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 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.
“In Moscow?” he said in a questioning tone. “Yes, in Moscow. Good-bye!”
“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-bye, 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.

1. A. V. Vinogradski (1766-1818), who took the monastic name of Augustin, was a celebrated preacher and the Archbishop of Moscow.—A.M.
2. A medicine much used in Russia, composed of two parts ether sulphuricus and three parts alcohol.—A.M.
3. Students at the theological college.—A.M.
4. The reader may need to be again reminded that the Russian Church law of affinity forbade a man to marry his sister-in-law, so that, had Natasha married Andrew, it would have been a hindrance to Nicholas’ marrying Princess Mary and retrieving the Rostovs’ fortunes.—A.M.
5. Pierre at Bazdéev’s house. He wears a coachman’s coat
   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 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.
   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.
   “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.”
   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 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