War and Peace
Denísov galloped up to him.
“Your excellency! Let us attack them! I’ll dwive them off.”
“Attack indeed!” said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. “And why are you stopping
here? Don’t you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
back.”
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front
line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side
of the river.
The two Pávlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdánich Schubert, came
up to Denísov’s squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostóv,
without taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the
first time since their encounter concerning Telyánin. Rostóv, feeling
that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he now
admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the
colonel’s athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
neck. It seemed to Rostóv that Bogdánich was only pretending not
to notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s
courage, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it
seemed to him that Bogdánich rode so near in order to show him his
courage. Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a
desperate attack just to punish him—Rostóv. Then he imagined how,
after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to him as he lay wounded and
would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkóv, familiar to the Pávlograds as
he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel.
After his dismissal from headquarters Zherkóv had not remained in the
regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front when he
could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had succeeded
in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince Bagratión. He now
came to his former chief with an order from the commander of the rear
guard.
“Colonel,” he said, addressing Rostóv’s enemy with an air of
gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, “there is an order
to stop and fire the bridge.”
“An order to who?” asked the colonel morosely.
“I don’t myself know ‘to who,’” replied the cornet in a
serious tone, “but the prince told me to ‘go and tell the colonel
that the hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.’”
Zherkóv was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvítski
came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his
weight.
“How’s this, Colonel?” he shouted as he approached. “I told you
to fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all
beside themselves over there and one can’t make anything out.”
The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvítski.
“You spoke to me of inflammable material,” said he, “but you said
nothing about firing it.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Nesvítski as he drew up, taking off his
cap and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
“wasn’t I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material
had been put in position?”
“I am not your ‘dear sir,’ Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell
me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would
burn it, I could not know by the holy spirit!”
“Ah, that’s always the way!” said Nesvítski with a wave of the
hand. “How did you get here?” said he, turning to Zherkóv.
“On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!”
“You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer...” continued the colonel in an
offended tone.
“Colonel,” interrupted the officer of the suite, “You must be
quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot.”
The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout
staff officer, and at Zherkóv, and he frowned.
“I will the bridge fire,” he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still
do the right thing.
Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame
for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
squadron, that in which Rostóv was serving under Denísov, to return to
the bridge.
“There, it’s just as I thought,” said Rostóv to himself. “He
wishes to test me!” His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his
face. “Let him see whether I am a coward!” he thought.
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostóv watched his enemy,
the colonel, closely—to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostóv, and looked
as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word
of command.
“Look sharp! Look sharp!” several voices repeated around him.
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men
were crossing themselves. Rostóv no longer looked at the colonel, he
had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid
that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse into
an orderly’s charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with
a thud. Denísov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something.
Rostóv saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs
catching and their sabers clattering.
“Stretchers!” shouted someone behind him.
Rostóv did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled,
and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
“At boss zides, Captain,” he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.
Rostóv wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and
was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front
the better. But Bogdánich, without looking at or recognizing Rostóv,
shouted to him:
“Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come
back, Cadet!” he cried angrily; and turning to Denísov, who, showing
off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
“Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,” he said.
“Oh, every bullet has its billet,” answered Váska Denísov, turning
in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer of the suite were
standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at
what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side—the blue
uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.
“Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there first? Will they
get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot
range and wipe them out?” These were the questions each man of the
troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself
with a sinking heart—watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright
evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with
their bayonets and guns.
“Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!” said Nesvítski; “they are
within grapeshot range now.”
“He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the
suite.
“True enough,” answered Nesvítski; “two smart fellows could have
done the job just as well.”
“Ah, your excellency,” put in Zherkóv, his eyes fixed on the
hussars, but still with that naïve air that made it impossible to know
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. “Ah, your excellency!
How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
Vladímir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the
squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our
Bogdánich knows how things are done.”
“There now!” said the officer of the suite, “that’s
grapeshot.”
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached
and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the
moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.
“Oh! Oh!” groaned Nesvítski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
officer of the suite by the arm. “Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
fallen!”
“Two, I think.”
“If I were Tsar I would never go to war,” said Nesvítski, turning
away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again
but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvítski could not see what was happening there,
as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in
setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no
longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was
someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars
got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too
high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and
knocked three of them over.
Rostóv, absorbed by his relations with Bogdánich, had paused on the
bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the
other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a
rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar nearest
to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostóv ran up to him with
the others. Again someone shouted, “Stretchers!” Four men seized the
hussar and began lifting him.
“Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!” cried the wounded man, but
still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed
into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the
sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep!
How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the
waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway
blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and
the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace
and happiness... “I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I
were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that sunshine
there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and
this uncertainty and hurry... There—they are shouting again, and
again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it,
death, is here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never
again see the sun, this water, that gorge!...”
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
stretchers came into view before Rostóv. And the fear of death and of
the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one
feeling of sickening agitation.
“O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
me!” Rostóv whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices