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us?’ came eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report spread
that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had
halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the
muddy road.
Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible.
Captain Tushin, having given orders to his company, sent
a soldier to find a dressing station or a doctor for the cadet,
and sat down by a bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the
road. Rostov, too, dragged himself to the fire. From pain,
cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole body.
Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake
kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which
he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his
eyes and then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him
dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of
Tushin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
Tushin’s large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw that Tushin with
his whole heart wished to help him but could not.
From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the
infantry, who were walking, driving past, and settling down
all around. The sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses’ hoofs moving in mud, the crackling of wood fires near
and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.
It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing
through the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually
subsiding after a storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and around him. An infantryman
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came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held his hands to the
blaze, and turned away his face.
‘You don’t mind your honor?’ he asked Tushin. ‘I’ve lost
my company, your honor. I don’t know where… such bad
luck!’
With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged
cheek came up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked
him to have the guns moved a trifle to let a wagon go past.
After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to the campfire. They
were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying to
snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.
‘You picked it up?… I dare say! You’re very smart!’ one of
them shouted hoarsely.
Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg band, came up and in angry tones asked the
artillerymen for water.
‘Must one die like a dog?’ said he.
Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a
cheerful soldier ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
‘A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you,
fellow countrymen. Thanks for the firewe’ll return it with
interest,’ said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.
Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a
cloak, and passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.
‘Who the devil has put the logs on the road?’ snarled he.
‘He’s deadwhy carry him?’ said another.
‘Shut up!’
And they disappeared into the darkness with with their
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load.
‘Still aching?’ Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in the hut
here,’ said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.
‘Coming, friend.’
Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it
straight, walked away from the fire.
Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been
prepared for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking
with some commanding officers who had gathered at his
quarters. The little old man with the half-closed eyes was
there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the general who
had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the
signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and
Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly
glittering eyes.
In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the
French, and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its
texture, shaking his head in perplexityperhaps because the
banner really interested him, perhaps because it was hard for
him, hungry as he was, to look on at a dinner where there was
no place for him. In the next hut there was a French colonel
who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into details of
the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had
been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as
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soon as the action began he had withdrawn from the wood,
mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two
battalions and had broken up the French troops.
‘When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion
was disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: ‘I’ll let
them come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole
battalion’and that’s what I did.’
The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he
had not managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps it might really have been so? Could
one possibly make out amid all that confusion what did or
did not happen?
‘By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,’ he continuedremembering Dolokhov’s conversation with Kutuzov
and his last interview with the gentleman-ranker‘that Private Dolokhov, who was reduced to the ranks, took a French
officer prisoner in my presence and particularly distinguished himself.’
‘I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,’ chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not
seen the hussars all that day, but had heard about them from
an infantry officer. ‘They broke up two squares, your excellency.’
Several of those present smiled at Zherkov’s words, expecting one of his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was
saying redounded to the glory of our arms and of the day’s
work, they assumed a serious expression, though many of
them knew that what he was saying was a lie devoid of any
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foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:
‘Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two
guns were abandoned in the center?’ he inquired, searching with his eyes for someone. (Prince Bagration did not
ask about the guns on the left flank; he knew that all the
guns there had been abandoned at the very beginning of the
action.) ‘I think I sent you?’ he added, turning to the staff officer on duty.
‘One was damaged,’ answered the staff officer, ‘and the
other I can’t understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only just left…. It is true that it was hot there,’
he added, modestly.
Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the village and had already been sent for.
‘Oh, but you were there?’ said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince Andrew.
‘Of course, we only just missed one another,’ said the staff
officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.
‘I had not the pleasure of seeing you,’ said Prince Andrew,
coldly and abruptly.
All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and
made his way timidly from behind the backs of the generals.
As he stepped past the generals in the crowded hut, feeling
embarrassed as he always was by the sight of his superiors,
he did not notice the staff of the banner and stumbled over
it. Several of those present laughed.
‘How was it a gun was abandoned?’ asked Bagration,
frowning, not so much at the captain as at those who were
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laughing, among whom Zherkov laughed loudest.
Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns
and yet remaining alive present themselves to Tushin in all
their horror. He had been so excited that he had not thought
about it until that moment. The officers’ laughter confused
him still more. He stood before Bagration with his lower
jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: ‘I don’t know…
your excellency… I had no men… your excellency.’
‘You might have taken some from the covering troops.’
Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops,
though that was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting
some other officer into trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on
Bagration as a schoolboy who has blundered looks at an examiner.
The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the
others did not venture to intervene. Prince Andrew looked
at Tushin from under his brows and his fingers twitched nervously.
‘Your excellency!’ Prince Andrew broke the silence with
his abrupt voice,’ you were pleased to send me to Captain
Tushin’s battery. I went there and found two thirds of the
men and horses knocked out, two guns smashed, and no
supports at all.’
Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
‘And, if your excellency will allow me to express my
opinion,’ he continued, ‘we owe today’s success chiefly to
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the action of that battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,’ and without awaiting a reply,
Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to
show distrust in Bolkonski’s emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that
he could go. Prince Andrew went out with him.
‘Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!’ said Tushin.
Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and
went away. He felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so
unlike what he had hoped.
‘Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want?
And when will all this end?’ thought Rostov, looking at the
changing shadows before him. The pain in his arm became
more and more intense. Irresistible drowsiness overpowered
him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the impression
of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
with the physical pain. It was they, these soldierswounded
and unwoundedit was they who were crushing, weighing
down, and twisting the sinews
