream, plunged in so that the water splashed in the air,
and, having disappeared for an instant, scrambled out on

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all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on. The French
who had been pursuing him stopped.
‘Smart, that!’ said the esaul.
‘What a beast!’ said Denisov with his former look of
vexation. ‘What has he been doing all this time?’
‘Who is he?’ asked Petya.
‘He’s our plastun. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Petya, nodding at the first words
Denisov uttered as if he understood it all, though he really
did not understand anything of it.
Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable
men in their band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near
the river Gzhat. When Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at
the beginning of his operations and had as usual
summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew
about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself,
had replied, as all village elders did, that he had neither
seen nor heard anything of them. But when Denisov
explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and
asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied
that some ‘more-orderers’ had really been at their village,
but that Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt
with such matters. Denisov had Tikhon called and, having
praised him for his activity, said a few words in the

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elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country

and the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland
should cherish.
‘We don’t do the French any harm,’ said Tikhon,
evidently frightened by Denisov’s words. ‘We only fooled
about with the lads for fun, you know! We killed a score
or so of ‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else..’
Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having
quite forgotten about this peasant, it was reported to him
that Tikhon had attached himself to their party and asked
to be allowed to remain with it. Denisov gave orders to let
him do so.
Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires,
fetching water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon
showed a great liking and aptitude for partisan warfare. At
night he would go out for booty and always brought back
French clothing and weapons, and when told to would
bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him
from drudgery and began taking him with him when he
went out on expeditions and had him enrolled among the
Cossacks.
Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot,
never lagging behind the cavalry. He was armed with a
musketoon (which he carried rather as a joke), a pike and

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an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses its teeth, with

equal case picking fleas out of its fur or crunching thick
bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs with
blows at arm’s length, or holding the head of the ax would
cut thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov’s party he
held a peculiar and exceptional position. When anything
particularly difficult or nasty had to be done- to push a
cart out of the mud with one’s shoulders, pull a horse out
of a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French,
or walk more than thirty miles in a day- everybody
pointed laughingly at Tikhon.
‘It won’t hurt that devil- he’s as strong as a horse!’
they said of him.
Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a
pistol at him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back.
That wound (which Tikhon treated only with internal and
external applications of vodka) was the subject of the
liveliest jokes by the whole detachment- jokes in which
Tikhon readily joined.
‘Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?’ the
Cossacks would banter him. And Tikhon, purposely
writhing and making faces, pretended to be angry and
swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only

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effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being

wounded he seldom brought in prisoners.
He was the bravest and most useful man in the party.
No one found more opportunities for attacking, no one
captured or killed more Frenchmen, and consequently he
was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars and
willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by
Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a ‘tongue.’
But whether because he had not been content to take only
one Frenchman or because he had slept through the night,
he had crept by day into some bushes right among the
French and, as Denisov had witnessed from above, had
been detected by them.

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Chapter VI

After talking for some time with the esaul about next
day’s attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the
French, he seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov
turned his horse and rode back.
‘Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,’ he said to Petya.
As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped,
peering into the forest. Among the trees a man with long
legs and long, swinging arms, wearing a short jacket, bast
shoes, and a Kazan hat, was approaching with long, light
steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax
stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he hastily
threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat
by its floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was
Tikhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked face and narrow
little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He lifted
his head high and gazed at Denisov as if repressing a
laugh.
‘Well, where did you disappear to?’ inquired Denisov.
‘Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,’
answered Tikhon boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but
melodious bass voice.

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‘Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You

ass! Well, why haven’t you taken one?’
‘Oh, I took one all right,’ said Tikhon.
‘Where is he?’
‘You see, I took him first thing at dawn,’ Tikhon
continued, spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes
in their bast shoes. ‘I took him into the forest. Then I see
he’s no good and think I’ll go and fetch a likelier one.’
‘You see?... What a wogue- it’s just as I thought,’ said
Denisov to the esaul. ‘Why didn’t you bwing that one?’
‘What was the good of bringing him?’ Tikhon
interrupted hastily and angrily- ‘that one wouldn’t have
done for you. As if I don’t know what sort you want!’
‘What a bwute you are!... Well?’
‘I went for another one,’ Tikhon continued, ‘and I
crept like this through the wood and lay down.’ (He
suddenly lay down on his stomach with a supple
movement to show how he had done it.) ‘One turned up
and I grabbed him, like this.’ (He jumped up quickly and
lightly.) ‘‘Come along to the colonel,’ I said. He starts
yelling, and suddenly there were four of them. They
rushed at me with their little swords. So I went for them
with my ax, this way: ‘What are you up to?’ says I.

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‘Christ be with you!’’ shouted Tikhon, waving his arms

with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.
‘Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels
through the puddles!’ said the esaul, screwing up his
glittering eyes.
Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all
refrained from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from
Tikhon’s face to the esaul’s and Denisov’s, unable to
make out what it all meant.
‘Don’t play the fool!’ said Denisov, coughing angrily.
‘Why didn’t you bwing the first one?’
Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head
with the other, then suddenly his whole face expanded
into a beaming, foolish grin, disclosing a gap where he
had lost a tooth (that was why he was called Shcherbaty-
the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a
peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.
‘Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,’ said
Tikhon. ‘The clothes on him- poor stuff! How could I
bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why, he says: ‘I’m a
general’s son myself, I won’t go!’ he says.’
‘You are a bwute!’ said Denisov. ‘I wanted to
question..’

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‘But I questioned him,’ said Tikhon. ‘He said he didn’t

know much. ‘There are a lot of us,’ he says, ‘but all poor
stuff- only soldiers in name,’ he says. ‘Shout loud at
them,’ he says, ‘and you’ll take them all,’’ Tikhon
concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denisov’s eyes.
‘I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashes- that’ll teach you
to play the fool!’ said Denisov severely.
‘But why are you angry?’ remonstrated Tikhon, ‘just
as if I’d never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets
dark and I’ll fetch you any of them you want- three if you
like.’
‘Well, let’s go,’ said Denisov, and rode all the way to
the watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.
Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks
laughing with him and at him, about some pair of boots he
had thrown into the bushes.
When the fit of laughter that had seized him at
Tikhon’s words and smile had passed and Petya realized
for a moment that this Tikhon had killed a man, he felt
uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and
felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a
moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to
brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of

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importance about tomorrow’s undertaking, that he might

not be unworthy of the company in which he found
himself.
The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov
on the way with the news that Dolokhov was soon coming
and that all was well with him.
Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him,
said: ‘Well, tell me about yourself.’

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Chapter VII

Petya, having left his people after their departure from

Moscow, joined his regiment and was soon taken as
orderly by a general commanding a large guerrilla
detachment. From the time he received his commission,
and especially since he had joined the active army and
taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a
constant state of blissful excitement at being grown-up
and in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to miss any chance to
do something really heroic. He was highly delighted with
what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same
time it always seemed to him that the really heroic
exploits were being performed just where he did not
happen to be. And he was always in a hurry to get where
he was not.
When on the twenty-first of October his general
expressed a wish to send somebody to Denisov’s
detachment, Petya begged so piteously to be sent that the
general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he
recalled Petya’s mad action at the battle of Vyazma,
where instead of riding by the road to the place to which
he had been sent, he had galloped to the advanced line

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under the fire of the French and had there twice fired his
pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade his taking
part in any action whatever of Denisov’s. That was why
Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov
asked him whether he could stay. Before they had ridden
to the outskirts of the forest Petya had considered he must
carry out his instructions strictly and return at once. But
when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and learned that
there would certainly be an attack that night, he decided,
with the rapidity with which young people change their
views, that the general, whom he had greatly respected till
then, was a rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero,
the esaul a hero, and Tikhon a hero too, and that it would
be shameful for him to leave them at a moment of
difficulty.
It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and
the esaul rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight
saddled horses could be seen, and Cossacks and hussars
who had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and were
kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest where the
French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the
small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was
chopping some mutton. In the room three officers of
Denisov’s band were converting a door into a tabletop.

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Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and
at once began helping the officers to fix up the dinner
table.
In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread
on it. On the table were vodka, a flask of rum, white
bread, roast mutton, and salt.
Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat
savory mutton with his hands, down which the grease
trickled, Petya was in an ecstatic childish state of love for
all men, and consequently of confidence that others loved
him in the same way.
‘So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?’ said he
to Denisov. ‘It’s all right my staying a day with you?’
And not waiting for a reply he answered his own
question: ‘You see I was told to find out- well, I am
finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the
chief... I don’t want a reward... But I want..’
Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing
back his head and flourishing his arms.
‘Into the vewy chief...’ Denisov repeated with a smile.
‘Only, please let me command something, so that I
may really command...’ Petya went on. ‘What would it be
to you?... Oh, you want a knife?’ he said, turning to an
officer who wished to cut himself a piece of mutton.

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And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer

admired it.
‘Please keep it. I have several like it,’ said Petya,
blushing. ‘Heavens! I was quite forgetting!’ he suddenly
cried. ‘I have some raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless
ones. We have a new sutler and he has such capital things.
I bought ten pounds. I am used to something sweet.
Would you like some?...’ and Petya ran out into the
passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags
which contained about five pounds of raisins. ‘Have
some, gentlemen, have some!’
‘You want a coffeepot, don’t you?’ he asked the esaul.
‘I bought a capital one from our sutler! He has splendid
things. And he’s very honest, that’s the chief thing. I’ll be
sure to send it to you. Or perhaps your flints are giving
out, or are worn out- that happens sometimes, you know. I
have brought some with me, here they are’- and he
showed a bag- ‘a hundred flints. I bought them very
cheap. Please take as many as you want, or all if you
like...’
Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much,
Petya stopped and blushed.
He tried to remember whether he had not done
anything else that was foolish. And running over the

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events of the day he remembered the French drummer

boy. ‘It’s capital for us here, but what of him? Where
have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven’t they hurt
his feelings?’ he thought. But having caught himself
saying too much about the flints, he was now afraid to
speak out.
‘I might ask,’ he thought, ‘but they’ll say: ‘He’s a boy
himself and so he pities the boy.’ I’ll show them
tomorrow whether I’m a boy. Will it seem odd if I ask?’
Petya thought. ‘Well, never mind!’ and immediately,
blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see if
they appeared ironical, he said:
‘May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and
give him something to eat?... Perhaps..’
‘Yes, he’s a poor little fellow,’ said Denisov, who
evidently saw nothing shameful in this reminder. ‘Call
him in. His name is Vincent Bosse. Have him fetched.’
‘I’ll call him,’ said Petya.
‘Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow,’ Denisov
repeated.
Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this.
He slipped in between the officers, came close to
Denisov, and said:

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‘Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how
splendid!’
And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.
‘Bosse! Vincent!’ Petya cried, stopping outside the
door.
‘Who do you want, sir?’ asked a voice in the darkness.
Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had
been captured that day.
‘Ah, Vesenny?’ said a Cossack.
Vincent, the boy’s name, had already been changed by
the Cossacks into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by
the peasants and soldiers. In both these adaptations the
reference to spring (vesna) matched the impression made
by the young lad.
‘He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho,
Vesenya! Vesenya!- Vesenny!’ laughing voices were
heard calling to one another in the darkness.
‘He’s a smart lad,’ said an hussar standing near Petya.
‘We gave him something to eat a while ago. He was
awfully hungry!’
The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was
heard in the darkness, and the drummer boy came to the
door.

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‘Ah, c’est vous!’ said Petya. ‘Voulez-vous manger?

N’ayez pas peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,’* he added
shyly and affectionately, touching the boy’s hand.
‘Entrez, entrez.’*[2]
*"Ah, it’s you! Do you want something to eat? Don’t
be afraid, they won’t hurt you.’
*[2] ‘Come in, come in.’
‘Merci, monsieur,’* said the drummer boy in a
trembling almost childish voice, and he began scraping
his dirty feet on the threshold.
*"Thank you, sir.’
There were many things Petya wanted to say to the
drummer boy, but did not dare to. He stood irresolutely
beside him in the passage. Then in the darkness he took
the boy’s hand and pressed it.
‘Come in, come in!’ he repeated in a gentle whisper.
‘Oh, what can I do for him?’ he thought, and opening the
door he let the boy pass in first.
When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a
distance from him, considering it beneath his dignity to
pay attention to him. But he fingered the money in his
pocket and wondered whether it would seem ridiculous to
give some to the drummer boy.

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Chapter VIII

The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya’s attention

from the drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some
mutton and vodka given, and whom he had had dressed in
a Russian coat so that he might be kept with their band
and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya had
heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov’s
extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the French, so
from the moment he entered the hut Petya did not take his
eyes from him, but braced himself up more and more and
held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of
such company.
Dolokhov’s appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.
Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon
of Nicholas the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his
way of speaking and everything he did indicated his
unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in Moscow had
worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a
most correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven
and wore a Guardsman’s padded coat with an Order of St.
George at his buttonhole and a plain forage cap set
straight on his head. He took off his wet felt cloak in a

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corner of the room, and without greeting anyone went up

to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter in
hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large
detachments had on the transport, of the message Petya
had brought, and his own replies to both generals. Then
he told him all he knew of the French detachment.
‘That’s so. But we must know what troops they are and
their numbers,’ said Dolokhov. ‘It will be necessary to go
there. We can’t start the affair without knowing for
certain how many there are. I like to work accurately.
Here now- wouldn’t one of these gentlemen like to ride
over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare
uniform.’
‘I, I... I’ll go with you!’ cried Petya.
‘There’s no need for you to go at all,’ said Denisov,
addressing Dolokhov, ‘and as for him, I won’t let him go
on any account.’
‘I like that!’ exclaimed Petya. ‘Why shouldn’t I go?’
‘Because it’s useless.’
‘Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I
shall go, and that’s all. You’ll take me, won’t you?’ he
said, turning to Dolokhov.

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‘Why not?’ Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing

the face of the French drummer boy. ‘Have you had that
youngster with you long?’ he asked Denisov.
‘He was taken today but he knows nothing. I’m
keeping him with me.’
‘Yes, and where do you put the others?’ inquired
Dolokhov.
‘Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for
them,’ shouted Denisov, suddenly flushing. ‘And I say
boldly that I have not a single man’s life on my
conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send thirty or
thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of
staining- I speak bluntly- staining the honor of a soldier?’
‘That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this
young count of sixteen,’ said Dolokhov with cold irony,
‘but it’s time for you to drop it.’
‘Why, I’ve not said anything! I only say that I’ll
certainly go with you,’ said Petya shyly.
‘But for you and me, old fellow, it’s time to drop these
amenities,’ continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular
pleasure in speaking of this subject which irritated
Denisov. ‘Now, why have you kept this lad?’ he went on,
swaying his head. ‘Because you are sorry for him! Don’t
we know those ‘receipts’ of yours? You send a hundred

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men away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or
get killed. So isn’t it all the same not to send them?’
The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded
approvingly.
‘That’s not the point. I’m not going to discuss the
matter. I do not wish to take it on my conscience. You say
they’ll die. All wight. Only not by my fault!’
Dolokhov began laughing.
‘Who has told them not to capture me these twenty
times over? But if they did catch me they’d string me up
to an aspen tree, and with all your chivalry just the same.’
He paused. ‘However, we must get to work. Tell the
Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms in it.
Well, are you coming with me?’ he asked Petya.
‘I? Yes, yes, certainly!’ cried Petya, blushing almost to
tears and glancing at Denisov.
While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov
what should be done with prisoners, Petya had once more
felt awkward and restless; but again he had no time to
grasp fully what they were talking about. ‘If grown-up,
distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and
right,’ thought he. ‘But above all Denisov must not dare
to imagine that I’ll obey him and that he can order me

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about. I will certainly go to the French camp with

Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!’
And to all Denisov’s persuasions, Petya replied that he
too was accustomed to do everything accurately and not
just anyhow, and that he never considered personal
danger.
‘For you’ll admit that if we don’t know for sure how
many of them there are... hundreds of lives may depend
on it, while there are only two of us. Besides, I want to go
very much and certainly will go, so don’t hinder me,’ said
he. ‘It will only make things worse..’

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Chapter IX

Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and

Dolokhov rode to the clearing from which Denisov had
reconnoitered the French camp, and emerging from the
forest in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow.
On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks
accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a
quick trot along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in
his mouth with excitement, rode by his side.
‘If we’re caught, I won’t be taken alive! I have a
pistol,’ whispered he.
‘Don’t talk Russian,’ said Dolokhov in a hurried
whisper, and at that very moment they heard through the
darkness the challenge: ‘Qui vive?’* and the click of a
musket.
*"Who goes there?’
The blood rushed to Petya’s face and he grasped his
pistol.
‘Lanciers du 6-me,’* replied Dolokhov, neither
hastening nor slackening his horse’s pace.
*"Lancers of the 6th Regiment.’
The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.

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‘Mot d’ordre.’*
*"Password.’
Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.
‘Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?’* he asked.
*"Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?’
‘Mot d’ordre,’ repeated the sentinel, barring the way
and not replying.
‘Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne
demandent pas le mot d’ordre...’ cried Dolokhov suddenly
flaring up and riding straight at the sentinel. ‘Je vous
demande si le colonel est ici.’*
*"When an officer is making his round, sentinels don’t
ask him for the password.... I am asking you if the colonel
is here.’
And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel,
who had stepped aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a
walk.
Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road,
Dolokhov stopped him and inquired where the
commander and officers were. The man, a soldier with a
sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to
Dolokhov’s horse, touched it with his hand, and explained
simply and in a friendly way that the commander and the

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officers were higher up the hill to the right in the

courtyard of the farm, as he called the landowner’s house.
Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which
French talk could be heard around the campfires,
Dolokhov turned into the courtyard of the landowner’s
house. Having ridden in, he dismounted and approached a
big blazing campfire, around which sat several men
talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron
at the edge of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and
blue overcoat, lit up by the fire, was kneeling beside it
stirring its contents with a ramrod.
‘Oh, he’s a hard nut to crack,’ said one of the officers
who was sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.
‘He’ll make them get a move on, those fellows!’ said
another, laughing.
Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the
sound of Dolokhov’s and Petya’s steps as they advanced
to the fire leading their horses.
‘Bonjour, messieurs!’* said Dolokhov loudly and
clearly.
*"Good day, gentlemen.’
There was a stir among the officers in the shadow
beyond the fire, and one tall, long-necked officer, walking
round the fire, came up to Dolokhov.

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‘Is that you, Clement?’ he asked. ‘Where the devil...?

But, noticing his mistake, he broke off short and, with a
frown, greeted Dolokhov as a stranger, asking what he
could do for him.
Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying
to overtake their regiment, and addressing the company in
general asked whether they knew anything of the 6th
Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Petya
thought the officers were beginning to look at him and
Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds
all were silent.
‘If you were counting on the evening soup, you have
come too late,’ said a voice from behind the fire with a
repressed laugh.
Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must
push on farther that night.
He handed the horses over to the soldier who was
stirring the pot and squatted down on his heels by the fire
beside the officer with the long neck. That officer did not
take his eyes from Dolokhov and again asked to what
regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not heard
the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French
pipe which he took from his pocket began asking the

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officer in how far the road before them was safe from
Cossacks.
‘Those brigands are everywhere,’ replied an officer
from behind the fire.
Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger
only to stragglers such as his companion and himself, ‘but
probably they would not dare to attack large
detachments?’ he added inquiringly. No one replied.
‘Well, now he’ll come away,’ Petya thought every
moment as he stood by the campfire listening to the talk.
But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had
dropped and began putting direct questions as to how
many men there were in the battalion, how many
battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about the
Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:
‘A horrid business dragging these corpses about with
one! It would be better to shoot such rabble,’ and burst
into loud laughter, so strange that Petya thought the
French would immediately detect their disguise, and
involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.
No one replied a word to Dolokhov’s laughter, and a
French officer whom they could not see (he lay wrapped
in a greatcoat) rose and whispered something to a

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companion. Dolokhov got up and called to the soldier

who was holding their horses.
‘Will they bring our horses or not?’ thought Petya,
instinctively drawing nearer to Dolokhov.
The horses were brought.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Dolokhov.
Petya wished to say ‘Good night’ but could not utter a
word. The officers were whispering together. Dolokhov
was a long time mounting his horse which would not
stand still, then he rode out of the yard at a footpace.
Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see
whether or no the French were running after them, but not
daring to.
Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back
across the open country, but through the village. At one
spot he stopped and listened. ‘Do you hear?’ he asked.
Petya recognized the sound of Russian voices and saw the
dark figures of Russian prisoners round their campfires.
When they had descended to the bridge Petya and
Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a
word paced morosely up and down it, then they
descended into the hollow where the Cossacks awaited
them.

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‘Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, ‘at the first shot at

daybreak,’’ said Dolokhov and was about to ride away,
but Petya seized hold of him.
‘Really!’ he cried, ‘you are such a hero! Oh, how fine,
how splendid! How I love you!’
‘All right, all right!’ said Dolokhov. But Petya did not
let go of him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that
Petya was bending toward him and wanted to kiss him.
Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and
vanished into the darkness.

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Chapter X

Having returned to the watchman’s hut, Petya found

Denisov in the passage. He was awaiting Petya’s return in
a state of agitation, anxiety, and self-reproach for having
let him go.
‘Thank God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, thank God!’ he
repeated, listening to Petya’s rapturous account. ‘But,
devil take you, I haven’t slept because of you! Well, thank
God. Now lie down. We can still get a nap before
morning.’
‘But... no,’ said Petya, ‘I don’t want to sleep yet.
Besides I know myself, if I fall asleep it’s finished. And
then I am used to not sleeping before a battle.’
He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of
his expedition and vividly picturing to himself what
would happen next day.
Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and
went out of doors.
It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but
drops were still falling from the trees. Near the
watchman’s hut the black shapes of the Cossacks’
shanties and of horses tethered together could be seen.

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Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with
their horses beside them were discernible, and in the
hollow the dying campfire gleamed red. Not all the
Cossacks and hussars were asleep; here and there, amid
the sounds of falling drops and the munching of the
horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed
to be whispering.
Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up
to the wagons. Someone was snoring under them, and
around them stood saddled horses munching their oats. In
the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which he called
‘Karabakh’ though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up
to it.
‘Well, Karabakh! We’ll do some service tomorrow,’
said he, sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.
‘Why aren’t you asleep, sir?’ said a Cossack who was
sitting under a wagon.
‘No, ah... Likhachev- isn’t that your name? Do you
know I have only just come back! We’ve been into the
French camp.’
And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not
only of his ride but also of his object, and why he
considered it better to risk his life than to act ‘just
anyhow.’

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‘Well, you should get some sleep now,’ said the

Cossack.
‘No, I am used to this,’ said Petya. ‘I say, aren’t the
flints in your pistols worn out? I brought some with me.
Don’t you want any? You can have some.’
The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get
a closer look at Petya.
‘Because I am accustomed to doing everything
accurately,’ said Petya. ‘Some fellows do things just
anyhow, without preparation, and then they’re sorry for it
afterwards. I don’t like that.’
‘Just so,’ said the Cossack.
‘Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will
you sharpen my saber for me? It’s got bl...’ (Petya feared
to tell a lie, and the saber never had been sharpened.)
‘Can you do it?’
‘Of course I can.’
Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon
Petya heard the warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He
climbed onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The Cossack
was sharpening the saber under the wagon.
‘I say! Are the lads asleep?’ asked Petya.
‘Some are, and some aren’t- like us.’
‘Well, and that boy?’

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‘Vesenny? Oh, he’s thrown himself down there in the

passage. Fast asleep after his fright. He was that glad!’
After that Petya remained silent for a long time,
listening to the sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness
and a black figure appeared.
‘What are you sharpening?’ asked a man coming up to
the wagon.
‘Why, this gentleman’s saber.’
‘That’s right,’ said the man, whom Petya took to be an
hussar. ‘Was the cup left here?’
‘There, by the wheel!’
The hussar took the cup.
‘It must be daylight soon,’ said he, yawning, and went
away.
Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with
Denisov’s guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road,
sitting on a wagon captured from the French beside which
horses were tethered, that under it Likhachev was sitting
sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark blotch to the
right was the watchman’s hut, and the red blotch below to
the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man
who had come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a
drink; but he neither knew nor waited to know anything of
all this. He was in a fairy kingdom where nothing

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resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be the

watchman’s hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very
depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it
might be the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was
really sitting on a wagon, but it might very well be that he
was not sitting on a wagon but on a terribly high tower
from which, if he fell, he would have to fall for a whole
day or a whole month, or go on falling and never reach
the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev,
who was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the
kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most splendid man in
the world, whom no one knew of. It might really have
been that the hussar came for water and went back into
the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished-
disappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.
Nothing Petya could have seen now would have
surprised him. He was in a fairy kingdom where
everything was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm
like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the
trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars.
Sometimes it looked as if the clouds were passing, and a
clear black sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed as if the
black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed to

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be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink

so low that one could touch it with one’s hand.
Petya’s eyes began to close and he swayed a little.
The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The
horses neighed and jostled one another. Someone snored.
‘Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg...’ hissed the saber against
the whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious
orchestra playing some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn.
Petya was as musical as Natasha and more so than
Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about it,
and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind
seemed to him particularly fresh and attractive. The music
became more and more audible. The melody grew and
passed from one instrument to another. And what was
played was a fugue- though Petya had not the least
conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument- now
resembling a violin and now a horn, but better and clearer
than violin or horn- played its own part, and before it had
finished the melody merged with another instrument that
began almost the same air, and then with a third and a
fourth; and they all blended into one and again became
separate and again blended, now into solemn church
music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and
triumphant.

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‘Oh- why, that was in a dream!’ Petya said to himself,

as he lurched forward. ‘It’s in my ears. But perhaps it’s
music of my own. Well, go on, my music! Now!..’
He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a
distance, sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies,
separated, blended, and again all mingled into the same
sweet and solemn hymn. ‘Oh, this is delightful! As much
as I like and as I like!’ said Petya to himself. He tried to
conduct that enormous orchestra.
‘Now softly, softly die away!’ and the sounds obeyed
him. ‘Now fuller, more joyful. Still more and more
joyful!’ And from an unknown depth rose increasingly
triumphant sounds. ‘Now voices join in!’ ordered Petya.
And at first from afar he heard men’s voices and then
women’s. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant
strength, and Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in
awe and joy.
With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song,
the drip from the trees, and the hissing of the saber,
‘Ozheg-zheg-zheg...’ and again the horses jostled one
another and neighed, not disturbing the choir but joining
in it.
Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed
himself all the time, wondered at his enjoyment and

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regretted that there was no one to share it. He was

awakened by Likhachev’s kindly voice.
‘It’s ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in
half with it!’
Petya woke up.
‘It’s getting light, it’s really getting light!’ he
exclaimed.
The horses that had previously been invisible could
now be seen to their very tails, and a watery light showed
itself through the bare branches. Petya shook himself,
jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it to
Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and
sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and
tightening their saddle girths.
‘And here’s the commander,’ said Likhachev.
Denisov came out of the watchman’s hut and, having
called Petya, gave orders to get ready.

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Chapter XI

The men rapidly picked out their horses in the

semidarkness, tightened their saddle girths, and formed
companies. Denisov stood by the watchman’s hut giving
final orders. The infantry of the detachment passed along
the road and quickly disappeared amid the trees in the
mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through the
mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held
his horse by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to
mount. His face, having been bathed in cold water, was
all aglow, and his eyes were particularly brilliant. Cold
shivers ran down his spine and his whole body pulsed
rhythmically.
‘Well, is ev’wything weady?’ asked Denisov. ‘Bwing
the horses.’
The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the
Cossack because the saddle girths were too slack,
reproved him, and mounted. Petya put his foot in the
stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but
Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of his
own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in
the darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.

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‘Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission!

Please... for God’s sake...!’ said he.
Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya’s very
existence. He turned to glance at him.
‘I ask one thing of you,’ he said sternly, ‘to obey me
and not shove yourself forward anywhere.’
He did not say another word to Petya but rode in
silence all the way. When they had come to the edge of
the forest it was noticeably growing light over the field.
Denisov talked in whispers with the esaul and the
Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had all
ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the
hill. Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses
descended with their riders into the ravine. Petya rode
beside Denisov, the pulsation of his body constantly
increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter, but the mist
still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley,
Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside
him.
‘The signal!’ said he.
The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an
instant the tramp of horses galloping forward was heard,
shouts came from various sides, and then more shots.

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At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting,

Petya lashed his horse and loosening his rein galloped
forward, not heeding Denisov who shouted at him. It
seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was fired it
suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the
bridge. Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of
him. On the bridge he collided with a Cossack who had
fallen behind, but he galloped on. In front of him soldiers,
probably Frenchmen, were running from right to left
across the road. One of them fell in the mud under his
horse’s feet.
Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with
something. From the midst of that crowd terrible screams
arose. Petya galloped up, and the first thing he saw was
the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman, clutching
the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.
‘Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!’ shouted Petya, and giving
rein to his excited horse he galloped forward along the
village street.
He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks,
hussars, and ragged Russian prisoners, who had come
running from both sides of the road, were shouting
something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a

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frowning red face, had been defending himself against the

hussars. When Petya galloped up the Frenchman had
already fallen. ‘Too late again!’ flashed through Petya’s
mind and he galloped on to the place from which the
rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard
of the landowner’s house he had visited the night before
with Dolokhov. The French were making a stand there
behind a wattle fence in a garden thickly overgrown with
bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who crowded at
the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the
gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-
greenish tint, shouting to his men. ‘Go round! Wait for the
infantry!’ he exclaimed as Petya rode up to him.
‘Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!’ shouted Petya, and without
pausing a moment galloped to the place whence came the
sounds of firing and where the smoke was thickest.
A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past,
while others plashed against something. The Cossacks
and Dolokhov galloped after Petya into the gateway of the
courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the
French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to
meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward
the pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but
instead of holding the reins he waved both his arms about

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rapidly and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one

side in his saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a
campfire that was smoldering in the morning light,
stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the wet
ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked
rapidly though his head was quite motionless. A bullet
had pierced his skull.
After speaking to the senior French officer, who came
out of the house with a white handkerchief tied to his
sword and announced that they surrendered, Dolokhov
dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay motionless
with outstretched arms.
‘Done for!’ he said with a frown, and went to the gate
to meet Denisov who was riding toward him.
‘Killed?’ cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance
the unmistakably lifeless attitude- very familiar to him- in
which Petya’s body was lying.
‘Done for!’ repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of
these words afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly
up to the prisoners, who were surrounded by Cossacks
who had hurried up. ‘We won’t take them!’ he called out
to Denisov.
Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya,
dismounted, and with trembling hands turned toward

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himself the bloodstained, mud-bespattered face which had

already gone white.
‘I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones...
take them all!’ he recalled Petya’s words. And the
Cossacks looked round in surprise at the sound, like the
yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned away, walked to
the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and
Dolokhov was Pierre Bezukhov.

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Chapter XII

During the whole of their march from Moscow no

fresh orders had been issued by the French authorities
concerning the party of prisoners among whom was
Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was no
longer with the same troops and baggage trains with
which it had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with
hardtack that had traveled the first stages with them had
been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone on
ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had
marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all
disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front
of them during the first days was now replaced by
Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train, convoyed by
Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry
baggage train.
From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till
then moved in three columns, went on as a single group.
The symptoms of disorder that Pierre had noticed at their
first halting place after leaving Moscow had now reached
the utmost limit.

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The road along which they moved was bordered on

both sides by dead horses; ragged men who had fallen
behind from various regiments continually changed about,
now joining the moving column, now again lagging
behind it.
Several times during the march false alarms had been
given and the soldiers of the escort had raised their
muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one another,
but had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for
their causeless panic.
These three groups traveling together- the cavalry
stores, the convoy of prisoners, and Junot’s baggage train-
still constituted a separate and united whole, though each
of the groups was rapidly melting away.
Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a
hundred and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now
remained; the rest had been captured or left behind. Some
of Junot’s wagons also had been captured or abandoned.
Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
from Davout’s corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre
learned that a larger guard had been allotted to that
baggage train than to the prisoners, and that one of their
comrades, a German soldier, had been shot by the

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marshal’s own order because a silver spoon belonging to

the marshal had been found in his possession.
The group of prisoners had melted away most of all.
Of the three hundred and thirty men who had set out from
Moscow fewer than a hundred now remained. The
prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even
the cavalry saddles or Junot’s baggage. They understood
that the saddles and Junot’s spoon might be of some use,
but that cold and hungry soldiers should have to stand and
guard equally cold and hungry Russians who froze and
lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to
shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but
revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous
condition they themselves were in, of giving way to the
pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering their own
plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness
and severity.
At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after
locking the prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage
their own stores, several of the soldier prisoners tunneled
under the wall and ran away, but were recaptured by the
French and shot.
The arrangement adopted when they started, that the
officer prisoners should be kept separate from the rest,

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had long since been abandoned. All who could walk went
together, and after the third stage Pierre had rejoined
Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had
chosen Karataev for its master.
On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again
fell ill with the fever he had suffered from in the hospital
in Moscow, and as he grew gradually weaker Pierre kept
away from him. Pierre did not know why, but since
Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an
effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the
subdued moaning with which Karataev generally lay
down at the halting places, and when he smelled the odor
emanating from him which was now stronger than before,
Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not
with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself,
that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within
him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that
all unhappiness arises not from privation but from
superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the
march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth-
that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that
as there is no condition in which man can be happy and
entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be

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unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and

freedom have their limits and that those limits are very
near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one
crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on
the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while
the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight
dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he
walked with bare feet that were covered with sores- his
footgear having long since fallen to pieces. He discovered
that when he had married his wife- of his own free will as
it had seemed to him- he had been no more free than now
when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that
he himself subsequently termed his sufferings, but which
at the time he scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his
bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was
appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the
gunpowder they used instead of salt was even pleasant;
there was no great cold, it was always warm walking in
the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the
lice that devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing
that was at first hard to bear was his feet.
After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined
his feet by the campfire, thought it would be impossible to
walk on them; but when everybody got up he went along,

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limping, and, when he had warmed up, walked without

feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at
them now, but thought of other things.
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in
man and the saving power he has of transferring his
attention from one thing to another, which is like the
safety valve of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to
blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the
prisoners who lagged behind, though more than a hundred
perished in that way. He did not think of Karataev who
grew weaker every day and evidently would soon have to
share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself.
The harder his position became and the more terrible the
future, the more independent of that position in which he
found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts,
memories, and imaginings that came to him.

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Chapter XIII

At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was

going uphill along the muddy, slippery road, looking at
his feet and at the roughness of the way. Occasionally he
glanced at the familiar crowd around him and then again
at his feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar
and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran merrily
along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its
agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and
hopping along on three, and then again going on all four
and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion.
The dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in
Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different animals-
from men to horses- in various stages of decomposition;
and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the
dog could eat all it wanted.
It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if
at any moment it might cease and the sky clear, but after a
short break it began raining harder than before. The
saturated road no longer absorbed the water, which ran
along the ruts in streams.

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Pierre walked along, looking from side to side,

counting his steps in threes, and reckoning them off on his
fingers. Mentally addressing the rain, he repeated: ‘Now
then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!’
It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but
far down and deep within him his soul was occupied with
something important and comforting. This something was
a most subtle spiritual deduction from a conversation with
Karataev the day before.
At their yesterday’s halting place, feeling chilly by a
dying campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next
one, which was burning better. There Platon Karataev was
sitting covered up- head and all- with his greatcoat as if it
were a vestment, telling the soldiers in his effective and
pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew. It
was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was
usually free of his fever and particularly lively. When
Pierre reached the fire and heard Platon’s voice enfeebled
by illness, and saw his pathetic face brightly lit up by the
blaze, he felt a painful prick at his heart. His feeling of
pity for this man frightened him and he wished to go
away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down,
trying not to look at Platon.
‘Well, how are you?’ he asked.

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‘How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won’t

grant us death,’ replied Platon, and at once resumed the
story he had begun.
‘And so, brother,’ he continued, with a smile on his
pale emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his
eyes, ‘ you see, brother..’
Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev
had told it to him alone some half-dozen times and always
with a specially joyful emotion. But well as he knew it,
Pierre now listened to that tale as to something new, and
the quiet rapture Karataev evidently felt as he told it
communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was of an
old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with
his family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a
companion- a rich merchant.
Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and
next morning his companion was found robbed and with
his throat cut. A bloodstained knife was found under the
old merchant’s pillow. He was tried, knouted, and his
nostrils having been torn off, ‘all in due form’ as Karataev
put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.
‘And so, brother’ (it was at this point that Pierre came
up), ‘ten years or more passed by. The old man was living
as a convict, submitting as he should and doing no wrong.

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Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one night the

convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man
among them. And they began telling what each was
suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One
told how he had taken a life, another had taken two, a
third had set a house on fire, while another had simply
been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they asked the
old man: ‘What are you being punished for, Daddy?’- ‘I,
my dear brothers,’ said he, ‘am being punished for my
own and other men’s sins. But I have not killed anyone or
taken anything that was not mine, but have only helped
my poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my dear brothers,
and had much property. ‘And he went on to tell them all
about it in due order. ‘I don’t grieve for myself,’ he says,
‘God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my
old wife and the children,’ and the old man began to
weep. Now it happened that in the group was the very
man who had killed the other merchant. ‘Where did it
happen, Daddy?’ he said. ‘When, and in what month?’ He
asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he
comes up to the old man like this, and falls down at his
feet! ‘You are perishing because of me, Daddy,’ he says.
‘It’s quite true, lads, that this man,’ he says, ‘is being
tortured innocently and for nothing! I,’ he says, ‘did that

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deed, and I put the knife under your head while you were
asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,’ he says, ‘for Christ’s sake!’’
Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the
fire, and he drew the logs together.
‘And the old man said, ‘God will forgive you, we are
all sinners in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,’ and he
wept bitter tears. Well, and what do you think, dear
friends?’ Karataev continued, his face brightening more
and more with a rapturous smile as if what he now had to
tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of
his story: ‘What do you think, dear fellows? That
murderer confessed to the authorities. ‘I have taken six
lives,’ he says (he was a great sinner), ‘but what I am
most sorry for is this old man. Don’t let him suffer
because of me.’ So he confessed and it was all written
down and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a
long way off, and while they were judging, what with one
thing and another, filling in the papers all in due form- the
authorities I mean- time passed. The affair reached the
Tsar. After a while the Tsar’s decree came: to set the
merchant free and give him a compensation that had been
awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the
old man. ‘Where is the old man who has been suffering
innocently and in vain? A paper has come from the Tsar!’

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so they began looking for him,’ here Karataev’s lower jaw

trembled, ‘but God had already forgiven him- he was
dead! That’s how it was, dear fellows!’ Karataev
concluded and sat for a long time silent, gazing before
him with a smile.
And Pierre’s soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by
the story itself but by its mysterious significance: by the
rapturous joy that lit up Karataev’s face as he told it, and
the mystic significance of that joy.

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Chapter XIV

‘A vos places!’* suddenly cried a voice.

*"To your places.’
A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of
something joyful and solemn was aroused among the
soldiers of the convoy and the prisoners. From all sides
came shouts of command, and from the left came smartly
dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the prisoners
at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension
people feel at the approach of those in authority. The
prisoners thronged together and were pushed off the road.
The convoy formed up.
‘The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The
Duke!’ and hardly had the sleek cavalry passed, before a
carriage drawn by six gray horses rattled by. Pierre caught
a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat with a tranquil
look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of
the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre’s large and striking
figure, and in the expression with which he frowned and
looked away Pierre thought he detected sympathy and a
desire to conceal that sympathy.

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The general in charge of the stores galloped after the

carriage with a red and frightened face, whipping up his
skinny horse. Several officers formed a group and some
soldiers crowded round them. Their faces all looked
excited and worried.
‘What did he say? What did he say?’ Pierre heard them
ask.
While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had
huddled together in a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev
whom he had not yet seen that morning. He sat in his
short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On his face,
besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday
while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered
innocently, there was now an expression of quiet
solemnity.
Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes
now filled with tears, evidently wishing him to come near
that he might say something to him. But Pierre was not
sufficiently sure of himself. He made as if he did not
notice that look and moved hastily away.
When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked
round. Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road
under the birch tree and two Frenchmen were talking over

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his head. Pierre did not look round again but went limping
up the hill.
From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came
the sound of a shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that
moment he remembered that he had not yet finished
reckoning up how many stages still remained to
Smolensk- a calculation he had begun before the marshal
went by. And he again started reckoning. Two French
soldiers ran past Pierre, one of whom carried a lowered
and smoking gun. They both looked pale, and in the
expression on their faces- one of them glanced timidly at
Pierre- there was something resembling what he had seen
on the face of the young soldier at the execution. Pierre
looked at the soldier and remembered that, two days
before, that man had burned his shirt while drying it at the
fire and how they had laughed at him.
Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog
began to howl. ‘What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?’
thought Pierre.
His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside
him, avoided looking back at the place where the shot had
been fired and the dog was howling, just as Pierre did, but
there was a set look on all their faces.

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Chapter XV

The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal’s baggage

train stopped at the village of Shamshevo. The men
crowded together round the campfires. Pierre went up to
the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, lay down with his back
to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He again slept as
he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.
Again real events mingled with dreams and again
someone, he or another, gave expression to his thoughts,
and even to the same thoughts that had been expressed in
his dream at Mozhaysk.
‘Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes
and moves and that movement is God. And while there is
life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love
life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else
is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent
sufferings.’
‘Karataev!’ came to Pierre’s mind.
And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-
forgotten, kindly old man who had given him geography
lessons in Switzerland. ‘Wait a bit,’ said the old man, and
showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive- a vibrating

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ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted

of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops
moved and changed places, sometimes several of them
merging into one, sometimes one dividing into many.
Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much space
as possible, but others striving to do the same compressed
it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.
‘That is life,’ said the old teacher.
‘How simple and clear it is,’ thought Pierre. ‘How is it
I did not know it before?’
‘God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so
as to reflect Him to the greatest extent. And it grows,
merges, disappears from the surface, sinks to the depths,
and again emerges. There now, Karataev has spread out
and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?’ said the
teacher.
‘Do you understand, damn you?’ shouted a voice, and
Pierre woke up.
He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had
just pushed a Russian soldier away was squatting by the
fire, engaged in roasting a piece of meat stuck on a
ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy, hairy,
red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the

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ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was

clearly visible by the glow of the charcoal.
‘It’s all the same to him,’ he muttered, turning quickly
to a soldier who stood behind him. ‘Brigand! Get away!’
And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre,
who turned away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner,
the Russian soldier the Frenchman had pushed away, was
sitting near the fire patting something with his hand.
Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray
dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.
‘Ah, he’s come?’ said Pierre. ‘And Plat-’ he began, but
did not finish.
Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories
awoke in his fancy- of the look Platon had given him as
he sat under the tree, of the shot heard from that spot, of
the dog’s howl, of the guilty faces of the two Frenchmen
as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and
of Karataev’s absence at this halt- and he was on the point
of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that
instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his
mind of a summer evening he had spent with a beautiful
Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And
without linking up the events of the day or drawing a
conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a

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vision of the country in summertime mingled with

memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe,
and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.
Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud
and rapid firing. French soldiers were running past him.
‘The Cossacks!’ one of them shouted, and a moment
later a crowd of Russians surrounded Pierre.
For a long time he could not understand what was
happening to him. All around he heard his comrades
sobbing with joy.
‘Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!’ old soldiers
exclaimed, weeping, as they embraced Cossacks and
hussars.
The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the
prisoners; one offered them clothes, another boots, and a
third bread. Pierre sobbed as he sat among them and could
not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier who
approached him, and kissed him, weeping.
Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting
a crowd of disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French,
excited by all that had happened, were talking loudly
among themselves, but as they passed Dolokhov who
gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them
with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became

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silent. On the opposite side stood Dolokhov’s Cossack,

counting the prisoners and marking off each hundred with
a chalk line on the gate.
‘How many?’ Dolokhov asked the Cossack.
‘The second hundred,’ replied the Cossack.
‘Filez, filez!’* Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted
this expression from the French, and when his eyes met
those of the prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.
*"Get along, get along!’
Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked
behind some Cossacks who were carrying the body of
Petya Rostov to a hole that had been dug in the garden.

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Chapter XVI

After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts

began, the flight of the French assumed a still more tragic
character, with men freezing, or roasting themselves to
death at the campfires, while carriages with people
dressed in furs continued to drive past, carrying away the
property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings, and
dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of
the French army went on essentially as before.
From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-
three thousand men not reckoning the Guards (who did
nothing during the whole war but pillage) was reduced to
thirty-six thousand, though not more than five thousand
had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding
terms of the progression could be determined
mathematically. The French army melted away and
perished at the same rate from Moscow to Vyazma, from
Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina,
and from the Berezina to Vilna- independently of the
greater or lesser intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the
barring of the way, or any other particular conditions.
Beyond Vyazma the French army instead of moving in

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three columns huddled together into one mass, and so

went on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we
know how far commanding officers allow themselves to
diverge from the truth in describing the condition of an
army) and this is what he said:
I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the
condition of the various corps I have had occasion to
observe during different stages of the last two or three
days’ march. They are almost disbanded. Scarcely a
quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of their
regiments, the others go off by themselves in different
directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In
general they regard Smolensk as the place where they
hope to recover. During the last few days many of the
men have been seen to throw away their cartridges and
their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your
ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty’s
service demands that the army should be rallied at
Smolensk and should first of all be freed from
ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry, unnecessary
baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in
proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are
worn out with hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as
well as a few days’ rest. Many have died last days on the

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road or at the bivouacs. This state of things is continually

becoming worse and makes one fear that unless a prompt
remedy is applied the troops will no longer be under
control in case of an engagement.
November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.
After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them
a promised land, the French, searching for food, killed
one another, sacked their own stores, and when
everything had been plundered fled farther.
They all went without knowing whither or why they
were going. Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it,
for no one issued any orders to him. But still he and those
about him retained their old habits: wrote commands,
letters, reports, and orders of the day; called one another
sire, mon cousin, prince d’Eckmuhl, roi de Naples, and so
on. But these orders and reports were only on paper,
nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be
carried out, and though they entitled one another
Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they
were miserable wretches who had done much evil for
which they had now to pay. And though they pretended to
be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of
himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.

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Chapter XVII

The movements of the Russian and French armies

during the campaign from Moscow back to the Niemen
were like those in a game of Russian blindman’s bluff, in
which two players are blindfolded and one of them
occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when
he gets into a tight place he runs away as quietly as he
can, and often thinking to escape runs straight into his
opponent’s arms.
At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga
road, Napoleon’s armies made their presence known, but
later when they reached the Smolensk road they ran
holding the clapper of their bell tight- and often thinking
they were escaping ran right into the Russians.
Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the
Russian pursuit and the consequent exhaustion of the
horses, the chief means of approximately ascertaining the
enemy’s position- by cavalry scouting- was not available.
Besides, as a result of the frequent and rapid change of
position by each army, even what information was
obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was

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received one day that the enemy had been in a certain

position the day before, by the third day when something
could have been done, that army was already two days’
march farther on and in quite another position.
One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond
Smolensk there were several different roads available for
the French, and one would have thought that during their
stay of four days they might have learned where the
enemy was, might have arranged some more
advantageous plan and undertaken something new. But
after a four days’ halt the mob, with no maneuvers or
plans, again began running along the beaten track, neither
to the right nor to the left but along the old- the worst-
road, through Krasnoe and Orsha.
Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the
French separated in their flight and spread out over a
distance of twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the
Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The Russian
army, expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right
beyond the Dnieper- which was the only reasonable thing
for him to do- themselves turned to the right and came out
onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of
blindman’s buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing
their enemy unexpectedly the French fell into confusion

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and stopped short from the sudden fright, but then they
resumed their flight, abandoning their comrades who were
farther behind. Then for three days separate portions of
the French army- first Murat’s (the vice-king’s), then
Davout’s, and then Ney’s- ran, as it were, the gauntlet of
the Russian army. They abandoned one another,
abandoned all their heavy baggage, their artillery, and half
their men, and fled, getting past the Russians by night by
making semicircles to the right.
Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing
up the walls of Smolensk which were in nobody’s way,
because despite the unfortunate plight of the French or
because of it, they wished to punish the floor against
which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a
corps of ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha
with only one thousand men left, having abandoned all
the rest and all his cannon, and having crossed the
Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.
From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna,
still playing at blindman’s buff with the pursuing army.
At the Berezina they again became disorganized, many
were drowned and many surrendered, but those who got
across the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a
fur coat and, having seated himself in a sleigh, galloped

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on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who

could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not
to surrender or die.

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Chapter XVIII

This campaign consisted in a flight of the French

during which they did all they could to destroy
themselves. From the time they turned onto the Kaluga
road to the day their leader fled from the army, none of
the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might
have thought that regarding this period of the campaign
the historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to
the will of one man, would have found it impossible to
make the story of the retreat fit their theory. But no!
Mountains of books have been written by the historians
about this campaign, and everywhere are described
Napoleon’s arrangements, the maneuvers, and his
profound plans which guided the army, as well as the
military genius shown by his marshals.
The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free
road into a well-supplied district and the parallel road was
open to him along which Kutuzov afterwards pursued
him- this unnecessary retreat along a devastated road- is
explained to us as being due to profound considerations.
Similarly profound considerations are given for his retreat
from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is

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described, where he is reported to have been prepared to

accept battle and take personal command, and to have
walked about with a birch stick and said:
‘J’ai assez fait l’empereur; il est temps de faire le
general,’* but nevertheless immediately ran away again,
abandoning to its fate the scattered fragments of the army
he left behind.
*"I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to
act the general.’
Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the
marshals, especially of Ney- a greatness of soul consisting
in this: that he made his way by night around through the
forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to Orsha,
abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his
men.
And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor
from his heroic army is presented to us by the historians
as something great and characteristic of genius. Even that
final running away, described in ordinary language as the
lowest depth of baseness which every child is taught to be
ashamed of- even that act finds justification in the
historians’ language.
When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads
of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are

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clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even

just, the historians produce a saving conception of
‘greatness.’ ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the standards
of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong,
there is no atrocity for which a ‘great’ man can be
blamed.
‘C’est grand!’* say the historians, and there no longer
exists either good or evil but only ‘grand’ and ‘not grand.’
Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the
characteristic, in their conception, of some special
animals called ‘heroes.’ And Napoleon, escaping home in
a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not
merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had
brought there, feels que c’est grand,*[2] and his soul is
tranquil.
*"It is great.’
*[2] That it is great.
‘Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au
ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,’* said he. And the whole
world for fifty years has been repeating: ‘Sublime! Grand!
Napoleon le Grand!’ Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un
pas.
*"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.’

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And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not

commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is
merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable
meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by
Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there
is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are
absent.

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Chapter XIX

What Russian, reading the account of the last part of

the campaign of 1812, has not experienced an
uncomfortable feeling of regret, dissatisfaction, and
perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is that the
French were not all captured or destroyed when our three
armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the
disordered French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in
crowds, and when (as the historians relate) the aim of the
Russians was to stop the French, to cut them off, and
capture them all?
How was it that the Russian army, which when
numerically weaker than the French had given battle at
Borodino, did not achieve its purpose when it had
surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim
was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously
superior to us that when we had surrounded them with
superior forces we could not beat them? How could that
happen?
History (or what is called by that name) replying to
these questions says that this occurred because Kutuzov

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and Tormasov and Chichagov, and this man and that man,
did not execute such and such maneuvers...
But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And
why if they were guilty of not carrying out a prearranged
plan were they not tried and punished? But even if we
admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and others were the
cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
why, the position of the Russian army being what it was
at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had
superior forces), the French army with its marshals, kings,
and Emperor was not captured, if that was what the
Russians aimed at.
The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian
military historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an
attack) is unfounded, for we know that he could not
restrain the troops from attacking at Vyazma and
Tarutino.
Why was the Russian army- which with inferior forces
had withstood the enemy in full strength at Borodino-
defeated at Krasnoe and the Berezina by the disorganized
crowds of the French when it was numerically superior?
If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and
capturing Napoleon and his marshals- and that aim was
not merely frustrated but all attempts to attain it were

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most shamefully baffled- then this last period of the

campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a
series of victories, and quite wrongly considered
victorious by Russian historians.
The Russian military historians in so far as they submit
to claims of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite
of their lyrical rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so
forth, must reluctantly admit that the French retreat from
Moscow was a series of victories for Napoleon and
defeats for Kutuzov.
But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that
such a conclusion involves a contradiction, since the
series of French victories brought the French complete
destruction, while the series of Russian defeats led to the
total destruction of their enemy and the liberation of their
country.
The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the
historians studying the events from the letters of the
sovereigns and the generals, from memoirs, reports,
projects, and so forth, have attributed to this last period of
the war of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of
cutting off and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and
his army.

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There never was or could have been such an aim, for it

would have been senseless and its attainment quite
impossible.
It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon’s
disorganized army was flying from Russia with all
possible speed, that is to say, was doing just what every
Russian desired. So what was the use of performing
various operations on the French who were running away
as fast as they possibly could?
Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the
passage of men whose whole energy was directed to
flight.
Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one’s
own troops in order to destroy the French army, which
without external interference was destroying itself at such
a rate that, though its path was not blocked, it could not
carry across the frontier more than it actually did in
December, namely a hundredth part of the original army.
Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take
captive the Emperor, kings, and dukes- whose capture
would have been in the highest degree embarrassing for
the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of the time
(Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. Still more
senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps

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of the French, when our own army had melted away to

half before reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would
have been needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and
when our men were not always getting full rations and the
prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.
All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his army were like the plan of a market
gardener who, when driving out of his garden a cow that
had trampled down the beds he had planted, should run to
the gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be
said in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very
angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew
up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from
the trampled beds.
But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his
army would have been senseless, it was impossible.
It was impossible first because- as experience shows
that a three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield
never coincides with the plans- the probability of
Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a
junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to
be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought
Kutuzov, who when he received the plan remarked that

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diversions planned over great distances do not yield the

desired results.
Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the
momentum with which Napoleon’s army was retiring,
incomparably greater forces than the Russians possessed
would have been required.
Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term ‘to
cut off’ has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread,
but not an army. To cut off an army- to bar its road- is
quite impossible, for there is always plenty of room to
avoid capture and there is the night when nothing can be
seen, as the military scientists might convince themselves
by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only
possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured,
just as it is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on
one’s hand. Men can only be taken prisoners if they
surrender according to the rules of strategy and tactics, as
the Germans did. But the French troops quite rightly did
not consider that this suited them, since death by hunger
and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.
Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never
since the world began has a war been fought under such
conditions as those that obtained in 1812, and the Russian
army in its pursuit of the French strained its strength to

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the utmost and could not have done more without

destroying itself.
During the movement of the Russian army from
Tarutino to Krasnoe it lost fifty thousand sick or
stragglers, that is a number equal to the population of a
large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army
without a battle.
And it is of this period of the campaign- when the
army lacked boots and sheepskin coats, was short of
provisions and without vodka, and was camping out at
night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees of frost,
when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline
cannot be maintained, when men were taken into that
region of death where discipline fails, not for a few hours
only as in a battle, but for months, where they were every
moment fighting death from hunger and cold, when half
the army perished in a single month- it is of this period of
the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
should have made a flank march to such and such a place,
Tormasov to another place, and Chichagov should have
crossed (more than knee-deep in snow) to somewhere
else, and how so-and-so ‘routed’ and ‘cut off’ the French
and so on and so on.

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The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and
should have been done to attain an end worthy of the
nation, and they are not to blame because other Russians,
sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should do what
was impossible.
All that strange contradiction now difficult to
understand between the facts and the historical accounts
only arises because the historians dealing with the matter
have written the history of the beautiful words and
sentiments of various generals, and not the history of the
events.
To them the words of Miloradovich seem very
interesting, and so do their surmises and the rewards this
or that general received; but the question of those fifty
thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves
does not even interest them, for it does not come within
the range of their investigation.
Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and
general plans and consider the movement of those
hundreds of thousands of men who took a direct part in
the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble
easily and simply receive an immediate and certain
solution.

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The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never

existed except in the imaginations of a dozen people. It
could not exist because it was senseless and unattainable.
The people had a single aim: to free their land from
invasion. That aim was attained in the first place of itself,
as the French ran away, and so it was only necessary not
to stop their flight. Secondly it was attained by the
guerrilla warfare which was destroying the French, and
thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was
following the French, ready to use its strength in case
their movement stopped.
The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running
animal. And the experienced driver knew it was better to
hold the whip raised as a menace than to strike the
running animal on the head.

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BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13

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Chapter I

When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of

horror: substance similar to his own is perishing before
his eyes. But when it is a beloved and intimate human
being that is dying, besides this horror at the extinction of
life there is a severance, a spiritual wound, which like a
physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes heals,
but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating
touch.
After Prince Andrew’s death Natasha and Princess
Mary alike felt this. Drooping in spirit and closing their
eyes before the menacing cloud of death that overhung
them, they dared not look life in the face. They carefully
guarded their open wounds from any rough and painful
contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the
street, a summons to dinner, the maid’s inquiry what dress
to prepare, or worse still any word of insincere or feeble
sympathy, seemed an insult, painfully irritated the wound,
interrupting that necessary quiet in which they both tried
to listen to the stern and dreadful choir that still resounded
in their imagination, and hindered their gazing into those
mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant had opened
out before them.

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Only when alone together were they free from such

outrage and pain. They spoke little even to one another,
and when they did it was of very unimportant matters.
Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the
possibility of a future seemed to them to insult his
memory. Still more carefully did they avoid anything
relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them that what
they had lived through and experienced could not be
expressed in words, and that any reference to the details
of his life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the
mystery that had been accomplished before their eyes.
Continued abstention from speech, and constant
avoidance of everything that might lead up to the subject-
this halting on all sides at the boundary of what they
might not mention- brought before their minds with still
greater purity and clearness what they were both feeling.
But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure
and complete joy. Princess Mary, in her position as
absolute and independent arbiter of her own fate and
guardian and instructor of her nephew, was the first to be
called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which she
had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from
her relations to which she had to reply; the room in which
little Nicholas had been put was damp and he began to

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cough; Alpatych came to Yaroslavl with reports on the

state of their affairs and with advice and suggestions that
they should return to Moscow to the house on the
Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and
needed only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it
was necessary to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to
emerge from the realm of secluded contemplation in
which she had lived till then, and sorry and almost
ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the cares
of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily
yielded to them. She went through the accounts with
Alpatych, conferred with Dessalles about her nephew, and
gave orders and made preparations for the journey to
Moscow.
Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess
Mary began making preparations for departure, held aloof
from her too.
Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go
with her to Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this
offer, for they saw their daughter losing strength every
day and thought that a change of scene and the advice of
Moscow doctors would be good for her.
‘I am not going anywhere,’ Natasha replied when this
was proposed to her. ‘Do please just leave me alone!’

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And she ran out of the room, with difficulty refraining

from tears of vexation and irritation rather than of sorrow.
After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and
alone in her grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her
room by herself, sitting huddled up feet and all in the
corner of the sofa, tearing and twisting something with
her slender nervous fingers and gazing intently and
fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This
solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in
absolute need of it. As soon as anyone entered she got up
quickly, changed her position and expression, and picked
up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting impatiently
for the intruder to go.
She felt all the time as if she might at any moment
penetrate that on which- with a terrible questioning too
great for her strength- her spiritual gaze was fixed.
One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale
and thin, dressed in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair
negligently twisted into a knot, was crouched feet and all
in the corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and
smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at a
corner of the door.
She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone-
to the other side of life. And that other side of life, of

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which she had never before thought and which had

formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable, was
now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible than
this side of life, where everything was either emptiness
and desolation or suffering and indignity.
She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she
could not imagine him otherwise than as he had been
here. She now saw him again as he had been at Mytishchi,
at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.
She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words
and her own, and sometimes devised other words they
might have spoken.
There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet
cloak, leaning his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is
dreadfully hollow and his shoulders raised. His lips are
firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and a wrinkle comes and
goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs twitches just
perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is
struggling with terrible pain. ‘What is that pain like? Why
does he have that pain? What does he feel? How does it
hurt him?’ thought Natasha. He noticed her watching him,
raised his eyes, and began to speak seriously:
‘One thing would be terrible,’ said he: ‘to bind oneself
forever to a suffering man. It would be continual torture.’

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And he looked searchingly at her. Natasha as usual

answered before she had time to think what she would
say. She said: ‘This can’t go on- it won’t. You will get
well- quite well.’
She now saw him from the commencement of that
scene and relived what she had then felt. She recalled his
long sad and severe look at those words and understood
the meaning of the rebuke and despair in that protracted
gaze.
‘I agreed,’ Natasha now said to herself, ‘that it would
be dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then
only because it would have been dreadful for him, but he
understood it differently. He thought it would be dreadful
for me. He then still wished to live and feared death. And
I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I
meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I
thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying,
to die continually before my eyes, I should have been
happy compared with what I am now. Now there is
nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No, he did not and
never will know it. And now it will never, never be
possible to put it right.’ And now he again seemed to be
saying the same words to her, only in her imagination
Natasha this time gave him a different answer. She

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stopped him and said: ‘Terrible for you, but not for me!
You know that for me there is nothing in life but you, and
to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me,’ and
he took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that
terrible evening four days before his death. And in her
imagination she said other tender and loving words which
she might have said then but only spoke now: ‘I love
thee!... thee! I love, love...’ she said, convulsively
pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate
effort...
She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were
already rising in her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself
to whom she was saying this. Again everything was
shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a strained
frown she peered toward the world where he was. And
now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the
mystery.... But at the instant when it seemed that the
incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a loud rattle
of the door handle struck painfully on her ears. Dunyasha,
her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a
frightened look on her face and showing no concern for
her mistress.

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‘Come to your Papa at once, please!’ said she with a

strange, excited look. ‘A misfortune... about Peter
Ilynich... a letter,’ she finished with a sob.

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Chapter II

Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha

was feeling a special estrangement from the members of
her own family. All of them- her father, mother, and
Sonya- were so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace,
that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to the
world in which she had been living of late, and she felt
not merely indifferent to them but regarded them with
hostility. She heard Dunyasha’s words about Peter Ilynich
and a misfortune, but did not grasp them.
‘What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to
them? They just live their own old, quiet, and
commonplace life,’ thought Natasha.
As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly
coming out of her mother’s room. His face was puckered
up and wet with tears. He had evidently run out of that
room to give vent to the sobs that were choking him.
When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly
and burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his
soft round face.
‘Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling...’ and weeping
like a child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a

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chair, he almost fell into it, covering his face with his
hands.
Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through
Natasha’s whole being. Terrible anguish struck her heart,
she felt a dreadful ache as if something was being torn
inside her and she were dying. But the pain was
immediately followed by a feeling of release from the
oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in
life. The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her
mother that she heard through the door, made her
immediately forget herself and her own grief.
She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm,
pointing to her mother’s door. Princess Mary, pale and
with quivering chin, came out from that room and taking
Natasha by the arm said something to her. Natasha neither
saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing
at the door for an instant as if struggling with herself, and
then ran to her mother.
The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and
awkward position, stretching out and beating her head
against the wall. Sonya and the maids were holding her
arms.
‘Natasha! Natasha!...’ cried the countess. ‘It’s not
true... it’s not true... He’s lying... Natasha!’ she shrieked,

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pushing those around her away. ‘Go away, all of you; it’s
not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!... It’s not true!’
Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over
her mother, embraced her, and with unexpected strength
raised her, turned her face toward herself, and clung to
her.
‘Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy,’
she kept on whispering, not pausing an instant.
She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly
with her, demanded a pillow and hot water, and
unfastened and tore open her mother’s dress.
‘My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!...’ she
whispered incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her
face, and feeling her own irrepressible and streaming tears
tickling her nose and cheeks.
The countess pressed her daughter’s hand, closed her
eyes, and became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up
with unaccustomed swiftness, glanced vacantly around
her, and seeing Natasha began to press her daughter’s
head with all her strength. Then she turned toward her
daughter’s face which was wincing with pain and gazed
long at it.

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‘Natasha, you love me?’ she said in a soft trustful

whisper. ‘Natasha, you would not deceive me? You’ll tell
me the whole truth?’
Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her
look there was nothing but love and an entreaty for
forgiveness.
‘My darling Mummy!’ she repeated, straining all the
power of her love to find some way of taking on herself
the excess of grief that crushed her mother.
And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother,
refusing to believe that she could live when her beloved
boy was killed in the bloom of life, escaped from reality
into a world of delirium.
Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor
that night, nor the next day and night. She did not sleep
and did not leave her mother. Her persevering and patient
love seemed completely to surround the countess every
moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to
life.
During the third night the countess kept very quiet for
a few minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of
her chair and closed her eyes, but opened them again on
hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was sitting up in
bed and speaking softly.

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‘How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won’t

you have some tea?’ Natasha went up to her. ‘You have
improved in looks and grown more manly,’ continued the
countess, taking her daughter’s hand.
‘Mamma! What are you saying..’
‘Natasha, he is no more, no more!’
And embracing her daughter, the countess began to
weep for the first time.

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Chapter III

Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the

count tried to replace Natasha but could not. They saw
that she alone was able to restrain her mother from
unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natasha remained
constantly at her mother’s side, sleeping on a lounge chair
in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her
incessantly because the mere sound of her tender,
caressing tones soothed her mother.
The mother’s wounded spirit could not could not heal.
Petya’s death had torn from her half her life. When the
news of Petya’s death had come she had been a fresh and
vigorous woman of fifty, but a month later she left her
room a listless old woman taking no interest in life. But
the same blow that almost killed the countess, this second
blow, restored Natasha to life.
A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the
spiritual body is like a physical wound and, strange as it
may seem, just as a deep wound may heal and its edges
join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet heal
completely only as the result of a vital force from within.

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Natasha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her

life was ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly
showed her that the essence of life- love- was still active
within her. Love awoke and so did life.
Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary
and Natasha together; this new sorrow brought them still
closer to one another. Princess Mary put off her departure,
and for three weeks looked after Natasha as if she had
been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s
bedroom had strained Natasha’s physical strength.
One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever,
Princess Mary took her to her own room and made her lie
down on the bed. Natasha lay down, but when Princess
Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she called
her back.
‘I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.’
‘You are tired- try to sleep.’
‘No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be
asking for me.’
‘She is much better. She spoke so well today,’ said
Princess Mary.
Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the
room scanned Princess Mary’s face.

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‘Is she like him?’ thought Natasha. ‘Yes, like and yet
not like. But she is quite original, strange, new, and
unknown. And she loves me. What is in her heart? All
that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What does
she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!’
‘Mary,’ she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s
hand to herself, ‘Mary, you mustn’t think me wicked. No?
Mary darling, how I love you! Let us be quite, quite
friends.’
And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face
and hands, making Princess Mary feel shy but happy by
this demonstration of her feelings.
From that day a tender and passionate friendship such
as exists only between women was established between
Princess Mary and Natasha. They were continually
kissing and saying tender things to one another and spent
most of their time together. When one went out the other
became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they
felt more in harmony with one another than either of them
felt with herself when alone. A feeling stronger than
friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive feeling
of life being possible only in each other’s presence.
Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after
they were already in bed they would begin talking and go

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on till morning. They spoke most of what was long past.

Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her mother, her
father, and her daydreams; and Natasha, who with a
passive lack of understanding had formerly turned away
from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry of
Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to
Princess Mary by affection, learned to love her past too
and to understand a side of life previously
incomprehensible to her. She did not think of applying
submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she
was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood
and loved in another those previously incomprehensible
virtues. For Princess Mary, listening to Natasha’s tales of
childhood and early youth, there also opened out a new
and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief in life
and its enjoyment.
Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to
lower (as they thought) their exalted feelings by words;
but this silence about him had the effect of making them
gradually begin to forget him without being conscious of
it.
Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so
weak that they all talked about her health, and this pleased
her. But sometimes she was suddenly overcome by fear

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not only of death but of sickness, weakness, and loss of

good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning
noticed her drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in
her glass. It seemed to her that things must be so, and yet
it was dreadfully sad.
One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself
out of breath. Unconsciously she immediately invented a
reason for going down, and then, testing her strength, ran
upstairs again, observing the result.
Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice
trembled, so she called again- though she could hear
Dunyasha coming- called her in the deep chest tones in
which she had been wont to sing, sing, and listened
attentively to herself.
She did not know and would not have believed it, but
beneath the layer of slime that covered her soul and
seemed to her impenetrable, delicate young shoots of
grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so
cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her
down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The
wound had begun to heal from within.

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At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow,

and the count insisted on Natasha’s going with her to
consult the doctors.

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Chapter IV

After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had

been unable to hold back his troops in their anxiety to
overwhelm and cut off the enemy and so on, the farther
movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians who
pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a
battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army
pursuing the French could not keep up with them; cavalry
and artillery horses broke down, and the information
received of the movements of the French was never
reliable.
The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this
continuous marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a
day that they could not go any faster.
To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian
army it is only necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of
the fact that, while not losing more than five thousand
killed and wounded after Tarutino and less than a hundred
prisoners, the Russian army which left that place a
hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty
thousand.

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The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as

destructive to our army as the flight of the French was to
theirs. The only difference was that the Russian army
moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction as
hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were
left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left
behind were among their own people. The chief cause of
the wastage of Napoleon’s army was the rapidity of its
movement, and a convincing proof of this is the
corresponding decrease of the Russian army.
Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to
check the movement of the French as was desired in
Petersburg and by the Russian army generals, directed his
whole activity here, as he had done at Tarutino and
Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of
our army.
But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous
diminution of the army caused by the rapidity of the
advance had become evident, another reason for
slackening the pace and delaying presented itself to
Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the
French. The road the French would take was unknown,
and so the closer our troops trod on their heels the greater
distance they had to cover. Only by following at some

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distance could one cut across the zigzag path of the

French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our
generals meant fresh movements of the army and a
lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable
aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutuzov’s
activity was directed during the whole campaign from
Moscow to Vilna- not casually or intermittently but so
consistently that he never once deviated from it.
Kutuzov felt and knew- not by reasoning or science but
with the whole of his Russian being- what every Russian
soldier felt: that the French were beaten, that the enemy
was flying and must be driven out; but at the same time he
like the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march,
the rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of
the year.
But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the
Russian army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to
astonish somebody, and for some reason to capture a king
or a duke- it seemed that now- when any battle must be
horrible and senseless- was the very time to fight and
conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his
shoulders when one after another they presented projects
of maneuvers to be made with those soldiers- ill-shod,
insufficiently clad, and half starved- who within a month

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and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their

number, and who at the best if the flight continued would
have to go a greater distance than they had already
traversed, before they reached the frontier.
This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to
overthrow, and to cut off showed itself particularly
whenever the Russians stumbled on the French army.
So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one
of the three French columns and stumbled instead on
Napoleon himself with sixteen thousand men. Despite all
Kutuzov’s efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to
preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of
French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at
Krasnoe for three days.
Toll wrote a disposition: ‘The first column will march
to so and so,’ etc. And as usual nothing happened in
accord with the disposition. Prince Eugene of
Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds that
were running past, and demanded reinforcements which
did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians,
dispersed and hid themselves in the forest by night,
making their way round as best they could, and continued
their flight.

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Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know

anything about the commissariat affairs of his
detachment, and could never be found when he was
wanted- that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he
styled himself- who was fond of parleys with the French,
sent envoys demanding their surrender, wasted time, and
did not do what he was ordered to do.
*Knight without fear and without reproach.
‘I give you that column, lads,’ he said, riding up to the
troops and pointing out the French to the cavalry.
And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on
horses that could scarcely move, trotted with much effort
to the column presented to them- that is to say, to a crowd
of Frenchmen stark with cold, frost-bitten, and starving-
and the column that had been presented to them threw
down its arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious
to do.
At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners,
several hundred cannon, and a stick called a ‘marshal’s
staff,’ and disputed as to who had distinguished himself
and were pleased with their achievement- though they
much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at least a
marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one
another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

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These men, carried away by their passions, were but

blind tools of the most melancholy law of necessity, but
considered themselves heroes and imagined that they
were accomplishing a most noble and honorable deed.
They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very
beginning of the campaign he had prevented their
vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought nothing but
satisfying his passions and would not advance from the
Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at
Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that
Napoleon was there he had quite lost his head, and that it
was probable that he had an understanding with Napoleon
and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
Not only did his contempories, carried away by their
passions, talk in this way, but posterity and history have
acclaimed Napoleon as grand, while Kutuzov is described
by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak old courtier, and
by Russians as something indefinite- a sort of puppet
useful only because he had a Russian name.

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Chapter V

In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of

blundering. The Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And
in a history recently written by order of the Highest
Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court
liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his
blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the
Russian army of the glory of complete victory over the
French.*
*History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov
and reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles
at Krasnoe, by Bogdanovich.
Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes)
whom the Russian mind does not acknowledge, but of
those rare and always solitary individuals who, discerning
the will of Providence, submit their personal will to it.
The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men
for discerning the higher laws.
For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say,
Napoleon- that most insignificant tool of history who
never anywhere, even in exile, showed human dignity-
Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is

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grand. But Kutuzov- the man who from the beginning to

the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by
word or deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an
example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and a
present conciousness of the future importance of what
was happening- Kutuzov seems to them something
indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of
the year 1812 they always seem a little ashamed.
And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character
whose activity was so unswervingly directed to a single
aim; and it would be difficult to imagine any aim more
worthy or more consonant with the will of the whole
people. Still more difficult would it be to find an instance
in history of the aim of an historical personage being so
completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov’s
efforts were directed in 1812.
Kutuzov never talked of ‘forty centuries looking down
from the Pyramids,’ of the sacrifices he offered for the
fatherland, or of what he intended to accomplish or had
accomplished; in general he said nothing about himself,
adopted no prose, always appeared to be the simplest and
most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to
Madame de Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty

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women, jested with generals, officers, and soldiers, and

never contradicted those who tried to prove anything to
him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza bridge
galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for
having caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: ‘How
was it you promised not to abandon Moscow without a
battle?’ Kutuzov replied: ‘And I shall not abandon
Moscow without a battle,’ though Moscow was then
already abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him
from the Emperor, said that Ermolov ought to be
appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied: ‘Yes, I
was just saying so myself,’ though a moment before he
had said quite the contrary. What did it matter to him-
who then alone amid a senseless crowd understood the
whole tremendous significance of what was happening-
what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed
the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less
could it matter to him who was appointed chief of the
artillery.
Not merely in these cases but continually did that old
man- who by experience of life had reached the
conviction that thoughts and the words serving as their
expression are not what move people- use quite
meaningless words that happened to enter his head.

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But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once

during the whole time of his activity utter one word
inconsistent with the single aim toward which he moved
throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of himself,
in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his
real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not
be understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino,
from which time his disagreement with those about him
began, he alone said that the battle of Borodino was a
victory, and repeated this both verbally and in his
dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He
alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of
Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s proposal of peace, he said:
There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He
alone during the retreat of the French said that all our
maneuvers are useless, everything is being accomplished
of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy must
be offered ‘a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the
Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we
must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that
he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten
Frenchmen.
And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to
Arakcheev to please the Emperor, he alone- incurring

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thereby the Emperor’s displeasure- said in Vilna that to

carry the war beyond the frontier is useless and harmful.
Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the
meaning of the events. His actions- without the smallest
deviation- were all directed to one and the same threefold
end: (1) to brace all his strength for conflict with the
French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out of
Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our
people and of our army.
This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was
‘Patience and Time,’ this enemy of decisive action, gave
battle at Borodino, investing the preparations for it with
unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov who before the
battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be lost, he
alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his
death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance
of generals that the battle was lost and despite the fact that
for an army to have to retire after winning a battle was
unprecedented. He alone during the whole retreat insisted
that battles, which were useless then, should not be
fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the
frontiers of Russia crossed.
It is easy now to understand the significance of these
events- if only we abstain from attributing to the activity

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of the mass aims that existed only in the heads of a dozen

individuals- for the events and results now lie before us.
But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the
general opinion, so truly discern the importance of the
people’s view of the events that in all his activity he was
never once untrue to it?
The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating
the meaning of the events then occuring lay in the
national feeling which he possessed in full purity and
strength.
Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this
feeling caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary
to the Tsar’s wish, to select him- an old man in disfavor-
to be their representative in the national war. And only
that feeling placed him on that highest human pedestal
from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all his
powers not to slaying and destroying men but to saving
and showing pity on them.
That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure
could not be cast in the false mold of a European hero- the
supposed ruler of men- that history has invented.
To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his
own conception of greatness.

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Chapter VI

The fifth of November was the first day of what is

called the battle of Krasnoe. Toward evening- after much
disputing and many mistakes made by generals who did
not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had been
sent about with counterorders- when it had become plain
that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there
could and would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and
went to Dobroe whither his headquarters had that day
been transferred.
The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe
on his plump little white horse, followed by an enormous
suite of discontented generals who whispered among
themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
French prisoners captured that day (there were seven
thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at
campfires. Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered
prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged in
anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing
in the road beside a long row of unharnessed French guns.
At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of
talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who,

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wearing a white cap with a red band and a padded

overcoat that bulged on his round shoulders, moved
slowly along the road on his white horse. One of the
generals was reporting to him where the guns and
prisoners had been captured.
Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to
what the general was saying. He screwed up his eyes with
a dissatisfied look as he gazed attentively and fixedly at
these prisoners, who presented a specially wretched
appearance. Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten
noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and
festering eyes.
One group of the French stood close to the road, and
two of them, one of whom had his face covered with
sores, were tearing a piece of raw flesh with their hands.
There was something horrible and bestial in the fleeting
glance they threw at the riders and in the malevolent
expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the
soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went
on with what he was doing.
Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers.
He puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively
swayed his head. At another spot he noticed a Russian
soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the shoulder,

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saying something to him in a friendly manner, and

Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again
swayed his head.
‘What were you saying?’ he asked the general, who
continuing his report directed the commander in chief’s
attention to some standards captured from the French and
standing in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment.
‘Ah, the standards!’ said Kutuzov, evidently detaching
himself with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied
him.
He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were
looking at him from all sides awaiting a word from him.
He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment,
sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. One of his suite
beckoned to the soldiers carrying the standards to advance
and surround the commander in chief with them. Kutuzov
was silent for a few seconds and then, submitting with
evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his position,
raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers
surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle
of officers, recognizing several of them.
‘I thank you all!’ he said, addressing the soldiers and
then again the officers. In the stillness around him his
slowly uttered words were distinctly heard. ‘I thank you

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all for your hard and faithful service. The victory is

complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you
forever.’
He paused and looked around.
‘Lower its head, lower it!’ he said to a soldier who had
accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding
before the Preobrazhensk standards. ‘Lower, lower, that’s
it. Hurrah lads!’ he added, addressing the men with a
rapid movement of his chin.
‘Hur-r-rah!’ roared thousands of voices.
While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned
forward in his saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit
up with a mild and apparently ironic gleam.
‘You see, brothers...’ said he when the shouts had
ceased... and all at once his voice and the expression of
his face changed. It was no longer the commander in chief
speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to tell his
comrades something very important.
There was a stir among the throng of officers and in
the ranks of the soldiers, who moved that they might hear
better what he was going to say.
‘You see, brothers, I know it’s hard for you, but it
can’t be helped! Bear up; it won’t be for long now! We’ll
see our visitors off and then we’ll rest. The Tsar won’t

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forget your service. It is hard for you, but still you are at
home while they- you see what they have come to,’ said
he, pointing to the prisoners. ‘Worse off than our poorest
beggars. While they were strong we didn’t spare
ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are
human beings too. Isn’t it so, lads?’
He looked around, and in the direct, respectful,
wondering gaze fixed upon him he read sympathy with
what he had said. His face grew brighter and brighter with
an old man’s mild smile, which drew the corners of his
lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased
speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity.
‘But after all who asked them here? Serves them right,
the bloody bastards!’ he cried, suddenly lifting his head.
And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the
first time during the whole campaign, and left the broken
ranks of the soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting
‘Hurrah!’
Kutuzov’s words were hardly understood by the
troops. No one could have repeated the field marshal’s
address, begun solemnly and then changing into an old
man’s simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that
speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined with
pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our

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cause, exactly expressed by that old man’s good-natured

expletives, was not merely understood but lay in the soul
of every soldier and found expression in their joyous and
long-sustained shouts. Afterwards when one of the
generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished his
caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering
unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently greatly moved.

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Chapter VII

When the troops reached their night’s halting place on

the eighth of November, the last day of the Krasnoe
battles, it was already growing dusk. All day it had been
calm and frosty with occasional lightly falling snow and
toward evening it began to clear. Through the falling
snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the
frost grew keener.
An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three
thousand strong but now numbered only nine hundred
was one of the first to arrive that night at its halting place-
a village on the highroad. The quartermasters who met the
regiment announced that all the huts were full of sick and
dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.
There was only one hut available for the regimental
commander.
The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment
passed through the village and stacked its arms in front of
the last huts.
Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment
began to prepare its lair and its food. One part of it
dispersed and waded knee-deep through the snow into a

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birch forest to the right of the village, and immediately

the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of branches,
and merry voices could be heard from there. Another
section amid the regimental wagons and horses which
were standing in a group was busy getting out caldrons
and rye biscuit, and feeding the horses. A third section
scattered through the village arranging quarters for the
staff officers, carrying out the French corpses that were in
the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and thatch
from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve
for shelter.
Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking
down the high wattle wall of a shed, the roof of which had
already been removed.
‘Now then, all together- shove!’ cried the voices, and
the huge surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and
creaking with frost, was seen swaying in the gloom of the
night. The lower stakes cracked more and more and at last
the wall fell, and with it the men who had been pushing it.
Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.
‘Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever!
That’s it... Where are you shoving to?’
‘Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a
song!’

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All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice

began to sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note
died away, twenty voices roared out at once: ‘Oo-oo-oo-
oo! That’s it. All together! Heave away, boys!...’ but
despite their united efforts the wattle hardly moved, and
in the silence that followed the heavy breathing of the
men was audible.
‘Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are!
Lend a hand... will you? You may want us one of these
days.’
Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on
their way into the village joined the haulers, and the
wattle wall, which was about thirty-five feet long an
seven feet high, moved forward along the village street,
swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of the
gasping men.
‘Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for?
There now..’
Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.
‘What are you up to?’ suddenly came the authoritative
voice of a sergeant major who came upon the men who
were hauling their burden. ‘There are gentry here; the
general himself is in that hut, and you foul-mouthed
devils, you brutes, I’ll give it to you!’ shouted he, hitting

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the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the
back. ‘Can’t you make less noise?’
The men became silent. The soldier who had been
struck groaned and wiped his face, which had been
scratched till it bled by his falling against the wattle.
‘There, how that devil hits out! He’s made my face all
bloody,’ said he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant
major had passed on.
‘Don’t you like it?’ said a laughing voice, and
moderating their tones the men moved forward.
When they were out of the village they began talking
again as loud as before, interlarding their talk with the
same aimless expletives.
In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers
had gathered and were in animated talk over their tea
about the events of the day and the maneuvers suggested
for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a flank march to
the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture him.
By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence
to its place the campfires were blazing on all sides ready
for cooking, the wood crackled, the snow was melting,
and black shadows of soldiers flitted to and fro all over
the occupied space where the snow had been trodden
down.

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Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything

was done without any orders being given. Stores of wood
were brought for the night, shelters were rigged up for the
officers, caldrons were being boiled, and muskets and
accouterments put in order.
The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a
semicircle by the Eighth Company as a shelter from the
north, propped up by musket rests, and a campfire was
built before it. They beat the tattoo, called the roll, had
supper, and settled down round the fires for the night-
some repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and
some stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of
their shirts.

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Chapter VIII

One would have thought that under the almost

incredibly wretched conditions the Russian soldiers were
in at that time- lacking warm boots and sheepskin coats,
without a roof over their heads, in the snow with eighteen
degrees of frost, and without even full rations (the
commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)-
they would have presented a very sad and depressing
spectacle.
On the contrary, the army had never under the best
material conditions presented a more cheerful and
animated aspect. This was because all who began to grow
depressed or who lost strength were sifted out of the army
day by day. All the physically or morally weak had long
since been left behind and only the flower of the army-
physically and mentally- remained.
More men collected behind the wattle fence of the
Eighth Company than anywhere else. Two sergeants
major were sitting with them and their campfire blazed
brighter than others. For leave to sit by their wattle they
demanded contributions of fuel.

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‘Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a

bitch? Are you lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch
some more wood!’ shouted a red-haired and red-faced
man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the
smoke but not moving back from the fire. ‘And you,
Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!’ said he to another
soldier.
This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a
corporal, but being robust he ordered about those weaker
than himself. The soldier they called ‘Jackdaw,’ a thin
little fellow with a sharp nose, rose obediently and was
about to go but at that instant there came into the light of
the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
carrying a load of wood.
‘Bring it here- that’s fine!’
They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire,
blew at it with their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts
of their greatcoats, making the flames hiss and crackle.
The men drew nearer and lit their pipes. The handsome
young soldier who had brought the wood, setting his arms
akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and deftly
on the spot where he stood.

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‘Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It’s well that I’m
a musketeer...’ he sang, pretending to hiccough after each
syllable.
‘Look out, your soles will fly off!’ shouted the red-
haired man, noticing that the sole of the dancer’s boot was
hanging loose. ‘What a fellow you are for dancing!’
The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of
leather, and threw it on the fire.
‘Right enough, friend,’ said he, and, having sat down,
took out of his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and
wrapped it round his foot. ‘It’s the steam that spoils
them,’ he added, stretching out his feet toward the fire.
‘They’ll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that
when we’ve finished hammering them, we’re to receive
double kits!’
‘And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after
all, it seems,’ said one sergeant major.
‘I’ve had an eye on him this long while,’ said the other.
‘Well, he’s a poor sort of soldier..’
‘But in the Third Company they say nine men were
missing yesterday.’
‘Yes, it’s all very well, but when a man’s feet are
frozen how can he walk?’
‘Eh? Don’t talk nonsense!’ said a sergeant major.

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‘Do you want to be doing the same?’ said an old

soldier, turning reproachfully to the man who had spoken
of frozen feet.
‘Well, you know,’ said the sharp-nosed man they
called Jackdaw in a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising
himself at the other side of the fire, ‘a plump man gets
thin, but for a thin one it’s death. Take me, now! I’ve got
no strength left,’ he added, with sudden resolution turning
to the sergeant major. ‘Tell them to send me to hospital;
I’m aching all over; anyway I shan’t be able to keep up.’
‘That’ll do, that’ll do!’ replied the sergeant major
quietly.
The soldier said no more and the talk went on.
‘What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and
the fact is that not one of them had what you might call
real boots on,’ said a soldier, starting a new theme. ‘They
were no more than make-believes.’
‘The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were
clearing the hut for the colonel and carried them out. It
was pitiful to see them, boys,’ put in the dancer. ‘As they
turned them over one seemed still alive and, would you
believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo.’

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‘But they’re a clean folk, lads,’ the first man went on;
‘he was white- as white as birchbark- and some of them
are such fine fellows, you might think they were nobles.’
‘Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all
classes there.’
‘But they don’t understand our talk at all,’ said the
dancer with a puzzled smile. ‘I asked him whose subject
he was, and he jabbered in his own way. A queer lot!’
‘But it’s strange, friends,’ continued the man who had
wondered at their whiteness, ‘the peasants at Mozhaysk
were saying that when they began burying the dead-
where the battle was you know- well, those dead had been
lying there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, ‘they
lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a
puff of powder smoke.’’
‘Was it from the cold?’ asked someone.
‘You’re a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it
was hot. If it had been from the cold, ours would not have
rotted either. ‘But,’ he says, ‘go up to ours and they are all
rotten and maggoty. So,’ he says, ‘we tie our faces up
with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag them
off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,’ he says, ‘are white as
paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.’’
All were silent.

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‘It must be from their food,’ said the sergeant major.

‘They used to gobble the same food as the gentry.’
No one contradicted him.
‘That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said
the men were all called up from ten villages around and
they carted for twenty days and still didn’t finish carting
the dead away. And as for the wolves, he says..’
‘That was a real battle,’ said an old soldier. ‘It’s the
only one worth remembering; but since that... it’s only
been tormenting folk.’
‘And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday
we ran at them and, my word, they didn’t let us get near
before they just threw down their muskets and went on
their knees. ‘Pardon!’ they say. That’s only one case.
They say Platov took ‘Poleon himself twice. But he didn’t
know the right charm. He catches him and catches him-
no good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away.
And there’s no way of killing him either.’
‘You’re a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look
at you!’
‘Liar, indeed! It’s the real truth.’
‘If he fell into my hands, when I’d caught him I’d bury
him in the ground with an aspen stake to fix him down.
What a lot of men he’s ruined!’

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‘Well, anyhow we’re going to end it. He won’t come

here again,’ remarked the old soldier, yawning.
The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began
settling down to sleep.
‘Look at the stars. It’s wonderful how they shine! You
would think the women had spread out their linen,’ said
one of the men, gazing with admiration at the Milky Way.
‘That’s a sign of a good harvest next year.’
‘We shall want some more wood.’
‘You warm your back and your belly gets frozen.
That’s queer.’
‘O Lord!’
‘What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you?
Look how he’s sprawling!’
In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had
fallen asleep could be heard. Others turned over and
warmed themselves, now and again exchanging a few
words. From a campfire a hundred paces off came a
sound of general, merry laughter.
‘Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!’
said one of the soldiers, and what a lot of them there are!’
One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth
Company.

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‘They’re having such fun,’ said he, coming back. ‘Two

Frenchies have turned up. One’s quite frozen and the
other’s an awful swaggerer. He’s singing songs...’
‘Oh, I’ll go across and have a look...’
And several of the men went over to the Fifth
Company.

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Chapter IX

The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of

the forest. A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the
midst of the snow, lighting up the branches of trees heavy
with hoarfrost.
About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the
snow of the forest, and the crackling of dry branches.
‘A bear, lads,’ said one of the men.
They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the
forest into the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad
human figures clinging to one another.
These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the
forest. They came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering
something in a language our soldiers did not understand.
One was taller than the other; he wore an officer’s hat and
seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he had
been going to sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy
soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He
raised his companion and said something, pointing to his
mouth. The soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a
greatcoat on the ground for the sick man, and brought
some buckwheat porridge and vodka for both of them.

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The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the

man with his head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his
orderly.
When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his
bowl of porridge he suddenly became unnaturally merry
and chattered incessantly to the soldiers, who could not
understand him. Ramballe refused food and resting his
head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking
at the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes.
Occasionally he emitted a long-drawn groan and then
again became silent. Morel, pointing to his shoulders,
tried to impress on the soldiers the fact that Ramballe was
an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer who
had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he
would not take a French officer into his hut to warm him,
and when the messenger returned and said that the colonel
wished the officer to be brought to him, Ramballe was
told to go. He rose and tried to walk, but staggered and
would have fallen had not a soldier standing by held him
up.
‘You won’t do it again, eh?’ said one of the soldiers,
winking and turning mockingly to Ramballe.

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‘Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are- a
real peasant!’ came rebukes from all sides addressed to
the jesting soldier.
They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed
arms of two soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe
put his arms around their necks while they carried him
and began wailing plaintively:
‘Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are
men! Oh, my brave, kind friends,’ and he leaned his head
against the shoulder of one of the men like a child.
Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the
fire, surrounded by the soldiers.
Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and
streaming eyes, was wearing a woman’s cloak and had a
shawl tied woman fashion round his head over his cap. He
was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song in a
hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the
nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as
they watched him.
‘Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I’ll soon
pick it up. How is it?’ said the man- a singer and a wag-
whom Morel was embracing.
‘Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!’ sang Morel,
winking. ‘Ce diable a quatre...’*

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*"Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That

rowdy devil.’
‘Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!’ repeated the
soldier, flourishing his arm and really catching the tune.
‘Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!’ rose their rough, joyous laughter
from all sides.
Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.
‘Well, go on, go on!’
‘Qui eut le triple talent,
De boire, de battre, Et d’etre un vert galant.’*
*Who had a triple talent
For drinking, for fighting,
And for being a gallant old boy...
‘It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!’
‘Ke...’ Zaletaev, brought out with effort: ‘ke-e-e-e,’ he
drawled, laboriously pursing his lips, ‘le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-
de-ba, e de-tra-va-ga-la ‘ he sang.
‘Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want
some more to eat?’
‘Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get
filled up after starving.’
They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a
laugh set to work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers
smiled gaily as they watched him. The older men, who

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thought it undignified to amuse themselves with such

nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side of the fire,
but one would occasionally raise himself on an elbow and
glance at Morel with a smile.
‘They are men too,’ said one of them as he wrapped
himself up in his coat. ‘Even wormwood grows on its
own root.’
‘O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That
means a hard frost...’
They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no
one was looking at them, began to disport themselves in
the dark sky: now flaring up, now vanishing, now
trembling, they were busy whispering something
gladsome and mysterious to one another.

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Chapter X

The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a

mathematical progression; and that crossing of the
Berezina about which so much has been written was only
one intermediate stage in its destruction, and not at all the
decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side
this is only because at the broken bridge across that river
the calamities their army had been previously enduring
were suddenly concentrated at one moment into a tragic
spectacle that remained in every memory, and on the
Russian side merely because in Petersburg- far from the
seat of war- a plan (again one of Pfuel’s) had been
devised to catch Napoleon in a strategic trap at the
Berezina River. Everyone assured himself that all would
happen according to plan, and therefore insisted that it
was just the crossing of the Berezina that destroyed the
French army. In reality the results of the crossing were
much less disastrous to the French- in guns and men lost-
than Krasnoe had been, as the figures show.
The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina
lies in the fact that it plainly and indubitably proved the

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fallacy of all the plans for cutting off the enemy’s retreat
and the soundness of the only possible line of action- the
one Kutuzov and the general mass of the army demanded-
namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French
crowd fled at a continually increasing speed and all its
energy was directed to reaching its goal. It fled like a
wounded animal and it was impossible to block its path.
This was shown not so much by the arrangements it made
for crossing as by what took place at the bridges. When
the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from
Moscow and women with children who were with the
French transport, all- carried on by vis inertiae- pressed
forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and did
not, surrender.
That impulse was reasonable. The condition of
fugitives and of pursuers was equally bad. As long as they
remained with their own people each might hope for help
from his fellows and the definite place he held among
them. But those who surrendered, while remaining in the
same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a
share in the necessities of life. The French did not need to
be informed of the fact that half the prisoners- with whom
the Russians did not know what to do- perished of cold
and hunger despite their captors’ desire to save them; they

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felt that it could not be otherwise. The most

compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to
the French- and even the Frenchmen in the Russian
service- could do nothing for the prisoners. The French
perished from the conditions to which the Russian army
was itself exposed. It was impossible to take bread and
clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to
give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or
guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did
that, but they were exceptions.
Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front
there was hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no
salvation save in collective flight, and on that the whole
strength of the French was concentrated.
The farther they fled the more wretched became the
plight of the remnant, especially after the Berezina, on
which (in consequence of the Petersburg plan) special
hopes had been placed by the Russians, and the keener
grew the passions of the Russian commanders, blamed
one another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the
failure of the Petersburg Berezina plan would be
attributed to Kutuzov led to dissatisfaction, contempt, and
ridicule, more and more strongly expressed. The ridicule
and contempt were of course expressed in a respectful

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form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was

to blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when
reporting to him or asking for his sanction they appeared
to be fulfilling a regrettable formality, but they winked
behind his back and tried to mislead him at every turn.
Because they could not understand him all these
people assumed that it was useless to talk to the old man;
that he would never grasp the profundity of their plans,
that he would answer with his phrases (which they
thought were mere phrases) about a ‘golden bridge,’
about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a
crowd of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all
that before. And all he said- that it was necessary to await
provisions, or that the men had no boots- was so simple,
while what they proposed was so complicated and clever,
that it was evident that he was old and stupid and that
they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.
After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral
and Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the
gossip of the staff reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw
this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Only
once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get angry and
write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the
Emperor) the following letter:

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‘On account of your spells of ill health, will your

excellency please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on
receipt of this, and there await further commands and
appointments from His Imperial Majesty.’
But after Bennigsen’s departure, the Grand Duke
Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had
taken part in the beginning of the campaign but had
subsequently been removed from the army by Kutuzov.
Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of
the Emperor’s displeasure at the poor success of our
forces and the slowness of their advance. The Emperor
intended to join the army personally in a few days’ time.
The old man, experienced in court as well as in
military affairs- this same Kutuzov who in August had
been chosen commander in chief against the sovereign’s
wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke and heir-
apparent from the army- who on his own authority and
contrary to the Emperor’s will had decided on the
abandonment of Moscow, now realized at once that his
day was over, that his part was played, and that the power
he was supposed to hold was no longer his. And he
understood this not merely from the attitude of the court.
He saw on the one hand that the military business in
which he had played his part was ended and felt that his

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mission was accomplished; and at the same time he began

to be conscious of the physical weariness of his aged body
and of the necessity of physical rest.
On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered
Vilna- his ‘dear Vilna’ as he called it. Twice during his
career Kutuzov had been governor of Vilna. In that
wealthy town, which had not been injured, he found old
friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of
which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly
turned from the cares of army and state and, as far as the
passions that seethed around him allowed, immersed
himself in the quiet life to which he had formerly been
accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that had
still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him
at all.
Chichagov, one of the most zealous ‘cutters-off’ and
‘breakers-up,’ who had first wanted to effect a diversion
in Greece and then in Warsaw but never wished to go
where he was sent: Chichagov, noted for the boldness
with which he spoke to the Emperor, and who considered
Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him because when
he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811
independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had
already been concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that

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the merit of securing that peace was really Kutuzov’s; this

Chichagov was the first to meet Kutuzov at the castle
where the latter was to stay. In undress naval uniform,
with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he handed
Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The
contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to
the old man in his dotage was expressed in the highest
degree by the behavior of Chichagov, who knew of the
accusations that were being directed against Kutuzov.
When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally
mentioned that the vehicles packed with china that had
been captured from him at Borisov had been recovered
and would be restored to him.
‘You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of....
On the contrary, I can supply you with everything even if
you want to give dinner parties,’ warmly replied
Chichagov, who tried by every word he spoke to prove
his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov to be
animated by the same desire.
Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his
subtle penetrating smile: ‘I meant merely to say what I
said.’
Contrary to the Emperor’s wish Kutuzov detained the
greater part of the army at Vilna. Those about him said

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that he became extraordinarily slack and physically feeble

during his stay in that town. He attended to army affairs
reluctantly, left everything to his generals, and while
awaiting the Emperor’s arrival led a dissipated life.
Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December
with his suite- Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski,
Arakcheev, and others- the Emperor reached Vilna on the
eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove straight to the
castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred generals
and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in front of
the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov
regiment.
A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a
troyka with three foam-flecked horses, shouted ‘Coming!’
and Konovnitsyn rushed into the vestibule to inform
Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall porter’s little lodge.
A minute later the old man’s large stout figure in full-
dress uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf
drawn round his stomach, waddled out into the porch. He
put on his hat with its peaks to the sides and, holding his
gloves in his hand and walking with an effort sideways
down the steps to the level of the street, took in his hand
the report he had prepared for the Emperor.

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There was running to and fro and whispering; another

troyka furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an
approaching sleigh in which the figures of the Emperor
and Volkonski could already be descried.
From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically
agitating effect on the old general. He carefully and
hastily felt himself all over, readjusted his hat, and pulling
himself together drew himself up and, at the very moment
when the Emperor, having alighted from the sleigh, lifted
his eyes to him, handed him the report and began
speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice.
The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov
from head to foot, frowned for an instant, but immediately
mastering himself went up to the old man, extended his
arms and embraced him. And this embrace too, owing to a
long-standing impression related to his innermost
feelings, had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a
sob.
The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov
guard, and again pressing the old man’s hand went with
him into the castle.
When alone with the field marshal the Emperor
expressed his dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit
and at the mistakes made at Krasnoe and the Berezina,

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and informed him of his intentions for a future campaign

abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The same
submissive, expressionless look with which he had
listened to the Emperor’s commands on the field of
Austerlitz seven years before settled on his face now.
When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered
head was crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling
gait, he was arrested by someone’s voice saying:
‘Your Serene Highness!’
Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while
into the eyes of Count Tolstoy, who stood before him
holding a silver salver on which lay a small object.
Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected of
him.
Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely
perceptible smile flashed across his puffy face, and
bowing low and respectfully he took the object that lay on
the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the First
Class.

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Chapter XI

Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball

which the Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had
received the Order of St. George of the First Class and the
Emperor showed him the highest honors, but everyone
knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him. The
proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first
to set that example, but everybody understood that the old
man was blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When
Kutuzov, conforming to a custom of Catherine’s day,
ordered the standards that had been captured to be
lowered at the Emperor’s feet on his entering the
ballroom, the Emperor made a wry face and muttered
something in which some people caught the words, ‘the
old comedian.’
The Emperor’s displeasure with Kutuzov was specially
increased at Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently
could not or would not understand the importance of the
coming campaign.
When on the following morning the Emperor said to
the officers assembled about him: ‘You have not only

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saved Russia, you have saved Europe!’ they all

understood that the war was not ended.
Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly
expressed his opinion that no fresh war could improve the
position or add to the glory of Russia, but could only spoil
and lower the glorious position that Russia had gained. He
tried to prove to the Emperor the impossibility of levying
fresh troops, spoke of the hardships already endured by
the people, of the possibility of failure and so forth.
This being the field marshal’s frame of mind he was
naturally regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to
the impending war.
To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the
natural method was to do what had been done with him at
Austerlitz and with Barclay at the beginning of the
Russian campaign- to transfer the authority to the
Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under the
commander in chief’s feet without upsetting the old man
by informing him of the change.
With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed
and its real strength removed and transferred to the
Emperor. Toll, Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh
appointments. Everyone spoke loudly of the field
marshal’s great weakness and failing health.

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His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away

and given to another. And in fact his health was poor.
So naturally, simply, and gradually- just as he had
come from Turkey to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit
the militia, and then to the army when he was needed
there- now when his part was played out, Kutuzov’s place
was taken by a new and necessary performer.
The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to
every Russian heart, was now to assume another, a
European, significance.
The movement of peoples from west to east was to be
succeeded by a movement of peoples from east to west,
and for this fresh war another leader was necessary,
having qualities and views differing from Kutuzov’s and
animated by different motives.
Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the
peoples from east to west and for the refixing of national
frontiers as Kutuzov had been for the salvation and glory
of Russia.
Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance
of power, or Napoleon meant. He could not understand it.
For the representative of the Russian people, after the
enemy had been destroyed and Russia had been liberated
and raised to the summit of her glory, there was nothing

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left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the

representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov
died.

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Chapter XII

As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full

effects of the physical privation and strain he had suffered
as prisoner until after they were over. After his liberation
he reached Orel, and on the third day there, when
preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up for
three months. He had what the doctors termed ‘bilious
fever.’ But despite the fact that the doctors treated him,
bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.
Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre’s mind by
all that happened to him from the time of his rescue till
his illness. He remembered only the dull gray weather
now rainy and now snowy, internal physical distress, and
pains in his feet and side. He remembered a general
impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of people
and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and
generals who questioned him, he also remembered his
difficulty in procuring a conveyance and horses, and
above all he remembered his incapacity to think and feel
all that time. On the day of his rescue he had seen the
body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned that
Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for

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more than a month had recently died in the Rostovs’

house at Yaroslavl, and Denisov who told him this news
also mentioned Helene’s death, supposing that Pierre had
heard of it long before. All this at the time seemed merely
strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as
quickly as possible from places where people were killing
one another, to some peaceful refuge where he could
recover himself, rest, and think over all the strange new
facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he immediately
fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and
Vaska, who had come from Moscow; and also his cousin
the eldest princess, who had been living on his estate at
Elets and hearing of his rescue and illness had come to
look after him.
It was only gradually during his convalescence that
Pierre lost the impressions he had become accustomed to
during the last few months and got used to the idea that no
one would oblige him to go anywhere tomorrow, that no
one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a
long time in his dreams he still saw himself in the
conditions of captivity. In the same way little by little he

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came to understand the news he had been told after his

rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of his
wife, and the destruction of the French.
A joyous feeling of freedom- that complete inalienable
freedom natural to man which he had first experienced at
the first halt outside Moscow- filled Pierre’s soul during
his convalescence. He was surprised to find that this inner
freedom, which was independent of external conditions,
now had as it were an additional setting of external
liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without
acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent
him anywhere. He had all he wanted: the thought of his
wife which had been a continual torment to him was no
longer there, since she was no more.
‘Oh, how good! How splendid!’ said he to himself
when a cleanly laid table was moved up to him with
savory beef tea, or when he lay down for the night on a
soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French
had gone and that his wife was no more. ‘Oh, how good,
how splendid!’
And by old habit he asked himself the question: ‘Well,
and what then? What am I going to do?’ And he
immediately gave himself the answer: ‘Well, I shall live.
Ah, how splendid!’

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The very question that had formerly tormented him,

the thing he had continually sought to find- the aim of
life- no longer existed for him now. That search for the
aim of life had not merely disappeared temporarily- he
felt that it no longer existed for him and could not present
itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his
happiness at this time.
He could not see an aim, for he now had faith- not faith
in any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an
ever-living, ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought
Him in aims he set himself. That search for an aim had
been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his
captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning but by
direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that
God is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had
learned that in Karataev God was greater, more infinite
and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe
recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a man who
after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds
what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked
over the heads of the men around him, when he should
have merely looked in front of him without straining his
eyes.

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In the past he had never been able to find that great

inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it
must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything
near and comprehensible he had only what was limited,
petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped
himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote
space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty
distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely
because it was not clearly seen. And such had European
life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy
seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as
he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those
distances and he had there seen the same pettiness,
worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had
learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything,
and therefore- to see it and enjoy its contemplation- he
naturally threw away the telescope through which he had
till now gazed over men’s heads, and gladly regarded the
ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite
life around him. And the closer he looked the more
tranquil and happy he became. That dreadful question,
‘What for?’ which had formerly destroyed all his mental
edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question,
‘What for?’ a simple answer was now always ready in his

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soul: ‘Because there is a God, that God without whose

will not one hair falls from a man’s head.’

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Chapter XIII

In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In

appearance he was just what he used to be. As before he
was absent-minded and seemed occupied not with what
was before his eyes but with something special of his
own. The difference between his former and present self
was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before
him or was said to him, he had puckered his forehead
painfully as if vainly seeking to distinguish something at a
distance. At present he still forgot what was said to him
and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now
looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic
smile at what was before him and listened to what was
said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite
different. Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted
but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to
avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played
round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in his eyes
with a questioning look as to whether they were as
contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his
presence.

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Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited

when he talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom
carried away in conversation and knew how to listen so
that people readily told him their most intimate secrets.
The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been
particularly hostile to him since she had felt herself under
obligations to him after the old count’s death, now after
staying a short time in Orel- where she had come
intending to show Pierre that in spite of his ingratitude she
considered it her duty to nurse him- felt to her surprise
and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did
not in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her
with interest. Formerly she had felt that he regarded her
with indifference and irony, and so had shrunk into
herself as she did with others and had shown him only the
combative side of her nature; but now he seemed to be
trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart,
and, mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let
him see the hidden, kindly sides of her character.
The most cunning man could not have crept into her
confidence more successfully, evoking memories of the
best times of her youth and showing sympathy with them.
Yet Pierre’s cunning consisted simply in finding pleasure

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in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,

hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.
‘Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under
the influence of bad people but of people such as myself,’
thought she.
His servants too- Terenty and Vaska- in their own way
noticed the change that had taken place in Pierre. They
considered that he had become much ‘simpler.’ Terenty,
when he had helped him undress and wished him good
night, often lingered with his master’s boots in his hands
and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not
start a talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a
chat, generally kept him there.
‘Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?’ he would
ask.
And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of
Moscow, and of the old count, and would stand for a long
time holding the clothes and talking, or sometimes
listening to Pierre’s stories, and then would go out into
the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master
and affection for him.
The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every
day, though he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose
as a man whose every moment was of value to suffering

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humanity, would sit for hours with Pierre telling him his
favorite anecdotes and his observations on the characters
of his patients in general, and especially of the ladies.
‘It’s a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like
our provincials,’ he would say.
There were several prisoners from the French army in
Orel, and the doctor brought one of them, a young Italian,
to see Pierre.
This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess
used to make fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed
for him.
The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to
see Pierre, talk with him, tell him about his past, his life at
home, and his love, and pour out to him his indignation
against the French and especially against Napoleon.
‘If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege
to fight such a nation,’ he said to Pierre. ‘You, who have
suffered so from the French, do not even feel animosity
toward them.’
Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the
Italian merely by evoking the best side of his nature and
taking a pleasure in so doing.
During the last days of Pierre’s stay in Orel his old
Masonic acquaintance Count Willarski, who had

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introduced him to the lodge in 1807, came to see him.

Willarski was married to a Russian heiress who had a
large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary
post in the commissariat department in that town.
Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though
they had never been intimate, came to him with the
professions of friendship and intimacy that people who
meet in a desert generally express for one another.
Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man
of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.
But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre
had lagged much behind the times, and had sunk, as he
expressed it to himself, into apathy and egotism.
‘You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow,’ he said.
But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than
it had been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see
him every day. To Pierre as he looked at and listened to
Willarski, it seemed strange to think that he had been like
that himself but a short time before.
Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with
his family affairs, his wife’s affairs, and his official
duties. He regarded all these occupations as hindrances to
life, and considered that they were all contemptible
because their aim was the welfare of himself and his

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family. Military, administrative, political, and Masonic

interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre,
without trying to change the other’s views and without
condemning him, but with the quiet, joyful, and amused
smile now habitual to him, was interested in this strange
though very familiar phenomenon.
There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with
Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all
the people he now met, which gained for him the general
good will. This was his acknowledgment of the
impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words,
and his recognition of the possibility of everyone
thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own
point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each
individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now
became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the
interest he took in, other people. The difference, and
sometimes complete contradiction, between men’s
opinions and their lives, and between one man and
another, pleased him and drew from him an amused and
gentle smile.
In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within
himself a center of gravity he had previously lacked.
Formerly all pecuniary questions, especially requests for

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money to which, as an extremely wealthy man, he was

very exposed, produced in him a state of hopeless
agitation and perplexity. ‘To give or not to give?’ he had
asked himself. ‘I have it and he needs it. But someone
else needs it still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps
they are both impostors?’ In the old days he had been
unable to find a way out of all these surmises and had
given to all who asked as long as he had anything to give.
Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with
regard to every question concerning his property, when
one person advised one thing and another something else.
Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt
either doubt or perplexity about these questions. There
was now within him a judge who by some rule unknown
to him decided what should or should not be done.
He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters,
but now he felt certain of what ought and what ought not
to be done. The first time he had recourse to his new
judge was when a French prisoner, a colonel, came to him
and, after talking a great deal about his exploits,
concluded by making what amounted to a demand that
Pierre should give him four thousand francs to send to his
wife and children. Pierre refused without the least
difficulty or effort, and was afterwards surprised how

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simple and easy had been what used to appear so

insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused
the colonel’s demand he made up his mind that he must
have recourse to artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the
Italian officer to accept some money of which he was
evidently in need. A further proof to Pierre of his own
more settled outlook on practical matters was furnished
by his decision with regard to his wife’s debts and to the
rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.
His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre
reckoned up with him his diminished income. The
burning of Moscow had cost him, according to the head
steward’s calculation, about two million rubles.
To console Pierre for these losses the head steward
gave him an estimate showing that despite these losses his
income would not be diminished but would even be
increased if he refused to pay his wife’s debts which he
was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild his
Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow
estate, which had cost him eighty thousand rubles a year
and brought in nothing.
‘Yes, of course that’s true,’ said Pierre with a cheerful
smile. ‘I don’t need all that at all. By being ruined I have
become much richer.’

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But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave

him an account of the state of things there, and spoke of
the estimate an architect had made of the cost of
rebuilding the town and country houses, speaking of this
as of a settled matter. About the same time he received
letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg
acquaintances speaking of his wife’s debts. And Pierre
decided that the steward’s proposals which had so pleased
him were wrong and that he must go to Petersburg and
settle his wife’s affairs and must rebuild in Moscow. Why
this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for
certain that it was necessary. His income would be
reduced by three fourths, but he felt it must be done.
Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to
travel together.
During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel
Pierre had experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life;
but when during his journey he found himself in the open
world and saw hundreds of new faces, that feeling was
intensified. Throughout his journey he felt like a
schoolboy on holiday. Everyone- the stagecoach driver,
the post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in
the villages- had a new significance for him. The presence
and remarks of Willarski who continually deplored the

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ignorance and poverty of Russia and its backwardness

compared with Europe only heightened Pierre’s pleasure.
Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an
extraordinary strength and vitality- the strength which in
that vast space amid the snows maintained the life of this
original, peculiar, and unique people. He did not
contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree with him-
an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid
discussions that could lead to nothing- and he smiled
joyfully as he listened to him.

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Chapter XIV

It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants

whose heap has been destroyed are hurrying: some from
the heap dragging bits of rubbish, larvae, and corpses,
others back to the heap, or why they jostle, overtake one
another, and fight, and it would be equally difficult to
explain what caused the Russians after the departure of
the French to throng to the place that had formerly been
Moscow. But when we watch the ants round their ruined
heap, the tenacity, energy, and immense number of the
delving insects prove that despite the destruction of the
heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is
the real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly,
though in Moscow in the month of October there was no
government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses- it was
still the Moscow it had been in August. All was
destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and
indestructible.
The motives of those who thronged from all sides to
Moscow after it had been cleared of the enemy were most
diverse and personal, and at first for the most part savage
and brutal. One motive only they all had in common: a

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desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to

apply their activities there.
Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand
inhabitants, in a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so
on. By the autumn of 1813 the number, ever increasing
and increasing, exceeded what it had been in 1812.
The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks
of Wintzingerode’s detachment, peasants from the
adjacent villages, and residents who had fled from
Moscow and had been hiding in its vicinity. The Russians
who entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered it in
their turn. They continued what the French had begun.
Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the
villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses
and the streets. The Cossacks carried off what they could
to their camps, and the householders seized all they could
find in other houses and moved it to their own, pretending
that it was their property.
But the first plunderers were followed by a second and
a third contingent, and with increasing numbers
plundering became more and more difficult and assumed
more definite forms.
The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the
organizations of regular life, with diverse branches of

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commerce and craftsmanship, with luxury, and

governmental and religious institutions. These forms were
lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops,
warehouses, market stalls, granaries- for the most part still
stocked with goods- and there were factories and
workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled with
luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government offices, churches,
and cathedrals. The longer the French remained the more
these forms of town life perished, until finally all was
merged into one confused, lifeless scene of plunder.
The more the plundering by the French continued, the
more both the wealth of Moscow and the strength of its
plunderers was destroyed. But plundering by the
Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city began,
had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the
greater the number of people taking part in it the more
rapidly was the wealth of the city and its regular life
restored.
Besides the plunderers, very various people, some
drawn by curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-
interest- house owners, clergy, officials of all kinds,
tradesmen, artisans, and peasants- streamed into Moscow
as blood flows to the heart.

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Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts

to carry off plunder were stopped by the authorities and
made to cart the corpses out of the town. Other peasants,
having heard of their comrades’ discomfiture, came to
town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat down one
another’s prices to below what they had been in former
days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in
Moscow every day, and on all sides logs were being
hewn, new houses built, and old, charred ones repaired.
Tradesmen began trading in booths. Cookshops and
taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The
clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not
been burned. Donors contributed Church property that
had been stolen. Government clerks set up their baize-
covered tables and their pigeonholes of documents in
small rooms. The higher authorities and the police
organized the distribution of goods left behind by the
French. The owners of houses in which much property
had been left, brought there from other houses,
complained of the injustice of taking everything to the
Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the
French had gathered things from different houses into this
or that house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to
keep all that was found there. They abused the police and

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bribed them, made out estimates at ten times their value

for government stores that had perished in the fire, and
demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin wrote
proclamations.

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Chapter XV

At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and

stayed in an annex of his house which had not been
burned. He called on Count Rostopchin and on some
acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he
intended to leave for Petersburg two days later.
Everybody was celebrating the victory, everything was
bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city.
Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone wished to
meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he
had seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward
them all, but was now instinctively on his guard for fear
of binding himself in any way. To all questions put to
him- whether important or quite trifling- such as: Where
would he live? Was he going to rebuild? When was he
going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel for
someone?- he replied: ‘Yes, perhaps,’ or, ‘I think so,’ and
so on.
He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but
the thought of Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it
was only as a pleasant memory of the distant past. He felt
himself not only free from social obligations but also

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from that feeling which, it seemed to him, he had aroused

in himself.
On the third day after his arrival he heard from the
Drubetskoys that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The
death, sufferings, and last days of Prince Andrew had
often occupied Pierre’s thoughts and now recurred to him
with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess
Mary was in Moscow and living in her house- which had
not been burned- in Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that
same evening to see her.
On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince
Andrew, of their friendship, of his various meetings with
him, and especially of the last one at Borodino.
‘Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind
he was then in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was
not disclosed to him before he died?’ thought Pierre. He
recalled Karataev and his death and involuntarily began to
compare these two men, so different, and yet so similar in
that they had both lived and both died and in the love he
felt for both of them.
Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most
serious mood. The house had escaped the fire; it showed
signs of damage but its general aspect was unchanged.
The old footman, who met Pierre with a stern face as if

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wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence of the old
prince had not disturbed the order of things in the house,
informed him that the princess had gone to her own
apartments, and that she received on Sundays.
‘Announce me. Perhaps she will see me,’ said Pierre.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the man. ‘Please step into the portrait
gallery.’
A few minutes later the footman returned with
Dessalles, who brought word from the princess that she
would be very glad to see Pierre if he would excuse her
want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.
In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess
and with her another person dressed in black. Pierre
remembered that the princess always had lady
companions, but who they were and what they were like
he never knew or remembered. ‘This must be one of her
companions,’ he thought, glancing at the lady in the black
dress.
The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her
hand.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking at his altered face after he had
kissed her hand, ‘so this is how we meet again. He of
spoke of you even at the very last,’ she went on, turning

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her eyes from Pierre to her companion with a shyness that

surprised him for an instant.
‘I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first
piece of good news we had received for a long time.’
Again the princess glanced round at her companion
with even more uneasiness in her manner and was about
to add something, but Pierre interrupted her.
‘Just imagine- I knew nothing about him!’ said he. ‘I
thought he had been killed. All I know I heard at second
hand from others. I only know that he fell in with the
Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!’
Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced
once at the companion’s face, saw her attentive and
kindly gaze fixed on him, and, as often happens when one
is talking, felt somehow that this companion in the black
dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would not
hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.
But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary’s
face expressed still greater embarrassment. She again
glanced rapidly from Pierre’s face to that of the lady in
the black dress and said:
‘Do you really not recognize her?’
Pierre looked again at the companion’s pale, delicate
face with its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and

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something near to him, long forgotten and more than

sweet, looked at him from those attentive eyes.
‘But no, it can’t be!’ he thought. ‘This stern, thin, pale
face that looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely
reminds me of her.’ But at that moment Princess Mary
said, ‘Natasha!’ And with difficulty, effort, and stress,
like the opening of a door grown rusty on its hinges, a
smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and
from that opening door came a breath of fragrance which
suffused Pierre with a happiness he had long forgotten
and of which he had not even been thinking- especially at
that moment. It suffused him, seized him, and enveloped
him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer
possible, it was Natasha and he loved her.
At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to
Princess Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which
he himself had been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet
with painful distress. He tried to hide his agitation. But
the more he tried to hide it the more clearly- clearer than
any words could have done- did he betray to himself, to
her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her.
‘No, it’s only the unexpectedness of it,’ thought Pierre.
But as soon as he tried to continue the conversation he
had begun with Princess Mary he again glanced at

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Natasha, and a still-deeper flush suffused his face and a

still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and fear seized his
soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped in
the middle of what he was saying.
Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not
at all expect to see her there, but he had failed to
recognize her because the change in her since he last saw
her was immense. She had grown thin and pale, but that
was not what made her unrecognizable; she was
unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that
face whose eyes had always shone with a suppressed
smile of the joy of life, now when he first entered and
glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile:
only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly
interrogative.
Pierre’s confusion was not reflected by any confusion
on Natasha’s part, but only by the pleasure that just
perceptibly lit up her whole face.

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Chapter XVI

‘She has come to stay with me,’ said Princess Mary.

‘The count and countess will be here in a few days. The
countess is in a dreadful state; but it was necessary for
Natasha herself to see a doctor. They insisted on her
coming with me.’
‘Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?’ said
Pierre, addressing Natasha. ‘You know it happened the
very day we were rescued. I saw him. What a delightful
boy he was!’
Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his
words her eyes widened and lit up.
‘What can one say or think of as a consolation?’ said
Pierre. ‘Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of
life, to die?’
‘Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without
faith...’ remarked Princess Mary.
‘Yes, yes, that is really true,’ Pierre hastily interrupted
her.
‘Why is it true?’ Natasha asked, looking attentively
into Pierre’s eyes.

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‘How can you ask why?’ said Princess Mary. ‘The

thought alone of what awaits..’
Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish
again looked inquiringly at Pierre.
‘And because,’ Pierre continued, ‘only one who
believes that there is a God ruling us can bear a loss such
as hers and... yours.’
Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but
suddenly stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her
and again addressed Princess Mary, asking about his
friend’s last days.
Pierre’s confusion had now almost vanished, but at the
same time he felt that his freedom had also completely
gone. He felt that there was now a judge of his every
word and action whose judgment mattered more to him
than that of all the rest of the world. As he spoke now he
was considering what impression his words would make
on Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her,
but whatever he was saying he regarded from her
standpoint.
Princess Mary- reluctantly as is usual in such cases-
began telling of the condition in which she had found
Prince Andrew. But Pierre’s face quivering with emotion,
his questions and his eager restless expression, gradually

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compelled her to go into details which she feared to recall

for her own sake.
‘Yes, yes, and so...? ‘ Pierre kept saying as he leaned
toward her with his whole body and eagerly listened to
her story. ‘Yes, yes... so he grew tranquil and softened?
With all his soul he had always sought one thing- to be
perfectly good- so he could not be afraid of death. The
faults he had- if he had any- were not of his making. So
he did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you
again,’ he added, suddenly turning to Natasha and looking
at her with eyes full of tears.
Natasha’s face twitched. She frowned and lowered her
eyes for a moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to
speak or not.
‘Yes, that was happiness,’ she then said in her quiet
voice with its deep chest notes. ‘For me it certainly was
happiness.’ She paused. ‘And he... he... he said he was
wishing for it at the very moment I entered the room...’
Natasha’s voice broke. She blushed, pressed her
clasped hands on her knees, and then controlling herself
with an evident effort lifted her head and began to speak
rapidly.
‘We knew nothing of it when we started from
Moscow. I did not dare to ask about him. Then suddenly

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Sonya told me he was traveling with us. I had no idea and

could not imagine what state he was in, all I wanted was
to see him and be with him,’ she said, trembling, and
breathing quickly.
And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell
what she had never yet mentioned to anyone- all she had
lived through during those three weeks of their journey
and life at Yaroslavl.
Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed
upon her full of tears. As he listened he did not think of
Prince Andrew, nor of death, nor of what she was telling.
He listened to her and felt only pity for her, for what she
was suffering now while she was speaking.
Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her
tears, sat beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the
story of those last days of her brother’s and Natasha’s
love.
Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful
tale.
She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the
intimate secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could
never finish. Several times she repeated the same thing
twice.

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Dessalles’ voice was heard outside the door asking

whether little Nicholas might come in to say good night.
‘Well, that’s all- everything,’ said Natasha.
She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran
to the door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head
against it, and rushed from the room with a moan either of
pain or sorrow.
Pierre gazed at the door through which she had
disappeared and did not understand why he suddenly felt
all alone in the world.
Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by
drawing his attention to her nephew who had entered the
room.
At that moment of emotional tenderness young
Nicholas’ face, which resembled his father’s, affected
Pierre so much that when he had kissed the boy he got up
quickly, took out his handkerchief, and went to the
window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but
she would not let him go.
‘No, Natasha and I sometimes don’t go to sleep till
after two, so please don’t go. I will order supper. Go
downstairs, we will come immediately.’
Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him:
‘This is the first time she has talked of him like that.’

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Chapter XVII

Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining

room; a few minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess
Mary entered with Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a
severe and grave expression had again settled on her face.
They all three of them now experienced that feeling of
awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and
heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same
conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the
desire to speak is there and silence seems like affectation.
They went silently to table. The footmen drew back the
chairs and pushed them up again. Pierre unfolded his cold
table napkin and, resolving to break the silence, looked at
Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had evidently both
formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with
satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also
has joy.
‘Do you take vodka, Count?’ asked Princess Mary, and
those words suddenly banished the shadows of the past.
‘Now tell us about yourself,’ said she. ‘One hears such
improbable wonders about you.’

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‘Yes,’ replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now

habitual to him. ‘They even tell me wonders I myself
never dreamed of! Mary Abramovna invited me to her
house and kept telling me what had happened, or ought to
have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also instructed
me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I
have noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I
am an interesting man now); people invite me out and tell
me all about myself.’
Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.
‘We have been told,’ Princess Mary interrupted her,
‘that you lost two millions in Moscow. Is that true?’
‘But I am three times as rich as before,’ returned
Pierre.
Though the position was now altered by his decision to
pay his wife’s debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still
maintained that he had become three times as rich as
before.
‘What I have certainly gained is freedom,’ he began
seriously, but did not continue, noticing that this theme
was too egotistic.
‘And are you building?’
‘Yes. Savelich says I must!’

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‘Tell me, you did not know of the countess’ death

when you decided to remain in Moscow?’ asked Princess
Mary and immediately blushed, noticing that her
question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed to
his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.
‘No,’ answered Pierre, evidently not considering
awkward the meaning Princess Mary had given to his
words. ‘I heard of it in Orel and you cannot imagine how
it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple,’ he
added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her
face curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, ‘but
her death shocked me terribly. When two people quarrel
they are always both in fault, and one’s own guilt
suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no
longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and
without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her,’ he
concluded, and was pleased to notice a look of glad
approval on Natasha’s face.
‘Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor,’
said Princess Mary.
Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time
tried not to look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance
her way again her face was cold, stern, and he fancied
even contemptuous.

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‘And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we

have been told?’ said Princess Mary.
Pierre laughed.
‘No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being
taken prisoner means being Napoleon’s guest. Not only
did I never see him but I heard nothing about him- I was
in much lower company!’
Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to
speak about his captivity was gradually led on to do so.
‘But it’s true that you remained in Moscow to kill
Napoleon?’ Natasha asked with a slight smile. ‘I guessed
it then when we met at the Sukharev tower, do you
remember?’
Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was
gradually led by Princess Mary’s questions and especially
by Natasha’s into giving a detailed account of his
adventures.
At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now
customary with him toward everybody and especially
toward himself, but when he came to describe the horrors
and sufferings he had witnessed he was unconsciously
carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong
impressions he has lived through.

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Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre

and now at Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only
Pierre and his goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow,
the expression of her face constantly changing with the
narrative, watched Pierre with an attention that never
wandered- evidently herself experiencing all that he
described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and
the brief questions she put, showed Pierre that she
understood just what he wished to convey. It was clear
that she understood not only what he said but also what he
wished to, but could not, express in words. The account
Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman
for protecting whom he was arrested was this: ‘It was an
awful sight- children abandoned, some in the flames...
One was snatched out before my eyes... and there were
women who had their things snatched off and their
earrings torn out...’ he flushed and grew confused. ‘Then
a patrol arrived and all the men- all those who were not
looting, that is- were arrested, and I among them.’
‘I am sure you’re not telling us everything; I am sure
you did something...’ said Natasha and pausing added,
‘something fine?’

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Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he

wanted to pass over the horrible details, but Natasha
insisted that he should not omit anything.
Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this
time he had risen from the table and was pacing the room,
Natasha following him with her eyes. Then he added:
‘No, you can’t understand what I learned from that
illiterate man- that simple fellow.’
‘Yes, yes, go on!’ said Natasha. ‘Where is he?’
‘They killed him almost before my eyes.’
And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to
tell of the last days of their retreat, of Karataev’s illness
and his death.
He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled
them. He now, as it were, saw a new meaning in all he
had gone through. Now that he was telling it all to
Natasha he experienced that pleasure which a man has
when women listen to him- not clever women who when
listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich
their minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or
who wish to adopt it to some thought of their own and
promptly contribute their own clever comments prepared
in their little mental workshop- but the pleasure given by
real women gifted with a capacity to select and absorb the

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very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without

knowing it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no
single quiver in Pierre’s voice, no look, no twitch of a
muscle in his face, nor a single gesture. She caught the
unfinished word in its flight and took it straight into her
open heart, divining the secret meaning of all Pierre’s
mental travail.
Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized
with him, but she now saw something else that absorbed
all her attention. She saw the possibility of love and
happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and the first
thought of this filled her heart with gladness.
It was three o’clock in the morning. The footmen came
in with sad and stern faces to change the candles, but no
one noticed them.
Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at
him intently with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as
if trying to understand something more which he had
perhaps left untold. Pierre in shamefaced and happy
confusion glanced occasionally at her, and tried to think
what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess
Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was
three o’clock and time to go to bed.

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‘People speak of misfortunes and sufferings,’ remarked

Pierre, ‘but if at this moment I were asked: ‘Would you
rather be what you were before you were taken prisoner,
or go through all this again?’ then for heaven’s sake let
me again have captivity and horseflesh! We imagine that
when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it
is only then that what is new and good begins. While
there is life there is happiness. There is much, much
before us. I say this to you,’ he added, turning to Natasha.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, answering something quite
different. ‘I too should wish nothing but to relive it all
from the beginning.’
Pierre looked intently at her.
‘Yes, and nothing more.’ said Natasha.
‘It’s not true, not true!’ cried Pierre. ‘I am not to blame
for being alive and wishing to live- nor you either.’
Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with
her hands, and began to cry.
‘What is it, Natasha?’ said Princess Mary.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ She smiled at Pierre through her
tears. ‘Good night! It is time for bed.’
Pierre rose and took his leave.
Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the
bedroom. They talked of what Pierre had told them.

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Princess Mary did not express her opinion of Pierre nor

did Natasha speak of him.
‘Well, good night, Mary!’ said Natasha. ‘Do you
know, I am often afraid that by not speaking of him’ (she
meant Prince Andrew) ‘for fear of not doing justice to our
feelings, we forget him.’
Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby
acknowledged the justice of Natasha’s remark, but she did
not express agreement in words.
‘Is it possible to forget?’ said she.
‘It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It
was hard and painful, but good, very good!’ said Natasha.
‘I am sure he really loved him. That is why I told him...
Was it all right?’ she added, suddenly blushing.
‘To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!’
said Princess Mary.
‘Do you know, Mary...’ Natasha suddenly said with a
mischievous smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on
her face for a long time, ‘he has somehow grown so clean,
smooth, and fresh- as if he had just come out of a Russian
bath; do you understand? Out of a moral bath. Isn’t it
true?’
‘Yes,’ replied Princess Mary. ‘He has greatly
improved.’

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‘With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well,
just as if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used
to..’
‘I understand why he’ (Prince Andrew) ‘liked no one
so much as him,’ said Princess Mary.
‘Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are
friends when they are quite different. That must be true.
Really he is quite unlike him- in everything.’
‘Yes, but he’s wonderful.’
‘Well, good night,’ said Natasha.
And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long
time on her face as if it had been forgotten there.

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Chapter XVIII

It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that

night. He paced up and down his room, now turning his
thoughts on a difficult problem and frowning, now
suddenly shrugging his shoulders and wincing, and now
smiling happily.
He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of
their love, at one moment jealous of her past, then
reproaching himself for that feeling. It was already six in
the morning and he still paced up and down the room.
‘Well, what’s to be done if it cannot be avoided?
What’s to be done? Evidently it has to be so,’ said he to
himself, and hastily undressing he got into bed, happy and
agitated but free from hesitation or indecision.
‘Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I
must do everything that she and I may be man and wife,’
he told himself.
A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to
Petersburg on the Friday. When he awoke on the
Thursday, Savelich came to ask him about packing for the
journey.

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‘What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is

there in Petersburg?’ he asked involuntarily, though only
to himself. ‘Oh, yes, long ago before this happened I did
for some reason mean to go to Petersburg,’ he reflected.
‘Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good fellow he is
and how attentive, and how he remembers everything,’ he
thought, looking at Savelich’s old face, ‘and what a
pleasant smile he has!’
‘Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your
freedom?’ Pierre asked him.
‘What’s the good of freedom to me, your excellency?
We lived under the late count- the kingdom of heaven be
his!- and we have lived under you too, without ever being
wronged.’
‘And your children?’
‘The children will live just the same. With such
masters one can live.’
‘But what about my heirs?’ said Pierre. ‘Supposing I
suddenly marry... it might happen,’ he added with an
involuntary smile.
‘If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be
a good thing.’

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‘How easy he thinks it,’ thought Pierre. ‘He doesn’t

know how terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or
too late... it is terrible!’
‘So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?’
asked Savelich.
‘No, I’ll put it off for a bit. I’ll tell you later. You must
forgive the trouble I have put you to,’ said Pierre, and
seeing Savelich smile, he thought: ‘But how strange it is
that he should not know that now there is no Petersburg
for me, and that that must be settled first of all! But
probably he knows it well enough and is only pretending.
Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?’
Pierre reflected. ‘No, another time.’
At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he
had been to see Princess Mary the day before and had
there met- ‘Whom do you think? Natasha Rostova!’
The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary
in that than if he had seen Anna Semenovna.
‘Do you know her?’ asked Pierre.
‘I have seen the princess,’ she replied. ‘I heard that
they were arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It
would be a very good thing for the Rostovs, they are said
to be utterly ruined.’
‘No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?’

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‘I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a

great pity.’
‘No, she either doesn’t understand or is pretending,’
thought Pierre. ‘Better not say anything to her either.’
The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre’s
journey.
‘How kind they all are,’ thought Pierre. ‘What is
surprising is that they should trouble about these things
now when it can no longer be of interest to them. And all
for me!’
On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre,
inviting him to send a representative to the Faceted Palace
to recover things that were to be returned to their owners
that day.
‘And this man too,’ thought Pierre, looking into the
face of the Chief of Police. ‘What a fine, good-looking
officer and how kind. Fancy bothering about such trifies
now! And they actually say he is not honest and takes
bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn’t he take
bribes? That’s the way he was brought up, and everybody
does it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles
as he looks at me.’
Pierre went to Princess Mary’s to dinner.

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As he drove through the streets past the houses that

had been burned down, he was surprised by the beauty of
those ruins. The picturesqueness of the chimney stacks
and tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters of the
town, stretching out and concealing one another,
reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The
cabmen he met and their passengers, the carpenters
cutting the timber for new houses with axes, the women
hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at him with
cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: ‘Ah, there he
is! Let’s see what will come of it!’
At the entrance to Princess Mary’s house Pierre felt
doubtful whether he had really been there the night before
and really seen Natasha and talked to her. ‘Perhaps I
imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find no one there.’
But he had hardly entered the room before he felt her
presence with his whole being by the loss of his sense of
freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds
and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet
she was quite different. Had she been like this when he
entered the day before he could not for a moment have
failed to recognize her.
She was as he had known her almost as a child and
later on as Prince Andrew’s fiancee. A bright questioning

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light shone in her eyes, and on her face was a friendly and
strangely roguish expression.
Pierre dined with them and would have spent the
whole evening there, but Princess Mary was going to
vespers and Pierre left the house with her.
Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole
evening. Though Princess Mary and Natasha were
evidently glad to see their visitor and though all
Pierre’s interest was now centered in that house,
by the evening they had talked over everything and the
conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and
repeatedly broke off. He stayed so long that Princess
Mary and Natasha exchanged glances, evidently
wondering when he would go. Pierre noticed this but
could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat on
because he simply could not get up and take his leave.
Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and
complaining of a headache began to say good night.
‘So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘No, I am not going,’ Pierre replied hastily, in a
surprised tone and as though offended. ‘Yes... no... to
Petersburg? Tomorrow- but I won’t say good-by yet. I
will call round in case you have any commissions for me,’

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said he, standing before Princess Mary and turning red,

but not taking his departure.
Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess
Mary on the other hand instead of going away sank into
an armchair, and looked sternly and intently at him with
her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had plainly
shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy
talk.
When Natasha left the room Pierre’s confusion and
awkwardness immediately vanished and were replaced by
eager excitement. He quickly moved an armchair toward
Princess Mary.
‘Yes, I wanted to tell you,’ said he, answering her look
as if she had spoken. ‘Princess, help me! What am I to
do? Can I hope? Princess, my dear friend, listen! I know it
all. I know I am not worthy of her, I know it’s impossible
to speak of it now. But I want to be a brother to her. No,
not that, I don’t, I can’t..’
He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his
hands.
‘Well,’ he went on with an evident effort at self-
control and coherence. ‘I don’t know when I began to
love her, but I have loved her and her alone all my life,

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and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without her. I

cannot propose to her at present, but the thought that
perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be
missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell
me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!’
he added after a pause, and touched her hand as she did
not reply.
‘I am thinking of what you have told me,’ answered
Princess Mary. ‘This is what I will say. You are right that
to speak to her of love at present..’
Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to
speak of love was impossible, but she stopped because
she had seen by the sudden change in Natasha two days
before that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre spoke
of his love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.
‘To speak to her now wouldn’t do,’ said the princess
all the same.
‘But what am I to do?
‘Leave it to me,’ said Princess Mary. ‘I know..’
Pierre was looking into Princess Mary’s eyes.
‘Well?... Well?...’ he said.
‘I know that she loves... will love you,’ Princess Mary
corrected herself.

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Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and

with a frightened expression seized Princess Mary’s hand.
‘What makes you think so? You think I may hope?
You think...?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Princess Mary with a smile.
‘Write to her parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her
when I can. I wish it to happen and my heart tells me it
will.’
‘No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be....
How happy I am! No, it can’t be!’ Pierre kept saying as
he kissed Princess Mary’s hands.
‘Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to
you,’ she said.
‘To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I’ll go. But I
may come again tomorrow?’
Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less
animated than she had been the day before; but that day as
he looked at her Pierre sometimes felt as if he was
vanishing and that neither he nor she existed any longer,
that nothing existed but happiness. ‘Is it possible? No, it
can’t be,’ he told himself at every look, gesture, and word
that filled his soul with joy.

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When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender

hand, he could not help holding it a little longer in his
own.
‘Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all
this treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it
possible that it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to
me as I am to myself?... No, that’s impossible!..’
‘Good-by, Count,’ she said aloud. ‘I shall look forward
very much to your return,’ she added in a whisper.
And these simple words, her look, and the expression
on her face which accompanied them, formed for two
months the subject of inexhaustible memories,
interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. ‘‘I shall
look forward very much to your return....’ Yes, yes, how
did she say it? Yes, ‘I shall look forward very much to
your return.’ Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to
me? How happy I am!’ said Pierre to himself.

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Chapter XIX

There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now at all like what

had troubled it during his courtship of Helene.
He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of
shame the words he had spoken, or say: ‘Oh, why did I
not say that?’ and, ‘Whatever made me say ‘Je vous
aime’?’ On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination
every word that he or Natasha had spoken and pictured
every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to
diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and
again. There was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind
as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong.
Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind:
‘Wasn’t it all a dream? Isn’t Princess Mary mistaken? Am
I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all this-
and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be
sure to smile and say: ‘How strange! He must be deluding
himself. Doesn’t he know that he is a man, just a man,
while I...? I am something altogether different and
higher.’’
That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did
not now make any plans. The happiness before him

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appeared so inconceivable that if only he could attain it, it

would be the end of all things. Everything ended with
that.
A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought
himself incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of
life- not for him alone but for the whole world- seemed to
him centered in his love and the possibility of being loved
by her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied
with one thing only- his future happiness. Sometimes it
seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he
was himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by
pretending to be busy with other interests. In every word
and gesture he saw allusions to his happiness. He often
surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks
and smiles which seemed to express a secret
understanding between him and them. And when he
realized that people might not be aware of his happiness,
he pitied them with his whole heart and felt a desire
somehow to explain to them that all that occupied them
was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.
When it was suggested to him that he should enter the
civil service, or when the war or any general political
affairs were discussed on the assumption that everybody’s
welfare depended on this or that issue of events, he would

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listen with a mild and pitying smile and surprise people

by his strange comments. But at this time he saw
everybody- both those who, as he imagined, understood
the real meaning of life (that is, what he was feeling) and
those unfortunates who evidently did not understand it- in
the bright light of the emotion that shone within himself,
and at once without any effort saw in everyone he met
everything that was good and worthy of being loved.
When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead
wife, her memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that
she had not known the bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili,
who having obtained a new post and some fresh
decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to
him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.
Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful
insanity. All the views he formed of men and
circumstances at this time remained true for him always.
He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but
when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred
to the views he had held at this time of his madness and
they always proved correct.
‘I may have appeared strange and queer then,’ he
thought, ‘but I was not so mad as I seemed. On the
contrary I was then wiser and had more insight than at

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any other time, and understood all that is worth

understanding in life, because... because I was happy.’
Pierre’s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to
do, to discover personal attributes which he termed ‘good
qualities’ in people before loving them; his heart was now
overflowing with love, and by loving people without
cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.
CHAPTER XX
After Pierre’s departure that first evening, when
Natasha had said to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking
smile: ‘He looks just, yes, just as if he had come out of a
Russian bath- in a short coat and with his hair cropped,’
something hidden and unknown to herself, but
irrepressible, awoke in Natasha’s soul.
Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was
suddenly altered. To her own surprise a power of life and
hope of happiness rose to the surface and demanded
satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to have
forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer
complained of her position, did not say a word about the
past, and no longer feared to make happy plans for the
future. She spoke little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary
mentioned him a long-extinguished light once more

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kindled in her eyes and her lips curved with a strange

smile.
The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised
Princess Mary; but when she understood its meaning it
grieved her. ‘Can she have loved my brother so little as to
be able to forget him so soon?’ she thought when she
reflected on the change. But when she was with Natasha
she was not vexed with her and did not reproach her. The
reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so
evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her
presence Princess Mary felt that she had no right to
reproach her even in her heart.
Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this
new feeling that she did not try to hide the fact that she
was no longer sad, but bright and cheerful.
When Princess Mary returned to her room after her
nocturnal talk with Pierre, Natasha met her on the
threshold.
‘He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?’ she repeated.
And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to
beg forgiveness for her joy settled on Natasha’s face.
‘I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would
tell me.’

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Understandable and touching as the look with which

Natasha gazed at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry
as she was to see her agitation, these words pained her for
a moment. She remembered her brother and his love.
‘But what’s to be done? She can’t help it,’ thought the
princess.
And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha
all that Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to
Petersburg Natasha was astounded.
‘To Petersburg!’ she repeated as if unable to
understand.
But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary’s
face she guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly
began to cry.
‘Mary,’ said she, ‘tell me what I should do! I am afraid
of being bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...’
‘You love him?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Natasha.
‘Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake,’
said Princess Mary, who because of those tears quite
forgave Natasha’s joy.
‘It won’t be just yet- someday. Think what fun it will
be when I am his wife and you marry Nicholas!’

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‘Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us

talk about you.’
They were silent awhile.
‘But why go to Petersburg?’ Natasha suddenly asked,
and hastily replied to her own question. ‘But no, no, he
must... Yes, Mary, He must...’

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FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20

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Chapter I

Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of

European history had subsided within its shores and
seemed to have become calm. But the mysterious forces
that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of their
motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.
Though the surface of the sea of history seemed
motionless, the movement of humanity went on as
unceasingly as the flow of time. Various groups of people
formed and dissolved, the coming formation and
dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was
in course of preparation.
The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from
shore to shore as previously. It was seething in its depths.
Historic figures were not borne by the waves from one
shore to another as before. They now seemed to rotate on
one spot. The historical figures at the head of armies, who
formerly reflected the movement of the masses by
ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the
restless movement by political and diplomatic
combinations, laws, and treaties.
The historians call this activity of the historical figures
‘the reaction.’

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In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the

historical personages who, in their opinion, caused what
they describe as the reaction. All the well-known people
of that period, from Alexander and Napoleon to Madame
de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and
the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and are
acquitted or condemned according to whether they
conduced to progress or to reaction.
According to their accounts a reaction took place at
that time in Russia also, and the chief culprit was
Alexander I, the same man who according to them was
the chief cause of the liberal movement at the
commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia.
There is no one in Russian literature now, from
schoolboy essayist to learned historian, who does not
throw his little stone at Alexander for things he did wrong
at this period of his reign.
‘He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In
this case he did well and in that case badly. He behaved
admirably at the beginning of his reign and during 1812,
but acted badly by giving a constitution to Poland,
forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to
Arakcheev, favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and
afterwards Shishkov and Photius. He also acted badly by

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concerning himself with the active army and disbanding

the Semenov regiment.’
It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the
reproaches the historians address to him, based on their
knowledge of what is good for humanity.
What do these reproaches mean?
Do not the very actions for which the historians praise
Alexander I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his
reign, his struggle with Napoleon, the firmness he
displayed in 1812 and the campaign of 1813) flow from
the same sources- the circumstances of his birth,
education, and life- that made his personality what it was
and from which the actions for which they blame him (the
Holy Alliance, the restoration of Poland, and the reaction
of 1820 and later) also flowed?
In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?
It lies in the fact that an historic character like
Alexander I, standing on the highest possible pinnacle of
human power with the blinding light of history focused
upon him; a character exposed to those strongest of all
influences: the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception
inseparable from power; a character who at every moment
of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening
in Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who

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like every man had his personal habits, passions, and

impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth- that this
character- though not lacking in virtue (the historians do
not accuse him of that)- had not the same conception of
the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as a present-day
professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied
with learning: that is, with books and lectures and with
taking notes from them.
But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I
was mistaken in his view of what was good for the
people, we must inevitably assume that the historian who
judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some time
turn out to be mistaken in his view of what is good for
humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and
inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we
see that every year and with each new writer, opinion as
to what is good for mankind changes; so that what once
seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice versa.
And what is more, we find at one and the same time quite
contradictory views as to what is bad and what is good in
history: some people regard giving a constitution to
Poland and forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in
Alexander, while others regard it as blameworthy.

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The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be

called useful or harmful, for it is impossible to say for
what it was useful or harmful. If that activity displeases
somebody, this is only because it does not agree with his
limited understanding of what is good. Whether the
preservation of my father’s house in Moscow, or the glory
of the Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg
and other universities, or the freedom of Poland or the
greatness of Russia, or the balance of power in Europe, or
a certain kind of European culture called ‘progress’
appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit that besides
these things the action of every historic character has
other more general purposes inaccessible to me.
But let us assume that what is called science can
harmonize all contradictions and possesses an unchanging
standard of good and bad by which to try historic
characters and events; let us say that Alexander could
have done everything differently; let us say that with
guidance from those who blame him and who profess to
know the ultimate aim of the movement of humanity, he
might have arranged matters according to the program his
present accusers would have given him- of nationality,
freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover the
ground). Let us assume that this program was possible

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and had then been formulated, and that Alexander had

acted on it. What would then have become of the activity
of all those who opposed the tendency that then prevailed
in the government- an activity that in the opinion of the
historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would
not have existed: there would have been no life, there
would have been nothing.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the
possibility of life is destroyed.

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Chapter II

If we assume as the historians do that great men lead

humanity to the attainment of certain ends- the greatness
of Russia or of France, the balance of power in Europe,
the diffusion of the ideas of the Revolution general
progress or anything else- then it is impossible to explain
the facts of history without introducing the conceptions of
chance and genius.
If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the
nineteenth century had been the aggrandizement of
Russia, that aim might have been accomplished without
all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If the aim
wag the aggrandizement of France, that might have been
attained without the Revolution and without the Empire.
If the aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing
press could have accomplished that much better than
warfare. If the aim was the progress of civilization, it is
easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing
civilization more expedient than by the destruction of
wealth and of human lives.
Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

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Because it happened so! ‘Chance created the situation;

genius utilized it,’ says history.
But what is chance? What is genius?
The words chance and genius do not denote any really
existing thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those
words only denote a certain stage of understanding of
phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I
think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I
talk about chance. I see a force producing effects beyond
the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not
understand why this occurs and I talk of genius.
To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each
evening into a special enclosure to feed and that becomes
twice as fat as the others must seem to be a genius. And it
must appear an astonishing conjunction of genius with a
whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram, who
instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes
into a special enclosure where there are oats- that this
very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.
But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that
happens to them happens solely for the attainment of their
sheepish aims; they need only admit that what happens to
them may also have purposes beyond their ken, and they
will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what

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happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not

know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least
know that all that happened to the ram did not happen
accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions of
chance or genius.
Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose
immediately intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate
purpose to be beyond our ken, may we discern the
sequence of experiences in the lives of historic characters
and perceive the cause of the effect they produce
(incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and
then the words chance and genius become superfluous.
We need only confess that we do not know the purpose
of the European convulsions and that we know only the
facts- that is, the murders, first in France, then in Italy, in
Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain, and in Russia- and
that the movements from the west to the east and from the
east to the west form the essence and purpose of these
events, and not only shall we have no need to see
exceptional ability and genius in Napoleon and
Alexander, but we shall be unable to consider them to be
anything but like other men, and we shall not be obliged
to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those
small events which made these people what they were,

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but it will be clear that all those small events were

inevitable.
By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate
purpose, we shall clearly perceive that just as one cannot
imagine a blossom or seed for any single plant better
suited to it than those it produces, so it is impossible to
imagine any two people more completely adapted down
to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill,
than Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.

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Chapter III

The fundamental and essential significance of the

European events of the beginning of the nineteenth
century lies in the movement of the mass of the European
peoples from west to east and afterwards from east to
west. The commencement of that movement was the
movement from west to east. For the peoples of the west
to be able to make their warlike movement to Moscow it
was necessary: (1) that they should form themselves into
a military group of a size able to endure a collision with
the warlike military group of the east, (2) that they should
abandon all established traditions and customs, and (3)
that during their military movement they should have at
their head a man who could justify to himself and to them
the deceptions, robberies, and murders which would have
to be committed during that movement.
And beginning with the French Revolution the old
inadequately large group was destroyed, as well as the old
habits and traditions, and step by step a group was formed
of larger dimensions with new customs and traditions, and
a man was produced who would stand at the head of the

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coming movement and bear the responsibility for all that

had to be done.
A man without convictions, without habits, without
traditions, without a name, and not even a Frenchman,
emerges- by what seem the strangest chances- from
among all the seething French parties, and without joining
any one of them is borne forward to a prominent position.
The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and
insignificance of his opponents, the frankness of his
falsehoods, and the dazzling and self-confident limitations
of this man raise him to the head of the army. The
brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent to Italy,
his opponents’ reluctance to fight, and his own childish
audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame.
Innumerable so called chances accompany him
everywhere. The disfavor into which he falls with the
rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts to
avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not
received into the Russian service, and the appointment he
seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During the war in Italy
he is several times on the verge of destruction and each
time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing to various
diplomatic considerations the Russian armies- just those

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which might have destroyed his prestige- do not appear

upon the scene till he is no longer there.
On his return from Italy he finds the government in
Paris in a process of dissolution in which all those who
are in it are inevitably wiped out and destroyed. And by
chance an escape from this dangerous position presents
itself in the form of an aimless and senseless expedition to
Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him.
Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most
reckless schemes are crowned with success. The enemy’s
fleet, which subsequently did not let a single boat pass,
allows his entire army to elude it. In Africa a whole series
of outrages are committed against the almost unarmed
inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes,
especially their leader, assure themselves that this is
admirable, this is glory- it resembles Caesar and
Alexander the Great and is therefore good.
This ideal of glory and grandeur- which consists not
merely in considering nothing wrong that one does but in
priding oneself on every crime one commits, ascribing to
it an incomprehensible supernatural significance- that
ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates, had
scope for its development in Africa. Whatever he does
succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The cruelty of

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murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His

childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from
Africa, leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his
credit, and again the enemy’s fleet twice lets him slip
past. When, intoxicated by the crimes he has committed
so successfully, he reaches Paris, the dissolution of the
republican government, which a year earlier might have
ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his
presence there now as a newcomer free from party
entanglements can only serve to exalt him- and though he
himself has no plan, he is quite ready for his new role.
He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the
parties snatched at him and demanded his participation.
He alone- with his ideal of glory and grandeur
developed in Italy and Egypt, his insane self-adulation,
his boldness in crime and frankness in lying- he alone
could justify what had to be done.
He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so
almost apart from his will and despite his indecision, his
lack of a plan, and all his mistakes, he is drawn into a
conspiracy that aims at seizing power and the conspiracy
is crowned with success.
He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm
he wishes to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to

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fall into a swoon and says senseless things that should

have ruined him. But the once proud and shrewd rulers of
France, feeling that their part is played out, are even more
bewildered than he, and do not say the words they should
have said to destroy him and retain their power.
Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all
men as if by agreement co-operate to confirm that power.
Chance forms the characters of the rulers of France, who
submit to him; chance forms the character of Paul I of
Russia who recognizes his government; chance contrives
a plot against him which not only fails to harm him but
confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d’Enghien in his
hands and unexpectedly causes him to kill him- thereby
convincing the mob more forcibly than in any other way
that he had the right, since he had the might. Chance
contrives that though he directs all his efforts to prepare
an expedition against England (which would inevitably
have ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but
unexpectedly falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who
surrender without a battle. Chance and genius give him
the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance all men, not only
the French but all Europe- except England which does not
take part in the events about to happen- despite their
former horror and detestation of his crimes, now

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recognize his authority, the title he has given himself, and

his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent
and reasonable to them all.
As if measuring themselves and preparing for the
coming movement, the western forces push toward the
east several times in 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1809, gaining
strength and growing. In 1811 the group of people that
had formed in France unites into one group with the
peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the
justification of the man who stands at the head of the
movement grows with the increased size of the group.
During the ten-year preparatory period this man had
formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe.
The discredited rulers of the world can oppose no
reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal of glory
and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display
their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia sends
his wife to seek the great man’s mercy; the Emperor of
Austria considers it a favor that this man receives a
daughter the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the guardian
of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the
aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who
prepares himself for the accomplishment of his role, so
much as all those round him who prepare him to take on

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himself the whole responsibility for what is happening

and has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty
fraud he commits, which in the mouths of those around
him is not at once represented as a great deed. The most
suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a
celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great,
but so are his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his
brothers-in-law. Everything is done to deprive him of the
remains of his reason and to prepare him for his terrible
part. And when he is ready so too are the forces.
The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final
goal- Moscow. That city is taken; the Russian army
suffers heavier losses than the opposing armies had
suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to Wagram.
But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius
which hitherto had so consistently led him by an
uninterrupted series of successes to the predestined goal,
an innumerable sequence of inverse chances occur- from
the cold in his head at Borodino to the sparks which set
Moscow on fire, and the frosts- and instead of genius,
stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.
The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the
chances are now not for Napoleon but always against him.

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A countermovement is then accomplished from east to

west with a remarkable resemblance to the preceding
movement from west to east. Attempted drives from east
to west- similar to the contrary movements of 1805, 1807,
and 1809- precede the great westward movement; there is
the same coalescence into a group of enormous
dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central
Europe to the movement; the same hesitation midway,
and the same increasing rapidity as the goal is
approached.
Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic
government and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is
no longer of any account; all his actions are evidently
pitiful and mean, but again an inexplicable chance occurs.
The allies detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause
of their sufferings. Deprived of power and authority, his
crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared to
them what he appeared ten years previously and one year
later- an outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance
no one perceives this. His part is not yet ended. The man
who ten years before and a year later was considered an
outlawed brigand is sent to an island two days’ sail from
France, which for some reason is presented to him as his

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dominion, and guards are given to him and millions of

money are paid him.

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Chapter IV

The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal

channels. The waves of the great movement abate, and on
the calm surface eddies are formed in which float the
diplomatists, who imagine that they have caused the
floods to abate.
But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed.
The diplomatists think that their disagreements are the
cause of this fresh pressure of natural forces; they
anticipate war between their sovereigns; the position
seems to them insoluble. But the wave they feel to be
rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises
again from the same point as before- Paris. The last
backwash of the movement from the west occurs: a
backwash which serves to solve the apparently
insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military
movement of that period of history.
The man who had devastated France returns to France
alone, without any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any
guard might arrest him, but by strange chance no one does
so and all rapturously greet the man they cursed the day
before and will curse again a month later.

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This man is still needed to justify the final collective

act.
That act is performed.
The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe
and wash off his powder and paint: he will not be wanted
any more.
And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful
comedy to himself in solitude on his island, justifying his
actions by intrigues and lies when the justification is no
longer needed, and displaying to the whole world what it
was that people had mistaken for strength as long as an
unseen hand directed his actions.
The manager having brought the drama to a close and
stripped the actor shows him to us.
‘See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see
that it was not he but I who moved you?’
But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long
before people understood this.
Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the
life of Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the
countermovement from east to west.
What was needed for him who, overshadowing others,
stood at the head of that movement from east to west?

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What was needed was a sense of justice and a

sympathy with European affairs, but a remote sympathy
not dulled by petty interests; a moral superiority over
those sovereigns of the day who co-operated with him; a
mild and attractive personality; and a personal grievance
against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I;
all this had been prepared by innumerable so-called
chances in his life: his education, his early liberalism, the
advisers who surrounded him, and by Austerlitz, and
Tilsit, and Erfurt.
During the national war he was inactive because he
was not needed. But as soon as the necessity for a general
European war presented itself he appeared in his place at
the given moment and, uniting the nations of Europe, led
them to the goal.
The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815
Alexander possesses all possible power. How does he use
it?
Alexander I- the pacifier of Europe, the man who from
his early years had striven only for his people’s welfare,
the originator of the liberal innovations in his fatherland-
now that he seemed to possess the utmost power and
therefore to have the possibility of bringing about the
welfare of his peoples- at the time when Napoleon in exile

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was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he

would have made mankind happy had he retained power-
Alexander I, having fulfilled his mission and feeling the
hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes the
insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it,
and gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he
despises, saying only:
‘Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too
am a man like the rest of you. Let me live like a man and
think of my soul and of God.’
As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete
in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole
too immense for man to comprehend, so each individual
has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve
a general purpose incomprehensible to man.
A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the
child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting
people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice
of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of
flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from
flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather
honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the
hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to
feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to

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perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying

with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the
latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee’s existence.
Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that
the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the
purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is
not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the
processes the human mind can discern. The higher the
human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes,
the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is
beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of
the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with
the purpose of historic characters and nations.

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Chapter V

Natasha’s wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in

1813, was the last happy event in the family of the old
Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov died that same year and, as
always happens, after the father’s death the family group
broke up.
The events of the previous year: the burning of
Moscow and the flight from it, the death of Prince
Andrew, Natasha’s despair, Petya’s death, and the old
countess’ grief fell blow after blow on the old count’s
head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning
of all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual
sense as if expecting and inviting further blows which
would finish him. He seemed now frightened and
distraught and now unnaturally animated and enterprising.
The arrangements for Natasha’s marriage occupied
him for a while. He ordered dinners and suppers and
obviously tried to appear cheerful, but his cheerfulness
was not infectious as it used to be: on the contrary it
evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.
When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet
and began to complain of depression. A few days later he

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fell ill and took to his bed. He realized from the first that
he would not get up again, despite the doctor’s
encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in an
armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time
she gave him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed
her hand. On his last day, sobbing, he asked her and his
absent son to forgive him for having dissipated their
property- that being the chief fault of which he was
conscious. After receiving communion and unction he
quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who
came to pay their last respects to the deceased filled the
house rented by the Rostovs. All these acquaintances,
who had so often dined and danced at his house and had
so often laughed at him, now said, with a common feeling
of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves:
‘Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy
man. You don’t meet such men nowadays.... And which
of us has not weaknesses of his own?’
It was just when the count’s affairs had become so
involved that it was impossible to say what would happen
if he lived another year that he unexpectedly died.
Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the
news of his father’s death reached him. He at once
resigned his commission, and without waiting for it to be

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accepted took leave of absence and went to Moscow. The

state of the count’s affairs became quite obvious a month
after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total
of small debts the existence of which no one had
suspected. The debts amounted to double the value of the
property.
Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the
inheritance. But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his
father’s memory, which he held sacred, and therefore
would not hear of refusing and accepted the inheritance
together with the obligation to pay the debts.
The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained
by a vague but powerful influence exerted on them while
he lived by the count’s careless good nature, all proceeded
to enforce their claims at once. As always happens in such
cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get paid first,
and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given
them as presents now became the most exacting of the
creditors. Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace,
and those who had seemed to pity the old man- the cause
of their losses (if they were losses)- now remorselessly
pursued the young heir who had voluntarily undertaken
the debts and was obviously not guilty of contracting
them.

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Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the

estate was sold by auction for half its value, and half the
debts still remained unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty
thousand rubles offered him by his brother-in-law
Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely due
for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the
remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the
government service.
He could not rejoin the army where he would have
been made colonel at the next vacancy, for his mother
now clung to him as her one hold on life; and so despite
his reluctant to remain in Moscow among people who had
known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil
service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service,
doffed the uniform of which he was so fond, and moved
with his mother and Sonya to a small house on the Sivtsev
Vrazhek.
Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the
time and had no clear idea of Nicholas’ circumstances.
Having borrowed money from his brother-in-law,
Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from him.
His position was the more difficult because with his
salary of twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep
himself, his mother, and Sonya, but had to shield his

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mother from knowledge of their poverty. The countess

could not conceive of life without the luxurious
conditions she had been used to from childhood and,
unable to realize how hard it was for her son, kept
demanding now a carriage (which they did not keep) to
send for a friend, now some expensive article of food for
herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a present as
a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.
Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her,
put up with her whims and secret ill-will, and helped
Nicholas to conceal their poverty from the old countess.
Nicholas felt himself irredeemably indebted to Sonya for
all she was doing for his mother and greatly admired her
patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.
He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too
perfect, and because there was nothing to reproach her
with. She had all that people are valued for, but little that
could have made him love her. He felt that the more he
valued her the less he loved her. He had taken her at her
word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now
behaved as if all that had passed between them had been
long forgotten and could never in any case be renewed.
Nicholas’ position became worse and worse. The idea
of putting something aside out of his salary proved a

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dream. Not only did he not save anything, but to comply

with his mother’s demands he even incurred some small
debts. He could see no way out of this situation. The idea
of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested to
him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The
other way out- his mother’s death- never entered his head.
He wished for nothing and hoped for nothing, and deep in
his heart experienced a gloomy and stern satisfaction in
an uncomplaining endurance of his position. He tried to
avoid his old acquaintances with their commiseration and
offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all distraction
and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play
cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the
room, and smoke one pipe after another. He seemed
carefully to cherish within himself the gloomy mood
which alone enabled him to endure his position.

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Chapter VI

At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to

Moscow. From reports current in town she learned how
the Rostovs were situated, and how ‘the son has sacrificed
himself for his mother,’ as people were saying.
‘I never expected anything else of him,’ said Princess
Mary to herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for
him. Remembering her friendly relations with all the
Rostovs which had made her almost a member of the
family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But
remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she
was shy about doing so. Making a great effort she did
however go to call on them a few weeks after her arrival
in Moscow.
Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess’
room could only be reached through his. But instead of
being greeted with pleasure as she had expected, at his
first glance at her his face assumed a cold, stiff, proud
expression she had not seen on it before. He inquired
about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat
there for five minutes left the room.

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When the princess came out of the countess’ room

Nicholas met her again, and with marked solemnity and
stiffness accompanied her to the anteroom. To her
remarks about his mother’s health he made no reply.
‘What’s that to you? Leave me in peace,’ his looks
seemed to say.
‘Why does she come prowling here? What does she
want? I can’t bear these ladies and all these civilities!’
said he aloud in Sonya’s presence, evidently unable to
repress his vexation, after the princess’ carriage had
disappeared.
‘Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?’ cried
Sonya, hardly able to conceal her delight. ‘She is so kind
and Mamma is so fond of her!’
Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of
the princess any more. But after her visit the old countess
spoke of her several times a day.
She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on
her, expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always
became ill-humored when she began to talk about her.
Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke
of the princess, but his silence irritated her.
‘She is a very admirable and excellent young woman,’
said she, ‘and you must go and call on her. You would at

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least be seeing somebody, and I think it must be dull for

you only seeing us.’
‘But I don’t in the least want to, Mamma.’
‘You used to want to, and now you don’t. Really I
don’t understand you, my dear. One day you are dull, and
the next you refuse to see anyone.’
‘But I never said I was dull.’
‘Why, you said yourself you don’t want even to see
her. She is a very admirable young woman and you
always liked her, but now suddenly you have got some
notion or other in your head. You hide everything from
me.’
‘Not at all, Mamma.’
‘If I were asking you to do something disagreeable
now- but I only ask you to return a call. One would think
mere politeness required it.... Well, I have asked you, and
now I won’t interfere any more since you have secrets
from your mother.’
‘Well, then, I’ll go if you wish it.’
‘It doesn’t matter to me. I only wish it for your sake.’
Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the
cards for a patience, trying to divert his mother’s attention
to another topic.

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The same conversation was repeated next day and the

day after, and the day after that.
After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly
chilly reception by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to
herself that she had been right in not wishing to be the
first to call.
‘I expected nothing else,’ she told herself, calling her
pride to her aid. ‘I have nothing to do with him and I only
wanted to see the old lady, who was always kind to me
and to whom I am under many obligations.’
But she could not pacify herself with these reflections;
a feeling akin to remorse troubled her when she thought
of her visit. Though she had firmly resolved not to call on
the Rostovs again and to forget the whole matter, she felt
herself all the time in an awkward position. And when she
asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit that it
was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did
not express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it
concealed something, and until she could discover what
that something was, she felt that she could not be at ease.
One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom
attending to her nephew’s lessons, she was informed that
Rostov had called. With a firm resolution not to betray
herself and not show her agitation, she sent for

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Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the

drawing room.
Her first glance at Nicholas’ face told her that he had
only come to fulfill the demands of politeness, and she
firmly resolved to maintain the tone in which he
addressed her.
They spoke of the countess’ health, of their mutual
friends, of the latest war news, and when the ten minutes
required by propriety had elapsed after which a visitor
may rise, Nicholas got up to say good-by.
With Mademoiselle Bourienne’s help the princess had
maintained the conversation very well, but at the very last
moment, just when he rose, she was so tired of talking of
what did not interest her, and her mind was so full of the
question why she alone was granted so little happiness in
life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat still, her
luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing that
he had risen.
Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to
notice her abstraction, made some remark to
Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again looked at the
princess. She still sat motionless with a look of suffering
on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the

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sadness her face expressed. He wished to help her and say

something pleasant, but could think of nothing to say.
‘Good-by, Princess!’ said he.
She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said as if waking up. ‘Are
you going already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but
the cushion for the countess!’
‘Wait a moment, I’ll fetch it,’ said Mademoiselle
Bourienne, and she left the room.
They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one
another.
‘Yes, Princess,’ said Nicholas at last with a sad smile,
‘it doesn’t seem long ago since we first met at
Bogucharovo, but how much water has flowed since then!
In what distress we all seemed to be then, yet I would
give much to bring back that time... but there’s no
bringing it back.’
Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her
own luminous ones as he said this. She seemed to be
trying to fathom the hidden meaning of his words which
would explain his feeling for her.
‘Yes, yes,’ said she, ‘but you have no reason to regret
the past, Count. As I understand your present life, I think

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you will always recall it with satisfaction, because the

self-sacrifice that fills it now..’
‘I cannot accept your praise,’ he interrupted her
hurriedly. ‘On the contrary I continually reproach
myself.... But this is not at all an interesting or cheerful
subject.’
His face again resumed its former stiff and cold
expression. But the princess had caught a glimpse of the
man she had known and loved, and it was to him that she
now spoke.
‘I thought you would allow me to tell you this,’ she
said. ‘I had come so near to you... and to all your family
that I thought you would not consider my sympathy
misplaced, but I was mistaken,’ and suddenly her voice
trembled. ‘I don’t know why,’ she continued, recovering
herself, ‘but you used to be different, and..’
‘There are a thousand reasons why,’ laying special
emphasis on the why. ‘Thank you, Princess,’ he added
softly. ‘Sometimes it is hard.’
‘So that’s why! That’s why!’ a voice whispered in
Princess Mary’s soul. ‘No, it was not only that gay, kind,
and frank look, not only that handsome exterior, that I
loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute, self-sacrificing
spirit too,’ she said to herself. ‘Yes, he is poor now and I

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am rich.... Yes, that’s the only reason.... Yes, were it not

for that...’ And remembering his former tenderness, and
looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly
understood the cause of his coldness.
‘But why, Count, why?’ she almost cried,
unconsciously moving closer to him. ‘Why? Tell me. You
must tell me!’
He was silent.
‘I don’t understand your why, Count,’ she continued,
‘but it’s hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you
wish to deprive me of our former friendship. And that
hurts me.’ There were tears in her eyes and in her voice. ‘I
have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard
for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!’ and suddenly she
began to cry and was hurrying from the room.
‘Princess, for God’s sake!’ he exclaimed, trying to stop
her. ‘Princess!’
She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed
silently into one another’s eyes- and what had seemed
impossible and remote suddenly became possible,
inevitable, and very near.

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Chapter VII

In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary

and moved to Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and
Sonya.
Within four years he had paid off all his remaining
debts without selling any of his wife’s property, and
having received a small inheritance on the death of a
cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as well.
In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his
affairs that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining
Bald Hills and was negotiating to buy back Otradnoe- that
being his pet dream.
Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew
so devoted to it that it became his favorite and almost his
sole occupation. Nicholas was a plain farmer: he did not
like innovations, especially the English ones then coming
into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate
management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive
products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did
not make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his
estate. He always had before his mind’s eye the estate as a
whole and not any particular part of it. The chief thing in

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his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in
the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most
important agent by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and
plow were made effective- the peasant laborer. When
Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its
different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted
his attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a
tool, but also a judge of farming and an end in himself. At
first he watched the serfs, trying to understand their aims
and what they considered good and bad, and only
pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality
learning from them their methods, their manner of speech,
and their judgment of what was good and bad. Only when
he had understood the peasants’ tastes and aspirations,
had learned to talk their language, to grasp the hidden
meaning of their words, and felt akin to them did he begin
boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform toward
them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas’
management produced very brilliant results.
Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the
management of the estates he at once unerringly
appointed as bailiff, village elder, and delegate, the very
men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they had
the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands.

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Before analyzing the properties of manure, before

entering into the debit and credit (as he ironically called
it), he found out how many cattle the peasants had and
increased the number by all possible means. He kept the
peasant families together in the largest groups possible,
not allowing the family groups to divide into separate
households. He was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved,
and the weak, and tried to get them expelled from the
commune.
He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the
peasants’ hay and corn as of his own, and few landowners
had their crops sown and harvested so early and so well,
or got so good a return, as did Nicholas.
He disliked having anything to do with the domestic
serfs- the ‘drones’ as he called them- and everyone said
he spoiled them by his laxity. When a decision had to be
taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one had to
be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted
everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have
a domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he
did so without the least hesitation. He never felt any
hesitation in dealing with the peasants. He knew that his
every decision would be approved by them all with very
few exceptions.

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He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish

a man, or to make things easy for or reward anyone,
merely because he felt inclined to do so. He could not
have said by what standard he judged what he should or
should not do, but the standard was quite firm and definite
in his own mind.
Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or
irregularity, he would say: ‘What can one do with our
Russian peasants?’ and imagined that he could not bear
them.
Yet he loved ‘our Russian peasants’ and their way of
life with his whole soul, and for that very reason had
understood and assimilated the one way and manner of
farming which produced good results.
Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her
husband’s and regretted that she could not share it; but
she could not understand the joys and vexations he
derived from that world, to her so remote and alien. She
could not understand why he was so particularly animated
and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and
spending the whole morning in the fields or on the
threshing floor, he returned from the sowing or mowing
or reaping to have tea with her. She did not understand
why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the

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farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew

Ermishin, who with his family had carted corn all night;
or of the fact that his (Nicholas’) sheaves were already
stacked before anyone else had his harvest in. She did not
understand why he stepped out from the window to the
veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so
joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry
and thirsty shoots of the young oats, or why when the
wind carried away a threatening cloud during the hay
harvest he would return from the barn, flushed,
sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and
gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would
say: ‘Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants’
will all be under cover.’
Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and
always ready to anticipate her wishes, should become
almost desperate when she brought him a petition from
some peasant men or women who had appealed to her to
be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas,
should obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to
interfere in what was not her business. She felt he had a
world apart, which he loved passionately and which had
laws she had not fathomed.

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Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke

of the good work he was doing for his serfs, he would be
vexed and reply: ‘Not in the least; it never entered my
head and I wouldn’t do that for their good! That’s all
poetry and old wives’ talk- all that doing good to one’s
neighbor! What I want is that our children should not
have to go begging. I must put our affairs in order while I
am alive, that’s all. And to do that, order and strictness are
essential.... That’s all about it!’ said he, clenching his
vigorous fist. ‘And fairness, of course,’ he added, ‘for if
the peasant is naked and hungry and has only one
miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or
for me.’
And all Nicholas did was fruitful- probably just
because he refused to allow himself to think that he was
doing good to others for virtue’s sake. His means
increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came to
beg him to buy them, and long after his death the memory
of his administration was devoutly preserved among the
serfs. ‘He was a master... the peasants’ affairs first and
then his own. Of course he was not to be trifled with
either- in a word, he was a real master!’

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Chapter VIII

One matter connected with his management sometimes

worried Nicholas, and that was his quick temper together
with his old hussar habit of making free use of his fists.
At first he saw nothing reprehensible in this, but in the
second year of his marriage his view of that form of
punishment suddenly changed.
Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from
Bogucharovo, a man who had succeeded to the post when
Dron died and who was accused of dishonesty and
various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the porch to
question him, and immediately after the elder had given a
few replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On
returning to lunch Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat
with her head bent low over her embroidery frame, and as
usual began to tell her what he had been doing that
morning. Among other things he spoke of the
Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then
pale, but continued to sit with head bowed and lips
compressed and gave her husband no reply.
‘Such an insolent scoundrel!’ he cried, growing hot
again at the mere recollection of him. ‘If he had told me

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he was drunk and did not see... But what is the matter
with you, Mary?’ he suddenly asked.
Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but
hastily looked down again and her lips puckered.
‘Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?’
The looks of the plain Countess Mary always
improved when she was in tears. She never cried from
pain or vexation, but always from sorrow or pity, and
when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible
charm.
The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no
longer restrain herself and began to cry.
‘Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do
you... Nicholas!’ and she covered her face with her hands.
Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her
side, and paced up and down the room. He understood
what she was weeping about, but could not in his heart at
once agree with her that what he had regarded from
childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong. ‘Is it
just sentimentality, old wives’ tales, or is she right?’ he
asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced
again at her face filled with love and pain, and he
suddenly realized that she was right and that he had long
been sinning against himself.

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‘Mary,’ he said softly, going up to her, ‘it will never

happen again; I give you my word. Never,’ he repeated in
a trembling voice like a boy asking for forgiveness.
The tears flowed faster still from the countess’ eyes.
She took his hand and kissed it.
‘Nicholas, when when did you break your cameo?’ she
asked to change the subject, looking at his finger on
which he wore a ring with a cameo of Laocoon’s head.
‘Today- it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don’t remind
me of it!’ and again he flushed. ‘I give you my word of
honor it shan’t occur again, and let this always be a
reminder to me,’ and he pointed to the broken ring.
After that, when in discussions with his village elders
or stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists
began to clench, Nicholas would turn the broken ring on
his finger and would drop his eyes before the man who
was making him angry. But he did forget himself once or
twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and
confess to his wife, and would again promise that this
should really be the very last time.
‘Mary, you must despise me!’ he would say. ‘I deserve
it.’

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‘You should go, go away at once, if you don’t feel

strong enough to control yourself,’ she would reply sadly,
trying to comfort her husband.
Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was
respected but not liked. He did not concern himself with
the interests of his own class, and consequently some
thought him proud and others thought him stupid. The
whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was
busy with the work on his farm. In autumn he gave
himself up to hunting with the same business like
seriousness- leaving home for a month, or even two, with
his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his
time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical,
and on these he spent a certain sum every year. He was
collecting, as he said, a serious library, and he made it a
rule to read through all the books he bought. He would sit
in his study with a grave air, reading- a task he first
imposed upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards
became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure
and a consciousness of being occupied with serious
matters. In winter, except for business excursions, he
spent most of his time at home making himself one with
his family and entering into all the details of his children’s
relations with their mother. The harmony between him

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and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily

discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her.
From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his
house. Before that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had
passed between himself and Sonya, blaming himself and
commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to be
gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the
wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward
her, and imagined that her wealth had influenced
Nicholas’ choice. She could not find fault with Sonya in
any way and tried to be fond of her, but often felt ill-will
toward her which she could not overcome.
Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about
Sonya and about her own injustice toward her.
‘You know,’ said Natasha, ‘you have read the Gospels
a great deal- there is a passage in them that just fits
Sonya.’
‘What?’ asked Countess Mary, surprised.
‘‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that
hath not shall be taken away.’ You remember? She is one
that hath not; why, I don’t know. Perhaps she lacks
egotism, I don’t know, but from her is taken away, and
everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am
dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted

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Nicholas to marry her, but I always had a sort of

presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile
flower, you know- like some strawberry blossoms.
Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she
doesn’t feel it as you or I would.’
Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words
in the Gospel must be understood differently, yet looking
at Sonya she agreed with Natasha’s explanation. It really
seemed that Sonya did not feel her position trying, and
had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower.
She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of
the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself
not to the people but to the home. She waited on the old
countess, petted and spoiled the children, was always
ready to render the small services for which she had a gift,
and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with
insufficient gratitude.
The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though
not on the same scale as under the old prince.
The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances,
were more than simple. The immense house on the old
stone foundations was of wood, plastered only inside. It
had bare deal floors and was furnished with very simple
hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their

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own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The

house was spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and
apartments for visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs’
and Bolkonskis’ relations sometimes came to Bald Hills
with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for
months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days
and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors
would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year
life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary
occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and
suppers, provided out of the produce of the estate.

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Chapter IX

It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December,

1820. Natasha had been staying at her brother’s with her
husband and children since early autumn. Pierre had gone
to Petersburg on business of his own for three weeks as he
said, but had remained there nearly seven weeks and was
expected back every minute.
Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the
retired General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with
the Rostovs this fifth of December.
On the sixth, which was his name day when the house
would be full of visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to
exchange his Tartar tunic for a tail coat, and put on
narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to the new
church he had built, and then receive visitors who would
come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and
talk about the elections of the nobility; but he considered
himself entitled to spend the eve of that day in his usual
way. He examined the bailiff’s accounts of the village in
Ryazan which belonged to his wife’s nephew, wrote two
business letters, and walked over to the granaries, cattle
yards and stables before dinner. Having taken precautions

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against the general drunkenness to be expected on the

morrow because it was a great saint’s day, he returned to
dinner, and without having time for a private talk with his
wife sat down at the long table laid for twenty persons, at
which the whole household had assembled. At that table
were his mother, his mother’s old lady companion
Belova, his wife, their three children with their governess
and tutor, his wife’s nephew with his tutor, Sonya,
Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their governess, and
old Michael Ivanovich, the late prince’s architect, who
was living on in retirement at Bald Hills.
Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When
her husband took his place she concluded, from the rapid
manner in which after taking up his table napkin he
pushed back the tumbler and wineglass standing before
him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case
when he came in to dinner straight from the farm-
especially before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that
mood of his, and when she herself was in a good frame of
mind quietly waited till he had had his soup and then
began to talk to him and make him admit that there was
no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that
and was hurt that he should be angry with her without any
reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had

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been. He replied. She again inquired whether everything

was going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made him
wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.
‘Then I’m not mistaken,’ thought Countess Mary.
‘Why is he cross with me?’ She concluded from his tone
that he was vexed with her and wished to end the
conversation. She knew her remarks sounded unnatural,
but could not refrain from asking some more questions.
Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon
became general and lively, and she did not talk to her
husband. When they left the table and went as usual to
thank the old countess, Countess Mary held out her hand
and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was angry
with her.
‘You always have such strange fancies! I didn’t even
think of being angry,’ he replied.
But the word always seemed to her to imply: ‘Yes, I
am angry but I won’t tell you why.’
Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that
even Sonya and the old countess, who felt jealous and
would have liked them to disagree, could find nothing to
reproach them with; but even they had their moments of
antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after
they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a

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feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred

most frequently during Countess Mary’s pregnancies, and
this was such a time.
‘Well, messieurs et mesdames,’ said Nicholas loudly
and with apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess
Mary that he did it on purpose to vex her), ‘I have been on
my feet since six this morning. Tomorrow I shall have to
suffer, so today I’ll go and rest.’
And without a word to his wife he went to the little
sitting room and lay down on the sofa.
‘That’s always the way,’ thought Countess Mary. ‘He
talks to everyone except me. I see... I see that I am
repulsive to him, especially when I am in this condition.’
She looked down at her expanded figure and in the glass
at her pale, sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now
looked larger than ever.
And everything annoyed her- Denisov’s shouting and
laughter, Natasha’s talk, and especially a quick glance
Sonya gave her.
Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary
found for feeling irritated.
Having sat awhile with her visitors without
understanding anything of what they were saying, she
softly left the room and went to the nursery.

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The children were playing at ‘going to Moscow’ in a

carriage made of chairs and invited her to go with them.
She sat down and played with them a little, but the
thought of her husband and his unreasonable crossness
worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.
‘Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with
him,’ she said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy,
imitating his mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not
notice him.
‘Mary, dear, I think he is asleep- he was so tired,’ said
Sonya, meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to
Countess Mary that she crossed her path everywhere).
‘Andrew may wake him.’
Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew
following her, felt that Sonya was right, and for that very
reason flushed and with evident difficulty refrained from
saying something harsh. She made no reply, but to avoid
obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly
and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door.
From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the
sound of his even breathing, every slightest tone of which
was familiar to his wife. As she listened to it she saw
before her his smooth handsome forehead, his mustache,

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and his whole face, as she had so often seen it in the

stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly
moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little
Andrew shouted from outside the door: ‘Papa! Mamma’s
standing here!’ Countess Mary turned pale with fright and
made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and quiet ensued
for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how
Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she
heard Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and
his voice said crossly:
‘I can’t get a moment’s peace.... Mary, is that you?
Why did you bring him here?’
‘I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive
me..’
Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary
moved away from the door and took the boy back to the
nursery. Five minutes later little black-eyed three-year-old
Natasha, her father’s pet, having learned from her brother
that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room,
ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-
eyed little girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up
to the sofa with energetic steps of her sturdy little legs,
and having examined the position of her father, who was
asleep with his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the

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hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a

tender smile on his face.
‘Natasha, Natasha!’ came Countess Mary’s frightened
whisper from the door. ‘Papa wants to sleep.’
‘No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep,’ said little
Natasha with conviction. ‘He’s laughing.’
Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter
in his arms.
‘Come in, Mary,’ he said to his wife.
She went in and sat down by her husband.
‘I did not notice him following me,’ she said timidly. ‘I
just looked in.’
Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced
at his wife and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other
arm around her and kissed her hair.
‘May I kiss Mamma?’ he asked Natasha.
Natasha smiled bashfully.
‘Again!’ she commanded, pointing with a peremptory
gesture to the spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
‘I don’t know why you think I am cross,’ said
Nicholas, replying to the question he knew was in his
wife’s mind.
‘You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel
when you are like that. It always seems to me... ‘

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‘Mary, don’t talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed

of yourself!’ he said gaily.
‘It seems to be that you can’t love me, that I am so
plain... always... and now... in this cond..’
‘Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears,
it’s love that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and
women of that kind who are loved for their beauty. But do
I love my wife? I don’t love her, but... I don’t know how
to put it. Without you, or when something comes between
us like this, I seem lost and can’t do anything. Now do I
love my finger? I don’t love it, but just try to cut it off!
‘I’m not like that myself, but I understand. So you’re
not angry with me?’
‘Awfully angry!’ he said, smiling and getting up. And
smoothing his hair he began to pace the room.
‘Do you know, Mary, what I’ve been thinking?’ he
began, immediately thinking aloud in his wife’s presence
now that they had made it up.
He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did
not care. A thought had occurred to him and so it
belonged to her also. And he told her of his intention to
persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.

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Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some

remark, and in her turn began thinking aloud. Her
thoughts were about the children.
‘You can see the woman in her already,’ she said in
French, pointing to little Natasha. ‘You reproach us
women with being illogical. Here is our logic. I say: ‘Papa
wants to sleep!’ but she says, ‘No, he’s laughing.’ And
she was right,’ said Countess Mary with a happy smile.
‘Yes, yes.’ And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in
his strong hand, lifted her high, placed her on his
shoulder, held her by the legs, and paced the room with
her. There was an expression of carefree happiness on the
faces of both father and daughter.
‘But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of
this one,’ his wife whispered in French.
‘Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..’
At that moment they heard the sound of the door
pulley and footsteps in the hall and anteroom, as if
someone had arrived.
‘Somebody has come.’
‘I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see,’ said Countess
Mary and left the room.
In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his
little daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he

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took the laughing child quickly from his shoulder and

pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded him of
dancing, and looking at the child’s round happy little face
he thought of what she would be like when he was an old
man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka
with her as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with
his daughter.
‘It is he, it is he, Nicholas!’ said Countess Mary, re-
entering the room a few minutes later. ‘Now our Natasha
has come to life. You should have seen her ecstasy, and
how he caught it for having stayed away so long. Well,
come along now, quick, quick! It’s time you two were
parted,’ she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who
clung to her father.
Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
‘I should never, never have believed that one could be
so happy,’ she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her
face but at the same time she sighed, and her deep eyes
expressed a quiet sadness as though she felt, through her
happiness, that there is another sort of happiness
unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily
thought at that instant.

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Chapter X

Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in

1820 already had three daughters besides a son for whom
she had longed and whom she was now nursing. She had
grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult to
recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively
Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined
and had a calm, soft, and serene expression. In her face
there was none of the ever-glowing animation that had
formerly burned there and constituted its charm. Now her
face and body were of all that one saw, and her soul was
not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong,
handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely
kindled in her face now. That happened only when, as
was the case that day, her husband returned home, or a
sick child was convalescent, or when she and Countess
Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him
to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince
Andrew’s memory), or on the rare occasions when
something happened to induce her to sing, a practice she
had quite abandoned since her marriage. At the rare
moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome,

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fully developed body she was even more attractive than in

former days.
Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had
lived in Moscow, in Petersburg, on their estate near
Moscow, or with her mother, that is to say, in Nicholas’
house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often
seen in society, and those who met her there were not
pleased with her and found her neither attractive nor
amiable. Not that Natasha liked solitude- she did not
know whether she liked it or not, she even thought that
she did not- but with her pregnancies, her confinements,
the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of
her husband’s life, she had demands on her time which
could be satisfied only by renouncing society. All who
had known Natasha before her marriage wondered at the
change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old
countess with her maternal instinct had realized that all
Natasha’s outbursts had been due to her need of children
and a husband- as she herself had once exclaimed at
Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest- and her mother
was now surprised at the surprise expressed by those who
had never understood Natasha, and she kept saying that
she had always known that Natasha would make an
exemplary wife and mother.

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‘Only she lets her love of her husband and children

overflow all bounds,’ said the countess, ‘so that it even
becomes absurd.’
Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by
clever folk, especially by the French, which says that a
girl should not let herself go when she marries, should not
neglect her accomplishments, should be even more
careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried,
and should fascinate her husband as much as she did
before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary
had at once abandoned all her witchery, of which her
singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it
up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took
no pains with her manners or with of speech, or with her
toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most
becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by
being too exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those
rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly
taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the
eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the first
moment given herself up entirely- that is, with her whole
soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that
her unity with her husband was not maintained by the
poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by

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something else- indefinite but firm as the bond between

her own body and soul.
To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and
sing romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have
seemed as strange as to adorn herself to attract herself. To
adorn herself for others might perhaps have been
agreeable- she did not know- but she had no time at all for
it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to singing,
to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had
no time to spare for these things.
We know that man has the faculty of becoming
completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it may
be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not
grow to infinite proportions if one’s entire attention is
devoted to it.
The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha’s
attention was her family: that is, her husband whom she
had to keep so that he should belong entirely to her and to
the home, and the children whom she had to bear, bring
into the world, nurse, and bring up.
And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only
but with her whole soul, her whole being, into the subject
that absorbed her, the larger did that subject grow and the
weaker and more inadequate did her powers appear, so

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that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and

yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered
necessary.
There were then as now conversations and discussions
about women’s rights, the relations of husband and wife
and their freedom and rights, though these themes were
not yet termed questions as they are now; but these topics
were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively
did not understand them.
These questions, then as now, existed only for those
who see nothing in marriage but the pleasure married
people get from one another, that is, only the beginnings
of marriage and not its whole significance, which lies in
the family.
Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like
the question of how to get the greatest gratification from
one’s dinner, did not then and do not now exist for those
for whom the purpose of a dinner is the nourishment it
affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.
If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man
who eats two dinners at once may perhaps get more
enjoyment but will not attain his purpose, for his stomach
will not digest the two dinners.

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If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person

who wishes to have many wives or husbands may perhaps
obtain much pleasure, but in that case will not have a
family.
If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose
of marriage is the family, the whole question resolves
itself into not eating more than one can digest, and not
having more wives or husbands than are needed for the
family- that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed
a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a
family. And she not only saw no need of any other or
better husband, but as all the powers of her soul were
intent on serving that husband and family, she could not
imagine and saw no interest in imagining how it would be
if things were different.
Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized
the more the society of her relatives- Countess Mary, and
her brother, her mother, and Sonya. She valued the
company of those to whom she could come striding
disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and
with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on
baby’s napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring
words to the effect that baby was much better.

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To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the

way she dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words,
and her jealousy- she was jealous of Sonya, of the
governess, and of every woman, pretty or plain- were
habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general
opinion was that Pierre was under his wife’s thumb,
which was really true. From the very first days of their
married life Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre
was greatly surprised by his wife’s view, to him a
perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life
belonged to her and to the family. His wife’s demands
astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he
submitted to them.
Pierre’s subjection consisted in the fact that he not only
dared not flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to,
any other woman; did not dare dine at the Club as a
pastime, did not dare spend money a whim, and did not
dare absent himself for any length of time, except on
business- in which his wife included his intellectual
pursuits, which she did not in the least understand but to
which she attributed great importance. To make up for
this, at home Pierre had the right to regulate his life and
that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At home
Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to her

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husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he

was occupied- that is, was reading or writing in his study.
Pierre had but to show a partiality for anything to get just
what he liked done always. He had only to express a wish
and Natasha would jump up and run to fulfill it.
The entire household was governed according to
Pierre’s supposed orders, that is, by his wishes which
Natasha tried to guess. Their way of life and place of
residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natasha’s
occupations, the children’s upbringing, were all selected
not merely with regard to Pierre’s expressed wishes, but
to what Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in
conversation supposed his wishes to be. And she deduced
the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having
once arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When
Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would fight
him with his own weapons.
Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after
the birth of their first child who was delicate, when they
had to change the wet nurse three times and Natasha fell
ill from despair, Pierre one day told her of Rousseau’s
view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet nurse
is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born,
despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and

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even of her husband himself- who were all vigorously

opposed to her nursing her baby herself, a thing then
unheard of and considered injurious- she insisted on
having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies
herself.
It very often happened that in a moment of irritation
husband and wife would have a dispute, but long
afterwards Pierre to his surprise and delight would find in
his wife’s ideas and actions the very thought against
which she had argued, but divested of everything
superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had
added when expressing his opinion.
After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous
and firm consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he
felt this because he saw himself reflected in his wife. He
felt the good and bad within himself inextricably mingled
and overlapping. But only what was really good in him
was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was
rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning
but was a direct and mysterious reflection.

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Chapter XI

Two months previously when Pierre was already

staying with the Rostovs he had received a letter from
Prince Theodore, asking him to come to Petersburg to
confer on some important questions that were being
discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of
the principal founders.
On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s
letters) Natasha herself suggested that he should go to
Petersburg, though she would feel his absence very
acutely. She attributed immense importance to all her
husband’s intellectual and abstract interests though she
did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a
hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre’s timid look
of inquiry after reading the letter she replied by asking
him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return. He was
given four weeks’ leave of absence.
Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more
than a fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant
state of alarm, depression, and irritability.
Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much
dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, had arrived

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during that fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow

and surprise as at a bad likeness of a person once dear. A
dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about the
nursery was all he saw and heard from his former
enchantress.
Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially
when her mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in
their efforts to console her tried to excuse Pierre and
suggested reasons for his delay in returning.
‘It’s all nonsense, all rubbish- those discussions which
lead to nothing and all those idiotic societies!’ Natasha
declared of the very affairs in the immense importance of
which she firmly believed.
And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her
only boy. No one else could tell her anything so
comforting or so reasonable as this little three-month-old
creature when he lay at her breast and she was conscious
of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little
nose. That creature said: ‘You are angry, you are jealous,
you would like to pay him out, you are afraid- but here
am I! And I am he...’ and that was unanswerable. It was
more than true.
During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the
baby for comfort so often, and fussed over him so much,

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that she overfed him and he fell ill. She was terrified by
his illness, and yet that was just what she needed. While
attending to him she bore the anxiety about her husband
more easily.
She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s
sleigh was heard at the front door, and the old nurse-
knowing how to please her mistress- entered the room
inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming face.
‘Has he come?’ Natasha asked quickly in a whisper,
afraid to move lest she should rouse the dozing baby.
‘He’s come, ma’am,’ whispered the nurse.
The blood rushed to Natasha’s face and her feet
involuntarily moved, but she could not jump up and run
out. The baby again opened his eyes and looked at her.
‘You’re here?’ he seemed to be saying, and again lazily
smacked his lips.
Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked
him a little, handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid
steps toward the door. But at the door she stopped as if
her conscience reproached her for having in her joy left
the child too soon, and she glanced round. The nurse with
raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of his cot.

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‘Go, ma’am! Don’t worry, go!’ she whispered,

smiling, with the kind of familiarity that grows up
between a nurse and her mistress.
Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
Denisov, who had come out of the study into the
dancing room with his pipe, now for the first time
recognized the old Natasha. A flood of brilliant, joyful
light poured from her transfigured face.
‘He’s come!’ she exclaimed as she ran past, and
Denisov felt that he too was delighted that Pierre, whom
he did not much care for, had returned.
On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a
fur coat unwinding his scarf. ‘It’s he! It’s really he! He
has come!’ she said to herself, and rushing at him
embraced him, pressed his head to her breast, and then
pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy, happy face,
covered with hoarfrost. ‘Yes, it is he, happy and
contented..’
Then all at once she remembered the tortures of
suspense she had experienced for the last fortnight, and
the joy that had lit up her face vanished; she frowned and
overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of reproaches and
angry words.

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‘Yes, it’s all very well for you. You are pleased,
you’ve had a good time.... But what about me? You might
at least have shown consideration for the children. I am
nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Petya was at death’s
door. But you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying..’
Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have
come sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and
would blow over in a minute or two; above all he knew
that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted to smile
but dared not even think of doing so. He made a piteous,
frightened face and bent down.
‘I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?’
‘All right now. Come along! I wonder you’re not
ashamed! If only you could see what I was like without
you, how I suffered!’
‘You are well?’
‘Come, come!’ she said, not letting go of his arm. And
they went to their rooms.
When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he
was in the nursery holding his baby son, who was again
awake, on his huge right palm and dandling him. A
blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby’s broad face
with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since

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over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha’s

face as she gazed tenderly at her husband and child.
‘And have you talked everything well over with Prince
Theodore?’ she asked.
‘Yes, capitally.’
‘You see, he holds it up.’ (She meant the baby’s head.)
‘But how he did frighten me... You’ve seen the princess?
Is it true she’s in love with that..’
‘Yes, just fancy..’
At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in.
Pierre with the baby on his hand stooped, kissed them,
and replied to their inquiries. But in spite of much that
was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby with the
little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all his
attention.
‘How sweet!’ said Countess Mary, looking at and
playing with the baby. ‘Now, Nicholas,’ she added,
turning to her husband, ‘I can’t understand how it is you
don’t see the charm of these delicious marvels.’
‘I don’t and can’t,’ replied Nicholas, looking coldly at
the baby. ‘A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!’
‘And yet he’s such an affectionate father,’ said
Countess Mary, vindicating her husband, ‘but only after
they are a year old or so..’

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‘Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly,’ said Natasha.

‘He says his hand is just made for a baby’s seat. Just
look!’
‘Only not for this...’ Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a
laugh, and shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.

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Chapter XII

As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills

several perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one
harmonious whole, though each retained its own
peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every
event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house was
important to all these worlds, but each had its own special
reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence
independently of the others.
For instance, Pierre’s return was a joyful and important
event and they all felt it to be so.
The servants- the most reliable judges of their masters
because they judge not by their conversation or
expressions of feeling but by their acts and way of life-
were glad of Pierre’s return because they knew that when
he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day
attend to the estate, and would would be in better spirits
and temper, and also because they would all receive
handsome presents for the holidays.
The children and their governesses were glad of
Pierre’s return because no one else drew them into the
social life of the household as he did. He alone could play

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on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only piece) to which,

as he said, all possible dances could be danced, and they
felt sure he had brought presents for them all.
Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and
intelligent, with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes,
was delighted because Uncle Pierre as he called him was
the object of his rapturous and passionate affection. No
one had instilled into him this love for Pierre whom he
saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had brought
him up had done her utmost to make him love her
husband as she loved him, and little Nicholas did love his
uncle, but loved him with just a shade of contempt. Pierre,
however, he adored. He did not want to be an hussar or a
Knight of St. George like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted
to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In Pierre’s
presence his face always shone with pleasure and he
flushed and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He
did not miss a single word he uttered, and would
afterwards, with Dessalles or by himself, recall and
reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had said.
Pierre’s past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of
which young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture
from some words he had overheard), his adventures in
Moscow, his captivity, Platon Karataev (of whom he had

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heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha (of whom the lad
was also particularly fond), and especially Pierre’s
friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not
remember- all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a
saint.
From broken remarks about Natasha and his father,
from the emotion with which Pierre spoke of that dead
father, and from the careful, reverent tenderness with
which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just
beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that
his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her
to his friend. But the father whom the boy did not
remember appeared to him a divinity who could not be
pictured, and of whom he never thought without a
swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the
boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.
The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped
to enliven and unite any company he was in.
The grown-up members of the family, not to mention
his wife, were pleased to have back a friend whose
presence made life run more smoothly and peacefully.
The old ladies were pleased with the presents he
brought them, and especially that Natasha would now be
herself again.

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Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various

worlds and made haste to satisfy all their expectations.
Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men,
Pierre, with the aid of a list his wife drew up, had now
bought everything, not forgetting his mother- and brother-
in-law’s commissions, nor the dress material for a present
to Belova, nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early
days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his
wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the
things he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback
by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he forgot
everything. But in time he grew used to this demand.
Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for herself, and gave
him commissions for others only when he himself had
offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected
and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for
everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he
now incurred Natasha’s censure it was only for buying
too many and too expensive things. To her other defects
(as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were
qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now
added stinginess.
From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on
a footing entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to

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his surprise that he spent only half as much as before, and

that his affairs- which had been in disorder of late, chiefly
because of his first wife’s debts- had begun to improve.
Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that
most expensive luxury, the kind of life that can be
changed at any moment, was no longer his nor did he
wish for it. He felt that his way of life had now been
settled once for all till death and that to change it was not
in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.
With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his
purchases.
‘What do you think of this?’ said he, unrolling a piece
of stuff like a shopman.
Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her
eldest daughter on her lap, turned her sparkling eyes
swiftly from her husband to the things he showed her.
‘That’s for Belova? Excellent!’ She felt the quality of
the material. ‘It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?’
Pierre told her the price.
‘Too dear!’ Natasha remarked. ‘How pleased the
children will be and Mamma too! Only you need not have
bought me this,’ she added, unable to suppress a smile as
she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls, of a
kind then just coming into fashion.

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‘Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it,’

returned Pierre.
‘When am I to wear it?’ and Natasha stuck it in her
coil of hair. ‘When I take little Masha into society?
Perhaps they will be fashionable again by then. Well, let’s
go now.’
And collecting the presents they went first to the
nursery and then to the old countess’ rooms.
The countess was sitting with her companion Belova,
playing grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha
came into the drawing room with parcels under their
arms.
The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and
wore a cap with a frill that surrounded her face. Her face
had shriveled, her upper lip had sunk in, and her eyes
were dim.
After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid
succession, she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten
in this world and left without aim or object for her
existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept awake, but did not
live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted
nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity
only death could give her. But until death came she had to
go on living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity

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one sees in very young children and very old people was
particularly evident in her. Her life had no external aims-
only a need to exercise her various functions and
inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think,
speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,
merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles,
nerves, and a liver. She did these things not under any
external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do,
when behind the purpose for which they strive that of
exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She talked
only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue
and lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had
to be cleared, and so on. What for people in their full
vigor is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.
Thus in the morning- especially if she had eaten
anything rich the day before- she felt a need of being
angry and would choose as the handiest pretext Belova’s
deafness.
She would begin to say something to her in a low tone
from the other end of the room.
‘It seems a little warmer today, my dear,’ she would
murmur.

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And when Belova replied: ‘Oh yes, they’ve come,’ she

would mutter angrily: ‘O Lord! How stupid and deaf she
is!’
Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem
too dry or too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After
these fits of irritability her face would grow yellow, and
her maids knew by infallible symptoms when Belova
would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess’
face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so
she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of
thinking- and the pretext for that was a game of patience.
When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be the
pretext. When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his
health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to
speak spitefully, the pretext would be Countess Mary.
When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was
usually toward seven o’clock when she had had an after-
dinner rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the
retelling of the same stories over and over again to the
same audience.
The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole
household though no one ever spoke of it, and they all
made every possible effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a
rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between Nicholas,

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Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the common

understanding of her condition expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said
that she had played her part in life, that what they now
saw was not her whole self, that we must all become like
her, and that they were glad to yield to her, to restrain
themselves for this once precious being formerly as full of
life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied.
‘Memento mori,’ said these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that
household, and the little children failed to understand this
and avoided her.

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Chapter XIII

When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the
countess was in one of her customary states in which she
needed the mental exertion of playing patience, and so-
though by force of habit she greeted him with the words
she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
absence: ‘High time, my dear, high time! We were all
weary of waiting for you. Well, thank God!’ and received
her presents with another customary remark: ‘It’s not the
gift that’s precious, my dear, but that you give it to me, an
old woman...’- yet it was evident that she was not pleased
by Pierre’s arrival at that moment when it diverted her
attention from the unfinished game.
She finished her game of patience and only then
examined the presents. They consisted of a box for cards,
of splendid workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup
with shepherdesses depicted on it and with a lid, and a
gold snuffbox with the count’s portrait on the lid which
Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in Petersburg. The
countess had long wished for such a box, but as she did
not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the
portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards.

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‘Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up,’ said

she as she always did. ‘But best of all you have brought
yourself back- for I never saw anything like it, you ought
to give your wife a scolding! What are we to do with her?
She is like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn’t see
anything, doesn’t remember anything,’ she went on,
repeating her usual phrases. ‘Look, Anna Timofeevna,’
she added to her companion, ‘see what a box for cards my
son has brought us!’
Belova admired the presents and was delighted with
her dress material.
Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and
Denisov had much to talk about that they could not
discuss before the old countess- not that anything was
hidden from her, but because she had dropped so far
behindhand in many things that had they begun to
converse in her presence they would have had to answer
inopportune questions and to repeat what they had already
told her many times: that so-and-so was dead and so-and-
so was married, which she would again be unable to
remember- yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the
drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the
countess’ questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged
and whether Countess Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings

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and still thought of them, and other matters that interested

no one and to which she herself was indifferent.
Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet
unavoidable, continued all through teatime. All the
grown-up members of the family were assembled near the
round tea table at which Sonya presided beside the
samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses
had had tea and their voices were audible from the next
room. At tea all sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas
beside the stove at a small table where his tea was handed
to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi bitch (daughter of the
first Milka), with a quite gray face and large black eyes
that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the
armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair,
mustache, and whiskers had turned half gray, sat beside
countess Mary with his general’s tunic unbuttoned; Pierre
sat between his wife and the old countess. He spoke of
what he knew might interest the old lady and that she
could understand. He told her of external social events
and of the people who had formed the circle of her
contemporaries and had once been a real, living, and
distinct group, but who were now for the most part
scattered about the world and like herself were garnering
the last ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years.

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But to the old countess those contemporaries of hers

seemed to be the only serious and real society. Natasha
saw by Pierre’s animation that his visit had been
interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not
say it before the old countess. Denisov, not being a
member of the family, did not understand Pierre’s caution
and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was
occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them
about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment,
then about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society.
Once or twice Pierre was carried away and began to speak
of these things, but Nicholas and Natasha always brought
him back to the health of Prince Ivan and Countess Mary
Alexeevna.
‘Well, and all this idiocy- Gossner and Tatawinova?’
Denisov asked. ‘Is that weally still going on?’
‘Going on?’ Pierre exclaimed. ‘Why more than ever!
The Bible Society is the whole government now!’
‘What is that, mon cher ami?’ asked the countess, who
had finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for
being angry after her meal. ‘What are you saying about
the government? I don’t understand.’
‘Well, you know, Maman,’ Nicholas interposed,
knowing how to translate things into his mother’s

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language, ‘Prince Alexander Golitsyn has founded a

society and in consequence has great influence, they say.’
‘Arakcheev and Golitsyn,’ incautiously remarked
Pierre, ‘are now the whole government! And what a
government! They see treason everywhere and are afraid
of everything.’
‘Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a
most estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary
Antonovna’s,’ said the countess in an offended tone; and
still more offended that they all remained silent, she went
on: ‘Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel Society!
Well, and what harm is there in that?’ and she rose
(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression
sailed back to her table in the sitting room.
The melancholy silence that followed was broken by
the sounds of the children’s voices and laughter from the
next room. Evidently some jolly excitement was going on
there.
‘Finished, finished!’ little Natasha’s gleeful yell rose
above them all.
Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and
Nicholas (Natasha he never lost sight of) and smiled
happily.
‘That’s delightful music!’ said he.

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‘It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her

stocking,’ said Countess Mary.
‘Oh, I’ll go and see,’ said Pierre, jumping up. ‘You
know,’ he added, stopping at the door, ‘why I’m
especially fond of that music? It is always the first thing
that tells me all is well. When I was driving here today,
the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I grew. As I
entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha’s peals of laughter
and that meant that all was well.’
‘I know! I know that feeling,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I
mustn’t go there- those stockings are to be a surprise for
me.’
Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and
laughter grew still louder.
‘Come, Anna Makarovna,’ Pierre’s voice was heard
saying, ‘come here into the middle of the room and at the
word of command, ‘One, two,’ and when I say ‘three’...
You stand here, and you in my arms- well now! One,
two!...’ said Pierre, and a silence followed: ‘three!’ and a
rapturously breathless cry of children’s voices filled the
room. ‘Two, two!’ they shouted.
This meant two stockings, which by a secret process
known only to herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the
same time on the same needles, and which, when they

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were ready, she always triumphantly drew, one out of the

other, in the children’s presence.

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Chapter XIV

Soon after this the children came in to say good night.

They kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made
their bows, and they went out. Only young Nicholas and
his tutor remained. Dessalles whispered to the boy to
come downstairs.
‘No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me
stay,’ replied Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.
‘Ma tante, please let me stay,’ said he, going up to his
aunt.
His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy.
Countess Mary glanced at him and turned to Pierre.
‘When you are here he can’t tear himself away,’ she
said.
‘I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles.
Good night!’ said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss
tutor, and he turned to young Nicholas with a smile. ‘You
and I haven’t seen anything of one another yet... How like
he is growing, Mary!’ he added, addressing Countess
Mary.
‘Like my father?’ asked the boy, flushing crimson and
looking up at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.

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Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been

saying when the children had interrupted. Countess Mary
sat down doing woolwork; Natasha did not take her eyes
off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov rose, asked for
their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sonya-
who sat weary but resolute at the samovar- and
questioned Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with
shining eyes unnoticed in a corner, starting every now and
then and muttering something to himself, and evidently
experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he turned his
curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down
collar, toward the place where Pierre sat.
The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip
about those in power, in which most people see the chief
interest of home politics. Denisov, dissatisfied with the
government on account of his own disappointments in the
service, heard with pleasure of the things done in
Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made
forcible and sharp comments on what Pierre told them.
‘One used to have to be a German- now one must
dance with Tatawinova and Madame Kwudener, and
wead Ecka’tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they should
let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose- he’d knock all this
nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the

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Semenov wegiment to a fellow like that Schwa’tz!’ he

cried.
Nicholas, though free from Denisov’s readiness to find
fault with everything, also thought that discussion of the
government was a very serious and weighty matter, and
the fact that A had been appointed Minister of This and B
Governor General of That, and that the Emperor had said
so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed to him very
important. And so he thought it necessary to take an
interest in these things and to question Pierre. The
questions put by these two kept the conversation from
changing its ordinary character of gossip about the higher
government circles.
But Natasha, knowing all her husband’s ways and
ideas, saw that he had long been wishing but had been
unable to divert the conversation to another channel and
express his own deeply felt idea for the sake of which he
had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend
Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his
affairs with Prince Theodore had gone.
‘What was it about?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Always the same thing,’ said Pierre, looking round at
his listeners. ‘Everybody sees that things are going so
badly that they cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is

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the duty of all decent men to counteract it as far as they

can.’
‘What can decent men do?’ Nicholas inquired,
frowning slightly. ‘What can be done?’
‘Why, this..’
‘Come into my study,’ said Nicholas.
Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse
her baby, now heard the nurse calling her and went to the
nursery. Countess Mary followed her. The men went into
the study and little Nicholas Bolkonski followed them
unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the writing table in
a shady corner by the window.
‘Well, what would you do?’ asked Denisov.
‘Always some fantastic schemes,’ said Nicholas.
‘Why this,’ began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing
the room, sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and
lisping: ‘the position in Petersburg is this: the Emperor
does not look into anything. He has abandoned himself
altogether to this mysticism’ (Pierre could not tolerate
mysticism in anyone now). ‘He seeks only for peace, and
only these people sans foi ni loi* can give it him- people
who recklessly hack at and strangle everything-
Magnitski, Arakcheev, and tutti quanti.... You will agree
that if you did not look after your estates yourself but only

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wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the more
readily your object might be attained,’ he said to
Nicholas.
*Without faith or law.
‘Well, what does that lead up to?’ said Nicholas.
‘Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law
courts, in the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and
Military Settlements; the people are tortured,
enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young and honest
is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on.
Everything is strained to such a degree that it will
certainly break,’ said Pierre (as those who examine the
actions of any government have always said since
governments began). ‘I told them just one thing in
Petersburg.’
‘Told whom?’
‘Well, you know whom,’ said Pierre, with a meaning
glance from under his brows. ‘Prince Theodore and all
those. To encourage culture and philanthropy is all very
well of course. The aim is excellent but in the present
circumstances something else is needed.’
At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his
nephew. His face darkened and he went up to the boy.
‘Why are you here?’

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‘Why? Let him be,’ said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the

arm and continuing. ‘That is not enough, I told them.
Something else is needed. When you stand expecting the
overstrained string to snap at any moment, when everyone
is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, as many as
possible must join hands as closely as they can to
withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young
and strong is being enticed away and depraved. One is
lured by women, another by honors, a third by ambition
or money, and they go over to that camp. No independent
men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen the
scope of our society, let the mot d’ordre be not virtue
alone but independence and action as well!’
Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up
an armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre,
coughing discontentedly and frowning more and more.
‘But action with what aim?’ he cried. ‘And what
position will you adopt toward the government?’
‘Why, the position of assistants. The society need not
be secret if the government allows it. Not merely is it not
hostile to government, but it is a society of true
conservatives- a society of gentlemen in the full meaning
of that word. It is only to prevent some Pugachev or other
from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev from

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sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join

hands only for the public welfare and the general safety.’
‘Yes, but it’s a secret society and therefore a hostile
and harmful one which can only cause harm.’
‘Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe’
(they did not then venture to suggest that Russia had
saved Europe) ‘do any harm? The Tugendbund is an
alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it is what Christ
preached on the Cross.’
Natasha, who had come in during the conversation,
looked joyfully at her husband. It was not what he was
saying that pleased her- that did not even interest her, for
it seemed to her that was all extremely simple and that she
had known it a long time (it seemed so to her because she
knew that it sprang from Pierre’s whole soul), but it was
his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her
glad.
The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the
turn-down collar- whom everyone had forgotten- gazed at
Pierre with even greater and more rapturous joy. Every
word of Pierre’s burned into his heart, and with a nervous
movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke the
sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his
uncle’s table.

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‘It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the
German Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing.’
‘No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for
the sausage eaters, but I don’t understand it and can’t
even pwonounce it,’ interposed Denisov in a loud and
resolute voice. ‘I agwee that evewything here is wotten
and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don’t understand. If
we’re not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own. That’s
all wight. Je suis vot’e homme!’*
*"I’m your man.’
Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas
knitted his brows still more and began proving to Pierre
that there was no prospect of any great change and that all
the danger he spoke of existed only in his imagination.
Pierre maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties
were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas felt himself
cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully
convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him
stronger than reason, of the justice of his opinion.
‘I will tell you this,’ he said, rising and trying with
nervously twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a
corner, but finally abandoning the attempt. ‘I can’t prove
it to you. You say that everything here is rotten and that
an overthrow is coming: I don’t see it. But you also say

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that our oath of allegiance is a conditional matter, and to

that I reply: ‘You are my best friend, as you know, but if
you formed a secret society and began working against
the government- be it what it may- I know it is my duty to
obey the government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to
lead a squadron against you and cut you down, I should
not hesitate an instant, but should do it.’ And you may
argue about that as you like!’
An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha
was the first to speak, defending her husband and
attacking her brother. Her defense was weak and inapt but
she attained her object. The conversation was resumed,
and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of
Nicholas’ last remark.
When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas
Bolkonski went up to Pierre, pale and with shining,
radiant eyes.
‘Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would
he agree with you?’ he asked.
And Pierre suddenly realized what a special,
independent, complex, and powerful process of thought
and feeling must have been going on in this boy during
that conversation, and remembering all he had said he

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regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had,

however, to give him an answer.
‘Yes, I think so,’ he said reluctantly, and left the study.
The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time
to notice what he had done to the things on the table. He
flushed and went up to Nicholas.
‘Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally,’ he
said, pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.
Nicholas started angrily.
‘All right, all right,’ he said, throwing the bits under
the table.
And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty,
he turned away from the boy.
‘You ought not to have been here at all,’ he said.

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Chapter XV

The conversation at supper was not about politics or

societies, but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best-
recollections of 1812. Denisov started these and Pierre
was particularly agreeable and amusing about them. The
family separated on the most friendly terms.
After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study
and given instructions to the steward who had been
waiting for him, went to the bedroom in his dressing
gown, where he found his wife still at her table, writing.
‘What are you writing, Mary?’ Nicholas asked.
Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she
was writing would not be understood or approved by her
husband.
She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from
him, but at the same time was glad he had surprised her at
it and that she would now have to tell him.
‘A diary, Nicholas,’ she replied, handing him a blue
exercise book filled with her firm, bold writing.
‘A diary?’ Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony,
and he took up the book.
It was in French.

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December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy)

woke up he did not wish to dress and Mademoiselle
Louise sent for me. He was naughty and obstinate. I tried
threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the matter
in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse’s help to
get the other children up, telling him that I did not love
him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then
he jumped out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed
so that I could not calm him for a long time. It was plain
that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me.
Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he
again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do
anything with him by tenderness.
‘What is a ‘ticket’?’ Nicholas inquired.
‘I have begun giving the elder ones marks every
evening, showing how they have behaved.’
Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing
at him, and continued to turn over the pages and read. In
the diary was set down everything in the children’s lives
that seemed noteworthy to their mother as showing their
characters or suggesting general reflections on
educational methods. They were for the most part quite
insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or

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to the father either, now that he read this diary about his
children for the first time.
Under the date ‘5’ was entered:
Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have
no pudding. He had none, but looked so unhappily and
greedily at the others while they were eating! I think that
punishment by depriving children of sweets only develops
their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.
Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife.
The radiant eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he
approve or disapprove of her diary? There could be no
doubt not only of his approval but also of his admiration
for his wife.
Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought
Nicholas, or even done at all, but this untiring, continual
spiritual effort of which the sole aim was the children’s
moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas been able to
analyze his feelings he would have found that his steady,
tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of
wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world,
almost beyond his reach, in which she had her being.
He was proud of her intelligence and goodness,
recognized his own insignificance beside her in the
spiritual world, and rejoiced all the more that she with

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such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of

himself.
‘I quite, quite approve, my dearest!’ said he with a
significant look, and after a short pause he added: ‘And I
behaved badly today. You weren’t in the study. We began
disputing- Pierre and I- and I lost my temper. But he is
impossible: such a child! I don’t know what would
become of him if Natasha didn’t keep him in hand....
Have you any idea why he went to Petersburg? They have
formed..’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Countess Mary. ‘Natasha told me.’
‘Well, then, you know,’ Nicholas went on, growing hot
at the mere recollection of their discussion, ‘he wanted to
convince me that it is every honest man’s duty to go
against the government, and that the oath of allegiance
and duty... I am sorry you weren’t there. They all fell on
me- Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she
rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion
and she has no words of her own but only repeats his
sayings...’ added Nicholas, yielding to that irresistible
inclination which tempts us to judge those nearest and
dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about
Natasha could have been applied word for word to
himself in relation to his wife.

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‘Yes, I have noticed that,’ said Countess Mary.

‘When I told him that duty and the oath were above
everything, he started proving goodness knows what! A
pity you were not there- what would you have said?’
‘As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so.
Pierre says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being
corrupted, and that it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of
course he is right there,’ said Countess Mary, ‘but he
forgets that we have other duties nearer to us, duties
indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might
expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children.’
‘Yes, that’s it! That’s just what I said to him,’ put in
Nicholas, who fancied he really had said it. ‘But they
insisted on their own view: love of one’s neighbor and
Christianity- and all this in the presence of young
Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all my
things.’
‘Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about
little Nicholas,’ said Countess Mary. ‘He is such an
exceptional boy. I am afraid I neglect him in favor of my
own: we all have children and relations while he has no
one. He is constantly alone with his thoughts.’
‘Well, I don’t think you need reproach yourself on his
account. All that the fondest mother could do for her son

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you have done and are doing for him, and of course I am
glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This evening he
listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy- as we
were going in to supper I looked and he had broken
everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it
himself at once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A
fine lad, a fine lad!’ repeated Nicholas, who at heart was
not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but was always anxious to
recognize that he was a fine lad.
‘Still, I am not the same as his own mother,’ said
Countess Mary. ‘I feel I am not the same and it troubles
me. A wonderful boy, but I am dreadfully afraid for him.
It would be good for him to have companions.’
‘Well it won’t be for long. Next summer I’ll take him
to Petersburg,’ said Nicholas. ‘Yes, Pierre always was a
dreamer and always will be,’ he continued, returning to
the talk in the study which had evidently disturbed him.
‘Well, what business is it of mine what goes on there-
whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that? What business
was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt
that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who
could not see or understand it? And then there are you and
the children and our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that
I am at the farm or in the office from morning to night?

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No, but I know I must work to comfort my mother, to

repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as I
was.’
Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not
live by bread alone and that he attached too much
importance to these matters. But she knew she must not
say this and that it would be useless to do so. She only
took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of
approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a
few minutes’ reflection continued to think aloud.
‘You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych’ (this was
his overseer) ‘came back from the Tambov estate and told
me they are already offering eighty thousand rubles for
the forest.’
And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the
possibility of repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and
added: ‘Another ten years of life and I shall leave the
children... in an excellent position.’
Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood
all that he told her. She knew that when he thought aloud
in this way he would sometimes ask her what he had been
saying, and be vexed if he noticed that she had been
thinking about something else. But she had to force
herself to attend, for what he was saying did not interest

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her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt,
about something different. She felt a submissive tender
love for this man who would never understand all that she
understood, and this seemed to make her love for him still
stronger and added a touch of passionate tenderness.
Besides this feeling which absorbed her altogether and
hindered her from following the details of her husband’s
plans, thoughts that had no connection with what he was
saying flitted through her mind. She thought of her
nephew. Her husband’s account of the boy’s agitation
while Pierre was speaking struck her forcibly, and various
traits of his gentle, sensitive character recurred to her
mind; and while thinking of her nephew she thought also
of her own children. She did not compare them with him,
but compared her feeling for them with her feeling for
him, and felt with regret that there was something lacking
in her feeling for young Nicholas.
Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose
from the difference in their ages, but she felt herself to
blame toward him and promised in her heart to do better
and to accomplish the impossible- in this life to love her
husband, her children, little Nicholas, and all her
neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary’s
soul always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the

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absolute, and could therefore never be at peace. A stern

expression of the lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened
by the body appeared on her face. Nicholas gazed at her.
‘O God! What will become of us if she dies, as I always
fear when her face is like that?’ thought he, and placing
himself before the icon he began to say his evening
prayers.

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Chapter XVI

Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as

only a husband and wife can talk, that is, with
extraordinary clearness and rapidity, understanding and
expressing each other’s thoughts in ways contrary to all
rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or
conclusions, and in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so
used to this kind of talk with her husband that for her it
was the surest sign of something being wrong between
them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning. When
he began proving anything, or talking argumentatively
and calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do
the same, she knew that they were on the verge of a
quarrel.
From the moment they were alone and Natasha came
up to him with wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing
his head pressed it to her bosom, saying: ‘Now you are all
mine, mine! You won’t escape!’- from that moment this
conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic and
contrary to them because quite different subjects were
talked about at one and the same time. This simultaneous
discussion of many topics did not prevent a clear

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understanding but on the contrary was the surest sign that

they fully understood one another.
Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning,
and contradictory, except the feeling that guides the
dream, so in this intercourse contrary to all laws of
reason, the words themselves were not consecutive and
clear but only the feeling that prompted them.
Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother’s life and
doings, of how she had suffered and lacked life during his
own absence, and of how she was fonder than ever of
Mary, and how Mary was in every way better than
herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in
acknowledging Mary’s superiority, but at the same time
by saying it she made a demand on Pierre that he should,
all the same, prefer her to Mary and to all other women,
and that now, especially after having seen many women
in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.
Pierre, answering Natasha’s words, told her how
intolerable it had been for him to meet ladies at dinners
and balls in Petersburg.
‘I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies,’ he
said. ‘It was simply dull. Besides, I was very busy.’
Natasha looked intently at him and went on:

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‘Mary is so splendid,’ she said. ‘How she understands

children! It is as if she saw straight into their souls.
Yesterday, for instance, Mitya was naughty..’
‘How like his father he is,’ Pierre interjected.
Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya’s likeness to
Nicholas: the recollection of his dispute with his brother-
in-law was unpleasant and he wanted to know what
Natasha thought of it.
‘Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with
anything not generally accepted. But I understand that
you value what opens up a fresh line,’ said she, repeating
words Pierre had once uttered.
‘No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and
discussions are an amusement- almost a pastime,’ said
Pierre. ‘For instance, he is collecting a library and has
made it a rule not to buy a new book till he has read what
he had already bought- Sismondi and Rousseau and
Montesquieu,’ he added with a smile. ‘You know how
much I...’ he began to soften down what he had said; but
Natasha interrupted him to show that this was
unnecessary.
‘So you say ideas are an amusement to him...’

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‘Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in

Petersburg I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am
taken up by a thought, all else is mere amusement.’
‘Ah, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you met the
children,’ said Natasha. ‘Which was most delighted? Lisa,
I’m sure.’
‘Yes,’ Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his
mind. ‘Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can’t
help it. Besides, when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this
to you) that the whole affair would go to pieces without
me- everyone was pulling his own way. But I succeeded
in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear and
simple. You see, I don’t say that we ought to oppose this
and that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: ‘Join hands,
you who love the right, and let there be but one banner-
that of active virtue.’ Prince Sergey is a fine fellow and
clever.’
Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness
of Pierre’s idea, but one thing disconcerted her. ‘Can a
man so important and necessary to society be also my
husband? How did this happen?’ She wished to express
this doubt to him. ‘Now who could decide whether he is
really cleverer than all the others?’ she asked herself, and
passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected.

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Judging by what he had said there was no one he had

respected so highly as Platon Karataev.
‘Do you know what I am thinking about?’ she asked.
‘About Platon Karataev. Would he have approved of you
now, do you think?’
Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He
understood his wife’s line of thought.
‘Platon Karataev?’ he repeated, and pondered,
evidently sincerely trying to imagine Karataev’s opinion
on the subject. ‘He would not have understood... yet
perhaps he would.’
‘I love you awfully!’ Natasha suddenly said. ‘Awfully,
awfully!’
‘No, he would not have approved,’ said Pierre, after
reflection. ‘What he would have approved of is our family
life. He was always so anxious to find seemliness,
happiness, and peace in everything, and I should have
been proud to let him see us. There now- you talk of my
absence, but you wouldn’t believe what a special feeling I
have for you after a separation...’
‘Yes, I should think...’ Natasha began.
‘No, it’s not that. I never leave off loving you. And one
couldn’t love more, but this is something special.... Yes,

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of course-’ he did not finish because their eyes meeting

said the rest.
‘What nonsense it is,’ Natasha suddenly exclaimed,
‘about honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at
first! On the contrary, now is the best of all. If only you
did not go away! Do you remember how we quarreled?
And it was always my fault. Always mine. And what we
quarreled about- I don’t even remember!’
‘Always about the same thing,’ said Pierre with a
smile. ‘Jealo..’
‘Don’t say it! I can’t bear it!’ Natasha cried, and her
eyes glittered coldly and vindictively. ‘Did you see her?’
she added, after a pause.
‘No, and if I had I shouldn’t have recognized her.’
They were silent for a while.
‘Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the
study I was looking at you,’ Natasha began, evidently
anxious to disperse the cloud that had come over them.
‘You are as like him as two peas- like the boy.’ (She
meant her little son.) ‘Oh, it’s time to go to him.... The
milk’s come.... But I’m sorry to leave you.’
They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly
turning to one another at the same time they both began to
speak. Pierre began with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm,

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Natasha with a quiet, happy smile. Having interrupted one

another they both stopped to let the other continue.
‘No. What did you say? Go on, go on.’
‘No, you go on, I was talking nonsense,’ said Natasha.
Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to
his complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg.
At that moment it seemed to him that he was chosen to
give a new direction to the whole of Russian society and
to the whole world.
‘I only wished to say that ideas that have great results
are always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious
people are united and constitute a power, then honest folk
must do the same. Now that’s simple enough.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what were you going to say?’
‘I? Only nonsense.’
‘But all the same?’
‘Oh nothing, only a trifle,’ said Natasha, smilingly still
more brightly. ‘I only wanted to tell you about Petya:
today nurse was coming to take him from me, and he
laughed, shut his eyes, and clung to me. I’m sure he
thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now he’s
crying. Well, good-by!’ and she left the room.

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Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski’s

bedroom a little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was
afraid of the dark and they could not cure him of it.)
Dessalles slept propped up on four pillows and his Roman
nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring. Little Nicholas,
who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat up in
bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had
awaked from a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he
and Uncle Pierre, wearing helmets such as were depicted
in his Plutarch, were leading a huge army. The army was
made up of white slanting lines that filled the air like the
cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles
called les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was
similar to those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre
were borne along lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer
to their goal. Suddenly the threads that moved them began
to slacken and become entangled and it grew difficult to
move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a stern
and threatening attitude.
‘Have you done this?’ he said, pointing to some broken
sealing wax and pens. ‘I loved you, but I have orders from
Arakcheev and will kill the first of you who moves
forward.’ Little Nicholas turned to look at Pierre but
Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father-

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Prince Andrew- and his father had neither shape nor form,
but he existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he
grew faint with love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and
formless. His father caressed and pitied him. But Uncle
Nicholas came nearer and nearer to them. Terror seized
young Nicholas and he awoke.
‘My father!’ he thought. (Though there were two good
portraits of Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never
imagined him in human form.) ‘My father has been with
me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle
Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius
Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort
of thing happen to me? I know they want me to learn.
And I will learn. But someday I shall have finished
learning, and then I will do something. I only pray God
that something may happen to me such as happened to
Plutarch’s men, and I will act as they did. I will do better.
Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with
me!’ And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he
began to cry.
‘Are you ill?’ he heard Dessalles’ voice asking.
‘No,’ answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.
‘He is good and kind and I am fond of him!’ he
thought of Dessalles. ‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a

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wonderful man he is! And my father? Oh, Father, Father!

Yes, I will do something with which even he would be
satisfied...’

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SECOND EPILOGUE

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Chapter I

History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize

and put into words, to describe directly the life of
humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.
The ancient historians all employed one and the same
method to describe and seize the apparently elusive- the
life of a people. They described the activity of individuals
who ruled the people, and regarded the activity of those
men as representing the activity of the whole nation.
The question: how did individuals make nations act as
they wished and by what was the will of these individuals
themselves guided? the ancients met by recognizing a
divinity which subjected the nations to the will of a
chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as
to accomplish ends that were predestined.
For the ancients these questions were solved by a
belief in the direct participation of the Deity in human
affairs.
Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
It would seem that having rejected the belief of the
ancients in man’s subjection to the Deity and in a
predetermined aim toward which nations are led, modern
history should study not the manifestations of power but

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the causes that produce it. But modern history has not
done this. Having in theory rejected the view held by the
ancients, it still follows them in practice.
Instead of men endowed with divine authority and
directly guided by the will of God, modern history has
given us either heroes endowed with extraordinary,
superhuman capacities, or simply men of very various
kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses.
Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the
Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient
historians regarded as representing the progress of
humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims-
the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or,
in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of
humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the
peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
large continent.
Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients
without replacing them by a new conception, and the
logic of the situation has obliged the historians, after they
had apparently rejected the divine authority of the kings
and the ‘fate’ of the ancients, to reach the same
conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1)
nations guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of

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a known aim to which these nations and humanity at large

are tending.
At the basis of the works of all the modern historians
from Gibbon to Buckle, despite their seeming
disagreements and the apparent novelty of their outlooks,
lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.
In the first place the historian describes the activity of
individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity
(one historian considers only monarchs, generals, and
ministers as being such men, while another includes also
orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which
humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of
them this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or
French realm; to another it is liberty, equality, and a
certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world
called Europe.
In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and
is expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east.
Several times it moves eastward and collides with a
countermovement from the east westward. In 1812 it
reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with
remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from
east to west, attracting to it, as the first movement had

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done, the nations of middle Europe. The counter

movement reaches the starting point of the first movement
in the west- Paris- and subsides.
During that twenty-year period an immense number of
fields were left untilled, houses were burned, trade
changed its direction, millions of men migrated, were
impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of Christian
men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What
made those people burn houses and slay their fellow men?
What were the causes of these events? What force made
men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and most
legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it
encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.
For a reply to these questions the common sense of
mankind turns to the science of history, whose aim is to
enable nations and humanity to know themselves.
If history had retained the conception of the ancients it
would have said that God, to reward or punish his people,
gave Napoleon power and directed his will to the
fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply, would have
been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve
in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone

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believing in it there would have been nothing

unintelligible in the history of that period, nor would there
have been any contradictions.
But modern history cannot give that reply. Science
does not admit the conception of the ancients as to the
direct participation of the Deity in human affairs, and
therefore history ought to give other answers.
Modern history replying to these questions says: you
want to know what this movement means, what caused it,
and what force produced these events? Then listen:
‘Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man;
he had such and such mistresses and such and such
ministers and he ruled France badly. His descendants
were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And
they had such and such favorites and such and such
mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at
that time. At the end of the eighteenth century there were
a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about
all men being free and equal. This caused people all over
France to begin to slash at and drown one another. They
killed the king and many other people. At that time there
was in France a man of genius- Napoleon. He conquered
everybody everywhere- that is, he killed many people
because he was a great genius. And for some reason he

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went to kill Africans, and killed them so well and was so

cunning and wise that when he returned to France he
ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him.
Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill
people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he
killed a great many. In Russia there was an Emperor,
Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and
therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly
made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled
and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six
hundred thousand men into Russia and captured Moscow;
then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the
Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and
others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its
peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies
and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he
raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris,
forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him to the island of
Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and
showing him every respect, though five years before and
one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a
brigand. Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the
laughingstock both of the French and the Allies, began to
reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old

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Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then

the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially
Talleyrand, who managed to sit down in a particular chair
before anyone else and thereby extended the frontiers of
France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations made
the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists
and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of
again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just
then Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the
French, who had been hating him, immediately all
submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry at
this and went to fight the French once more. And they
defeated the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing
him as a brigand, sent him to the island of St. Helena.
And the exile, separated from the beloved France so dear
to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and
bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a
reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began
to oppress their subjects.’
It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic- a
caricature of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is
a very mild expression of the contradictory replies, not
meeting the questions, which all the historians give, from
the compilers of memoirs and the histories of separate

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states to the writers of general histories and the new

histories of the culture of that period.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise
from the fact that modern history, like a deaf man,
answers questions no one has asked.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the
movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first
question- in the absence of a reply to which all the rest
will be incomprehensible- is: what is the power that
moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously
replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that
Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote
certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with
it, but it is not what was asked. All that would be
interesting if we recognized a divine power based on itself
and always consistently directing its nations through
Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not
acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking
about Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be
shown the connection existing between these men and the
movement of the nations.
If instead of a divine power some other force has
appeared, it should be explained in what this new force

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consists, for the whole interest of history lies precisely in

that force.
History seems to assume that this force is self-evident
and known to everyone. But in spite of every desire to
regard it as known, anyone reading many historical works
cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously
understood by the historians themselves, is really quite
well known to everybody.

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Chapter II

What force moves the nations?

Biographical historians and historians of separate
nations understand this force as a power inherent in
heroes and rulers. In their narration events occur solely by
the will of a Napoleon, and Alexander, or in general of
the persons they describe. The answers given by this kind
of historian to the question of what force causes events to
happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one
historian to each event. As soon as historians of different
nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same
event, the replies they give immediately lose all meaning,
for this force is understood by them all not only
differently but often in quite contradictory ways. One
historian says that an event was produced by Napoleon’s
power, another that it was produced by Alexander’s, a
third that it was due to the power of some other person.
Besides this, historians of that kind contradict each other
even in their statement as to the force on which the
authority of some particular person was based. Thiers, a
Bonapartist, says that Napoleon’s power was based on his
virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was

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based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the

historians of this class, by mutually destroying one
another’s positions, destroy the understanding of the force
which produces events, and furnish no reply to history’s
essential question.
Writers of universal history who deal with all the
nations seem to recognize how erroneous is the specialist
historians’ view of the force which produces events. They
do not recognize it as a power inherent in heroes and
rulers, but as the resultant of a multiplicity of variously
directed forces. In describing a war or the subjugation of a
people, a general historian looks for the cause of the event
not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of
many persons connected with the event.
According to this view the power of historical
personages, represented as the product of many forces,
can no longer, it would seem, be regarded as a force that
itself produces events. Yet in most cases universal
historians still employ the conception of power as a force
that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause. In
their exposition, an historic character is first the product
of his time, and his power only the resultant of various
forces, and then his power is itself a force producing
events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and others, for instance, at

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one time prove Napoleon to be a product of the

Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at
another plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other
things they do not like were simply the product of
Napoleon’s misdirected will, and that the very ideas of
1789 were arrested in their development by Napoleon’s
caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general
temper of the age produced Napoleon’s power. But
Napoleon’s power suppressed the ideas of the Revolution
and the general temper of the age.
This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only
does it occur at every step, but the universal historians’
accounts are all made up of a chain of such
contradictions. This contradiction occurs because after
entering the field of analysis the universal historians stop
halfway.
To find component forces equal to the composite or
resultant force, the sum of the components must equal the
resultant. This condition is never observed by the
universal historians, and so to explain the resultant forces
they are obliged to admit, in addition to the insufficient
components, another unexplained force affecting the
resultant action.

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Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813

or the restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these
events were produced by the will of Alexander. But the
universal historian Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the
specialist historian, tries to prove that the campaign of
1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons were due to
other things beside Alexander’s will- such as the activity
of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte
Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently
decomposes Alexander’s power into the components:
Talleyrand, Chateaubriand, and the rest- but the sum of
the components, that is, the interactions of Chateaubriand,
Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others, evidently
does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of
millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That
Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke
certain words to one another only affected their mutual
relations but does not account for the submission of
millions. And therefore to explain how from these
relations of theirs the submission of millions of people
resulted- that is, how component forces equal to one A
gave a resultant equal to a thousand times A- the historian
is again obliged to fall back on power- the force he had
denied- and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces,

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that is, he has to admit an unexplained force acting on the

resultant. And that is just what the universal historians do,
and consequently they not only contradict the specialist
historians but contradict themselves.
Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say,
according to whether they want rain or fine weather: ‘The
wind has blown the clouds away,’ or, ‘The wind has
brought up the clouds.’ And in the same way the universal
historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in
with their theory, say that power is the result of events,
and sometimes, when they want to prove something else,
say that power produces events.
A third class of historians- the so-called historians of
culture- following the path laid down by the universal
historians who sometimes accept writers and ladies as
forces producing events- again take that force to be
something quite different. They see it in what is called
culture- in mental activity.
The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard
to their progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for
if historical events may be explained by the fact that
certain persons treated one another in such and such ways,
why not explain them by the fact that such and such
people wrote such and such books? Of the immense

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number of indications accompanying every vital

phenomenon, these historians select the indication of
intellectual activity and say that this indication is the
cause. But despite their endeavors to prove that the cause
of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a great
stretch can one admit that there is any connection between
intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in
no case can one admit that intellectual activity controls
people’s actions, for that view is not confirmed by such
facts as the very cruel murders of the French Revolution
resulting from the doctrine of the equality of man, or the
very cruel wars and executions resulting from the
preaching of love.
But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised
arguments with which these histories are filled- admitting
that nations are governed by some undefined force called
an idea- history’s essential question still remains
unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs and to
the influence of advisers and other people introduced by
the universal historians, another, newer force- the idea- is
added, the connection of which with the masses needs
explanation. It is possible to understand that Napoleon
had power and so events occurred; with some effort one
may even conceive that Napoleon together with other

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influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le

Contrat social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin
to drown one another cannot be understood without an
explanation of the causal nexus of this new force with the
event.
Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live
contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some
connection between the intellectual activity of men and
their historical movements, just as such a connection may
be found between the movements of humanity and
commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything else you
please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the
historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the
whole historical movement is hard to understand. Only
the following considerations can have led the historians to
such a conclusion: (1) that history is written by learned
men, and so it is natural and agreeable for them to think
that the activity of their class supplies the basis of the
movement of all humanity, just as a similar belief is
natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists, and
soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because
traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that
spiritual activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture,
ideas, are all indistinct, indefinite conceptions under

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whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still

less definite meaning, and which can therefore be readily
introduced into any theory.
But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of
this kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone
for something) the histories of culture, to which all
general histories tend more and more to approximate, are
significant from the fact that after seriously and minutely
examining various religious, philosophic, and political
doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to
describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of
1812 for instance, they involuntarily describe it as
resulting from an exercise of power- and say plainly that
that was the result of Napoleon’s will. Speaking so, the
historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves,
and show that the new force they have devised does not
account for what happens in history, and that history can
only be explained by introducing a power which they
apparently do not recognize.

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Chapter III

A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: ‘What moves

it?’ A peasant says the devil moves it. Another man says
the locomotive moves because its wheels go round. A
third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in the
smoke which the wind carries away.
The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete
explanation. To refute him someone would have to prove
to him that there is no devil, or another peasant would
have to explain to him that it is not the devil but a
German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as a
result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both
wrong. But the man who says that the movement of the
wheels is the cause refutes himself, for having once begun
to analyze he ought to go on and explain further why the
wheels go round; and till he has reached the ultimate
cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure
of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search
for the cause. The man who explains the movement of the
locomotive by the smoke that is carried back has noticed
that the wheels do not supply an explanation and has

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taken the first sign that occurs to him and in his turn has
offered that as an explanation.
The only conception that can explain the movement of
the locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the
movement observed.
The only conception that can explain the movement of
the peoples is that of some force commensurate with the
whole movement of the peoples.
Yet to supply this conception various historians take
forces of different kinds, all of which are incommensurate
with the movement observed. Some see it as a force
directly inherent in heroes, as the peasant sees the devil in
the locomotive; others as a force resulting from several
other forces, like the movement of the wheels; others
again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that is
blown away.
So long as histories are written of separate individuals,
whether Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and
not the histories of all, absolutely all those who take part
in an event, it is quite impossible to describe the
movement of humanity without the conception of a force
compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain
end. And the only such conception known to historians is
that of power.

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This conception is the one handle by means of which

the material of history, as at present expounded, can be
dealt with, and anyone who breaks that handle off, as
Buckle did, without finding some other method of treating
historical material, merely deprives himself of the one
possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the
conception of power as an explanation of historical events
is best demonstrated by the universal historians and
historians of culture themselves, for they professedly
reject that conception but inevitably have recourse to it at
every step.
In dealing with humanity’s inquiry, the science of
history up to now is like money in circulation- paper
money and coin. The biographies and special national
histories are like paper money. They can be used and can
circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to anyone
and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is
the security behind them. You need only forget to ask
how the will of heroes produces events, and such histories
as Thiers’ will be interesting and instructive and may
perhaps even possess a tinge of poetry. But just as doubts
of the real value of paper money arise either because,
being easy to make, too much of it gets made or because
people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts

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concerning the real value of such histories arise either

because too many of them are written or because in his
simplicity of heart someone inquires: by what force did
Napoleon do this?- that is, wants to exchange the current
paper money for the real gold of actual comprehension.
The writers of universal histories and of the history of
culture are like people who, recognizing the defects of
paper money, decide to substitute for it money made of
metal that has not the specific gravity of gold. It may
indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more than that.
Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is
deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but
merely jingle. As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not
merely for exchange but also for use, so universal
historians will be valuable only when they can reply to
history’s essential question: what is power? The universal
historians give contradictory replies to that question,
while the historians of culture evade it and answer
something quite different. And as counters of imitation
gold can be used only among a group of people who agree
to accept them as gold, or among those who do not know
the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians
of culture, not answering humanity’s essential question,
serve as currency for some purposes of their own, only in

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universities and among the mass of readers who have a

taste for what they call ‘serious reading.’

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Chapter IV

Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to

the divine subjection of the will of a nation to some
chosen man and the subjection of that man’s will to the
Deity, history cannot without contradictions take a single
step till it has chosen one of two things: either a return to
the former belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in
human affairs or a definite explanation of the meaning of
the force producing historical events and termed ‘power.’
A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been
destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant
by power.
Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war.
We are so accustomed to that idea and have become so
used to it that the question: why did six hundred thousand
men go to fight when Napoleon uttered certain words,
seems to us senseless. He had the power and so what he
ordered was done.
This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the
power was given him by God. But as soon as we do not
admit that, it becomes essential to determine what is this
power of one man over others.

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It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man

over a weak one- a domination based on the application or
threat of physical force, like the power of Hercules; nor
can it be based on the effect of moral force, as in their
simplicity some historians think who say that the leading
figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a
special strength of soul and mind called genius. This
power cannot be based on the predominance of moral
strength, for, not to mention heroes such as Napoleon
about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely,
history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich,
who ruled over millions of people, had any particular
moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally
morally weaker than any of the millions they ruled over.
If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in
the moral qualities of him who possesses it, it must
evidently be looked for elsewhere- in the relation to the
people of the man who wields the power.
And that is how power is understood by the science of
jurisprudence, that exchange bank of history which offers
to exchange history’s understanding of power for true
gold.
Power is the collective will of the people transferred,
by expressed or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

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In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of

discussions of how a state and power might be arranged
were it possible for all that to be arranged, it is all very
clear; but when applied to history that definition of power
needs explanation.
The science of jurisprudence regards the state and
power as the ancients regarded fire- namely, as something
existing absolutely. But for history, the state and power
are merely phenomena, just as for modern physics fire is
not an element but a phenomenon.
From this fundamental difference between the view
held by history and that held by jurisprudence, it follows
that jurisprudence can tell minutely how in its opinion
power should be constituted and what power- existing
immutably outside time- is, but to history’s questions
about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it
can answer nothing.
If power be the collective will of the people transferred
to their ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of
the people? If not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was
Napoleon III a criminal when he was taken prisoner at
Boulogne, and why, later on, were those criminals whom
he arrested?

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Do palace revolutions- in which sometimes only two

or three people take part- transfer the will of the people to
a new ruler? In international relations, is the will of the
people also transferred to their conqueror? Was the will of
the Confederation of the Rhine transferred to Napoleon in
1806? Was the will of the Russian people transferred to
Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the
French went to fight the Austrians?
To these questions three answers are possible:
Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is
always unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers
they have chosen, and that therefore every emergence of a
new power, every struggle against the power once
appointed, should be absolutely regarded as an
infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the
people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under
definite and known conditions, and to show that all
limitations, conflicts, and even destructions of power
result from a nonobservance by the rulers of the
conditions under which their power was entrusted to
them; or (3) that the will of the people is delegated to the
rulers conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown
and indefinite, and that the appearance of several
authorities, their struggles and their falls, result solely

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from the greater or lesser fulfillment by the rulers of these

unknown conditions on which the will of the people is
transferred from some people to others.
And these are the three ways in which the historians do
explain the relation of the people to their rulers.
Some historians- those biographical and specialist
historians already referred to- in their simplicity failing to
understand the question of the meaning of power, seem to
consider that the collective will of the people is
unconditionally transferred to historical persons, and
therefore when describing some single state they assume
that particular power to be the one absolute and real
power, and that any other force opposing this is not a
power but a violation of power- mere violence.
Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful
periods of history, has the inconvenience- in application
to complex and stormy periods in the life of nations
during which various powers arise simultaneously and
struggle with one another- that a Legitimist historian will
prove that the National Convention, the Directory, and
Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a
Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the
Convention and the other that the Empire was the real
power, and that all the others were violations of power.

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Evidently the explanations furnished by these historians

being mutually contradictory can only satisfy young
children.
Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another
set of historians say that power rests on a conditional
delegation of the will of the people to their rulers, and that
historical leaders have power only conditionally on
carrying out the program that the will of the people has by
tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this program
consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they
continually contradict one another.
Each historian, according to his view of what
constitutes a nation’s progress, looks for these conditions
in the greatness, wealth, freedom, or enlightenment of
citizens of France or some other country. But not to
mention the historians’ contradictions as to the nature of
this program- or even admitting that some one general
program of these conditions exists- the facts of history
almost always contradict that theory. If the conditions
under which power is entrusted consist in the wealth,
freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how is it that
Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns
tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by
their people? To this question historians reply that Louis

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XIV’s activity, contrary to the program, reacted on Louis

XVI. But why did it not react on Louis XIV or on Louis
XV- why should it react just on Louis XVI? And what is
the time limit for such reactions? To these questions there
are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view
explain why for several centuries the collective will is not
withdrawn from certain rulers and their heirs, and then
suddenly during a period of fifty years is transferred to the
Convention, to the Directory, to Napoleon, to Alexander,
to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to Charles X, to Louis
Philippe, to a Republican government, and to Napoleon
III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people’s
will from from one individual to another, especially in
view of international relations, conquests, and alliances,
the historians are obliged to admit that some of these
transfers are not normal delegations of the people’s will
but are accidents dependent on cunning, on mistakes, on
craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a ruler, or a
party leader. So that the greater part of the events of
history- civil wars, revolutions, and conquests- are
presented by these historians not as the results of free
transferences of the people’s will, but as results of the ill-
directed will of one or more individuals, that is, once
again, as usurpations of power. And so these historians

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also see and admit historical events which are exceptions

to the theory.
These historians resemble a botanist who, having
noticed that some plants grow from seeds producing two
cotyledons, should insist that all that grows does so by
sprouting into two leaves, and that the palm, the
mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full
growth and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations
from the theory.
Historians of the third class assume that the will of the
people is transferred to historic personages conditionally,
but that the conditions are unknown to us. They say that
historical personages have power only because they fulfill
the will of the people which has been delegated to them.
But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not
in the historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what
significance have those leaders?
The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of
the people: the activity of the leaders represents the
activity of the people.
But in that case the question arises whether all the
activity of the leaders serves as an expression of the
people’s will or only some part of it. If the whole activity
of the leaders serves as the expression of the people’s

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will, as some historians suppose, then all the details of the

court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon
or a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation,
which is evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular
side of the activity of an historical leader which serves to
express the people’s life, as other so-called
‘philosophical’ historians believe, then to determine
which side of the activity of a leader expresses the
nation’s life, we have first of all to know in what the
nation’s life consists.
Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise
some most obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction
which can cover all conceivable occurrences, and declare
this abstraction to be the aim of humanity’s movement.
The most usual generalizations adopted by almost all the
historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress,
civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization
as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians
study the men of whom the greatest number of
monuments have remained: kings, ministers, generals,
authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to the extent to
which in their opinion these persons have promoted or
hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved
that the aim of humanity does consist in freedom,

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equality, enlightenment, or civilization, and as the

connection of the people with the rulers and enlighteners
of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption that
the collective will of the people is always transferred to
the men whom we have noticed, it happens that the
activity of the millions who migrate, burn houses,
abandon agriculture, and destroy one another never is
expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen
people who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or
slay their fellow creatures.
History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the
peoples of the west at the end of the eighteenth century
and their drive eastward explained by the activity of Louis
XIV, XV, and XVI, their mistresses and ministers, and by
the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais,
and others?
Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to
Kazan and Siberia expressed by details of the morbid
character of Ivan the Terrible and by his correspondence
with Kurbski?
Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the
Crusades explained by the life and activity of the
Godfreys and the Louis-es and their ladies? For us that
movement of the peoples from west to east, without

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leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the

Hermit, remains incomprehensible. And yet more
incomprehensible is the cessation of that movement when
a rational and sacred aim for the Crusade- the deliverance
of Jerusalem- had been clearly defined by historic leaders.
Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to free the
Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown
cause which had previously impelled them to go no
longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers can evidently not cover the life of the
peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and
Minnesingers, but the history of the life of the peoples
and their impulses has remained unknown.
Still less does the history of authors and reformers
explain to us the life of the peoples.
The history of culture explains to us the impulses and
conditions of life and thought of a writer or a reformer.
We learn that Luther had a hot temper and said such and
such things; we learn that Rousseau was suspicious and
wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after
the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor
why during the French Revolution they guillotined one
another.

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If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by

the newest historians, we shall have the history of
monarchs and writers, but not the history of the life of the
peoples.

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Chapter V

The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a

few men, for the connection between those men and the
nations has not been found. The theory that this
connection is based on the transference of the collective
will of a people to certain historical personages is an
hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.
The theory of the transference of the collective will of
the people to historic persons may perhaps explain much
in the domain of jurisprudence and be essential for its
purposes, but in its application to history, as soon as
revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur- that is, as soon
as history begins- that theory explains nothing.
The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of
transference of the people’s will cannot be verified, for it
never occurred.
Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head
of affairs, the theory can always say that such and such a
person took the lead because the collective will was
transferred to him.
The replies this theory gives to historical questions are
like the replies of a man who, watching the movements of

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a herd of cattle and paying no attention to the varying

quality of the pasturage in different parts of the field, or to
the driving of the herdsman, should attribute the direction
the herd takes to what animal happens to be at its head.
‘The herd goes in that direction because the animal in
front leads it and the collective will of all the other
animals is vested in that leader.’ This is what historians of
the first class say- those who assume the unconditional
transference of the people’s will.
‘If the animals leading the herd change, this happens
because the collective will of all the animals is transferred
from one leader to another, according to whether the
animal is or is not leading them in the direction selected
by the whole herd.’ Such is the reply historians who
assume that the collective will of the people is delegated
to rulers under conditions which they regard as known.
(With this method of observation it often happens that the
observer, influenced by the direction he himself prefers,
regards those as leaders who, owing to the people’s
change of direction, are no longer in front, but on one
side, or even in the rear.)
‘If the animals in front are continually changing and
the direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this
is because in order to follow a given direction the animals

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transfer their will to the animals that have attracted our

attention, and to study the movements of the herd we
must watch the movements of all the prominent animals
moving on all sides of the herd.’ So say the third class of
historians who regard all historical persons, from
monarchs to journalists, as the expression of their age.
The theory of the transference of the will of the people
to historic persons is merely a paraphrase- a restatement
of the question in other words.
What causes historical events? Power. What is power?
Power is the collective will of the people transferred to
one person. Under what condition is the will of the people
delegated to one person? On condition that that person
expresses the will of the whole people. That is, power is
power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of
which we do not understand.
If the realm of human knowledge were confined to
abstract reasoning, then having subjected to criticism the
explanation of ‘power’ that juridical science gives us,
humanity would conclude that power is merely a word
and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena
man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which
he verifies his reflections. And experience tells us that

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power is not merely a word but an actually existing

phenomenon.
Not to speak of the fact that no description of the
collective activity of men can do without the conception
of power, the existence of power is proved both by history
and by observing contemporary events.
Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men
appear, by whose will the event seems to have taken
place. Napoleon III issues a decree and the French go to
Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue decrees
and an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree
and an army enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command
and the French submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows
us that whatever event occurs it is always related to the
will of one or of several men who have decreed it.
The historians, in accord with the old habit of
acknowledging divine intervention in human affairs, want
to see the cause of events in the expression of the will of
someone endowed with power, but that supposition is not
confirmed either by reason or by experience.
On the one side reflection shows that the expression of
a man’s will- his words- are only part of the general
activity expressed in an event, as for instance in a war or a
revolution, and so without assuming an incomprehensible,

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supernatural force- a miracle- one cannot admit that

words can be the immediate cause of the movements of
millions of men. On the other hand, even if we admitted
that words could be the cause of events, history shows
that the expression of the will of historical personages
does not in most cases produce any effect, that is to say,
their commands are often not executed, and sometimes
the very opposite of what they order occurs.
Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of
humanity we cannot regard ‘power’ as the cause of
events.
Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely
the relation that exists between the expression of
someone’s will and the execution of that will by others.
To explain the conditions of that relationship we must
first establish a conception of the expression of will,
referring it to man and not to the Deity.
If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as
ancient history tells us, the expression of that will is
independent of time and is not caused by anything, for the
Divinity is not controlled by an event. But speaking of
commands that are the expression of the will of men
acting in time and in relation to one another, to explain
the connection of commands with events we must restore:

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(1) the condition of all that takes place: the continuity of

movement in time both of the events and of the person
who commands, and (2) the inevitability of the
connection between the person commanding and those
who execute his command.

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Chapter VI

Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not

dependent on time, can relate to a whole series of events
occurring over a period of years or centuries, and only the
Deity, independent of everything, can by His sole will
determine the direction of humanity’s movement; but man
acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs.
Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we
see that no command can be executed without some
preceding order having been given rendering the
execution of the last command possible.
No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself
covers a whole series of occurrences; but each command
follows from another, and never refers to a whole series
of events but always to one moment only of an event.
When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered
armies to go to war, we combine in one simultaneous
expression a whole series of consecutive commands
dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have
commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so.
Today he ordered such and such papers to be written to
Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg; tomorrow such and

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such decrees and orders to the army, the fleet, the

commissariat, and so on and so on- millions of
commands, which formed a whole series corresponding to
a series of events which brought the French armies into
Russia.
If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands
concerning an invasion of England and expended on no
other undertaking so much time and effort, and yet during
his whole reign never once attempted to execute that
design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with
which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance
(a conviction he repeatedly expressed)- this came about
because his commands did not correspond to the course of
events in the first case, but did so correspond in the latter.
For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary
that a man should order what can be executed. But to
know what can and what cannot be executed is
impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon’s invasion of
Russia in which millions participated, but even in the
simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles
may arise to prevent its execution. Every order executed
is always one of an immense number unexecuted. All the
impossible orders inconsistent with the course of events
remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get linked up

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with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a

series of events, and are executed.
Our false conception that an event is caused by a
command which precedes it is due to the fact that when
the event has taken place and out of thousands of others
those few commands which were consistent with that
event have been executed, we forget about the others that
were not executed because they could not be. Apart from
that, the chief source of our error in this matter is due to
the fact that in the historical accounts a whole series of
innumerable, diverse, and petty events, such for instance
as all those which led the French armies to Russia, is
generalized into one event in accord with the result
produced by that series of events, and corresponding with
this generalization the whole series of commands is also
generalized into a single expression of will.
We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and
invaded it. In reality in all Napoleon’s activity we never
find anything resembling an expression of that wish, but
find a series of orders, or expressions of his will, very
variously and indefinitely directed. Amid a long series of
unexecuted orders of Napoleon’s one series, for the
campaign of 1812, was carried out- not because those
orders differed in any way from the other, unexecuted

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orders but because they coincided with the course of

events that led the French army into Russia; just as in
stencil work this or that figure comes out not because the
color was laid on from this side or in that way, but
because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in
the stencil.
So that examining the relation in time of the
commands to the events, we find that a command can
never be the cause of the event, but that a certain definite
dependence exists between the two.
To understand in what this dependence consists it is
necessary to reinstate another omitted condition of every
command proceeding not from the Deity but from a man,
which is, that the man who gives the command himself
takes part in
This relation of the commander to those he commands
is just what is called power. This relation consists in the
following:
For common action people always unite in certain
combinations, in which regardless of the difference of the
aims set for the common action, the relation between
those taking part in it is always the same.
Men uniting in these combinations always assume such
relations toward one another that the larger number take a

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more direct share, and the smaller number a less direct

share, in the collective action for which they have
combined.
Of all the combinations in which men unite for
collective action one of the most striking and definite
examples is an army.
Every army is composed of lower grades of the
service- the rank and file- of whom there are always the
greatest number; of the next higher military rank-
corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom there
are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are
still fewer, and so on to the highest military command
which is concentrated in one person.
A military organization may be quite correctly
compared to a cone, of which the base with the largest
diameter consists of the rank and file; the next higher and
smaller section of the cone consists of the next higher
grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point of
which will represent the commander in chief.
The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the
lower section of the cone and its base. The soldier himself
does the stabbing, hacking, burning, and pillaging, and
always receives orders for these actions from men above
him; he himself never gives an order. The

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noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer)

perform the action itself less frequently than the soldiers,
but they already give commands. An officer still less
often acts directly himself, but commands still more
frequently. A general does nothing but command the
troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a
weapon himself. The commander in chief never takes
direct part in the action itself, but only gives general
orders concerning the movement of the mass of the
troops. A similar relation of people to one another is seen
in every combination of men for common activity- in
agriculture, trade, and every administration.
And so without particularly analyzing all the
contiguous sections of a cone and of the ranks of an army,
or the ranks and positions in any administrative or public
business whatever from the lowest to the highest, we see a
law by which men, to take associated action, combine in
such relations that the more directly they participate in
performing the action the less they can command and the
more numerous they are, while the less their direct
participation in the action itself, the more they command
and the fewer of them there are; rising in this way from
the lowest ranks to the man at the top, who takes the least

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direct share in the action and directs his activity chiefly to

commanding.
This relation of the men who command to those they
command is what constitutes the essence of the
conception called power.
Having restored the condition of time under which all
events occur, find that a command is executed only when
it is related to a corresponding series of events. Restoring
the essential condition of relation between those who
command and those who execute, we find that by the very
nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is
exclusively directed to commanding.

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Chapter VII

When an event is taking place people express their

opinions and wishes about it, and as the event results from
the collective activity of many people, some one of the
opinions or wishes expressed is sure to be fulfilled if but
approximately. When one of the opinions expressed is
fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event as a
command preceding it.
Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his
opinion as to how and where to haul it. They haul the log
away, and it happens that this is done as one of them said.
He ordered it. There we have command and power in
their primary form. The man who worked most with his
hands could not think so much about what he was doing,
or reflect on or command what would result from the
common activity; while the man who commanded more
would evidently work less with his hands on account of
his greater verbal activity.
When some larger concourse of men direct their
activity to a common aim there is a yet sharper division of
those who, because their activity is given to directing and
commanding, take less less part in the direct work.

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When a man works alone he always has a certain set of

reflections which as it seems to him directed his past
activity, justify his present activity, and guide him in
planning his future actions. Just the same is done by a
concourse of people, allowing those who do not take a
direct part in the activity to devise considerations,
justifications, and surmises concerning their collective
activity.
For reasons known or unknown to us the French began
to drown and kill one another. And corresponding to the
event its justification appears in people’s belief that this
was necessary for the welfare of France, for liberty, and
for equality. People ceased to kill one another, and this
event was accompanied by its justification in the necessity
for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and so
on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow
men, and the event was accompanied by phrases about the
glory of France, the baseness of England, and so on.
History shows us that these justifications of the events
have no common sense and are all contradictory, as in the
case of killing a man as the result of recognizing his
rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for the
humiliation of England. But these justifications have a
very necessary significance in their own day.

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These justifications release those who produce the

events from moral responsibility. These temporary aims
are like the broom fixed in front of a locomotive to clear
the snow from the rails in front: they clear men’s moral
responsibilities from their path.
Without such justification there would be no reply to
the simplest question that presents itself when examining
each historical event. How is it that millions of men
commit collective crimes- make war, commit murder, and
so on?
With the present complex forms of political and social
life in Europe can any event that is not prescribed,
decreed, or ordered by monarchs, ministers, parliaments,
or newspapers be imagined? Is there any collective action
which cannot find its justification in political unity, in
patriotism, in the balance of power, or in civilization? So
that every event that occurs inevitably coincides with
some expressed wish and, receiving a justification,
presents itself as the result of the will of one man or of
several men.
In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the
waves it cuts will always be noticeable ahead of it. To
those on board the ship the movement of those waves will
be the only perceptible motion.

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Only by watching closely moment by moment the

movement of that flow and comparing it with the
movement of the ship do we convince ourselves that
every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement of
the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that
we ourselves were imperceptibly moving.
We see the same if we watch moment by moment the
movement of historical characters (that is, re-establish the
inevitable condition of all that occurs- the continuity of
movement in time) and do not lose sight of the essential
connection of historical persons with the masses.
When the ship moves in one direction there is one and
the same wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the
wave ahead of it also turns frequently. But wherever it
may turn there always will be the wave anticipating its
movement.
Whatever happens it always appears that just that event
was foreseen and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the
rush of water which neither directs nor increases its
movement foams ahead of it, and at a distance seems to us
not merely to move of itself but to govern the ship’s
movement also.
Examining only those expressions of the will of
historical persons which, as commands, were related to

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events, historians have assumed that the events depended

on those commands. But examining the events themselves
and the connection in which the historical persons stood
to the people, we have found that they and their orders
were dependent on events. The incontestable proof of this
deduction is that, however many commands were issued,
the event does not take place unless there are other causes
for it, but as soon as an event occurs- be it what it may-
then out of all the continually expressed wishes of
different people some will always be found which by their
meaning and their time of utterance are related as
commands to the events.
Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and
positively to these two essential questions of history:
(1) What is power?
(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?
(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other
individuals, in which the more this person expresses
opinions, predictions, and justifications of the collective
action that is performed, the less is his participation in
that action.
(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power,
nor by intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of
the two as historians have supposed, but by the activity of

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all the people who participate in the events, and who

always combine in such a way that those taking the
largest direct share in the event take on themselves the
least responsibility and vice versa.
Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the
event; physically it is those who submit to the power. But
as the moral activity is inconceivable without the
physical, the cause of the event is neither in the one nor in
the other but in the union of the two.
Or in other words, the conception of a cause is
inapplicable to the phenomena we are examining.
In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity- that
final limit to which in every domain of thought man’s
reason arrives if it is not playing with the subject.
Electricity produces heat, heat produces electricity. Atoms
attract each other and atoms repel one another.
Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and
of atoms, we cannot say why this occurs, and we say that
it is so because it is inconceivable otherwise, because it
must be so and that it is a law. The same applies to
historical events. Why war and revolution occur we do
not know. We only know that to produce the one or the
other action, people combine in a certain formation in
which they all take part, and we say that this is so because

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it is unthinkable otherwise, or in other words that it is a

law.

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Chapter VIII

If history dealt only with external phenomena, the

establishment of this simple and obvious law would
suffice and we should have finished our argument. But the
law of history relates to man. A particle of matter cannot
tell us that it does not feel the law of attraction or
repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is the
subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore
not subject to the law.
The presence of the problem of man’s free will, though
unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.
All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily
encountered this question. All the contradictions and
obscurities of history and the false path historical science
has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of
that question.
If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man
could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of
disconnected incidents.
If in a thousand years even one man in a million could
act freely, that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single
free act of that man’s in violation of the laws governing

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human action would destroy the possibility of the

existence of any laws for the whole of humanity.
If there be a single law governing the actions of men,
free will cannot exist, for then man’s will is subject to that
law.
In this contradiction lies the problem of free will,
which from most ancient times has occupied the best
human minds and from most ancient times has been
presented in its whole tremendous significance.
The problem is that regarding man as a subject of
observation from whatever point of view- theological,
historical, ethical, or philosophic- we find a general law
of necessity to which he (like all that exists) is subject.
But regarding him from within ourselves as what we are
conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.
This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite
apart from and independent of reason. Through his reason
man observes himself, but only through consciousness
does he know himself.
Apart from consciousness of self no observation or
application of reason is conceivable.
To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man
must first of all be conscious of himself as living. A man
is only conscious of himself as a living being by the fact

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that he wills, that is, is conscious of his volition. But his

will- which forms the essence of his life- man recognizes
(and can but recognize) as free.
If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always
directed by one and the same law (whether he observes
the necessity of taking food, using his brain, or anything
else) he cannot recognize this never-varying direction of
his will otherwise than as a limitation of it. Were it not
free it could not be limited. A man’s will seems to him to
be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as
free.
You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted
my hand and let it fall. Everyone understands that this
illogical reply is an irrefutable demonstration of freedom.
That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is
not subject to reason.
If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate
and independent source of self-consciousness it would be
subject to reasoning and to experience, but in fact such
subjection does not exist and is inconceivable.
A series of experiments and arguments proves to every
man that he, as an object of observation, is subject to
certain laws, and man submits to them and never resists
the laws of gravity or impermeability once he has become

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acquainted with them. But the same series of experiments

and arguments proves to him that the complete freedom
of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that
his every action depends on his organization, his
character, and the motives acting upon him; yet man
never submits to the deductions of these experiments and
arguments. Having learned from experiment and
argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably
believes this and always expects the law that he has
learned to be fulfilled.
But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to
laws, he does not and cannot believe this.
However often experiment and reasoning may show a
man that under the same conditions and with the same
character he will do the same thing as before, yet when
under the same conditions and with the same character he
approaches for the thousandth time the action that always
ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as
before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every
man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and
experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to
imagine two different courses of action in precisely the
same conditions, feels that without this irrational
conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he

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cannot imagine life. He feels that however impossible it

may be, it is so, for without this conception of freedom
not only would he be unable to understand life, but he
would be unable to live for a single moment.
He could not live, because all man’s efforts, all his
impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom.
Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and
subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease,
culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and
hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees
of freedom.
A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of
except as deprived of life.
If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a
senseless contradiction like the possibility of performing
two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an
effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness
is not subject to reason.
This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by
all thinkers and felt by everyone without exception, this
consciousness without which no conception of man is
possible constitutes the other side of the question.

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Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and

all-seeing God. What is sin, the conception of which
arises from the consciousness of man’s freedom? That is a
question for theology.
The actions of men are subject to general immutable
laws expressed in statistics. What is man’s responsibility
to society, the conception of which results from the
conception of freedom? That is a question for
jurisprudence.
Man’s actions proceed from his innate character and
the motives acting upon him. What is conscience and the
perception of right and wrong in actions that follows from
the consciousness of freedom? That is a question for
ethics.
Man in connection with the general life of humanity
appears subject to laws which determine that life. But the
same man apart from that connection appears to free.
How should the past life of nations and of humanity be
regarded- as the result of the free, or as the result of the
constrained, activity of man? That is a question for
history.
Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of
knowledge- thanks to that most powerful engine of
ignorance, the diffusion of printed matter- has the

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question of the freedom of will been put on a level on

which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the
majority of so-called advanced people- that is, the crowd
of ignoramuses- have taken the work of the naturalists
who deal with one side of the question for a solution of
the whole problem.
They say and write and print that the soul and freedom
do not exist, for the life of man is expressed by muscular
movements and muscular movements are conditioned by
the activity of the nerves; the soul and free will do not
exist because at an unknown period of time we sprang
from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that
thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which
with such ardor they are now trying to prove by
physiology and comparative zoology was not merely
acknowledged by all the religions and all the thinkers, but
has never been denied. They do not see that the role of the
natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an
instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the
fact that, from the point of view of observation, reason
and the will are merely secretions of the brain, and that
man following the general law may have developed from
lower animals at some unknown period of time, only
explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands of

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years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories-

that from the point of view of reason man is subject to the
law of necessity; but it does not advance by a hair’s
breadth the solution of the question, which has another,
opposite, side, based on the consciousness of freedom.
If men descended from the apes at an unknown period
of time, that is as comprehensible as that they were made
from a handful of earth at a certain period of time (in the
first case the unknown quantity is the time, in the second
case it is the origin); and the question of how man’s
consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law
of necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by
comparative physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a
rabbit, or an ape, we can observe only the muscular
nervous activity, but in man we observe consciousness as
well as the muscular and nervous activity.
The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can
solve this question, are like plasterers set to plaster one
side of the walls of a church who, availing themselves of
the absence of the chief superintendent of the work,
should in an access of zeal plaster over the windows,
icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should
be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers,
everything is now so smooth and regular.

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Chapter IX

For the solution of the question of free will or

inevitability, history has this advantage over other
branches of knowledge in which the question is dealt
with, that for history this question does not refer to the
essence of man’s free will but its manifestation in the past
and under certain conditions.
In regard to this question, history stands to the other
sciences as experimental science stands to abstract
science.
The subject for history is not man’s will itself but our
presentation of it.
And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by
the incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not
exist as it does for theology, ethics, and philosophy.
History surveys a presentation of man’s life in which the
union of these two contradictions has already taken place.
In actual life each historic event, each human action, is
very clearly and definitely understood without any sense
of contradiction, although each event presents itself as
partly free and partly compulsory.

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To solve the question of how freedom and necessity

are combined and what constitutes the essence of these
two conceptions, the philosophy of history can and should
follow a path contrary to that taken by other sciences.
Instead of first defining the conceptions of freedom and
inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the
phenomena of life under those definitions, history should
deduce a definition of the conception of freedom and
inevitability themselves from the immense quantity of
phenomena of which it is cognizant and that always
appear dependent on these two elements.
Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or
of an individual we may consider, we always regard it as
the result partly of man’s free will and partly of the law of
inevitability.
Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and
the incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of
Napoleon III, or of someone’s action an hour ago in
choosing one direction out of several for his walk, we are
unconscious of any contradiction. The degree of freedom
and inevitability governing the actions of these people is
clearly defined for us.
Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies
according to differences in the point of view from which

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we regard the event, but every human action appears to us

as a certain combination of freedom and inevitability. In
every action we examine we see a certain measure of
freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And
always the more freedom we see in any action the less
inevitability do we perceive, and the more inevitability
the less freedom.
The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases
and increases according to the point of view from which
the action is regarded, but their relation is always one of
inverse proportion.
A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns
him; or a hungry mother exhausted by feeding her baby,
who steals some food; or a man trained to discipline who
on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless man-
seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the
law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in
which these people were placed, and more free to one
who does not know that the man was himself drowning,
that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the
ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed a
murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably
and harmlessly in society seems less guilty and his action
more due to the law of inevitability, to someone who

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considers his action after twenty years have elapsed than

to one who examined it the day after it was committed.
And in the same way every action of an insane,
intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less free and
more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of
him who committed the action, and seems more free and
less inevitable to one who does not know it. In all these
cases the conception of freedom is increased or
diminished and the conception of compulsion is
correspondingly decreased or increased, according to the
point of view from which the action is regarded. So that
the greater the conception of necessity the smaller the
conception of freedom and vice versa.
Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of
jurisprudence, and history itself understand alike this
relation between necessity and freedom.
All cases without exception in which our conception of
freedom and necessity is increased and diminished
depend on three considerations:
(1) The relation to the external world of the man who
commits the deeds.
(2) His relation to time.
(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.

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The first consideration is the clearness of our

perception of the man’s relation to the external world and
the greater or lesser clearness of our understanding of the
definite position occupied by the man in relation to
everything coexisting with him. This is what makes it
evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject
to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that
makes the actions of a man closely connected with others
in a thickly populated district, or of one bound by family,
official, or business duties, seem certainly less free and
more subject to necessity than those of a man living in
solitude and seclusion.
If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to
everything around him, each action of his seems to us
free. But if we see his relation to anything around him, if
we see his connection with anything whatever- with a
man who speaks to him, a book he reads, the work on
which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or the
light that falls on the things about him- we see that each
of these circumstances has an influence on him and
controls at least some side of his activity. And the more
we perceive of these influences the more our conception
of his freedom diminishes and the more our conception of
the necessity that weighs on him increases.

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The second consideration is the more or less evident

time relation of the man to the world and the clearness of
our perception of the place the man’s action occupies in
time. That is the ground which makes the fall of the first
man, resulting in the production of the human race,
appear evidently less free than a man’s entry into
marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity
of people who lived centuries ago and are connected with
me in time cannot seem to me as free as the life of a
contemporary, the consequences of which are still
unknown to me.
The degree of our conception of freedom or
inevitability depends in this respect on the greater or
lesser lapse of time between the performance of the action
and our judgment of it.
If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in
approximately the same circumstances as those I am in
now, my action appears to me undoubtedly free. But if I
examine an act performed a month ago, then being in
different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if
that act had not been committed much that resulted from
it- good, agreeable, and even essential- would not have
taken place. If I reflect on an action still more remote, ten
years ago or more, then the consequences of my action

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are still plainer to me and I find it hard to imagine what

would have happened had that action not been performed.
The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same
thing the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more
doubtful becomes my belief in the freedom of my action.
In history we find a very similar progress of conviction
concerning the part played by free will in the general
affairs of humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to
be indubitably the doing of all the known participants, but
with a more remote event we already see its inevitable
results which prevent our considering anything else
possible. And the farther we go back in examining events
the less arbitrary do they appear.
The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the
result of the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The
Napoleonic wars still seem to us, though already
questionably, to be the outcome of their heroes’ will. But
in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its
definite place in history and without which we cannot
imagine the modern history of Europe, though to the
chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared as merely
due to the will of certain people. In regard to the
migration of the peoples it does not enter anyone’s head
today to suppose that the renovation of the European

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world depended on Attila’s caprice. The farther back in

history the object of our observation lies, the more
doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the event
become and the more manifest the law of inevitability.
The third consideration is the degree to which we
apprehend that endless chain of causation inevitably
demanded by reason, in which each phenomenon
comprehended, and therefore man’s every action, must
have its definite place as a result of what has gone before
and as a cause of what will follow.
The better we are acquainted with the physiological,
psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation
and by which man is controlled, and the more correctly
we perceive the physiological, psychological, and
historical causes of the action, and the simpler the action
we are observing and the less complex the character and
mind of the man in question, the more subject to
inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of
others appear.
When we do not at all understand the cause of an
action, whether a crime, a good action, or even one that is
simply nonmoral, we ascribe a greater amount of freedom
to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently demand the
punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act

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we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we

recognize in it more individuality, originality, and
independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes
of the act is known to us we recognize a certain element
of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the
crime, or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous
act, or the freedom of the apparently original action. That
a criminal was reared among male factors mitigates his
fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or mother,
or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and
therefore seems less deserving of sympathy and less the
result of free will. The founder of a sect or party, or an
inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by
what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a
large range of examples, if our observation is constantly
directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in
people’s actions, their actions appear to us more under
compulsion and less free the more correctly we connect
the effects with the causes. If we examined simple actions
and had a vast number of such actions under observation,
our conception of their inevitability would be still greater.
The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the
misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad

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company, a drunkard’s relapse into drunkenness, and so

on are actions that seem to us less free the better we
understand their cause. If the man whose actions we are
considering is on a very low stage of mental development,
like a child, a madman, or a simpleton- then, knowing the
causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and
intelligence in question, we see so large an element of
necessity and so little free will that as soon as we know
the cause prompting the action we can foretell the result.
On these three considerations alone is based the
conception of irresponsibility for crimes and the
extenuating circumstances admitted by all legislative
codes. The responsibility appears greater or less according
to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
which the man was placed whose action is being judged,
and according to the greater or lesser interval of time
between the commission of the action and its
investigation, and according to the greater or lesser
understanding of the causes that led to the action.

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Chapter X

Thus our conception of free will and inevitability

gradually diminishes or increases according to the greater
or lesser connection with the external world, the greater or
lesser remoteness of time, and the greater or lesser
dependence on the causes in relation to which we
contemplate a man’s life.
So that if we examine the case of a man whose
connection with the external world is well known, where
the time between the action and its examination is great,
and where the causes of the action are most accessible, we
get the conception of a maximum of inevitability and a
minimum of free will. If we examine a man little
dependent on external conditions, whose action was
performed very recently, and the causes of whose action
are beyond our ken, we get the conception of a minimum
of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
In neither case- however we may change our point of
view, however plain we may make to ourselves the
connection between the man and the external world,
however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or
short the period of time, however intelligible or

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incomprehensible the causes of the action may be- can we

ever conceive either complete freedom or complete
necessity.
(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be
exempt from the influence of the external world, we never
get a conception of freedom in space. Every human action
is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by
his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action
seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise
my arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the
direction in which there was least obstruction to that
action either from things around me or from the
construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the
possible directions because in it there were fewest
obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it
should encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man
being free we must imagine him outside space, which is
evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of
judgment to the time of the deed, we never get a
conception of freedom in time. For if I examine an action
committed a second ago I must still recognize it as not
being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at
which it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but

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ask myself: could I have abstained from lifting my arm at

the moment that has already passed? To convince myself
of this I do not lift it the next moment. But I am not now
abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked
the question. Time has gone by which I could not detain,
the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I
now refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it
the same that now surrounds me. The moment in which
the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at that
moment I could make only one movement, and whatever
movement I made would be the only one. That I did not
lift my arm a moment later does not prove that I could
have abstained from lifting it then. And since I could
make only one movement at that single moment of time,
it could not have been any other. To imagine it as free, it
is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary
between the past and the future- that is, outside time,
which is impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the
causes may be increased, we never reach a conception of
complete freedom, that is, an absence of cause. However
inaccessible to us may be the cause of the expression of
will in any action, our own or another’s, the first demand
of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for

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without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my

arm to perform an action independently of any cause, but
my wish to perform an action without a cause is the cause
of my action.
But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all
influences, examining only his momentary action in the
present, unevoked by any cause- we were to admit so
infinitely small a remainder of inevitability as equaled
zero, we should even then not have arrived at the
conception of complete freedom in man, for a being
uninfluenced by the external world, standing outside of
time and independent of cause, is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never imagine the action of a
man quite devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the
law of inevitability.
(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the
conditions of space in which man is situated, that
knowledge can never be complete, for the number of
those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space. And
therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men
are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain
measure of freedom remains.
(2) However we may prolong the period of time
between the action we are examining and the judgment

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upon it, that period will be finite, while time is infinite,

and so in this respect too there can never be absolute
inevitability.
(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation
of any action, we shall never know the whole chain since
it is endless, and so again we never reach absolute
inevitability.
But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining
minimum of freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some
given case- as for instance in that of a dying man, an
unborn babe, or an idiot- complete absence of freedom,
by so doing we should destroy the very conception of man
in the case we are examining, for as soon as there is no
freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of
the action of a man subject solely to the law of
inevitability without any element of freedom is just as
impossible as the conception of a man’s completely free
action.
And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject
to the law of inevitability without any freedom, we must
assume the knowledge of an infinite number of space
relations, an infinitely long period of time, and an infinite
series of causes.

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To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the

law of inevitability, we must imagine him all alone,
beyond space, beyond time, and free from dependence on
cause.
In the first case, if inevitability were possible without
freedom we should have reached a definition of
inevitability by the laws of inevitability itself, that is, a
mere form without content.
In the second case, if freedom were possible without
inevitability we should have arrived at unconditioned
freedom beyond space, time, and cause, which by the fact
of its being unconditioned and unlimited would be
nothing, or mere content without form.
We should in fact have reached those two
fundamentals of which man’s whole outlook on the
universe is constructed- the incomprehensible essence of
life, and the laws defining that essence.
Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that
give it visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined
otherwise. (2) Time is infinite motion without a moment
of rest and is unthinkable otherwise. (3) The connection
between cause and effect has no beginning and can have
no end.

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Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists

is but me, consequently I include space. (2) I measure
flowing time by the fixed moment of the present in which
alone I am conscious of myself as living, consequently I
am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself
to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.
Consciousness gives expression to the essence of
freedom.
Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life,
in man’s consciousness. Inevitability without content is
man’s reason in its three forms.
Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what
examines. Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the
form.
Only by separating the two sources of cognition,
related to one another as form to content, do we get the
mutually exclusive and separately incomprehensible
conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of
man’s life.
Apart from these two concepts which in their union
mutually define one another as form and content, no
conception of life is possible.

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All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain

relation of free will to inevitability, that is, of
consciousness to the laws of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is
only a certain relation of the forces of nature to
inevitability, or of the essence of life to the laws of
reason.
The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not
conscious of them; we call those forces gravitation,
inertia, electricity, animal force, and so on, but we are
conscious of the force of life in man and we call that
freedom.
But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible
in itself but felt by every man, is understood by us only to
the extent to which we know the laws of inevitability to
which it is subject (from the first knowledge that all
bodies have weight, up to Newton’s law), so too the force
of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which
everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as
we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject
(from the fact that every man dies, up to the knowledge of
the most complex economic and historic laws).
All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of
life under the laws of reason.

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Man’s free will differs from every other force in that

man is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it
in no way differs from any other force. The forces of
gravitation, electricity, or chemical affinity are only
distinguished from one another in that they are differently
defined by reason. Just so the force of man’s free will is
distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature
only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart
from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that
define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or
the force that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a
momentary undefinable sensation of life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the
heavenly bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of
heat and electricity, or of chemical affinity, or of the vital
force, forms the content of astronomy, physics, chemistry,
botany, zoology, and so on, just in the same way does the
force of free will form the content of history. But just as
the subject of every science is the manifestation of this
unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only
be the subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of
the force of free will in human beings in space, in time,
and in dependence on cause forms the subject of history,
while free will itself is the subject of metaphysics.

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In the experimental sciences what we know we call the

laws of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital
force. Vital force is only an expression for the unknown
remainder over and above what we know of the essence
of life.
So also in history what is known to us we call laws of
inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will
is for history only an expression for the unknown
remainder of what we know about the laws of human life.

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Chapter XI

History examines the manifestations of man’s free will

in connection with the external world in time and in
dependence on cause, that is, it defines this freedom by
the laws of reason, and so history is a science only in so
far as this free will is defined by those laws.
The recognition of man’s free will as something
capable of influencing historical events, that is, as not
subject to laws, is the same for history as the recognition
of a free force moving the heavenly bodies would be for
astronomy.
That assumption would destroy the possibility of the
existence of laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there
is even a single body moving freely, then the laws of
Kepler and Newton are negatived and no conception of
the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists. If
any single action is due to free will, then not a single
historical law can exist, nor any conception of historical
events.
For history, lines exist of the movement of human
wills, one end of which is hidden in the unknown but at
the other end of which a consciousness of man’s will in

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the present moves in space, time, and dependence on

cause.
The more this field of motion spreads out before our
eyes, the more evident are the laws of that movement. To
discover and define those laws is the problem of history.
From the standpoint from which the science of history
now regards its subject on the path it now follows,
seeking the causes of events in man’s freewill, a scientific
enunciation of those laws is impossible, for however
man’s free will may be restricted, as soon as we recognize
it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law
becomes impossible.
Only by reducing this element of free will to the
infinitesimal, that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small
quantity, can we convince ourselves of the absolute
inaccessibility of the causes, and then instead of seeking
causes, history will take the discovery of laws as its
problem.
The search for these laws has long been begun and the
new methods of thought which history must adopt are
being worked out simultaneously with the self-destruction
toward which- ever dissecting and dissecting the causes of
phenomena- the old method of history is moving.

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All human sciences have traveled along that path.

Arriving at infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of
sciences, abandons the process of analysis and enters on
the new process of the integration of unknown, infinitely
small, quantities. Abandoning the conception of cause,
mathematics seeks law, that is, the property common to
all unknown, infinitely small, elements.
In another form but along the same path of reflection
the other sciences have proceeded. When Newton
enunciated the law of gravity he did not say that the sun
or the earth had a property of attraction; he said that all
bodies from the largest to the smallest have the property
of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the
question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he
expressed the property common to all bodies from the
infinitely large to the infinitely small. The same is done
by the natural sciences: leaving aside the question of
cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the same
path. And if history has for its object the study of the
movement of the nations and of humanity and not the
narration of episodes in the lives of individuals, it too,
setting aside the conception of cause, should seek the laws
common to all the inseparably interconnected
infinitesimal elements of free will.

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Chapter XII

From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered

and proved, the mere recognition of the fact that it was
not the sun but the earth that moves sufficed to destroy
the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving
that law it might have been possible to retain the old
conception of the movements of the bodies, but without
disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue
studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the
discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds
were still studied for a long time.
From the time the first person said and proved that the
number of births or of crimes is subject to mathematical
laws, and that this or that mode of government is
determined by certain geographical and economic
conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil
produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which
history had been built were destroyed in their essence.
By refuting these new laws the former view of history
might have been retained; but without refuting them it
would seem impossible to continue studying historic
events as the results of man’s free will. For if a certain

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mode of government was established or certain

migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such
and such geographic, ethnographic, or economic
conditions, then the free will of those individuals who
appear to us to have established that mode of government
or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as
the cause.
And yet the former history continues to be studied side
by side with the laws of statistics, geography, political
economy, comparative philology, and geology, which
directly contradict its assumptions.
The struggle between the old views and the new was
long and stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy.
Theology stood on guard for the old views and accused
the new of violating revelation. But when truth
conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the
new foundation.
Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now
proceeding between the old and the new conception of
history, and theology in the same way stands on guard for
the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting
revelation.
In the one case as in the other, on both sides the
struggle provokes passion and stifles truth. On the one

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hand there is fear and regret for the loss of the whole
edifice constructed through the ages, on the other is the
passion for destruction.
To the men who fought against the rising truths of
physical philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that
truth it would destroy faith in God, in the creation of the
firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the son of Nun.
To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton,
to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of
astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of
gravitation as a weapon against religion.
Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the
law of inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul,
of good and evil, and all the institutions of state and
church that have been built up on those conceptions.
So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of
the law of inevitability today use that law as a weapon
against religion, though the law of inevitability in history,
like the law of Copernicus in astronomy, far from
destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which the
institutions of state and church are erected.
As in the question of astronomy then, so in the
question of history now, the whole difference of opinion
is based on the recognition or nonrecognition of

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something absolute, serving as the measure of visible

phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the
earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free
will.
As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the
motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate
sensation of the earth’s fixity and of the motion of the
planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the
subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and
cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the
independence of one’s own personality. But as in
astronomy the new view said: ‘It is true that we do not
feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its
immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its
motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,’ so also
in history the new view says: ‘It is true that we are not
conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free
will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our
dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause,
we arrive at laws.’
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the
consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to
recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it
is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not

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exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not

conscious.

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