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-interesthouse owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen,
artisans, and peasantsstreamed into Moscow as blood flows
to the heart.
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
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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 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 himwhether important or quite triflingsuch 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 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
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vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary was
in Moscow and living in her housewhich had not been
burnedin 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 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.
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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 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 imagineI 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
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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 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 thinkingespecially 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 clearlyclearer than any words
could have donedid 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
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begun with Princess Mary he again glanced at 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.
‘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
