War and Peace
of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what went on around
him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror and haste, like
something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the previous night’s
experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was not destined to bring
his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not been hindered by
anything on the way, his intention could not now have been carried out,
for Napoleon had passed the Arbát more than four hours previously on his
way from the Dorogomílov suburb to the Krémlin, and was now sitting in
a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Krémlin, giving
detailed and exact orders as to measures to be taken immediately
to extinguish the fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the
inhabitants. But Pierre did not know this; he was entirely absorbed
in what lay before him, and was tortured—as those are who obstinately
undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its
difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures—by the
fear of weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.
Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by instinct
and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the Povarskóy.
As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser—he
even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose
from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets
and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something
unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he was
approaching the fire. As he was going along a footpath across a
wide-open space adjoining the Povarskóy on one side and the gardens
of Prince Gruzínski’s house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the
desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening
from a dream and lifted his head.
By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of household
goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and trunks. On the
ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer young, with long,
prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman,
swaying to and fro and muttering something, was choking with sobs. Two
girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty short frocks and cloaks,
were staring at their mother with a look of stupefaction on their pale
frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy of about seven, who wore an
overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was crying in his
old nurse’s arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting on a trunk,
and, having undone her pale-colored plait, was pulling it straight
and sniffing at her singed hair. The woman’s husband, a short,
round-shouldered man in the undress uniform of a civilian official, with
sausage-shaped whiskers and showing under his square-set cap the hair
smoothly brushed forward over his temples, with expressionless face was
moving the trunks, which were placed one on another, and was dragging
some garments from under them.
As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet.
“Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends... help
us, somebody,” she muttered between her sobs. “My girl... My daughter!
My youngest daughter is left behind. She’s burned! Ooh! Was it for this
I nursed you.... Ooh!”
“Don’t, Mary Nikoláevna!” said her husband to her in a low voice,
evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. “Sister must have
taken her, or else where can she be?” he added.
“Monster! Villain!” shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to weep.
“You have no heart, you don’t feel for your own child! Another man would
have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a
man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man,” she went on,
addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. “The fire broke out
alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out ‘Fire!’ and we rushed
to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is what we
have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the rest is lost.
We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!...” and again she
began to sob. “My child, my dear one! Burned, burned!”
“But where was she left?” asked Pierre.
From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
might help her.
“Oh, dear sir!” she cried, seizing him by the legs. “My benefactor, set
my heart at ease.... Aníska, go, you horrid girl, show him the way!” she
cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing
her long teeth.
“Show me the way, show me, I... I’ll do it,” gasped Pierre rapidly.
The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her plait,
sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre felt
as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his head
higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift steps
he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the Povarskóy. The
whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues of flame here
and there broke through that cloud. A great number of people crowded in
front of the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a French
general saying something to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the
maid, was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but the French
soldiers stopped him.
“On ne passe pas!” * cried a voice.
* “You can’t pass!”
“This way, uncle,” cried the girl. “We’ll pass through the side street,
by the Nikúlins’!”
Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with her.
She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left, and,
passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.
“It’s here, close by,” said she and, running across the yard, opened a
gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small wooden
wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its
sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames issued from
the openings of the windows and from under the roof.
As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and
involuntarily stopped.
“Which is it? Which is your house?” he asked.
“Ooh!” wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. “That’s it, that was our
lodging. You’ve burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious little
missy! Ooh!” lamented Aníska, who at the sight of the fire felt that she
too must give expression to her feelings.
Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house
that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and around
which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize
what these men, who were dragging something out, were about; but seeing
before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber and trying
to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that looting was
going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.
The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the
whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and
the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds
and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here and there dense
sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish scales creeping along
the walls), and the heat and smoke and rapidity of motion, produced
on Pierre the usual animating effects of a conflagration. It had a
peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of the fire he felt
himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed him down. He felt
young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of
the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still
standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting
and then a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close
beside him.
Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some Frenchmen
who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with metal
articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the drawer.
“What does this fellow want?” shouted one of them referring to Pierre.
“There’s a child in that house. Haven’t you seen a child?” cried Pierre.
“What’s he talking about? Get along!” said several voices, and one of
the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from
them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved
threateningly toward him.
“A child?” shouted a Frenchman from above. “I did hear something
squealing in the garden. Perhaps it’s his brat that the fellow is
looking for. After all, one must be human, you know....”
“Where is it? Where?” said Pierre.
“There! There!” shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the
garden at the back of the house. “Wait a bit—I’m coming down.”
And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with a spot
on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window on the
ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the
garden.
“Hurry up, you others!” he called out to his comrades. “It’s getting
hot.”
When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman pulled
Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space where a
three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.
“There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!” said the
Frenchman. “Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
know!” and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
comrades.
Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take
her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking
child, unattractively like her mother, began to yell and run away.
Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his arms. She screamed
desperately and angrily and tried with her little hands to pull Pierre’s
hands away and to bite them with her slobbering mouth. Pierre was seized
by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he had experienced when
touching some nasty little animal. But he made an effort not to throw
the child down and ran with her to the large house. It was now, however,
impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aníska, was no
longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and disgust pressed the
wet, painfully sobbing child to himself as tenderly as he could and ran
with her through the garden seeking another way out.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
with his little burden to the Gruzínski garden at the corner of the
Povarskóy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had set
out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods
that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian families who
had taken refuge here from the fire with their belongings, there were
several French soldiers in a variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice
of them. He hurried to find the family of that civil servant in order to
restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre
felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the
heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than ever
the sense of youth, animation, and determination that had come on him
when he ran to save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging
with her little hands to Pierre’s coat, sat on his arm gazing about
her like some little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a
slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
frightened, sickly little face.