War and Peace
He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He
walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he
met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family
consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,
cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar
type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the
perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,
black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,
beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright
lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out
onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the old
woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless, large,
almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she was aware
of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck Pierre and,
hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at her.
When he had reached the fence, still without finding those he sought, he
stopped and looked about him.
With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than
before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him.
“Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You’re of the gentry yourself,
aren’t you? Whose child is it?” they asked him.
Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who
had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether
anyone knew where she had gone.
“Why, that must be the Anférovs,” said an old deacon, addressing a
pockmarked peasant woman. “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!” he added
in his customary bass.
“The Anférovs? No,” said the woman. “They left in the morning. That must
be either Mary Nikoláevna’s or the Ivánovs’!”
“He says ‘a woman,’ and Mary Nikoláevna is a lady,” remarked a house
serf.
“Do you know her? She’s thin, with long teeth,” said Pierre.
“That’s Mary Nikoláevna! They went inside the garden when these wolves
swooped down,” said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.
“O Lord, have mercy!” added the deacon.
“Go over that way, they’re there. It’s she! She kept on lamenting and
crying,” continued the woman. “It’s she. Here, this way!”
But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been
intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at
the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them.
One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round
the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were
bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a
long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements
and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman’s loose gown
of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian boots. The little
barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the Armenians and,
saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old
man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown
stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands in
his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and silent.
“Here, take the child!” said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to the
woman, handing the little girl to her. “Give her back to them, give her
back!” he almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the
ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.
The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.
The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to the
Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to
side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands from his
pockets had seized her by the neck.
The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude,
with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the
soldier was doing to her.
While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing
from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young
woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
“Let that woman alone!” exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious voice,
seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside.
The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing down
the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward Pierre.
“Voyons, pas de bêtises!” * 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 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!”
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, 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 Zúbov Rampart that was
being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under strict guard.
BOOK TWELVE: 1812
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 Rumyántsev, the French, Márya Fëdorovna, the Tsarévich, 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 Márya, concerned for
the welfare of the charitable and educational institutions under her
patronage, had given directions that they should all be removed to
Kazán, and the things belonging to these institutions had already been
packed up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions
she would be pleased to give—with her characteristic Russian patriotism
had replied that she could give no directions about state institutions
for that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally
was concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.
At Anna Pávlovna’s on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the
battle of Borodinó, 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 Vasíli 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 Pávlovna’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
Pávlovna, not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room,
did not let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
conversation.
The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess Bezúkhova.
She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed
several gatherings of which she was usually the 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 Pávlovna’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.”