War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Chapter I

‘Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me
that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies
and horrors perpetrated by that AntichristI really believe
he is AntichristI will have nothing more to do with you and
you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as
you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened
yousit down and tell me all the news.’
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known
Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the
Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words she greeted
Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance,
who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna
had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St.
Petersburg, used only by the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French,
and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning,
ran as follows:
‘If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and
if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is
not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight
between 7 and 10Annette Scherer.’
‘Heavens! what a virulent attack!’ replied the prince,
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not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had
just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee
breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene
expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French
in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and
with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of
importance who had grown old in society and at court. He
went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to
her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently
seated himself on the sofa.
‘First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your
friend’s mind at rest,’ said he without altering his tone,
beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned.
‘Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be
calm in times like these if one has any feeling?’ said Anna
Pavlovna. ‘You are staying the whole evening, I hope?’
‘And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is
Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there,’ said the
prince. ‘My daughter is coming for me to take me there.’
‘I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all
these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.’
‘If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment
would have been put off,’ said the prince, who, like a woundup clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish
to be believed.
‘Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.’
‘What can one say about it?’ replied the prince in a cold,


5

listless tone. ‘What has been decided? They have decided
that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we
are ready to burn ours.’
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary,
despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social
vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it,
she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which,
though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither
wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna
Pavlovna burst out:
‘Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t understand things, but Austria never has wished, and does not
wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone must save
Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith
in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform the
noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that
God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain!
We alone must avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom,
I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial
spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alex6

War and Peace

ander’s loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta.
She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in
our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The
English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have
they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that
Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless
before him.... And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is
just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of
our adored monarch. He will save Europe!’
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
‘I think,’ said the prince with a smile, ‘that if you had
been sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would
have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by assault. You
are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?’
‘In a moment. A propos,’ she added, becoming calm
again, ‘I am expecting two very interesting men tonight, le
Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French
families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones.
And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound
thinker? He has been received by the Emperor. Had you
heard?’
‘I shall be delighted to meet them,’ said the prince. ‘But
tell me,’ he added with studied carelessness as if it had only
just occurred to him, though the question he was about


7

to ask was the chief motive of his visit, ‘is it true that the
Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first
secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor
creature.’
Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but
others were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya
Fedorovna to secure it for the baron.
Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that
neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the
Empress desired or was pleased with.
‘Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager
Empress by her sister,’ was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna’s face suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere
devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness.
She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d’estime, and again her face clouded over
with sadness.
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with
the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for
daring to speak he had done of a man recommended to the
Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said:
‘Now about your family. Do you know that since your
daughter came out everyone has been enraptured by her?
They say she is amazingly beautiful.’
The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
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War and Peace

‘I often think,’ she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if
to show that political and social topics were ended and the
time had come for intimate conversation‘I often think how
unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has
fate given you two such splendid children? I don’t speak of
Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like him,’ she added in a tone
admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. ‘Two
such charming children. And really you appreciate them
less than anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.’
And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
‘I can’t help it,’ said the prince. ‘Lavater would have said
I lack the bump of paternity.’
‘Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do
you know I am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between
ourselves’ (and her face assumed its melancholy expression),
‘he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you were pitied...’
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting a reply. He frowned.
‘What would you have me do?’ he said at last. ‘You know
I did all a father could for their education, and they have
both turned out fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but
Anatole is an active one. That is the only difference between
them.’ He said this smiling in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth
very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and
unpleasant.
‘And why are children born to such men as you? If you
were not a father there would be nothing I could reproach


9

you with,’ said Anna Pavlovna, looking up pensively.
‘I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess
that my children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I
have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be
helped!’
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel
fate by a gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.
‘Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son
Anatole?’ she asked. ‘They say old maids have a mania for
matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little person who is very unhappy with
her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya.’
Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness
of memory and perception befitting a man of the world, he
indicated by a movement of the head that he was considering this information.
‘Do you know,’ he said at last, evidently unable to check
the sad current of his thoughts, ‘that Anatole is costing me
forty thousand rubles a year? And,’ he went on after a pause,
‘what will it be in five years, if he goes on like this?’ Presently he added: ‘That’s what we fathers have to put up with.... Is
this princess of yours rich?’
‘Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to
retire from the army under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is very clever but eccentric,
and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a brother;
I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is
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War and Peace

an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov’s and will be here tonight.’
‘Listen, dear Annette,’ said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pavlovna’s hand and for some reason drawing it
downwards. ‘Arrange that affair for me and I shall always
be your most devoted slaveslafe wigh an f, as a village elder
of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family
and that’s all I want.’
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him,
he raised the maid of honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and
swung it to and fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking
in another direction.
‘Attendez,’ said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, ‘I’ll speak to
Lise, young Bolkonski’s wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be arranged. It shall be on your family’s
behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as old maid.’



11

Chapter II
Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling.
The highest Petersburg society was assembled there: people
differing widely in age and character but alike in the social
circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasili’s daughter, the
beautiful Helene, came to take her father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and her badge as
maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkonskaya,
known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter,
and being pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but
only to small receptions. Prince Vasili’s son, Hippolyte, had
come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.
*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, ‘You have not
yet seen my aunt,’ or ‘You do not know my aunt?’ and very
gravely conducted him or her to a little old lady, wearing large
bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to arrive; and slowly
turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna Pavlovna
mentioned each one’s name and then left them.
Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old
aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted
to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna Pavlovna
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War and Peace

observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in
the same words, about their health and her own, and the
health of Her Majesty, ‘who, thank God, was better today.’
And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing
impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the
whole evening.
The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work
in a gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip,
on which a delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too
short for her teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was
especially charming when she occasionally drew it down to
meet the lower lip. As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defectthe shortness of her upper lip and
her half-open mouthseemed to be her own special and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this
pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of
life and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men
and dull dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being
in her company and talking to her a little while, felt as if they
too were becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who
talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile and the
constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in
a specially amiable mood that day.
The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar,
as if all she was doing was a pleasure to herself and to all


13

around her. ‘I have brought my work,’ said she in French,
displaying her bag and addressing all present. ‘Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me,’ she
added, turning to her hostess. ‘You wrote that it was to be
quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.’
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lacetrimmed, dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just
below the breast.
‘Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than
anyone else,’ replied Anna Pavlovna.
‘You know,’ said the princess in the same tone of voice
and still in French, turning to a general, ‘my husband is deserting me? He is going to get himself killed. Tell me what
this wretched war is for?’ she added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she turned to speak to
his daughter, the beautiful Helene.
‘What a delightful woman this little princess is!’ said
Prince Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young
man with close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored
breeches fashionable at that time, a very high ruffle, and a
brown dress coat. This stout young man was an illegitimate
son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine’s
time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man had
not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated,
and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna
greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of this lowest-grade
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greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face
when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather
bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety could
only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.
‘It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit
a poor invalid,’ said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed
glance with her aunt as she conducted him to her.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as if in search of something. On his way to
the aunt he bowed to the little princess with a pleased smile,
as to an intimate acquaintance.
Anna Pavlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned
away from the aunt without waiting to hear her speech about
Her Majesty’s health. Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained
him with the words: ‘Do you know the Abbe Morio? He is a
most interesting man.’
‘Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and
it is very interesting but hardly feasible.’
‘You think so?’ rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say
something and get away to attend to her duties as hostess.
But Pierre now committed a reverse act of impoliteness.
First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to
him, and now he continued to speak to another who wished
to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart,
he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbe’s plan
chimerical.


15

‘We will talk of it later,’ said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.
And having got rid of this young man who did not know
how to behave, she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready to help at any point where the
conversation might happen to flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes round
and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that
creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to
check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a
silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady,
proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on
him when he approached the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed
to another group whose center was the abbe.
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at
Anna Pavlovna’s was the first he had attended in Russia.
He knew that all the intellectual lights of Petersburg were
gathered there and, like a child in a toyshop, did not know
which way to look, afraid of missing any clever conversation
that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and refined
expression on the faces of those present he was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he came up
to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views,
as young people are fond of doing.
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Chapter III
Anna Pavlovna’s reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the
exception of the aunt, beside whom sat only one elderly lady,
who with her thin careworn face was rather out of place in
this brilliant society, the whole company had settled into
three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round
the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili’s daughter, and the
little Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though
rather too plump for her age. The third group was gathered
round Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.
The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft
features and polished manners, who evidently considered
himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed
himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat
to her guests. As a clever maitre d’hotel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had
seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the
abbe, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the murder of the
Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d’Enghien
had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were


17

particular reasons for Buonaparte’s hatred of him.
‘Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte,’ said Anna Pavlovna, with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la
Louis XV in the sound of that sentence: ‘Contez nous cela,
Vicomte.’
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of
his willingness to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group
round him, inviting everyone to listen to his tale.
‘The vicomte knew the duc personally,’ whispered Anna
Pavlovna to of the guests. ‘The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur,’ said she to another. ‘How evidently he belongs to
the best society,’ said she to a third; and the vicomte was
served up to the company in the choicest and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef on a
hot dish.
The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle
smile.
‘Come over here, Helene, dear,’ said Anna Pavlovna to
the beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off,
the center of another group.
The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging
smile with which she had first entered the roomthe smile
of a perfectly beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her
white dress trimmed with moss and ivy, with a gleam of
white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling diamonds, she
passed between the men who made way for her, not looking
at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosomwhich in the fashion of
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those days were very much exposedand she seemed to bring
the glamour of a ballroom with her as she moved toward
Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only did she
not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even
appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious
beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.
‘How lovely!’ said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte
lifted his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by
something extraordinary when she took her seat opposite
and beamed upon him also with her unchanging smile.
‘Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience,’
said he, smilingly inclining his head.
The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table
and considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited.
All the time the story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm, altered in shape by its
pressure on the table, now at her still more beautiful bosom,
on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time
to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever
the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna,
at once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of
honor’s face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.
The little princess had also left the tea table and followed
Helene.
‘Wait a moment, I’ll get my work.... Now then, what are
you thinking of?’ she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte.
‘Fetch me my workbag.’
There was a general movement as the princess, smiling


19

and talking merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily
arranged herself in her seat.
‘Now I am all right,’ she said, and asking the vicomte to
begin, she took up her work.
Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined
the circle and moving a chair close to hers seated himself
beside her.
Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by
the fact that in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features were like his sister’s, but while in
her case everything was lit up by a joyous, self-satisfied,
youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary
was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His
eyes, nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant,
wearied grimace, and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.
‘It’s not going to be a ghost story?’ said he, sitting down
beside the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if
without this instrument he could not begin to speak.
‘Why no, my dear fellow,’ said the astonished narrator,
shrugging his shoulders.
‘Because I hate ghost stories,’ said Prince Hippolyte in a
tone which showed that he only understood the meaning of
his words after he had uttered them.
He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers
could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or
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very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee
breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he
called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote,
then current, to the effect that the Duc d’Enghien had gone
secretly to Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her
house he came upon Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress’ favors, and that in his presence Napoleon
happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to which he was
subject, and was thus at the duc’s mercy. The latter spared
him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid
by death.
The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at
the point where the rivals suddenly recognized one another;
and the ladies looked agitated.
‘Charming!’ said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring
glance at the little princess.
‘Charming!’ whispered the little princess, sticking the
needle into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story prevented her from going on with it.
The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling
gratefully prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a watchful eye on the young man who so
alarmed her, noticed that he was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to the rescue. Pierre
had managed to start a conversation with the abbe about the
balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by the
young man’s simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his
pet theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and


21

too naturally, which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.
‘The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the
rights of the people,’ the abbe was saying. ‘It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russiabarbaric as she is
said to beto place herself disinterestedly at the head of an
alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance
of power of Europe, and it would save the world!’
‘But how are you to get that balance?’ Pierre was beginning.
At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking
severely at Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian
climate. The Italian’s face instantly changed and assumed
an offensively affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.
‘I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the society, more especially of the feminine society,
in which I have had the honor of being received, that I have
not yet had time to think of the climate,’ said he.
Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna,
the more conveniently to keep them under observation,
brought them into the larger circle.

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Chapter IV
Just them another visitor entered the drawing room:
Prince Andrew Bolkonski, the little princess’ husband. He
was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with
firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his
weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered
a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room,
but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to
look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he
found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that
of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a grimace
that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pavlovna’s
hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.
‘You are off to the war, Prince?’ said Anna Pavlovna.
‘General Kutuzov,’ said Bolkonski, speaking French and
stressing the last syllable of the general’s name like a Frenchman, ‘has been pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...’
‘And Lise, your wife?’
‘She will go to the country.’
‘Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming
wife?’
‘Andre,’ said his wife, addressing her husband in the
same coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men,


23

‘the vicomte has been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!’
Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away.
Pierre, who from the moment Prince Andrew entered the
room had watched him with glad, affectionate eyes, now
came up and took his arm. Before he looked round Prince
Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with
whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre’s
beaming face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.
‘There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?’ said
he to Pierre.
‘I knew you would be here,’ replied Pierre. ‘I will come to
supper with you. May I?’ he added in a low voice so as not to
disturb the vicomte who was continuing his story.
‘No, impossible!’ said Prince Andrew, laughing and
pressing Pierre’s hand to show that there was no need to ask
the question. He wished to say something more, but at that
moment Prince Vasili and his daughter got up to go and the
two young men rose to let them pass.
‘You must excuse me, dear Vicomte,’ said Prince Vasili to the Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a
friendly way to prevent his rising. ‘This unfortunate fete at
the ambassador’s deprives me of a pleasure, and obliges me
to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave your enchanting
party,’ said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.
His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs,
lightly holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone
still more radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her
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War and Peace

with rapturous, almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.
‘Very lovely,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Very,’ said Pierre.
In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre’s hand and said to
Anna Pavlovna: ‘Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a whole month and this is the first time I have
seen him in society. Nothing is so necessary for a young
man as the society of clever women.’
Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in
hand. She knew his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili’s. The elderly lady who had been sitting with the old aunt
rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasili in the anteroom.
All the affectation of interest she had assumed had left her
kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed only anxiety and fear.
‘How about my son Boris, Prince?’ said she, hurrying
after him into the anteroom. ‘I can’t remain any longer in
Petersburg. Tell me what news I may take back to my poor
boy.’
Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very
politely to the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience,
she gave him an ingratiating and appealing smile, and took
his hand that he might not go away.
‘What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor,
and then he would be transferred to the Guards at once?’
said she.
‘Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can,’ answered
Prince Vasili, ‘but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince


25

Golitsyn. That would be the best way.’
The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the best families in Russia, but she was poor,
and having long been out of society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come to Petersburg to
procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son. It
was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna’s reception and had
sat listening to the vicomte’s story. Prince Vasili’s words
frightened her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment; then she smiled again
and dutched Prince Vasili’s arm more tightly.
‘Listen to me, Prince,’ said she. ‘I have never yet asked
you for anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my father’s friendship for you; but now I
entreat you for God’s sake to do this for my sonand I shall
always regard you as a benefactor,’ she added hurriedly. ‘No,
don’t be angry, but promise! I have asked Golitsyn and he
has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were,’ she
said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
‘Papa, we shall be late,’ said Princess Helene, turning
her beautiful head and looking over her classically molded
shoulder as she stood waiting by the door.
Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to
be economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and
having once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who
begged of him, he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But in Princess
Drubetskaya’s case he felt, after her second appeal, some26

War and Peace

thing like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of
what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for
the first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her
manners that she was one of those womenmostly motherswho, having once made up their minds, will not rest until
they have gained their end, and are prepared if necessary to
go on insisting day after day and hour after hour, and even
to make scenes. This last consideration moved him.
‘My dear Anna Mikhaylovna,’ said he with his usual familiarity and weariness of tone, ‘it is almost impossible for
me to do what you ask; but to prove my devotion to you and
how I respect your father’s memory, I will do the impossibleyour son shall be transferred to the Guards. Here is my
hand on it. Are you satisfied?’
‘My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from youI
knew your kindness!’ He turned to go.
‘Waitjust a word! When he has been transferred to the
Guards...’ she faltered. ‘You are on good terms with Michael
Ilarionovich Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and then..’
Prince Vasili smiled.
‘No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how Kutuzov
is pestered since his appointment as Commander in Chief.
He told me himself that all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants.’
‘No, but do promise! I won’t let you go! My dear benefactor..’
‘Papa,’ said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before, ‘we shall be late.’


27

‘Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?’
‘Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?’
‘Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don’t promise.’
‘Do promise, do promise, Vasili!’ cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went, with the smile of a coquettish girl, which
at one time probably came naturally to her, but was now
very ill-suited to her careworn face.
Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince
had gone her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the group where the vicomte was still
talking, and again pretended to listen, while waiting till it
would be time to leave. Her task was accomplished.

28

War and Peace

Chapter V
‘And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?’ asked Anna Pavlovna, ‘and of the comedy of
the people of Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions before
Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on
a throne and granting the petitions of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one’s head whirl! It is as if the
whole world had gone crazy.’
Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the
face with a sarcastic smile.
‘‘Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!’* They say he
was very fine when he said that,’ he remarked, repeating the
words in Italian: ‘‘Dio mi l’ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!’’
*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
‘I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the
glass run over,’ Anna Pavlovna continued. ‘The sovereigns
will not be able to endure this man who is a menace to everything.’
‘The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,’ said the vicomte, polite but hopeless: ‘The sovereigns, madame... What
have they done for Louis XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!’ and he became more animated.
‘And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are
sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper.’


29

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte
for some time through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the little princess, and having asked
for a needle began tracing the Conde coat of arms on the
table. He explained this to her with as much gravity as if she
had asked him to do it.
‘Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d’ azurmaison
Conde,’ said he.
The princess listened, smiling.
‘If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year
longer,’ the vicomte continued, with the air of a man who,
in a matter with which he is better acquainted than anyone
else, does not listen to others but follows the current of his
own thoughts, ‘things will have gone too far. By intrigues,
violence, exile, and executions, French societyI mean good
French societywill have been forever destroyed, and then..’
He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
Pierre wished to make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna, who had him under
observation, interrupted:
‘The Emperor Alexander,’ said she, with the melancholy
which always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, ‘has declared that he will leave it to the French
people themselves to choose their own form of government;
and I believe that once free from the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms of its rightful
king,’ she concluded, trying to be amiable to the royalist
30

War and Peace

emigrant.
‘That is doubtful,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Monsieur le Vicomte quite rightly supposes that matters have already gone
too far. I think it will be difficult to return to the old regime.’
‘From what I have heard,’ said Pierre, blushing and
breaking into the conversation, ‘almost all the aristocracy
has already gone over to Bonaparte’s side.’
‘It is the Buonapartists who say that,’ replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. ‘At the present time it is difficult
to know the real state of French public opinion.
‘Bonaparte has said so,’ remarked Prince Andrew with a
sarcastic smile.
It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was
aiming his remarks at him, though without looking at him.
‘‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,’’ Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again
quoting Napoleon’s words. ‘‘I opened my antechambers and
they crowded in.’ I do not know how far he was justified in
saying so.’
‘Not in the least,’ replied the vicomte. ‘After the murder of the duc even the most partial ceased to regard him
as a hero. If to some people,’ he went on, turning to Anna
Pavlovna, ‘he ever was a hero, after the murder of the duc
there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on
earth.’
Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile
their appreciation of the vicomte’s epigram, Pierre again
broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt


31

sure he would say something inappropriate, she was unable
to stop him.
‘The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,’ declared Monsieur
Pierre, ‘was a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness of soul by not fearing to take on
himself the whole responsibility of that deed.’
‘Dieu! Mon Dieu!’ muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.
‘What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows greatness of soul?’ said the little princess,
smiling and drawing her work nearer to her.
‘Oh! Oh!’ exclaimed several voices.
‘Capital!’ said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began
slapping his knee with the palm of his hand.
The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked
solemnly at his audience over his spectacles and continued.
‘I say so,’ he continued desperately, ‘because the Bourbons fled from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy,
and Napoleon alone understood the Revolution and quelled
it, and so for the general good, he could not stop short for
the sake of one man’s life.’
‘Won’t you come over to the other table?’ suggested Anna
Pavlovna.
But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
‘No,’ cried he, becoming more and more eager, ‘Napoleon
is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in itequality
of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the pressand
only for that reason did he obtain power.’
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War and Peace

‘Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself
of it to commit murder he had restored it to the rightful
king, I should have called him a great man,’ remarked the
vicomte.
‘He could not do that. The people only gave him power
that he might rid them of the Bourbons and because they
saw that he was a great man. The Revolution was a grand
thing!’ continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and
his wish to express all that was in his mind.
‘What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well,
after that... But won’t you come to this other table?’ repeated
Anna Pavlovna.
‘Rousseau’s Contrat social,’ said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.
‘I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about
ideas.’
‘Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,’ again interjected an ironical voice.
‘Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is
most important. What is important are the rights of man,
emancipation from prejudices, and equality of citizenship,
and all these ideas Napoleon has retained in full force.’
‘Liberty and equality,’ said the vicomte contemptuously,
as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how
foolish his words were, ‘high-sounding words which have
long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have
people since the Revolution become happier? On the con

33

trary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it.’
Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from
Pierre to the vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess.
In the first moment of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-struck. But when she
saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words had not exasperated the
vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to
stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in a
vigorous attack on the orator.
‘But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,’ said she, ‘how do you
explain the fact of a great man executing a ducor even an
ordinary man whois innocent and untried?’
‘I should like,’ said the vicomte, ‘to ask how monsieur explains the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was
a swindle, and not at all like the conduct of a great man!’
‘And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!’ said the little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
‘He’s a low fellow, say what you will,’ remarked Prince
Hippolyte.
Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them
all and smiled. His smile was unlike the half-smile of other
people. When he smiled, his grave, even rather gloomy, look
was instantaneously replaced by anothera childlike, kindly,
even rather silly look, which seemed to ask forgiveness.
The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw
clearly that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his
words suggested. All were silent.
‘How do you expect him to answer you all at once?’ said
Prince Andrew. ‘Besides, in the actions of a statesman one
34

War and Peace

has to distinguish between his acts as a private person, as a
general, and as an emperor. So it seems to me.’
‘Yes, yes, of course!’ Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this reinforcement.
‘One must admit,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘that Napoleon as a man was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in
the hospital at Jaffa where he gave his hand to the plaguestricken; but... but there are other acts which it is difficult
to justify.’
Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down
the awkwardness of Pierre’s remarks, rose and made a sign
to his wife that it was time to go.
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to
everyone to attend, and asking them all to be seated began:
‘I was told a charming Moscow story today and must
treat you to it. Excuse me, VicomteI must tell it in Russian
or the point will be lost....’ And Prince Hippolyte began to
tell his story in such Russian as a Frenchman would speak
after spending about a year in Russia. Everyone waited, so
emphatically and eagerly did he demand their attention to
his story.
‘There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very
stingy. She must have two footmen behind her carriage, and
very big ones. That was her taste. And she had a lady’s maid,
also big. She said..’
Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his
ideas with difficulty.
‘She said... Oh yes! She said, ‘Girl,’ to the maid, ‘put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while


35

I make some calls.’’
Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing
long before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several persons, among them the
elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however smile.
‘She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl
lost her hat and her long hair came down....’ Here he could
contain himself no longer and went on, between gasps of
laughter: ‘And the whole world knew...’
And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told it, or why it had to be told in Russian,
still Anna Pavlovna and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably ending Pierre’s unpleasant
and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last and
next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

36

War and Peace

Chapter VI
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree,
the guests began to take their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height,
broad, with huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, to enter a drawing room and still less how to leave
one; that is, how to say something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was absent-minded. When
he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the general’s
three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume, till the
general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness
and inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.
Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian
mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion,
nodded and said: ‘I hope to see you again, but I also hope
you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.’
When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but
again everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless
perhaps, ‘Opinions are opinions, but you see what a capital,
good-natured fellow I am.’ And everyone, including Anna
Pavlovna, felt this.
Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning
his shoulders to the footman who was helping him on with
his cloak, listened indifferently to his wife’s chatter with


37

Prince Hippolyte who had also come into the hall. Prince
Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant princess, and
stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
‘Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold,’ said the little
princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. ‘It is settled,’ she
added in a low voice.
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise
about the match she contemplated between Anatole and the
little princess’ sister-in-law.
‘I rely on you, my dear,’ said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low
tone. ‘Write to her and let me know how her father looks at
the matter. Au revoir!’and she left the hall.
Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and,
bending his face close to her, began to whisper something.
Two footmen, the princess’ and his own, stood holding
a shawl and a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish.
They listened to the French sentences which to them were
meaningless, with an air of understanding but not wishing
to appear to do so. The princess as usual spoke smilingly
and listened with a laugh.
‘I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,’ said
Prince Hippolyte ‘-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening,
has it not? Delightful!’
‘They say the ball will be very good,’ replied the princess,
drawing up her downy little lip. ‘All the pretty women in
society will be there.’
‘Not all, for you will not be there; not all,’ said Prince
Hippolyte smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from
the footman, whom he even pushed aside, he began wrap38

War and Peace

ping it round the princess. Either from awkwardness or
intentionally (no one could have said which) after the shawl
had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long
time, as though embracing her.
Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and
glancing at her husband. Prince Andrew’s eyes were closed,
so weary and sleepy did he seem.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked his wife, looking past her.
Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in
the latest fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling
in it, ran out into the porch following the princess, whom a
footman was helping into the carriage.
‘Princesse, au revoir,’ cried he, stumbling with his tongue
as well as with his feet.
The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat
in the dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber;
Prince Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone’s way.
‘Allow me, sir,’ said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his
path.
‘I am expecting you, Pierre,’ said the same voice, but gently and affectionately.
The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince
Hippolyte laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch
waiting for the vicomte whom he had promised to take
home.
‘Well, mon cher,’ said the vicomte, having seated himself
beside Hippolyte in the carriage, ‘your little princess is very


39

nice, very nice indeed, quite French,’ and he kissed the tips
of his fingers. Hippolyte burst out laughing.
‘Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,’ continued the vicomte. ‘I pity the poor husband,
that little officer who gives himself the airs of a monarch.’
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said,
‘And you were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal
to the French? One has to know how to deal with them.’
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s
study like one quite at home, and from habit immediately
lay down on the sofa, took from the shelf the first book that
came to his hand (it was Caesar’s Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
‘What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite
ill now,’ said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He
lifted his eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved
his hand.
‘That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the
thing in the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is
possible butI do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political power...’
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in
such abstract conversation.
‘One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well,
have you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a
guardsman or a diplomatist?’ asked Prince Andrew after a
momentary silence.
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War and Peace

Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under
him.
‘Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the
other.’
‘But you must decide on something! Your father expects
it.’
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe
as tutor, and had remained away till he was twenty. When
he returned to Moscow his father dismissed the abbe and
said to the young man, ‘Now go to Petersburg, look round,
and choose your profession. I will agree to anything. Here
is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money. Write to me
all about it, and I will help you in everything.’ Pierre had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not
decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince
Andrew was speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
‘But he must be a Freemason,’ said he, referring to the
abbe whom he had met that evening.
‘That is all nonsense.’ Prince Andrew again interrupted him, ‘let us talk business. Have you been to the Horse
Guards?’
‘No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and
wanted to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it
were a war for freedom I could understand it and should be
the first to enter the army; but to help England and Austria
against the greatest man in the world is not right.’
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s
childish words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would in fact have


41

been difficult to give any other answer than the one Prince
Andrew gave to this naive question.
‘If no one fought except on his own conviction, there
would be no wars,’ he said.
‘And that would be splendid,’ said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
‘Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come
about..’
‘Well, why are you going to the war?’ asked Pierre.
‘What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going...’ He paused. ‘I am going because the life I am leading
here does not suit me!’

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War and Peace

Chapter VII
The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room.
Prince Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face
assumed the look it had had in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing
room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. The princess
came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as
fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a chair for her.
‘How is it,’ she began, as usual in French, settling down
briskly and fussily in the easy chair, ‘how is it Annette never
got married? How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense
about women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!’
‘And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he wants to go to the war,’ replied Pierre,
addressing the princess with none of the embarrassment so
commonly shown by young men in their intercourse with
young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched
her to the quick.
‘Ah, that is just what I tell him!’ said she. ‘I don’t understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live
without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything
of the kind, don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us.


43

I always tell him: Here he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most
brilliant position. He is so well known, so much appreciated
by everyone. The other day at the Apraksins’ I heard a lady
asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrew?’ I did indeed.’
She laughed. ‘He is so well received everywhere. He might
easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know the
Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were
speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?’
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not
like the conversation, gave no reply.
‘When are you starting?’ he asked.
‘Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken of,’ said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone
in which she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room
and which was so plainly ill-suited to the family circle of
which Pierre was almost a member. ‘Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must be broken
off... and then you know, Andre...’ (she looked significantly
at her husband) ‘I’m afraid, I’m afraid!’ she whispered, and
a shudder ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that
someone besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and
addressed her in a tone of frigid politeness.
‘What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,’
said he.
‘There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for
a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me
and locks me up alone in the country.’
‘With my father and sister, remember,’ said Prince An44

War and Peace

drew gently.
‘Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to be afraid.’
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving
her not a joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She
paused as if she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy
before Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.
‘I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,’ said
Prince Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture
of despair.
‘No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you
have..’
‘Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,’ said Prince
Andrew. ‘You had better go.’
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy
lip quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders,
and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise,
now at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too,
but changed his mind.
‘Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?’ exclaimed the little princess suddenly, her pretty face all at
once distorted by a tearful grimace. ‘I have long wanted to
ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me? What
have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
pity for me. Why is it?’
‘Lise!’ was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that


45

she would herself regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
‘You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did
you behave like that six months ago?’
‘Lise, I beg you to desist,’ said Prince Andrew still more
emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated
as he listened to all this, rose and approached the princess.
He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready
to cry himself.
‘Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I
assure you I myself have experienced... and so... because...
No, excuse me! An outsider is out of place here... No, don’t
distress yourself... Good-by!’
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
‘No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.’
‘No, he thinks only of himself,’ muttered the princess
without restraining her angry tears.
‘Lise!’ said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the
pitch which indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty face changed into a winning and piteous look
of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced askance at her husband’s
face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping
tail.
‘Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!’ she muttered, and lifting her
dress with one hand she went up to her husband and kissed
46

War and Peace

him on the forehead.
‘Good night, Lise,’ said he, rising and courteously kissing
her hand as he would have done to a stranger.



47

Chapter VIII
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking.
Pierre continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
‘Let us go and have supper,’ he said with a sigh, going to
the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room. Everything from the table napkins to the
silver, china, and glass bore that imprint of newness found
in the households of the newly married. Halfway through
supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talkas one who has long had
something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak
out.
‘Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice:
never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done
all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the
woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or
else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry
when you are old and good for nothingor all that is good
and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you
marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you
will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed
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except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side
by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what’s the
good?...’ and he waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem
different and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend in amazement.
‘My wife,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘is an excellent
woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s honor
is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this,
because I like you.’
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like
that Bolkonski who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna’s easy
chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases
between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face was now
quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the
fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at
ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these
moments of almost morbid irritation.
‘You don’t understand why I say this,’ he continued, ‘but
it is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,’ said he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte),
‘but Bonaparte when he worked went step by step toward
his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and,
like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you
have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity,


49

and trivialitythese are the enchanted circle I cannot escape
from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever
was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very
amiable and have a caustic wit,’ continued Prince Andrew,
‘and at Anna Pavlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid
set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women...
If you only knew what those society women are, and women
in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial
in everythingthat’s what women are when you see them in
their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as
if there were something in them, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t marry!’
concluded Prince Andrew.
‘It seems funny to me,’ said Pierre, ‘that you, you should
consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You
have everything before you, everything. And you..’
He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how
highly he thought of his friend and how much he expected
of him in the future.
‘How can he talk like that?’ thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew
possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre
lacked, and which might be best described as strength of
will. Pierre was always astonished at Prince Andrew’s calm
manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary memory,
his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all
at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often
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tation (to which he himself was particularly addicted), he
regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of strength.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of
life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is
necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.
‘My part is played out,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘What’s the
use of talking about me? Let us talk about you,’ he added after a silence, smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
‘But what is there to say about me?’ said Pierre, his face
relaxing into a careless, merry smile. ‘What am I? An illegitimate son!’ He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was
plain that he had made a great effort to say this. ‘Without
a name and without means... And it really...’ But he did not
say what ‘it really’ was. ‘For the present I am free and am all
right. Only I haven’t the least idea what I am to do; I wanted
to consult you seriously.’
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glancefriendly and affectionate as it wasexpressed a sense of his
own superiority.
‘I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man
among our whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what you
will; it’s all the same. You’ll be all right anywhere. But look
here: give up visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort
of life. It suits you so badlyall this debauchery, dissipation,
and the rest of it!’
‘What would you have, my dear fellow?’ answered Pierre,
shrugging his shoulders. ‘Women, my dear fellow; women!’
‘I don’t understand it,’ replied Prince Andrew. ‘Wom

51

en who are comme il faut, that’s a different matter; but the
Kuragins’ set of women, ‘women and wine’ I don’t understand!’
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin’s and sharing the dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they
were planning to reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew’s sister.
‘Do you know?’ said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a
happy thought, ‘seriously, I have long been thinking of it....
Leading such a life I can’t decide or think properly about
anything. One’s head aches, and one spends all one’s money. He asked me for tonight, but I won’t go.’
‘You give me your word of honor not to go?’
‘On my honor!’

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War and Peace

Chapter IX
It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab
intending to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to
the house the more he felt the impossibility of going to sleep
on such a night. It was light enough to see a long way in the
deserted street and it seemed more like morning or evening
than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole
Kuragin was expecting the usual set for cards that evening,
after which there was generally a drinking bout, finishing
with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.
‘I should like to go to Kuragin’s,’ thought he.
But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go there. Then, as happens to people of weak
character, he desired so passionately once more to enjoy that
dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go.
The thought immediately occurred to him that his promise
to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave
it he had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his
gathering; ‘besides,’ thought he, ‘all such ‘words of honor’
are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or
something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor
and dishonor will be all the same!’ Pierre often indulged in
reflections of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and inten

53

tions. He went to Kuragin’s.
Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks, in which Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted
porch, ascended the stairs, and went in at the open door.
There was no one in the anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks,
and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of alcohol,
and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.
Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet
dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first
room, in which were the remains of supper. A footman,
thinking no one saw him, was drinking on the sly what
was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds
of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of
a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine young
men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three
others were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by
the chain and trying to set him at the others.
‘I bet a hundred on Stevens!’ shouted one.
‘Mind, no holding on!’ cried another.
‘I bet on Dolokhov!’ cried a third. ‘Kuragin, you part our
hands.’
‘There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.’
‘At one draught, or he loses!’ shouted a fourth.
‘Jacob, bring a bottle!’ shouted the host, a tall, handsome
fellow who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat,
and with his fine linen shirt unfastened in front. ‘Wait a bit,
you fellows.... Here is Petya! Good man!’ cried he, addressing Pierre.
Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear
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blue eyes, particularly striking among all these drunken
voices by its sober ring, cried from the window: ‘Come here;
part the bets!’ This was Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov
regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who was living
with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.
‘I don’t understand. What’s it all about?’
‘Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,’ said Anatole, taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
‘First of all you must drink!’
Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under
his brows at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round
the window, and listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on
refilling Pierre’s glass while explaining that Dolokhov was
betting with Stevens, an English naval officer, that he would
drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge of the third
floor window with his legs hanging out.
‘Go on, you must drink it all,’ said Anatole, giving Pierre
the last glass, ‘or I won’t let you go!’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he
went up to the window.
Dolokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing
himself particularly to Anatole and Pierre.
Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and
light-blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry
officers he wore no mustache, so that his mouth, the most
striking feature of his face, was clearly seen. The lines of that
mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm


55

lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this, together
with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced
an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face. Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet,
though Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov
lived with him and had placed himself on such a footing that
all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected
him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov could play all
games and nearly always won. However much he drank, he
never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov
were at that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.
The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which
prevented anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being
forced out by two footmen, who were evidently flurried and
intimidated by the directions and shouts of the gentlemen
around.
Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window.
He wanted to smash something. Pushing away the footmen
he tugged at the frame, but could not move it. He smashed
a pane.
‘You have a try, Hercules,’ said he, turning to Pierre.
Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the
oak frame out with a crash.
‘Take it right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,’ said
Dolokhov.
‘Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?’ said
Anatole.
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‘First-rate,’ said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a
bottle of rum in his hand was approaching the window, from
which the light of the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped
onto the window sill. ‘Listen!’ cried he, standing there and
addressing those in the room. All were silent.
‘I bet fifty imperials’he spoke French that the Englishman
might understand him, but he did, not speak it very well‘I
bet fifty imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?’
added he, addressing the Englishman.
‘No, fifty,’ replied the latter.
‘All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle
of rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the
window on this spot’ (he stooped and pointed to the sloping
ledge outside the window) ‘and without holding on to anything. Is that right?’
‘Quite right,’ said the Englishman.
Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one
of the buttons of his coat and looking down at himthe Englishman was shortbegan repeating the terms of the wager to
him in English.
‘Wait!’ cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on
the window sill to attract attention. ‘Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else does the same, I will pay him a hundred
imperials. Do you understand?’
The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether
he intended to accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not
release him, and though he kept nodding to show that he


57

understood, Anatole went on translating Dolokhov’s words
into English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the Life Guards,
who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window
sill, leaned over, and looked down.
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones of the pavement.
‘Shut up!’ cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the
window. The lad jumped awkwardly back into the room,
tripping over his spurs.
Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach
it easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the
window and lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides
of the window, he adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his
hands, moved a little to the right and then to the left, and
took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and placed
them on the window sill, though it was already quite light.
Dolokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were
lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the
Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One
man, older than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted to seize hold
of Dolokhov’s shirt.
‘I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,’ said this more sensible
man.
Anatole stopped him.
‘Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he’ll be
killed. Eh?... What then?... Eh?’
Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both
hands, arranged himself on his seat.
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‘If anyone comes meddling again,’ said he, emitting the
words separately through his thin compressed lips, ‘I will
throw him down there. Now then!’
Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands,
took the bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head,
and raised his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some broken glass remained
in that position without taking his eyes from the window
and from Dolokhov’s back. Anatole stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up
his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran to
a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his
face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile
forgot to fade though his features now expressed horror
and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes.
Dolokhov still sat in the same position, only his head was
thrown further back till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted higher and
higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting yet
further back. ‘Why is it so long?’ thought Pierre. It seemed
to him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly
Dolokhov made a backward movement with his spine, and
his arm trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his
whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping ledge. As he began
slipping down, his head and arm wavered still more with
the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window sill,
but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes
and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he


59

was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was
standing on the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
‘It’s empty.’
He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it
neatly. Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
‘Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!... Devil
take you!’ came from different sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and began counting
out the money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak.
Pierre jumped upon the window sill.
‘Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same
thing!’ he suddenly cried. ‘Even without a bet, there! Tell
them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it.... Bring a bottle!’
‘Let him do it, let him do it,’ said Dolokhov, smiling.
‘What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let
you!... Why, you go giddy even on a staircase,’ exclaimed
several voices.
‘I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!’ shouted Pierre,
banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture
and preparing to climb out of the window.
They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that
everyone who touched him was sent flying.
‘No, you’ll never manage him that way,’ said Anatole.
‘Wait a bit and I’ll get round him.... Listen! I’ll take your bet
tomorrow, but now we are all going to -’s.’
‘Come on then,’ cried Pierre. ‘Come on!... And we’ll take
Bruin with us.’
And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from
the ground, and began dancing round the room with it.
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Chapter X
Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess
Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only
son Boris on the evening of Anna Pavlovna’s soiree. The
matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception made,
and Boris transferred into the regiment of Semenov Guards
with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to Kutuzov’s staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna’s
endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna’s reception Anna Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went
straight to her rich relations, the Rostovs, with whom she
stayed when in the town and where and where her darling
Bory, who had only just entered a regiment of the line and
was being at once transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had
been educated from childhood and lived for years at a time.
The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his
equipment, was to join them on the march to Radzivilov.
It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the
Rostovsthe mother and the youngest daughterboth named
Nataly. Ever since the morning, carriages with six horses
had been coming and going continually, bringing visitors to
the Countess Rostova’s big house on the Povarskaya, so well
known to all Moscow. The countess herself and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the


61

visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in relays.
The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a
thin Oriental type of face, evidently worn out with childbearingshe had had twelve. A languor of motion and speech,
resulting from weakness, gave her a distinguished air which
inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya,
who as a member of the household was also seated in the
drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors.
The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors.
The count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them
all to dinner.
‘I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher,’ or ‘ma
chere’he called everyone without exception and without
the slightest variation in his tone, ‘my dear,’ whether they
were above or below him in rank‘I thank you for myself
and for our two dear ones whose name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended,
ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come,
mon cher!’ These words he repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and with the same expression on his
full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of
the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As soon as
he had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who
were still in the drawing room, drew a chair toward him
or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his
hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life
and knows how to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity,
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offered surmises about the weather, or touched on questions
of health, sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad
but self-confident French; then again, like a man weary but
unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some
visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald
patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way
back from the anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall, where
tables were being set out for eighty people; and looking at
the footmen, who were bringing in silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would call
Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of
all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table would say: ‘Well, Dmitri, you’ll see that things
are all as they should be? That’s right! The great thing is the
serving, that’s it.’ And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.
‘Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!’ announced
the countess’ gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering
the drawing room. The countess reflected a moment and
took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.
‘I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see her
and no more. She is so affected. Ask her in,’ she said to the
footman in a sad voice, as if saying: ‘Very well, finish me
off.’
A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a roundfaced smiling daughter, entered the drawing room, their
dresses rustling.


63

‘Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor
child... at the Razumovski’s ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so delighted...’ came the sounds of animated
feminine voices, interrupting one another and mingling
with the rustling of dresses and the scraping of chairs. Then
one of those conversations began which last out until, at the
first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses and say, ‘I
am so delighted... Mamma’s health... and Countess Apraksina... and then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put
on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation was
on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and
celebrated beau of Catherine’s day, Count Bezukhov, and
about his illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved
so improperly at Anna Pavlovna’s reception.
‘I am so sorry for the poor count,’ said the visitor. ‘He is
in such bad health, and now this vexation about his son is
enough to kill him!’
‘What is that?’ asked the countess as if she did not know
what the visitor alluded to, though she had already heard
about the cause of Count Bezukhov’s distress some fifteen
times.
‘That’s what comes of a modern education,’ exclaimed
the visitor. ‘It seems that while he was abroad this young
man was allowed to do as he liked, now in Petersburg I hear
he has been doing such terrible things that he has been expelled by the police.’
‘You don’t say so!’ replied the countess.
‘He chose his friends badly,’ interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. ‘Prince Vasili’s son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have,
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it is said, been up to heaven only knows what! And they
have had to suffer for it. Dolokhov has been degraded to
the ranks and Bezukhov’s son sent back to Moscow. Anatole
Kuragin’s father managed somehow to get his son’s affair
hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg.’
‘But what have they been up to?’ asked the countess.
‘They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov,’ replied
the visitor. ‘He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such
a worthy woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold
of a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with
it to visit some actresses! The police tried to interfere, and
what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and the
bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal.
And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!’
‘What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my
dear!’ shouted the count, dying with laughter.
‘Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?’
Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
‘It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,’ continued the visitor. ‘And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich
Bezukhov’s son who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well educated and clever. This
is all that his foreign education has done for him! I hope
that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his
money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have my daughters to consider.’
‘Why do you say this young man is so rich?’ asked the
countess, turning away from the girls, who at once assumed


65

an air of inattention. ‘His children are all illegitimate. I
think Pierre also is illegitimate.’
The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
‘I should think he has a score of them.’
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently wishing to show her connections and
knowledge of what went on in society.
‘The fact of the matter is,’ said she significantly, and also
in a half whisper, ‘everyone knows Count Cyril’s reputation.... He has lost count of his children, but this Pierre was
his favorite.’
‘How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!’ remarked the countess. ‘I have never seen a handsomer man.’
‘He is very much altered now,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna.
‘Well, as I was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through
his wife, but the count is very fond of Pierre, looked after
his education, and wrote to the Emperor about him; so that
in the case of his deathand he is so ill that he may die at
any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from Petersburgno
one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre or
Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles!
I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself. Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother’s second cousin.
He’s also my Bory’s godfather,’ she added, as if she attached
no importance at all to the fact.
‘Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has
come on some inspection business,’ remarked the visitor.
‘Yes, but between ourselves,’ said the princess, that is a
pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladi66

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mirovich, hearing how ill he is.’
‘But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,’ said
the count; and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young ladies. ‘I can just imagine what
a funny figure that policeman cut!’
And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman,
his portly form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the
laugh of one who always eats well and, in particular, drinks
well. ‘So do come and dine with us!’ he said.



67

Chapter XI
Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably, but not concealing the fact that she would not be
distressed if they now rose and took their leave. The visitor’s
daughter was already smoothing down her dress with an
inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from the next
room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls running to
the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl of
thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the
room. It was evident that she had not intended her flight to
bring her so far. Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer of the Guards, a
girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.
The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side,
spread his arms wide and threw them round the little girl
who had run in.
‘Ah, here she is!’ he exclaimed laughing. ‘My pet, whose
name day it is. My dear pet!’
‘Ma chere, there is a time for everything,’ said the countess with feigned severity. ‘You spoil her, Ilya,’ she added,
turning to her husband.
‘How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name day,’ said the visitor. ‘What a charming
child,’ she added, addressing the mother.
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This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of
lifewith childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved
and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed backward,
thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in
low slipperswas just at that charming age when a girl is no
longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman.
Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in
the lace of her mother’s mantillanot paying the least attention to her severe remarkand began to laugh. She laughed,
and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll
which she produced from the folds of her frock.
‘Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...’ was all
Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such a
loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could
not help joining in.
‘Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,’
said the mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended
sternness, and turning to the visitor she added: ‘She is my
youngest girl.’
Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s mantilla, glanced up at her through tears of laughter,
and again hid her face.
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene,
thought it necessary to take some part in it.
‘Tell me, my dear,’ said she to Natasha, ‘is Mimi a relation of yours? A daughter, I suppose?’
Natasha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension
to childish things. She did not reply, but looked at her seri

69

ously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer,
Anna Mikhaylovna’s son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the
count’s eldest son; Sonya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece,
and little Petya, his youngest boy, had all settled down in
the drawing room and were obviously trying to restrain
within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth
that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms,
from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room
talk of society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then they glanced at one another, hardly able
to suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends
from childhood, were of the same age and both handsome
fellows, though not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his
calm and handsome face had regular, delicate features.
Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip,
and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm.
Nicholas blushed when he entered the drawing room. He
evidently tried to find something to say, but failed. Boris
on the contrary at once found his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that doll Mimi when
she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken;
how she had aged during the five years he had known her,
and how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natasha. She turned away from
him and glanced at her younger brother, who was screwing
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up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed
from the room as fast as her nimble little feet would carry
her. Boris did not laugh.
‘You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do
you want the carriage?’ he asked his mother with a smile.
‘Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,’ she answered,
returning his smile.
Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha.
The plump boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their
program had been disturbed.



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Chapter XII
The only young people remaining in the drawing room,
not counting the young lady visitor and the countess’ eldest
daughter (who was four years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and
Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with
a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a
tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of
her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By
the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve
of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She
evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the
general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her
eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who
was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose
upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled
down only to spring up with more energy and again play
with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha and
Boris, escape from the drawing room.
‘Ah yes, my dear,’ said the count, addressing the visitor
and pointing to Nicholas, ‘his friend Boris has become an
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officer, and so for friendship’s sake he is leaving the university and me, his old father, and entering the military service,
my dear. And there was a place and everything waiting for
him in the Archives Department! Isn’t that friendship?’ remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
‘But they say that war has been declared,’ replied the visitor.
‘They’ve been saying so a long while,’ said the count, ‘and
they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it.
My dear, there’s friendship for you,’ he repeated. ‘He’s joining the hussars.’
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
‘It’s not at all from friendship,’ declared Nicholas, flaring
up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. ‘It is
not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my
vocation.’
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and
they were both regarding him with a smile of approbation.
‘Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us today. He has been here on leave and is taking
Nicholas back with him. It can’t be helped!’ said the count,
shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of a matter
that evidently distressed him.
‘I have already told you, Papa,’ said his son, ‘that if you
don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use
anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.I don’t know how to hide what I feel.’ As he
spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady visitor.


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The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready
at any moment to start her gambols again and display her
kittenish nature.
‘All right, all right!’ said the old count. ‘He always flares
up! This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all
think of how he rose from an ensign and became Emperor.
Well, well, God grant it,’ he added, not noticing his visitor’s
sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to young Rostov.
‘What a pity you weren’t at the Arkharovs’ on Thursday.
It was so dull without you,’ said she, giving him a tender
smile.
The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with
a coquettish smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a
confidential conversation without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of Sonya, who blushed
and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk he glanced
round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and
hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial
smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas’ animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the
conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room
to find Sonya.
‘How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on
their sleeves!’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. ‘Cousinagedangereux voisinage;”* she
added.
*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
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‘Yes,’ said the countess when the brightness these young
people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if
answering a question no one had put but which was always
in her mind, ‘and how much suffering, how much anxiety
one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them
now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy.
One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so
dangerous both for girls and boys.’
‘It all depends on the bringing up,’ remarked the visitor.
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ continued the countess. ‘Till now
I have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and
had their full confidence,’ said she, repeating the mistake of
so many parents who imagine that their children have no
secrets from them. ‘I know I shall always be my daughters’
first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he will all
the same never be like those Petersburg young men.’
‘Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,’ chimed in
the count, who always solved questions that seemed to him
perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. ‘Just
fancy: wants to be an hussar. What’s one to do, my dear?’
‘What a charming creature your younger girl is,’ said the
visitor; ‘a little volcano!’
‘Yes, a regular volcano,’ said the count. ‘Takes after me!
And what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell
the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni!
We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons.’
‘Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice
to train it at that age.’


75

‘Oh no, not at all too young!’ replied the count. ‘Why, our
mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.’
‘And she’s in love with Boris already. Just fancy!’ said the
countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris’ and went on,
evidently concerned with a thought that always occupied
her: ‘Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly’
(she meant that they would be kissing), ‘but as it is, I know
every word she utters. She will come running to me of her
own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I
spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder
sister I was stricter.’
‘Yes, I was brought up quite differently,’ remarked the
handsome elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Vera’s beauty as smiles
generally do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and
therefore unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking,
not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and
had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyonethe visitors and countess
aliketurned to look at her as if wondering why she had said
it, and they all felt awkward.
‘People are always too clever with their eldest children
and try to make something exceptional of them,’ said the
visitor.
‘What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too clever with Vera,’ said the count. ‘Well, what of
that? She’s turned out splendidly all the same,’ he added,
winking at Vera.
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The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
‘What manners! I thought they would never go,’ said the
countess, when she had seen her guests out.



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Chapter XIII
When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only
went as far as the conservatory. There she paused and stood
listening to the conversation in the drawing room, waiting for
Boris to come out. She was already growing impatient, and
stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming at once, when
she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching neither
quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly among the
flower tubs and hid there.
Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round,
brushed a little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined his handsome face. Natasha,
very still, peered out from her ambush, waiting to see what
he would do. He stood a little while before the glass, smiled,
and walked toward the other door. Natasha was about to call
him but changed her mind. ‘Let him look for me,’ thought she.
Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked her
first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding
place, watchingas under an invisible capto see what went on in
the world. She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure.
Sonya, muttering to herself, kept looking round toward the
drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.
‘Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?’ said he,
running up to her.
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‘It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!’ sobbed Sonya.
‘Ah, I know what it is.’
‘Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back
to her!’
‘So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and
yourself like that, for a mere fancy?’ said Nicholas taking her
hand.
Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not
stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush
with sparkling eyes. ‘What will happen now?’ thought she.
‘Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
everything!’ said Nicholas. ‘And I will prove it to you.’
‘I don’t like you to talk like that.’
‘Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sonya!’ He drew her
to him and kissed her.
‘Oh, how nice,’ thought Natasha; and when Sonya and
Nicholas had gone out of the conservatory she followed and
called Boris to her.
‘Boris, come here,’ said she with a sly and significant look.
‘I have something to tell you. Here, here!’ and she led him into
the conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had
been hiding.
Boris followed her, smiling.
‘What is the something?’ asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she
had thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
‘Kiss the doll,’ said she.
Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but
did not reply.


79

‘Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,’ said she, and
went further in among the plants and threw down the doll.
‘Closer, closer!’ she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and fear appeared on her flushed face.
‘And me? Would you like to kiss me?’ she whispered almost
inaudibly, glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling,
and almost crying from excitement.
Boris blushed.
‘How funny you are!’ he said, bending down to her and
blushing still more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he,
embraced him so that both her slender bare arms clasped him
above his neck, and, tossing back her hair, kissed him full on
the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other
side of the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
‘Natasha,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you, but..’
‘You are in love with me?’ Natasha broke in.
‘Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another
four years... then I will ask for your hand.’
Natasha considered.
‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,’ she counted on her
slender little fingers. ‘All right! Then it’s settled?’
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
‘Settled!’ replied Boris.
‘Forever?’ said the little girl. ‘Till death itself?’
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into
the adjoining sitting room.
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Chapter XIV
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired
that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was
told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came ‘to congratulate.’ The countess wished to have a tete-a-tete talk with
the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikhaylovna,
whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but
pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
‘With you I will be quite frank,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna.
‘There are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so
value your friendship.’
Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The
countess pressed her friend’s hand.
‘Vera,’ she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently
not a favorite, ‘how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see
you are not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..’
The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not
seem at all hurt.
‘If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,’
she replied as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and
smiled scornfully. Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who
was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever


81

written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window and
ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha
looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in
love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant
feeling in Vera.
‘How often have I asked you not to take my things?’ she
said. ‘You have a room of your own,’ and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
‘In a minute, in a minute,’ he said, dipping his pen.
‘You always manage to do things at the wrong time,’ continued Vera. ‘You came rushing into the drawing room so
that everyone felt ashamed of you.’
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that
very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at
one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in
her hand.
‘And at your age what secrets can there be between
Natasha and Boris, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!’
‘Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?’ said Natasha in
defense, speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to everyone.
‘Very silly,’ said Vera. ‘I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!’
‘All have secrets of their own,’ answered Natasha, getting
warmer. ‘We don’t interfere with you and Berg.’
‘I should think not,’ said Vera, ‘because there can never
be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma
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how you are behaving with Boris.’
‘Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me,’ remarked
Boris. ‘I have nothing to complain of.’
‘Don’t, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really
tiresome,’ said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled
slightly. (She used the word ‘diplomat,’ which was just then
much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they
attached to it.) ‘Why does she bother me?’ And she added,
turning to Vera, ‘You’ll never understand it, because you’ve
never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame
de Genlis and nothing more’ (this nickname, bestowed on
Vera by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), ‘and your
greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt
with Berg as much as you please,’ she finished quickly.
‘I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..’
‘Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,’ put in
Nicholas‘said unpleasant things to everyone and upset
them. Let’s go to the nursery.’
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the
room.
‘The unpleasant things were said to me,’ remarked Vera,
‘I said none to anyone.’
‘Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!’ shouted laughing voices through the door.
The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating
and unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently
unmoved by what had been said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at her


83

own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and
calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going
on.
‘Ah, my dear,’ said the countess, ‘my life is not all roses
either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means
won’t last long? It’s all the Club and his easygoing nature.
Even in the country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting,
and heaven knows what besides! But don’t let’s talk about
me; tell me how you managed everything. I often wonder
at you, Annettehow at your age you can rush off alone in a
carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those ministers and
great people, and know how to deal with them all! It’s quite
astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly do it.’
‘Ah, my love,’ answered Anna Mikhaylovna, ‘God grant
you never know what it is to be left a widow without means
and with a son you love to distraction! One learns many
things then,’ she added with a certain pride. ‘That lawsuit
taught me much. When I want to see one of those big people
I write a note: ‘Princess So-and-So desires an interview with
So and-So,’ and then I take a cab and go myself two, three,
or four timestill I get what I want. I don’t mind what they
think of me.’
‘Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?’ asked the
countess. ‘You see yours is already an officer in the Guards,
while my Nicholas is going as a cadet. There’s no one to interest himself for him. To whom did you apply?’
‘To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to
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everything, and put the matter before the Emperor,’ said
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured to gain her end.
‘Has Prince Vasili aged much?’ asked the countess. ‘I
have not seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs’ theatricals. I expect he has forgotten me. He paid me
attentions in those days,’ said the countess, with a smile.
‘He is just the same as ever,’ replied Anna Mikhaylovna,
‘overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned
his head at all. He said to me, ‘I am sorry I can do so little for
you, dear Princess. I am at your command.’ Yes, he is a fine
fellow and a very kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my
love for my son: I would do anything for his happiness! And
my affairs are in such a bad way that my position is now a
terrible one,’ continued Anna Mikhaylovna, sadly, dropping
her voice. ‘My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes
no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a penny and don’t know how to equip Boris.’ She took out her
handkerchief and began to cry. ‘I need five hundred rubles,
and have only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a
state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich
Bezukhov. If he will not assist his godsonyou know he is
Bory’s godfatherand allow him something for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I shall
not be able to equip him.’
The countess’ eyes filled with tears and she pondered in
silence.
‘I often think, though, perhaps it’s a sin,’ said the princess, ‘that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov


85

so rich, all alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is
his life worth? It’s a burden to him, and Bory’s life is only
just beginning...’
‘Surely he will leave something to Boris,’ said the countess.
‘Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so
selfish. Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and
I shall speak to him straight out. Let people think what they
will of me, it’s really all the same to me when my son’s fate
is at stake.’ The princess rose. ‘It’s now two o’clock and you
dine at four. There will just be time.’
And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to
make the most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to
call her son, and went into the anteroom with him.
‘Good-by, my dear,’ said she to the countess who saw her
to the door, and added in a whisper so that her son should
not hear, ‘Wish me good luck.’
‘Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?’
said the count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: ‘If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with
us. He has been to the house, you know, and danced with
the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear. We will see
how Taras distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!’

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Chapter XV
‘My dear Boris,’ said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her
son as Countess Rostova’s carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw covered street and turned into the
wide courtyard of Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov’s
house. ‘My dear Boris,’ said the mother, drawing her hand
from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and tenderly on her son’s arm, ‘be affectionate and attentive to him.
Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your
future depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be
nice to him, as you so well know how to be.’
‘If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would
come of it...’ answered her son coldly. ‘But I have promised
and will do it for your sake.’
Although the hall porter saw someone’s carriage standing at the entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son
(who without asking to be announced had passed straight
through the glass porch between the rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady’s old cloak, he asked
whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency
was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving
anyone.
‘We may as well go back,’ said the son in French.
‘My dear!’ exclaimed his mother imploringly, again lay

87

ing her hand on his arm as if that touch might soothe or
rouse him.
Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother
without taking off his cloak.
‘My friend,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the hall porter, I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich
is very ill... that’s why I have come... I am a relation. I shall
not disturb him, my friend... I only need see Prince Vasili
Sergeevich: he is staying here, is he not? Please announce
me.’
The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs,
and turned away.
‘Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich,’
he called to a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and
a swallow-tail coat, who ran downstairs and looked over
from the halfway landing.
The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress
before a large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.
‘My dear,’ she said to her son, once more stimulating him
by a touch, ‘you promised me!’
The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors
led to the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.
Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of
the hall, were about to ask their way of an elderly footman
who had sprung up as they entered, the bronze handle of
one of the doors turned and Prince Vasili came outwearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast, as was his
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custom when at hometaking leave of a good-looking, darkhaired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor,
Lorrain.
‘Then it is certain?’ said the prince.
‘Prince, humanum est errare,* but...’ replied the doctor,
swallowing his r’s, and pronouncing the Latin words with a
French accent.
*To err is human.
‘Very well, very well..’
Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili
dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry. The son noticed that an
expression of profound sorrow suddenly clouded his mother’s face, and he smiled slightly.
‘Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again!
And how is our dear invalid?’ said she, as though unaware
of the cold offensive look fixed on her.
Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly
and perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna,
answering her query by a movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the patient.
‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. ‘Oh, how
awful! It is terrible to think.... This is my son,’ she added, indicating Boris. ‘He wanted to thank you himself.’
Boris bowed again politely.
‘Believe me, Prince, a mother’s heart will never forget
what you have done for us.’
‘I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna


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Mikhaylovna,’ said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill,
and in tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed under an obligation, assuming
an air of much greater importance than he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer’s reception.
‘Try to serve well and show yourself worthy,’ added he,
addressing Boris with severity. ‘I am glad.... Are you here on
leave?’ he went on in his usual tone of indifference.
‘I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,’ replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the
prince’s brusque manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly and respectfully that the
prince gave him a searching glance.
‘Are you living with your mother?’
‘I am living at Countess Rostova’s,’ replied Boris, again
adding, ‘your excellency.’
‘That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna.
‘I know, I know,’ answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. ‘I never could understand how Nataly made up
her mind to marry that unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd
and stupid fellow, and a gambler too, I am told.’
‘But a very kind man, Prince,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna
with a pathetic smile, as though she too knew that Count
Rostov deserved this censure, but asked him not to be too
hard on the poor old man. ‘What do the doctors say?’ asked
the princess after a pause, her worn face again expressing
deep sorrow.
‘They give little hope,’ replied the prince.
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‘And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me and Boris. He is his godson,’ she added, her tone
suggesting that this fact ought to give Prince Vasili much
satisfaction.
Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna
Mikhaylovna saw that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov’s fortune, and hastened to reassure
him.
‘If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to
Uncle,’ said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance
and unconcern, ‘I know his character: noble, upright... but
you see he has no one with him except the young princesses.... They are still young....’ She bent her head and continued
in a whisper: ‘Has he performed his final duty, Prince? How
priceless are those last moments! It can make things no
worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is
so ill. We women, Prince,’ and she smiled tenderly, ‘always
know how to say these things. I absolutely must see him,
however painful it may be for me. I am used to suffering.’
Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he had done at Anna Pavlovna’s, that it would be
difficult to get rid of Anna Mikhaylovna.
‘Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear
Anna Mikhaylovna?’ said he. ‘Let us wait until evening. The
doctors are expecting a crisis.’
‘But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful:
the duties of a Christian..’
A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the


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princesses, the count’s niece, entered with a cold, stern face.
The length of her body was strikingly out of proportion to
her short legs. Prince Vasili turned to her.
‘Well, how is he?’
‘Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise...’ said
the princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.
‘Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy smile, ambling lightly up to the count’s
niece. ‘I have come, and am at your service to help you nurse
my uncle. I imagine what you have gone through,’ and she
sympathetically turned up her eyes.
The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left
the room at Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she had conquered, settled down in an
armchair, inviting Prince Vasili to take a seat beside her.
‘Boris,’ she said to her son with a smile, ‘I shall go in to
see the count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to
Pierre meanwhile and don’t forget to give him the Rostovs’
invitation. They ask him to dinner. I suppose he won’t go?’
she continued, turning to the prince.
‘On the contrary,’ replied the prince, who had plainly become depressed, ‘I shall be only too glad if you relieve me
of that young man.... Here he is, and the count has not once
asked for him.’
He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris
down one flight of stairs and up another, to Pierre’s rooms.

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Chapter XVI
Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for
himself in Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for
riotous conduct and sent to Moscow. The story told about
him at Count Rostov’s was true. Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been for some days
in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father’s house.
Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be
already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his fatherwho were never favorably disposed toward himwould have
used it to turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the
day of his arrival went to his father’s part of the house. Entering the drawing room, where the princesses spent most of
their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom were sitting at
embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the eldest
who was readingthe one who had met Anna Mikhaylovna.
The two younger ones were embroidering: both were rosy
and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole
on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received
as if he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in
her reading and silently stared at him with frightened eyes;
the second assumed precisely the same expression; while the
youngest, the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and
lively disposition, bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she foresaw. She drew her


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wool down through the canvas and, scarcely able to refrain
from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the pattern.
‘How do you do, cousin?’ said Pierre. ‘You don’t recognize me?’
‘I recognize you only too well, too well.’
‘How is the count? Can I see him?’ asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual, but unabashed.
‘The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you have done your best to increase his mental
sufferings.’
‘Can I see the count?’ Pierre again asked.
‘Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you
can see him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle’s beef tea is
readyit is almost time,’ she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were busy, and busy making his father
comfortable, while evidently he, Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.
Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he
bowed and said: ‘Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me
know when I can see him.’
And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing
laughter of the sister with the mole.
Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the
count’s house. He sent for Pierre and said to him: ‘My dear
fellow, if you are going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is all I have to say to you.
The count is very, very ill, and you must not see him at all.’
Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent
the whole time in his rooms upstairs.
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When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and
down his room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make
menacing gestures at the wall, as if running a sword through
an invisible foe, and glaring savagely over his spectacles, and
then again resuming his walk, muttering indistinct words,
shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.
‘England is done for,’ said he, scowling and pointing his
finger at someone unseen. ‘Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation
and to the rights of man, is sentenced to...’ But before Pierrewho at that moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in
person and to have just effected the dangerous crossing of
the Straits of Dover and captured Londoncould pronounce
Pitt’s sentence, he saw a well-built and handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left Moscow
when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten
him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris
by the hand with a friendly smile.
‘Do you remember me?’ asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile. ‘I have come with my mother to see the count, but
it seems he is not well.’
‘Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,’
answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man
was.
Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not
consider it necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least embarrassment looked Pierre straight in
the face.
‘Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today,’ said he,
after a considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncom

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fortable.
‘Ah, Count Rostov!’ exclaimed Pierre joyfully. ‘Then you
are his son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn’t know you at first. Do
you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It’s such an age..’
‘You are mistaken,’ said Boris deliberately, with a bold
and slightly sarcastic smile. ‘I am Boris, son of Princess
Anna Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya,
and his son is Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot.’
Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
‘Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I’ve mixed everything up. One has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are
Boris? Of course. Well, now we know where we are. And
what do you think of the Boulogne expedition? The English
will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the
Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve doesn’t make a mess of things!
Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he
did not read the papers and it was the first time he had heard
Villeneuve’s name.
‘We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner
parties and scandal than with politics,’ said he in his quiet
ironical tone. ‘I know nothing about it and have not thought
about it. Moscow is chiefly busy with gossip,’ he continued.
‘Just now they are talking about you and your father.’
Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his
companion’s sake that the latter might say something he
would afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly,
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and dryly, looking straight into Pierre’s eyes.
‘Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,’ Boris went on.
‘Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his
fortune, though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely
hope he will..’
‘Yes, it is all very horrid,’ interrupted Pierre, ‘very horrid.’
Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently
say something disconcerting to himself.
‘And it must seem to you,’ said Boris flushing slightly, but
not changing his tone or attitude, ‘it must seem to you that
everyone is trying to get something out of the rich man?’
‘So it does,’ thought Pierre.
‘But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that
you are quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother
among such people. We are very poor, but for my own part
at any rate, for the very reason that your father is rich, I don’t
regard myself as a relation of his, and neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him.’
For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when
he did, he jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the
elbow in his quick, clumsy way, and, blushing far more than
Boris, began to speak with a feeling of mingled shame and
vexation.
‘Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could
think?... I know very well..’
But Boris again interrupted him.
‘I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not
like it? You must excuse me,’ said he, putting Pierre at ease


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instead of being put at ease by him, ‘but I hope I have not
offended you. I always make it a rule to speak out... Well,
what answer am I to take? Will you come to dinner at the
Rostovs’?’
And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and extricated himself from an awkward situation
and placed another in it, became quite pleasant again.
‘No, but I say,’ said Pierre, calming down, ‘you are a wonderful fellow! What you have just said is good, very good.
Of course you don’t know me. We have not met for such a
long time... not since we were children. You might think that
I... I understand, quite understand. I could not have done it
myself, I should not have had the courage, but it’s splendid. I
am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It’s queer,’ he
added after a pause, ‘that you should have suspected me!’ He
began to laugh. ‘Well, what of it! I hope we’ll get better acquainted,’ and he pressed Boris’ hand. ‘Do you know, I have
not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I
am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?’
‘And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army
across?’ asked Boris with a smile.
Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and
being of the same mind he began explaining the advantages
and disadvantages of the Boulogne expedition.
A footman came in to summon Boristhe princess was
going. Pierre, in order to make Boris’ better acquaintance,
promised to come to dinner, and warmly pressing his hand
looked affectionately over his spectacles into Boris’ eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and down the
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room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe
with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance
of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.
As often happens in early youth, especially to one who
leads a lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for
this young man and made up his mind that they would be
friends.
Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief
to her eyes and her face was tearful.
‘It is dreadful, dreadful!’ she was saying, ‘but cost me
what it may I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the
night. He must not be left like this. Every moment is precious. I can’t think why his nieces put it off. Perhaps God will
help me to find a way to prepare him!... Adieu, Prince! May
God support you..’
‘Adieu, ma bonne,’ answered Prince Vasili turning away
from her.
‘Oh, he is in a dreadful state,’ said the mother to her son
when they were in the carriage. ‘He hardly recognizes anybody.’
‘I don’t understand, Mammawhat is his attitude to Pierre?’
asked the son.
‘The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends
on it.’
‘But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?’
‘Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!’
‘Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..’
‘Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!’ exclaimed the mother.


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Chapter XVII
After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to
visit Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all alone applying her handkerchief
to her eyes. At last she rang.
‘What is the matter with you, my dear?’ she said crossly
to the maid who kept her waiting some minutes. ‘Don’t you
wish to serve me? Then I’ll find you another place.’
The countess was upset by her friend’s sorrow and humiliating poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind
which with her always found expression in calling her maid
‘my dear’ and speaking to her with exaggerated politeness.
‘I am very sorry, ma’am,’ answered the maid.
‘Ask the count to come to me.’
The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather
guilty look as usual.
‘Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we
are to have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid
for Taras were not ill-spent. He is worth it!’
He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his
hands ruffling his gray hair.
‘What are your commands, little countess?’
‘You see, my dear... What’s that mess?’ she said, pointing
to his waistcoat. ‘It’s, the saute, most likely,’ she added with a
smile. ‘Well, you see, Count, I want some money.’
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Her face became sad.
‘Oh, little countess!’... and the count began bustling to get
out his pocketbook.
‘I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles,’
and taking out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping
her husband’s waistcoat.
‘Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who’s there?’ he
called out in a tone only used by persons who are certain
that those they call will rush to obey the summons. ‘Send
Dmitri to me!’
Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up
in the count’s house and now managed all his affairs, stepped
softly into the room.
‘This is what I want, my dear fellow,’ said the count to the
deferential young man who had entered. ‘Bring me...’ he reflected a moment, ‘yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes!
But mind, don’t bring me such tattered and dirty notes as
last time, but nice clean ones for the countess.’
‘Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please,’ said the countess, sighing deeply.
‘When would you like them, your excellency?’ asked
Dmitri. ‘Allow me to inform you... But, don’t be uneasy,’
he added, noticing that the count was beginning to breathe
heavily and quickly which was always a sign of approaching
anger. ‘I was forgetting... Do you wish it brought at once?’
‘Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess.’
‘What a treasure that Dmitri is,’ added the count with a
smile when the young man had departed. ‘There is never any
‘impossible’ with him. That’s a thing I hate! Everything is


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possible.’
‘Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes
in the world,’ said the countess. ‘But I am in great need of
this sum.’
‘You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift,’ said
the count, and having kissed his wife’s hand he went back to
his study.
When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov’s the money, all in clean notes, was lying ready under a
handkerchief on the countess’ little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something was agitating her.
‘Well, my dear?’ asked the countess.
‘Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know
him, he is so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly
said a word..’
‘Annette, for heaven’s sake don’t refuse me,’ the countess began, with a blush that looked very strange on her thin,
dignified, elderly face, and she took the money from under
the handkerchief.
Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and
stooped to be ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
‘This is for Boris from me, for his outfit.’
Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and
weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they
were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because theyfriends from childhoodhad to think about such a
base thing as money, and because their youth was over.... But
those tears were pleasant to them both.
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Chapter XVIII
Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was already seated in the drawing room. The
count took the gentlemen into his study and showed them
his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From time to time he
went out to ask: ‘Hasn’t she come yet?’ They were expecting
Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le
terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank,
but for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya
Dmitrievna was known to the Imperial family as well as to
all Moscow and Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her,
laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told good stories
about her, while none the less all without exception respected and feared her.
In the count’s room, which was full of tobacco smoke,
they talked of war that had been announced in a manifesto,
and about the recruiting. None of them had yet seen the
manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared. The count sat
on the sofa between two guests who were smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head
first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers
with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his
two neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.
One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a
thin and wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was


103

dressed like a most fashionable young man. He sat with his
legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and, having stuck
an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an
old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess’, a man with
‘a sharp tongue’ as they said in Moscow society. He seemed
to be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh,
rosy officer of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed,
and buttoned, held his pipe in the middle of his mouth and
with red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting it escape
from his handsome mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant
Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha
had, teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her
‘intended.’ The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite occupation when not playing boston, a
card game he was very fond of, was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers
at one another.
‘Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse
Karlovich,’ said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing
the most ordinary Russian expressions with the choicest
French phraseswhich was a peculiarity of his speech. ‘Vous
comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’etat;* you want to make
something out of your company?’
*You expect to make an income out of the government.
‘No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the
cavalry the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just
consider my own position now, Peter Nikolaevich..’
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Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His conversation always related entirely to himself;
he would remain calm and silent when the talk related to
any topic that had no direct bearing on himself. He could
remain silent for hours without being at all put out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as
soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin
to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
‘Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the
cavalry I should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even with the rank of lieutenant; but as
it is I receive two hundred and thirty,’ said he, looking at
Shinshin and the count with a joyful, pleasant smile, as if
it were obvious to him that his success must always be the
chief desire of everyone else.
‘Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the
Guards I shall be in a more prominent position,’ continued Berg, ‘and vacancies occur much more frequently in
the Foot Guards. Then just think what can be done with
two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a little
aside and to send something to my father,’ he went on, emitting a smoke ring.
‘La balance y est...* A German knows how to skin a flint,
as the proverb says,’ remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to
the other side of his mouth and winking at the count.
*So that squares matters.
The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing
that Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference, continued to explain how by


105

exchanging into the Guards he had already gained a step on
his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime the
company commander might get killed and he, as senior in
the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied
his father was with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating
all this, and did not seem to suspect that others, too, might
have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his youthful egotism was so obvious,
that he disarmed his hearers.
‘Well, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you gofoot or
horsethat I’ll warrant,’ said Shinshin, patting him on the
shoulder and taking his feet off the sofa.
Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into
the drawing room.
It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,* avoid
engaging in any long conversation but think it necessary to
move about and talk, in order to show that they are not at all
impatient for their food. The host and hostess look toward
the door, and now and then glance at one another, and the
visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they
are waiting forsome important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.
*Hors d’oeuvres.
Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting
awkwardly in the middle of the drawing room on the first
chair he had come across, blocking the way for everyone.
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ively looking around through his spectacles as if in search
of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not
notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair
with the bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet
man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest fellow could
have played such a prank on a policeman.
‘You have only lately arrived?’ the countess asked him.
‘Oui, madame,’ replied he, looking around him.
‘You have not yet seen my husband?’
‘Non, madame.’ He smiled quite inappropriately.
‘You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it’s
very interesting.’
‘Very interesting.’
The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter understood that she was being asked to
entertain this young man, and sitting down beside him she
began to speak about his father; but he answered her, as he
had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other guests
were all conversing with one another. ‘The Razumovskis...
It was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina...’ was heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into
the ballroom.
‘Marya Dmitrievna?’ came her voice from there.
‘Herself,’ came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya
Dmitrievna entered the room.
All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the
door. Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-year-old head


107

with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests, and
leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them up.
Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.
‘Health and happiness to her whose name day we are
keeping and to her children,’ she said, in her loud, full-toned
voice which drowned all others. ‘Well, you old sinner,’ she
went on, turning to the count who was kissing her hand,
‘you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere to hunt
with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just see
how these nestlings are growing up,’ and she pointed to the
girls. ‘You must look for husbands for them whether you
like it or not...’
Well,’ said she, ‘how’s my Cossack?’ (Marya Dmitrievna always called Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the
child’s arm as she came up fearless and gay to kiss her hand.
‘I know she’s a scamp of a girl, but I like her.’
She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her
huge reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha,
who beamed with the pleasure of her saint’s-day fete, turned
away at once and addressed herself to Pierre.
‘Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,’ said she, assuming a soft
high tone of voice. ‘Come here, my friend...’ and she ominously tucked up her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached,
looking at her in a childlike way through his spectacles.
‘Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only
one to tell your father the truth when he was in favor, and in
your case it’s my evident duty.’ She paused. All were silent,
expectant of what was to follow, for this was dearly only a
prelude.
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‘A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his
deathbed and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride
a bear! For shame, sir, for shame! It would be better if you
went to the war.’
She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who
could hardly keep from laughing.
‘Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?’ said Marya
Dmitrievna.
The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the
countess followed on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of
importance to them because Nicholas was to go with him to
the regiment; then came Anna Mikhaylovna with Shinshin.
Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling Julie Karagina went
in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling
the whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors,
and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery,
and the guests settled down in their places. Then the strains
of the count’s household band were replaced by the clatter
of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the soft steps
of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with
Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna Mikhaylovna on
her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At the
other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left
and Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the grownup young
people: Vera beside Berg, and Pierre beside Boris; and on
the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From
behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases the count kept


109

glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors’ glasses, not neglecting
his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her duties
as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by
their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair.
At the ladies’ end an even chatter of voices was heard all the
time, at the men’s end the voices sounded louder and louder,
especially that of the colonel of hussars who, growing more
and more flushed, ate and drank so much that the count
held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but
a heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre
who the guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha,
who was sitting opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined
the new faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two soups he
chose turtle with savory patties and went on to the game
without omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These
latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in
a napkin, from behind the next man’s shoulders and whispered: ‘Dry Madeira”... ‘Hungarian”... or ‘Rhine wine’ as the
case might be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with the
count’s monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre held
out one at random and drank with enjoyment, gazing with
ever-increasing amiability at the other guests. Natasha, who
sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen look
at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the
first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that
funny lively little girl’s look made him inclined to laugh
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without knowing why.
Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina, to whom he was again talking with the same
involuntary smile. Sonya wore a company smile but was
evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned pale, now
blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept
looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight
that might be put upon the children. The German tutor was
trying to remember all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner to his
people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the
butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He
frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want any of that
wine, but was mortified because no one would understand
that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that
he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for
knowledge.



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Chapter XIX
At the men’s end of the table the talk grew more and more
animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war
had already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which
he had himself seen, had that day been forwarded by courier
to the commander in chief.
‘And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?’
remarked Shinshin. ‘He has stopped Austria’s cackle and I
fear it will be our turn next.’
The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently
devoted to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin’s remark.
‘It is for the reasson, my goot sir,’ said he, speaking with a
German accent, ‘for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat.
He declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and
dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze sanctity of its alliances...’
he spoke this last word with particular emphasis as if in it
lay the gist of the matter.
Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he repeated from the opening words of the
manifesto:
... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor’s sole
and absolute aimto establish peace in Europe on firm foundationshas now decided him to despatch part of the army
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abroad and to create a new condition for the attainment of
that purpose.
‘Zat, my dear sir, is vy...’ he concluded, drinking a tumbler of wine with dignity and looking to the count for
approval.
‘Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* ‘Jerome, Jerome, do not
roam, but turn spindles at home!’?’ said Shinshin, puckering
his brows and smiling. ‘Cela nous convient a merveille.*[2]
Suvorov nowhe knew what he was about; yet they beat him
a plate couture,*[3] and where are we to find Suvorovs now?
Je vous demande un peu,’*[4] said he, continually changing
from French to Russian.
*Do you know the proverb?
*[2] That suits us down to the ground.
*[3] Hollow.
*[4] I just ask you that.
‘Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!’ said the
colonel, thumping the table; ‘and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as
po-o-ossible”... he dwelt particularly on the word possible...
‘as po-o-ossible,’ he ended, again turning to the count. ‘Zat
is how ve old hussars look at it, and zere’s an end of it! And
how do you, a young man and a young hussar, how do you
judge of it?’ he added, addressing Nicholas, who when he
heard that the war was being discussed had turned from his
partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel.
‘I am quite of your opinion,’ replied Nicholas, flaming
up, turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses
about with as much decision and desperation as though he


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were at that moment facing some great danger. ‘I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer,’ he concluded,
consciousas were othersafter the words were uttered that
his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and were therefore awkward.
‘What you said just now was splendid!’ said his partner
Julie.
Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and
behind them and down to her neck and shoulders while
Nicholas was speaking.
Pierre listened to the colonel’s speech and nodded approvingly.
‘That’s fine,’ said he.
‘The young man’s a real hussar!’ shouted the colonel,
again thumping the table.
‘What are you making such a noise about over there?’
Marya Dmitrievna’s deep voice suddenly inquired from the
other end of the table. ‘What are you thumping the table
for?’ she demanded of the hussar, ‘and why are you exciting
yourself? Do you think the French are here?’
‘I am speaking ze truce,’ replied the hussar with a smile.
‘It’s all about the war,’ the count shouted down the table.
‘You know my son’s going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is
going.’
‘I have four sons in the army but still I don’t fret. It is all
in God’s hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare
you in a battle,’ replied Marya Dmitrievna’s deep voice,
which easily carried the whole length of the table.
‘That’s true!’
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Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies’ at
the one end and the men’s at the other.
‘You won’t ask,’ Natasha’s little brother was saying; ‘I
know you won’t ask!’
‘I will,’ replied Natasha.
Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat
opposite, to listen to what was coming, and turning to her
mother:
‘Mamma!’ rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice, audible the whole length of the table.
‘What is it?’ asked the countess, startled; but seeing by
her daughter’s face that it was only mischief, she shook a
finger at her sternly with a threatening and forbidding
movement of her head.
The conversation was hushed.
‘Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?’ and
Natasha’s voice sounded still more firm and resolute.
The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook her fat finger.
‘Cossack!’ she said threateningly.
Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally,
looked at the elders.
‘You had better take care!’ said the countess.
‘Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?’ Natasha
again cried boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her
prank would be taken in good part.
Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.
‘You see! I have asked,’ whispered Natasha to her little


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brother and to Pierre, glancing at him again.
‘Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,’ said Marya Dmitrievna.
Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she
braved even Marya Dmitrievna.
‘Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t
like ice cream.’
‘Carrot ices.’
‘No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?’ she almost screamed; ‘I want to know!’
Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing,
and all the guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya
Dmitrievna’s answer but at the incredible boldness and
smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat Marya
Dmitrievna in this fashion.
Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there
would be pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was
served round. The band again struck up, the count and
countess kissed, and the guests, leaving their seats, went up
to ‘congratulate’ the countess, and reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children, and
with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs
scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered
but with redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing
room and to the count’s study.
CHAPTER XX
The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the count’s visitors settled themselves, some in the
two drawing rooms, some in the sitting room, some in the
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library.
The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with
difficulty from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap,
and laughed at everything. The young people, at the countess’ instigation, gathered round the clavichord and harp.
Julie by general request played first. After she had played
a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the other
young ladies in begging Natasha and Nicholas, who were
noted for their musical talent, to sing something. Natasha,
who was treated as though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.
‘What shall we sing?’ she said.
‘‘The Brook,’’ suggested Nicholas.
‘Well, then,let’s be quick. Boris, come here,’ said Natasha.
‘But where is Sonya?’
She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in
the room ran to look for her.
Running into Sonya’s room and not finding her there,
Natasha ran to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either.
Natasha concluded that she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was the place of mourning
for the younger female generation in the Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on
Nurse’s dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling
her gauzy pink dress under her, hiding her face with her
slender fingers, and sobbing so convulsively that her bare
little shoulders shook. Natasha’s face, which had been so
radiantly happy all that saint’s day, suddenly changed: her
eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad


117

neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
‘Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!’
And Natasha’s large mouth widened, making her look quite
ugly, and she began to wail like a baby without knowing
why, except that Sonya was crying. Sonya tried to lift her
head to answer but could not, and hid her face still deeper
in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue-striped feather
bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sonya sat up and
began wiping her eyes and explaining.
‘Nicholas is going away in a week’s time, his... papers...
have come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry,’
and she showed a paper she held in her handwith the verses
Nicholas had written, ‘still, I should not cry, but you can’t...
no one can understand... what a soul he has!’
And she began to cry again because he had such a noble
soul.
‘It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you
and Boris also,’ she went on, gaining a little strength; ‘he is
nice... there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas
is my cousin... one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it can’t be done. And besides, if she tells
Mamma’ (Sonya looked upon the countess as her mother
and called her so) ‘that I am spoiling Nicholas’ career and
am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness,’ and she made the sign of the cross, ‘I love her so much,
and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done
to her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing...’
Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her
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hands and in the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her,
but her face showed that she understood all the gravity of
her friend’s trouble.
‘Sonya,’ she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed
the true reason of her friend’s sorrow, ‘I’m sure Vera has
said something to you since dinner? Hasn’t she?’
‘Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied
some others, and she found them on my table and said
she’d show them to Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and
that Mamma would never allow him to marry me, but that
he’ll marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her all day...
Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..’
And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before.
Natasha lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her
tears, began comforting her.
‘Sonya, don’t believe her, darling! Don’t believe her! Do
you remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting room after supper? Why, we settled how
everything was to be. I don’t quite remember how, but
don’t you remember that it could all be arranged and how
nice it all was? There’s Uncle Shinshin’s brother has married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you
know. And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have
told him all about it. And he is so clever and so good!’ said
Natasha. ‘Don’t you cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!’
and she kissed her and laughed. ‘Vera’s spiteful; never mind
her! And all will come right and she won’t say anything to
Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he doesn’t care
at all for Julie.’


119

Natasha kissed her on the hair.
Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone,
and it seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft
paws, and begin playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
‘Do you think so?... Really? Truly?’ she said, quickly
smoothing her frock and hair.
‘Really, truly!’ answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock
that had strayed from under her friend’s plaits.
Both laughed.
‘Well, let’s go and sing ‘The Brook.’’
‘Come along!’
‘Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so
funny!’ said Natasha, stopping suddenly. ‘I feel so happy!’
And she set off at a run along the passage.
Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and
tucking away the verses in the bosom of her dress close to
her bony little chest, ran after Natasha down the passage
into the sitting room with flushed face and light, joyous
steps. At the visitors’ request the young people sang the
quartette, ‘The Brook,’ with which everyone was delighted.
Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
At
nighttime
in
the
moon’s
fair
glow
How
sweet,
as
fancies
wander
free,
To
feel
that
in
this
world
there’s
one
Who still is thinking but of thee!
That
while
her
fingers
touch
the
harp
Wafting
sweet
music
music
the
lea,
It
is
for
thee
thus
swells
her
heart,
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Sighing its message out to thee...
A
day
or
two,
then
bliss
unspoilt,
But oh! till then I cannot live!...
He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the
sound of the feet and the coughing of the musicians were
heard from the gallery.
Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin
had engaged him, as a man recently returned from abroad,
in a political conversation in which several others joined
but which bored Pierre. When the music began Natasha
came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing
and blushing:
‘Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers.’
‘I am afraid of mixing the figures,’ Pierre replied; ‘but if
you will be my teacher...’ And lowering his big arm he offered it to the slender little girl.
While the couples were arranging themselves and the
musicians tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy; she was dancing with a
grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was sitting in a
conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady.
She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given
her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman
(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and smiling over the
fan.
‘Dear, dear! Just look at her!’ exclaimed the countess as
she crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.


121

Natasha blushed and laughed.
‘Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to
be surprised at?’
In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter
of chairs being pushed back in the sitting room where the
count and Marya Dmitrievna had been playing cards with
the majority of the more distinguished and older visitors.
They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and
replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both
with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya
Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the
ecossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians
and shouted up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
‘Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?’
This was the count’s favorite dance, which he had danced
in his youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)
‘Look at Papa!’ shouted Natasha to the whole company,
and quite forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up
partner she bent her curly head to her knees and made the
whole room ring with her laughter.
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile
of pleasure at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved
his arms, beat time, straightened his shoulders, turned out
his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a smile that
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broadened his round face more and more, prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively
gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those
of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways
of the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfsthe men on one side and the women on the otherwho with
beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.
‘Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!’ loudly remarked the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner
could not and did not want to dance well. Her enormous
figure stood erect, her powerful arms hanging down (she
had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her stern
but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count’s plump figure, in Marya
Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more
beaming face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting
more and more into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the
agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Marya
Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight exertionsthe least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms
when turning, or stamp her footwhich everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual severity. The dance grew
livelier and livelier. The other couples could not attract a
moment’s attention to their own evolutions and did not even
try to do so. All were watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress,
urging them to ‘look at Papa!’ though as it was they never


123

took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the dance
the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more
lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round
Marya Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until,
turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final
pas, raising his soft foot backwards, bowing his perspiring
head, smiling and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid
a thunder of applause and laughter led by Natasha. Both
partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
‘That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chere,’ said
the count.
‘That was a Daniel Cooper!’ exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up her sleeves and puffing heavily.

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Chapter XXI
While in the Rostovs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was
being danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks were getting the
supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke. The doctors
pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession,
communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house
there was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such
moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, a group of
undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive
funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been
assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the
count’s health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine’s court, Count
Bezukhov.
The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone
stood up respectfully when the Military Governor, having
stayed about half an hour alone with the dying man, passed
out, slightly acknowledging their bows and trying to escape
as quickly as from the glances fixed on him by the doctors,
clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince Vasili, who had
grown thinner and paler during the last few days, escorted
him to the door, repeating something to him several times


125

in low tones.
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing
one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee
and covering his face with his hand. After sitting so for a
while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened eyes,
went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor
leading to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest
princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in
nervous whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came
from the dying man’s room, grew silent and gazed with eyes
full of curiosity or expectancy at his door, which creaked
slightly when opened.
‘The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be
o’erpassed,’ said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat
beside him and was listening naively to his words.
‘I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?’ asked
the lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as if she had no
opinion of her own on the subject.
‘Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament, ‘replied the priest,
passing his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair
combed back across his bald head.
‘Who was that? The Military Governor himself?’ was being asked at the other side of the room. ‘How young-looking
he is!’
‘Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament
of unction.’
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‘I knew someone who received that sacrament seven
times.’
The second princess had just come from the sickroom
with her eyes red from weeping and sat down beside Dr.
Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose under a portrait
of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a table.
‘Beautiful,’ said the doctor in answer to a remark about
the weather. ‘The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides,
in Moscow one feels as if one were in the country.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ replied the princess with a sigh. ‘So he may
have something to drink?’
Lorrain considered.
‘Has he taken his medicine?’
‘Yes.’
The doctor glanced at his watch.
‘Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of
tartar,’ and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he
meant by a pinch.
‘Dere has neffer been a gase,’ a German doctor was saying to an aide-de-camp, ‘dat one liffs after de sird stroke.’
‘And what a well-preserved man he was!’ remarked the
aide-de-camp. ‘And who will inherit his wealth?’ he added
in a whisper.
‘It von’t go begging,’ replied the German with a smile.
Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked
as the second princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to Lorrain’s instructions. The German
doctor went up to Lorrain.
‘Do you think he can last till morning?’ asked the Ger

127

man, addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced
badly.
Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative
finger before his nose.
‘Tonight, not later,’ said he in a low voice, and he moved
away with a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able
clearly to understand and state the patient’s condition.
Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the
princess’ room.
In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were
burning before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of
flowers and burnt pastilles. The room was crowded with
small pieces of furniture, whatnots, cupboards, and little
tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was just visible
behind a screen. A small dog began to bark.
‘Ah, is it you, cousin?’
She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so
extremely smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece
with her head and covered with varnish.
‘Has anything happened?’ she asked. ‘I am so terrified.’
‘No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about
business, Catiche,’* muttered the prince, seating himself
wearily on the chair she had just vacated. ‘You have made
the place warm, I must say,’ he remarked. ‘Well, sit down:
let’s have a talk.’
*Catherine.
‘I thought perhaps something had happened,’ she said
with her unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting
down opposite the prince, she prepared to listen.
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‘I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can’t.’
‘Well, my dear?’ said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and
bending it downwards as was his habit.
It was plain that this ‘well?’ referred to much that they
both understood without naming.
The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally
long for her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no
sign of emotion in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook
her head and glanced up at the icons with a sigh. This might
have been taken as an expression of sorrow and devotion, or
of weariness and hope of resting before long. Prince Vasili
understood it as an expression of weariness.
‘And I?’ he said; ‘do you think it is easier for me? I am
as worn out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with
you, Catiche, a very serious talk.’
Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to
twitch nervously, now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression which was never to be
seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes too seemed strange;
at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the next
glanced round in alarm.
The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her
thin bony hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili’s eyes
evidently resolved not to be the first to break silence, if she
had to wait till morning.
‘Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,’ continued Prince Vasili, returning to his
theme, apparently not without an inner struggle; ‘at such
a moment as this one must think of everything. One must


129

think of the future, of all of you... I love you all, like children
of my own, as you know.’
The princess continued to look at him without moving,
and with the same dull expression.
‘And then of course my family has also to be considered,’ Prince Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little
table without looking at her. ‘You know, Catiche, that weyou three sisters, Mamontov, and my wifeare the count’s only
direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is for you to talk or
think of such matters. It is no easier for me; but, my dear, I
am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for anything.
Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count,’ pointing to
his portrait, ‘definitely demanded that he should be called.’
Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but
could not make out whether she was considering what he
had just said or whether she was simply looking at him.
‘There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon
cousin,’ she replied, ‘and it is that He would be merciful
to him and would allow his noble soul peacefully to leave
this..’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently, rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward
him the little table that he had pushed away. ‘But... in short,
the fact is... you know yourself that last winter the count
made a will by which he left all his property, not to us his
direct heirs, but to Pierre.’
‘He has made wills enough!’ quietly remarked the princess. ‘But he cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is
illegitimate.’
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‘But, my dear,’ said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the
little table and becoming more animated and talking more
rapidly: ‘what if a letter has been written to the Emperor in
which the count asks for Pierre’s legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of the count’s services, his
request would be granted?..’
The princess smiled as people do who think they know
more about the subject under discussion than those they are
talking with.
‘I can tell you more,’ continued Prince Vasili, seizing her
hand, ‘that letter was written, though it was not sent, and
the Emperor knew of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then as soon as all is over,’ and Prince
Vasili sighed to intimate what he meant by the words all is
over, ‘and the count’s papers are opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the petition will
certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate son.’
‘And our share?’ asked the princess smiling ironically, as
if anything might happen, only not that.
‘But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will
then be the legal heir to everything and you won’t get anything. You must know, my dear, whether the will and letter
were written, and whether they have been destroyed or not.
And if they have somehow been overlooked, you ought to
know where they are, and must find them, because..’
‘What next?’ the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not changing the expression of her eyes. ‘I am a
woman, and you think we are all stupid; but I know this: an


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illegitimate son cannot inherit... un batard!’* she added, as if
supposing that this translation of the word would effectively
prove to Prince Vasili the invalidity of his contention.
*A bastard.
‘Well, really, Catiche! Can’t you understand! You are so
intelligent, how is it you don’t see that if the count has written a letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre
as legitimate, it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will
become Count Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything
under the will? And if the will and letter are not destroyed,
then you will have nothing but the consolation of having
been dutiful et tout ce qui s’ensuit!* That’s certain.’
*And all that follows therefrom.
‘I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect
fool,’ said the princess with the expression women assume
when they suppose they are saying something witty and
stinging.
‘My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna,’ began Prince
Vasili impatiently, ‘I came here not to wrangle with you, but
to talk about your interests as with a kinswoman, a good,
kind, true relation. And I tell you for the tenth time that if
the letter to the Emperor and the will in Pierre’s favor are
among the count’s papers, then, my dear girl, you and your
sisters are not heiresses! If you don’t believe me, then believe
an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich’ (the
family solicitor) ‘and he says the same.’
At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess’ ideas; her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did
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not change, and her voice when she began to speak passed
through such transitions as she herself evidently did not expect.
‘That would be a fine thing!’ said she. ‘I never wanted
anything and I don’t now.’
She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her
dress.
‘And this is gratitudethis is recognition for those who
have sacrificed everything for his sake!’ she cried. ‘It’s splendid! Fine! I don’t want anything, Prince.’
‘Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters...’ replied Prince Vasili.
But the princess did not listen to him.
‘Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I
could expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue,
and ingratitudethe blackest ingratitudein this house..’
‘Do you or do you not know where that will is?’ insisted
Prince Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.
‘Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them,
and sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I
know who has been intriguing!’
The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by
the hand. She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith
in the whole human race. She gave her companion an angry
glance.
‘There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was all done casually in a moment of anger, of
illness, and was afterwards forgotten. Our duty, my dear,
is to rectify his mistake, to ease his last moments by not


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letting him commit this injustice, and not to let him die
feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..’
‘Who sacrificed everything for him,’ chimed in the princess, who would again have risen had not the prince still
held her fast, ‘though he never could appreciate it. No, mon
cousin,’ she added with a sigh, ‘I shall always remember that
in this world one must expect no reward, that in this world
there is neither honor nor justice. In this world one has to
be cunning and cruel.’
‘Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent
heart.’
‘No, I have a wicked heart.’
‘I know your heart,’ repeated the prince. ‘I value your
friendship and wish you to have as good an opinion of me.
Don’t upset yourself, and let us talk sensibly while there is
still time, be it a day or be it but an hour.... Tell me all you
know about the will, and above all where it is. You must
know. We will take it at once and show it to the count. He
has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it. You
understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry
out his wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came
simply to help him and you.’
‘Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguingI know!’
cried the princess.
‘That’s not the point, my dear.’
‘It’s that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a
housemaid... the infamous, vile woman!’
‘Do not let us lose any time..’
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‘Ah, don’t talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in
here and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about
us, especially about SophieI can’t repeat themthat it made
the count quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this vile, infamous paper,
but I thought the thing was invalid.’
‘We’ve got to it at lastwhy did you not tell me about it
sooner?’
‘It’s in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,’
said the princess, ignoring his question. ‘Now I know! Yes;
if I have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!’
almost shrieked the princess, now quite changed. ‘And what
does she come worming herself in here for? But I will give
her a piece of my mind. The time will come!’



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Chapter XXII
While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the princess’ room, a carriage containing
Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who
found it necessary to accompany him) was driving into the
court of Count Bezukhov’s house. As the wheels rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna,
having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he was asleep in his corner and woke him up.
Rousing himself, Pierre followed Anna Mikhaylovna out
of the carriage, and only then began to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him. He noticed
that they had not come to the front entrance but to the back
door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps
two men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from
the entrance and hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for
a moment, Pierre noticed several other men of the same
kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides. But
neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any
notice of them. ‘It seems to be all right,’ Pierre concluded,
and followed Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended
the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to Pierre, who
was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why
it was necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less
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why he had to go by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna
Mikhaylovna’s air of assurance and haste, Pierre concluded
that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the stairs
they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering.
These men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna
Mikhaylovna pass and did not evince the least surprise at
seeing them there.
‘Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?’ asked
Anna Mikhaylovna of one of them.
‘Yes,’ replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were now permissible; ‘the door to the left, ma’am.’
‘Perhaps the count did not ask for me,’ said Pierre when
he reached the landing. ‘I’d better go to my own room.’
Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come
up.
‘Ah, my friend!’ she said, touching his arm as she had
done her son’s when speaking to him that afternoon, ‘believe me I suffer no less than you do, but be a man!’
‘But really, hadn’t I better go away?’ he asked, looking
kindly at her over his spectacles.
‘Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have
been done you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the
agony of death.’ She sighed. ‘I have loved you like a son from
the first. Trust yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your
interests.’
Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction
that all this had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed
Anna Mikhaylovna who was already opening a door.


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This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant
of the princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre
had never been in this part of the house and did not even
know of the existence of these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna,
addressing a maid who was hurrying past with a decanter
on a tray as ‘my dear’ and ‘my sweet,’ asked about the princess’ health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The
first door on the left led into the princesses’ apartments. The
maid with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door
(everything in the house was done in haste at that time),
and Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively
glanced into the room, where Prince Vasili and the eldest
princess were sitting close together talking. Seeing them
pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious impatience,
while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of desperation slammed the door with all her might.
This action was so unlike her usual composure and the
fear depicted on Prince Vasili’s face so out of keeping with
his dignity that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over
his spectacles at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no
surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as if to say that
this was no more than she had expected.
‘Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests,’ said
she in reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.
Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still
less what ‘watching over his interests’ meant, but he decided
that all these things had to be. From the passage they went
into a large, dimly lit room adjoining the count’s reception
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room. It was one of those sumptuous but cold apartments
known to Pierre only from the front approach, but even in
this room there now stood an empty bath, and water had
been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with
a censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without
heeding them. They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian windows opening into the
conservatory, with its large bust and full length portrait of
Catherine the Great. The same people were still sitting here
in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale
tear-worn Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big
stout figure of Pierre who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.
Anna Mikhaylovna’s face expressed a consciousness that
the decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside
her, entered the room even more boldly than that afternoon.
She felt that as she brought with her the person the dying
man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the
count’s confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of
amble, not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly
smaller, and respectfully received the blessing first of one
and then of another priest.
‘God be thanked that you are in time,’ said she to one of
the priests; ‘all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This
young man is the count’s son,’ she added more softly. ‘What
a terrible moment!’


139

Having said this she went up to the doctor.
‘Dear doctor,’ said she, ‘this young man is the count’s
son. Is there any hope?’
The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently
shrugged his shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the
same movement raised her shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away from the doctor to
Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and tenderly sad
voice, she said:
‘Trust in His mercy!’ and pointing out a small sofa for
him to sit and wait for her, she went silently toward the door
that everyone was watching and it creaked very slightly as
she disappeared behind it.
Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress
implicitly, moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon
as Anna Mikhaylovna had disappeared he noticed that the
eyes of all in the room turned to him with something more
than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with
a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had
never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the
one who had been talking to the priests, rose and offered
him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up and returned a
glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became respectfully
silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At
first Pierre wished to take another seat so as not to trouble
the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and to pass
round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at
once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a
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person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to
accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the
aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady’s chair, placing his
huge hands symmetrically on his knees in the naive attitude
of an Egyptian statue, and decided in his own mind that all
was as it should be, and that in order not to lose his head
and do foolish things he must not act on his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of those
who were guiding him.
Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with
head erect majestically entered the room. He was wearing
his long coat with three stars on his breast. He seemed to
have grown thinner since the morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed Pierre. He
went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do),
and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it
was firmly fixed on.
‘Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you.
That is well!’ and he turned to go.
But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: ‘How is...’ and hesitated, not knowing whether it would be proper to call the
dying man ‘the count,’ yet ashamed to call him ‘father.’
‘He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage,
my friend..’
Pierre’s mind was in such a confused state that the word
‘stroke’ suggested to him a blow from something. He looked
at Prince Vasili in perplexity, and only later grasped that a
stroke was an attack of illness. Prince Vasili said something


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to Lorrain in passing and went through the door on tiptoe.
He could not walk well on tiptoe and his whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and the
priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the
door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being
moved about, and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the
same expression, pale but resolute in the discharge of duty,
ran out and touching Pierre lightly on the arm said:
‘The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to
be administered. Come.’
Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet,
and noticed that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and
some of the servants, all followed him in, as if there were
now no further need for permission to enter that room.

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Chapter XXIII
Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns
and an arch, its walls hung round with Persian carpets. The
part of the room behind the columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and on the other an
immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated
with red light like a Russian church during evening service.
Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in
that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly
changed, Pierre sawcovered to the waist by a bright green
quiltthe familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of hair above his broad forehead
which reminded one of a lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay just
under the icons; his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into
the right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb, and an
old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in
position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted
tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the
service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front
of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though declaring


143

to all that she could not answer for herself should she glance
round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and
all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near
the strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the
invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his
left arm on the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned
round for the purpose, and was crossing himself with his
right hand, turning his eyes upward each time he touched
his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and resignation to the will of God. ‘If you do not understand these
sentiments,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘so much the worse for
you!’
Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and
the menservants; the men and women had separated as in
church. All were silently crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting of deep bass
voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of feet
were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt
she quite knew what she was about, went across the room
to where Pierre was standing and gave him a taper. He lit
it and, distracted by observing those around him, began
crossing himself with the hand that held the taper.
Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess
with the mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her
handkerchief, and remained with it hidden for awhile; then
looking up and seeing Pierre she again began to laugh. She
evidently felt unable to look at him without laughing, but
could not resist looking at him: so to be out of temptation
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she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst
of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,
they whispered to one another, and the old servant who
was holding the count’s hand got up and said something to
the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from behind
her back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning
against one of the columns in a respectful attitude implying
that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, understood the full importance of the rite now being performed
and even approved of it. He now approached the sick man
with the noiseless step of one in full vigor of life, with his
delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the hand
that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given something to
drink, there was a stir around him, then the people resumed
their places and the service continued. During this interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which
he had been leaning, andwith air which intimated that he
knew what he was about and if others did not understand
him it was so much the worse for themdid not go up to the
dying man, but passed by him, joined the eldest princess,
and moved with her to the side of the room where stood the
high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the bed
both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back
door, but returned to their places one after the other before
the service was concluded. Pierre paid no more attention
to this occurrence than to the rest of what went on, having
made up his mind once for all that what he saw happening


145

around him that evening was in some way essential.
The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the
priest was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man
on having received the sacrament. The dying man lay as
lifeless and immovable as before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which
Anna Mikhaylovna’s was the most distinct.
Pierre heard her say:
‘Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
impossible..’
The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses,
and servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray manewhich, though he saw other faces
as well, he had not lost sight of for a single moment during
the whole service. He judged by the cautious movements of
those who crowded round the invalid chair that they had
lifted the dying man and were moving him.
‘Catch hold of my arm or you’ll drop him!’ he heard
one of the servants say in a frightened whisper. ‘Catch hold
from underneath. Here!’ exclaimed different voices; and the
heavy breathing of the bearers and the shuffling of their feet
grew more hurried, as if the weight they were carrying were
too much for them.
As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna,
passed the young man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying man’s high, stout,
uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by those
who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray,
curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad
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brow and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and
its cold, majestic expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as Pierre remembered it
three months before, when the count had sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with the
uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze
fixed itself upon nothing.
After a few minutes’ bustle beside the high bedstead,
those who had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna
Mikhaylovna touched Pierre’s hand and said, ‘Come.’ Pierre
went with her to the bed on which the sick man had been
laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows.
His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk
quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count
was gazing straight at him, but with a look the significance
of which could not be understood by mortal man. Either
this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes they
must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced inquiringly at
his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with her
eyes, glancing at the sick man’s hand and moving her lips as
if to send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as
not to touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed
his lips to the large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor
a single muscle of the count’s face stirred. Once more Pierre
looked questioningly at Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he
was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna with her eyes indicated a
chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre obediently sat down,


147

his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna Mikhaylovna
nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed
that his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and
doing his utmost to look as small as possible. He looked at
the count, who still gazed at the spot where Pierre’s face had
been before he sat down. Anna Mikhaylovna indicated by
her attitude her consciousness of the pathetic importance of
these last moments of meeting between the father and son.
This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an
hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count’s
face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre
realize how near death his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna
Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man’s eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre, then
to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring
whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the
sick man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at
the servant who stood constantly at the head of the bed.
‘Wants to turn on the other side,’ whispered the servant,
and got up to turn the count’s heavy body toward the wall.
Pierre rose to help him.
While the count was being turned over, one of his arms
fell back helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it
forward. Whether he noticed the look of terror with which
Pierre regarded that lifeless arm, or whether some other
thought flitted across his dying brain, at any rate he glanced
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at the refractory arm, at Pierre’s terror-stricken face, and
again at the arm, and on his face a feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed
to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre
felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling
in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was
turned on to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.
‘He is dozing,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that
one of the princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. ‘Let us go.’
Pierre went out.



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Chapter XXIV
There was now no one in the reception room except Prince
Vasili and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the
portrait of Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon
as they saw Pierre and his companion they became silent,
and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide something as
she whispered:
‘I can’t bear the sight of that woman.’
‘Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room,’
said Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. ‘Go and take
something, my poor Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not
hold out.’
To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna
Mikhaylovna into the small drawing room.
‘There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as
a cup of this delicious Russian tea,’ Lorrain was saying with
an air of restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from
a delicate Chinese handleless cup before a table on which
tea and a cold supper were laid in the small circular room.
Around the table all who were at Count Bezukhov’s house
that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre well
remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre,
who did not know how to dance, had liked sitting in this
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room to watch the ladies who, as they passed through in
their ball dresses with diamonds and pearls on their bare
shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly lighted
mirrors which repeated their reflections several times. Now
this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one
small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder,
and in the middle of the night a motley throng of people
sat there, not merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and
betraying by every word and movement that they none of
them forgot what was happening and what was about to
happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though
he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at
his monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to
the reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the
eldest princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential,
and after a short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna
was standing beside the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.
‘Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and
what is not necessary,’ said the younger of the two speakers,
evidently in the same state of excitement as when she had
slammed the door of her room.
‘But, my dear princess,’ answered Anna Mikhaylovna
blandly but impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom
and preventing the other from passing, ‘won’t this be too
much for poor Uncle at a moment when he needs repose?
Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is already
prepared..’
Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his famil

151

iar attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His
cheeks, which were so flabby that they looked heavier below,
were twitching violently; but he wore the air of a man little
concerned in what the two ladies were saying.
‘Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as
she pleases. You know how fond the count is of her.’
‘I don’t even know what is in this paper,’ said the younger
of the two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to
an inlaid portfolio she held in her hand. ‘All I know is that
his real will is in his writing table, and this is a paper he has
forgotten...’
She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter
sprang so as to bar her path.
‘I know, my dear, kind princess,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the portfolio so firmly that it was plain she
would not let go easily. ‘Dear princess, I beg and implore
you, have some pity on him! Je vous en conjure..’
The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle
for the portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was
evident that if the princess did speak, her words would not
be flattering to Anna Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held
on tenaciously, her voice lost none of its honeyed firmness
and softness.
‘Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of
place in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?’
‘Why don’t you speak, cousin?’ suddenly shrieked the
princess so loud that those in the drawing room heard her
and were startled. ‘Why do you remain silent when heaven
knows who permits herself to interfere, making a scene on
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the very threshold of a dying man’s room? Intriguer!’ she
hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the portfolio.
But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to
keep her hold on the portfolio, and changed her grip.
Prince Vasili rose. ‘Oh!’ said he with reproach and surprise, ‘this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you.’
The princess let go.
‘And you too!’
But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.
‘Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself
will go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?’
‘But, Prince,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, ‘after such a solemn sacrament, allow him a moment’s peace! Here, Pierre,
tell them your opinion,’ said she, turning to the young man
who, having come quite close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the princess which had lost all
dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince Vasili.
‘Remember that you will answer for the consequences,’
said Prince Vasili severely. ‘You don’t know what you are
doing.’
‘Vile woman!’ shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from
her.
Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.
At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had
watched so long and which had always opened so quietly,
burst noisily open and banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out wringing her hands.


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‘What are you doing!’ she cried vehemently. ‘He is dying
and you leave me alone with him!’
Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna,
stooping, quickly caught up the object of contention and
ran into the bedroom. The eldest princess and Prince Vasili,
recovering themselves, followed her. A few minutes later the
eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again biting her
underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an irrepressible hatred.
‘Yes, now you may be glad!’ said she; ‘this is what you
have been waiting for.’ And bursting into tears she hid her
face in her handkerchief and rushed from the room.
Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on
which Pierre was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his
face with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and that
his jaw quivered and shook as if in an ague.
‘Ah, my friend!’ said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and
there was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had
never observed in it before. ‘How often we sin, how much
we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear friend...
I too... All will end in death, all! Death is awful...’ and he
burst into tears.
Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre
with slow, quiet steps.
‘Pierre!’ she said.
Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young
man on his forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after
a pause she said:
‘He is no more...’
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Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
‘Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives
such relief as tears.’
She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was
glad no one could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him,
and when she returned he was fast asleep with his head on
his arm.
In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:
‘Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of
you. But God will support you: you are young, and are now,
I hope, in command of an immense fortune. The will has
not yet been opened. I know you well enough to be sure that
this will not turn your head, but it imposes duties on you,
and you must be a man.’
Pierre was silent.
‘Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I
had not been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle promised me only the day before
yesterday not to forget Boris. But he had no time. I hope, my
dear friend, you will carry out your father’s wish?’
Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly
looked in silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her
talk with Pierre, Anna Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs’ and went to bed. On waking in the morning she told
the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of Count
Bezukhov’s death. She said the count had died as she would
herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but
edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it
was so touching that she could not think of it without tears,


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and did not know which had behaved better during those
awful momentsthe father who so remembered everything
and everybody at last and last and had spoken such pathetic
words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see,
so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to hide it
in order not to sadden his dying father. ‘It is painful, but it
does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old
count and his worthy son,’ said she. Of the behavior of the
eldest princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly,
but in whispers and as a great secret.

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Chapter XXV
At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski’s
estate, the arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was
daily expected, but this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the old prince’s household. General
in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich (nicknamed in society, ‘the King of Prussia’) ever since the Emperor Paul had
exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion,
Mademoiselle Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was
free to return to the capitals, he still continued to live in
the country, remarking that anyone who wanted to see him
could come the hundred miles from Moscow to Bald Hills,
while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to say
that there are only two sources of human viceidleness and
superstition, and only two virtuesactivity and intelligence.
He himself undertook his daughter’s education, and to develop these two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in
algebra and geometry till she was twenty, and arranged her
life so that her whole time was occupied. He was himself
always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving problems in
higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working in the garden, or superintending the building that was
always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity, regularity in his household was


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carried to the highest point of exactitude. He always came
to table under precisely the same conditions, and not only
at the same hour but at the same minute. With those about
him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp
and invariably exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted
men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement
and had now no influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the province in which the prince’s estate
lay considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty
antechamber ante chamber just as the architect, gardener,
or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared punctually to
the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber
experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when
the enormously high study door opened and showed the
figure of a rather small old man, with powdered wig, small
withered hands, and bushy gray eyebrows which, when he
frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.
On the morning of the day that the young couple were
to arrive, Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the morning greeting, crossing
herself with trepidation and repeating a silent prayer. Every
morning she came in like that, and every morning prayed
that the daily interview might pass off well.
An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose quietly and said in a whisper: ‘Please walk
in.’
Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The
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princess timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the entrance. The prince was
working at the lathe and after glancing round continued his
work.
The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The large table covered with books and plans, the
tall glass-fronted bookcases with keys in the locks, the high
desk for writing while standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with tools laid ready to hand and
shavings scattered aroundall indicated continuous, varied,
and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot shod in
a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still
possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old
age. After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot
from the pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table,
summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven)
and, regarding her tenderly and attentively, said severely:
‘Quite well? All right then, sit down.’ He took the exercise book containing lessons in geometry written by himself
and drew up a chair with his foot.
‘For tomorrow!’ said he, quickly finding the page and
making a scratch from one paragraph to another with his
hard nail.
The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
‘Wait a bit, here’s a letter for you,’ said the old man suddenly, taking a letter addressed in a woman’s hand from a


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bag hanging above the table, onto which he threw it.
At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves
on the princess’ face. She took it quickly and bent her head
over it.
‘From Heloise?’ asked the prince with a cold smile that
showed his still sound, yellowish teeth.
‘Yes, it’s from Julie,’ replied the princess with a timid
glance and a timid smile.
‘I’ll let two more letters pass, but the third I’ll read,’ said
the prince sternly; ‘I’m afraid you write much nonsense. I’ll
read the third!’
‘Read this if you like, Father,’ said the princess, blushing
still more and holding out the letter.
‘The third, I said the third!’ cried the prince abruptly,
pushing the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table
he drew toward him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.
‘Well, madam,’ he began, stooping over the book close
to his daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair
on which she sat, so that she felt herself surrounded on all
sides by the acrid scent of old age and tobacco, which she
had known so long. ‘Now, madam, these triangles are equal;
please note that the angle ABC..’
The princess looked in a scared way at her father’s eyes
glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and
went, and it was plain that she understood nothing and was
so frightened that her fear would prevent her understanding
any of her father’s further explanations, however clear they
might be. Whether it was the teacher’s fault or the pupil’s,
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this same thing happened every day: the princess’ eyes grew
dim, she could not see and could not hear anything, but
was only conscious of her stern father’s withered face close
to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think
only of how to get away quickly to her own room to make
out the problem in peace. The old man was beside himself:
moved the chair on which he was sitting noisily backward
and forward, made efforts to control himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become vehement,
scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.
The princess gave a wrong answer.
‘Well now, isn’t she a fool!’ shouted the prince, pushing
the book aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and down, lightly touched his daughter’s
hair and sat down again.
He drew up his chair. and continued to explain.
‘This won’t do, Princess; it won’t do,’ said he, when Princess Mary, having taken and closed the exercise book with
the next day’s lesson, was about to leave: ‘Mathematics are
most important, madam! I don’t want to have you like our
silly ladies. Get used to it and you’ll like it,’ and he patted
her cheek. ‘It will drive all the nonsense out of your head.’
She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and
took an uncut book from the high desk.
‘Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has sent you. Religious! I don’t interfere with anyone’s
belief... I have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go.’
He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the
door after her.


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Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad,
scared expression that rarely left her and which made her
plain, sickly face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing
table, on which stood miniature portraits and which was
littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy
as her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and
eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina who
had been at the Rostovs’ name-day party.
Julie wrote in French:
Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a
thing is separation! Though I tell myself that half my life
and half my happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in
spite of the distance separating us our hearts are united by
indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against fate and in spite
of the pleasures and distractions around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my heart ever
since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last
summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential
sofa? Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh
moral strength from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me
as I write?
Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced
into the mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak,
ungraceful figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now
looked with particular hopelessness at her reflection in the
glass. ‘She flatters me,’ thought the princess, turning away
and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter her friend,
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the princess’ eyeslarge, deep and luminous (it seemed as if
at times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)were
so beautiful that very often in spite of the plainness of her
face they gave her an attraction more powerful than that of
beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression
of her own eyesthe look they had when she was not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced
unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She
went on reading:
All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two
brothers is already abroad, the other is with the Guards,
who are starting on their march to the frontier. Our dear
Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant
that the Corsican monster who is destroying the peace of
Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased
the Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To
say nothing of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one
of the associations nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to
remain inactive and has left the university to join the army.
I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme
youth his departure for the army was a great grief to me.
This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is
so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which
one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty
and, particularly, he is so frank and has so much heart. He
is so pure and poetic that my relations with him, transient
as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to my


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poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday
I will tell you about our parting and all that was said then.
That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to
know these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate,
for the latter are generally the stronger! I know very well
that Count Nicholas is too young ever to be more to me than
a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this! The
chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of
old Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three
princesses have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing,
and it is Monsieur Pierre who has inherited all the property
and has besides been recognized as legitimate; so that he is
now Count Bezukhov and possessor of the finest fortune in
Russia. It is rumored that Prince Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he returned to Petersburg
quite crestfallen.
I confess I understand very little about all these matters
of wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young
man, whom we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre,
has become Count Bezukhov and the owner of one of the
largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to watch the
change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened
by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always
seemed to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two
years people have amused themselves by finding husbands
for me (most of whom I don’t even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future
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Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have
no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know
that a while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna
told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince
Vasili’s son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on you
that his relations’ choice has fallen. I don’t know what you
will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of
it. He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace.
That is all I have been able to find out about him.
But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet
of paper, and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the
Apraksins’. Read the mystical book I am sending you; it has
an enormous success here. Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it is an admirable
book which calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give my
respects to monsieur your father and my compliments to
Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
JULIE
P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming
little wife.
The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile
and her luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely
transformed. Then she suddenly rose and with her heavy
tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of paper and her
hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote, also
in French:
Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has giv

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en me great delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie?
Separation, of which you say so much that is bad, does not
seem to have had its usual effect on you. You complain of
our separation. What then should I say, if I dared complain,
I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if we had
not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do
you suppose that I should look severely on your affection
for that young man? On such matters I am only severe with
myself. I understand such feelings in others, and if never
having felt them I cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian love, love
of one’s neighbor, love of one’s enemy, is worthier, sweeter,
and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a
young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl
like yourself.
The news of Count Bezukhov’s death reached us before
your letter and my father was much affected by it. He says
the count was the last representative but one of the great
century, and that it is his own turn now, but that he will do
all he can to let his turn come as late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a
child. He always seemed to me to have an excellent heart,
and that is the quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad
for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine Saviour’s words,
that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still more sorry for
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Pierre. So young, and burdened with such richesto what
temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest
beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume
you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow.
Yet since you tell me that among some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding cannot
grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I
never could understand the fondness some people have for
confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that
merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination,
giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles and Gospels.
Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain; for
how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this
flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the
Eternal? Let us rather confine ourselves to studying those
sublime rules which our divine Saviour has left for our
guidance here below. Let us try to conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we let our
feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God,
who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him;
and the less we seek to fathom what He has been pleased to
conceal from us, the sooner will He vouchsafe its revelation
to us through His divine Spirit.
My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only
told me that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit


167

from Prince Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for
me, I will tell you, dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage
as a divine institution to which we must conform. However
painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay the duties
of wife and wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform
them as faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by
examining my feelings toward him whom He may give me
for husband.
I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his
speedy arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will
be but a brief one, however, for he will leave, us again to take
part in this unhappy war into which we have been drawn,
God knows how or why. Not only where you areat the heart
of affairs and of the worldis the talk all of war, even here
amid fieldwork and the calm of naturewhich townsfolk consider characteristic of the countryrumors of war are heard
and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches
and countermarches, things of which I understand nothing;
and the day before yesterday during my daily walk through
the village I witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our people and starting to
join the army. You should have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and
should have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind
has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached
love and forgiveness of injuriesand that men attribute the
greatest merit to skill in killing one another.
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and
His most Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-pow168

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erful care!
MARY
‘Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already
dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother,’ said
the smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r’s. She brought into
Princess Mary’s strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a
quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and selfsatisfied.
‘Princess, I must warn you,’ she added, lowering her
voice and evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and
speaking with exaggerated grasseyement, ‘the prince has
been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared.’
‘Ah, dear friend,’ replied Princess Mary, ‘I have asked you
never to warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him and would not have others do so.’
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she
was five minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting room with a look of alarm.
Between twelve and two o’clock, as the day was mapped out,
the prince rested and the princess played the clavichord.



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Chapter XXVI
The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to
the snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From
the far side of the house through the closed doors came the
sound of difficult passagestwenty times repeatedof a sonata
by Dussek.
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood
drove up to the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to alight, and let her pass into the
house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head
out of the door of the antechamber, reported in a whisper
that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
Tikhon knew that neither the son’s arrival nor any other
unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well
as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether
his father’s habits had changed since he was at home last,
and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned
to his wife.
‘He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to
Mary’s room,’ he said.
The little princess had grown stouter during this time,
but her eyes and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when
she began to speak just as merrily and prettily as ever.
‘Why, this is a palace!’ she said to her husband, looking
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around with the expression with which people compliment
their host at a ball. ‘Let’s come, quick, quick!’ And with a
glance round, she smiled at Tikhon, at her husband, and at
the footman who accompanied them.
‘Is that Mary practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her by
surprise.’
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
‘You’ve grown older, Tikhon,’ he said in passing to the
old man, who kissed his hand.
Before they reached the room from which the sounds of
the clavichord came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman,
Mademoiselle Bourienne, rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.
‘Ah! what joy for the princess!’ exclaimed she: ‘At last! I
must let her know.’
‘No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,’
said the little princess, kissing her. ‘I know you already
through my sister-in-law’s friendship for you. She was not
expecting us?’
They went up to the door of the sitting room from which
came the sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata.
Prince Andrew stopped and made a grimace, as if expecting
something unpleasant.
The little princess entered the room. The passage broke
off in the middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary’s
heavy tread and the sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew
went in the two princesses, who had only met once before
for a short time at his wedding, were in each other’s arms


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warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened
to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously
equally ready to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged
his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of music do when they
hear a false note. The two women let go of one another, and
then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other’s hands,
kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew’s
surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle
Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt
ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that
they should cry, and apparently it never entered their heads
that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.
‘Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!’ they suddenly exclaimed,
and then laughed. ‘I dreamed last night...’‘You were not expecting us?...’‘Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?...’ ‘And you
have grown stouter!..’
‘I knew the princess at once,’ put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘And I had no idea!...’ exclaimed Princess Mary. ‘Ah, Andrew, I did not see you.’
Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one
another, and he told her she was still the same crybaby as
ever. Princess Mary had turned toward her brother, and
through her tears the loving, warm, gentle look of her large
luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment, rested on
Prince Andrew’s face.
The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy
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upper lip continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and drawing up again next moment
when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and
sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had had on the
Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in her
condition, and immediately after that informed them that
she had left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven
knew what she would have to dress in here; and that Andrew
had quite changed, and that Kitty Odyntsova had married
an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary, a real one,
but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was still
looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were
full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following
a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law’s words.
In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she
addressed her brother:
‘So you are really going to the war, Andrew?’ she said
sighing.
Lise sighed too.
‘Yes, and even tomorrow,’ replied her brother.
‘He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might
have had promotion..’
Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing
her train of thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.
‘Is it certain?’ she said.
The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and
said: ‘Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..’
Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sis

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ter-in-law’s and unexpectedly again began to cry.
‘She needs rest,’ said Prince Andrew with a frown. ‘Don’t
you, Lise? Take her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How
is he? Just the same?’
‘Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opinion will be,’ answered the princess joyfully.
‘And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the lathe?’ asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely
perceptible smile which showed that, in spite of all his love
and respect for his father, he was aware of his weaknesses.
‘The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the
mathematics and my geometry lessons,’ said Princess Mary
gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry were among the
greatest delights of her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had
come for the old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the
young prince to his father. The old man made a departure
from his usual routine in honor of his son’s arrival: he gave
orders to admit him to his apartments while he dressed
for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned
style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when
Prince Andrew entered his father’s dressing room (not with
the contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing
rooms, but with the animated face with which he talked to
Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered
chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head
to Tikhon.
‘Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?’
said the old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the
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tail, which Tikhon was holding fast to plait, would allow.
‘You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes
on like this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are
you?’ And he held out his cheek.
The old man was in a good temper after his nap before
dinner. (He used to say that a nap ‘after dinner was silverbefore dinner, golden.’) He cast happy, sidelong glances at
his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father on the spot indicated to
him. He made no reply on his father’s favorite topicmaking
fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly of
Bonaparte.
‘Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my
wife who is pregnant,’ said Prince Andrew, following every
movement of his father’s face with an eager and respectful
look. ‘How is your health?’
‘Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am
busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of course
I am well.’
‘Thank God,’ said his son smiling.
‘God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,’ he continued, returning to his hobby; ‘tell me how the Germans have
taught you to fight Bonaparte by this new science you call
‘strategy.’’
Prince Andrew smiled.
‘Give me time to collect my wits, Father,’ said he, with a
smile that showed that his father’s foibles did not prevent his
son from loving and honoring him. ‘Why, I have not yet had
time to settle down!’


175

‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ cried the old man, shaking his
pigtail to see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping
his by the hand. ‘The house for your wife is ready. Princess
Mary will take her there and show her over, and they’ll talk
nineteen to the dozen. That’s their woman’s way! I am glad
to have her. Sit down and talk. About Mikhelson’s army I
understandTolstoy’s too... a simultaneous expedition.... But
what’s the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know
that. What about Austria?’ said he, rising from his chair and
pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who ran
after him, handing him different articles of clothing. ‘What
of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?’
Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, beganat
first reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit changing unconsciously from Russian
to French as he went onto explain the plan of operation for
the coming campaign. He explained how an army, ninety
thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her
out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of
that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how
two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the
Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English
were to land at Naples, and how a total force of five hundred
thousand men was to attack the French from different sides.
The old prince did not evince the least interest during this
explanation, but as if he were not listening to it continued
to dress while walking about, and three times unexpectedly
interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: ‘The white one,
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the white one!’
This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:
‘And will she soon be confined?’ and shaking his head
reproachfully said: ‘That’s bad! Go on, go on.’
The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was
finishing his description. The old man began to sing, in the
cracked voice of old age: ‘Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu
sait quand reviendra.’*
*”Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when
he’ll return.’
His son only smiled.
‘I don’t say it’s a plan I approve of,’ said the son; ‘I am
only telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his
plan by now, not worse than this one.’
‘Well, you’ve told me nothing new,’ and the old man repeated, meditatively and rapidly:
‘Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room.’



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Chapter XXVII
At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven,
entered the dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess
Mary, and Mademoiselle Bourienne were already awaiting
him together with his architect, who by a strange caprice
of his employer’s was admitted to table though the position
of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly
not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who
generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely
admitted even important government officials to his table,
had unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always
went into a corner to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and
had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael
Ivanovich was ‘not a whit worse than you or I.’ At dinner the
prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more
often than to anyone else.
In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house
was exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the
footmenone behind each chairstood waiting for the prince to
enter. The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making signs to the footmen, and anxiously
glancing from the clock to the door by which the prince was
to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large gilt frame,
new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes
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Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a
badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crownan alleged
descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince
Andrew, looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his
head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at a portrait so
characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
‘How thoroughly like him that is!’ he said to Princess
Mary, who had come up to him.
Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did
not understand what he was laughing at. Everything her
father did inspired her with reverence and was beyond question.
‘Everyone has his Achilles’ heel,’ continued Prince Andrew. ‘Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such
nonsense!’
Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her
brother’s criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were heard coming from the study. The prince
walked in quickly and jauntily as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his manners with the
strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock
struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the
drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes
from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all
present and rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers
do when the Tsar enters, the sensation of fear and respect
which the old man inspired in all around him. He stroked
her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of her


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neck.
‘I’m glad, glad, to see you,’ he said, looking attentively into
her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down.
‘Sit down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!’
He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A
footman moved the chair for her.
‘Ho, ho!’ said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded figure. ‘You’ve been in a hurry. That’s bad!’
He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with
his lips only and not with his eyes.
‘You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as
possible,’ he said.
The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his
words. She was silent and seemed confused. The prince
asked her about her father, and she began to smile and talk.
He asked about mutual acquaintances, and she became still
more animated and chattered away giving him greetings
from various people and retailing the town gossip.
‘Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband
and she has cried her eyes out,’ she said, growing more and
more lively.
As she became animated the prince looked at her more
and more sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a definite idea of her, he turned
away and addressed Michael Ivanovich.
‘Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having
a bad time of it. Prince Andrew’ (he always spoke thus of
his son) ‘has been telling me what forces are being collected
against him! While you and I never thought much of him.’
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Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when ‘you and I’
had said such things about Bonaparte, but understanding
that he was wanted as a peg on which to hang the prince’s
favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at the young prince,
wondering what would follow.
‘He is a great tactician!’ said the prince to his son, pointing to the architect.
And the conversation again turned on the war, on
Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The
old prince seemed convinced not only that all the men of the
day were mere babies who did not know the A B C of war
or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant little
Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any
Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also
convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe
and no real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the
men of the day were playing, pretending to do something
real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his father’s ridicule of
the new men, and drew him on and listened to him with evident pleasure.
‘The past always seems good,’ said he, ‘but did not Suvorov himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which
he did not know how to escape?’
‘Who told you that? Who?’ cried the prince. ‘Suvorov!’
And he jerked away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught.
‘Suvorov!... Consider, Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and
Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would have been a prisoner if
Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the Hofs-kriegswurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled


181

the devil himself! When you get there you’ll find out what
those Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn’t manage them so what chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my
dear boy,’ he continued, ‘you and your generals won’t get on
against Buonaparte; you’ll have to call in the French, so that
birds of a feather may fight together. The German, Pahlen,
has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the Frenchman, Moreau,’ he said, alluding to the invitation made that
year to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... ‘Wonderful!... Were the Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans?
No, lad, either you fellows have all lost your wits, or I have
outlived mine. May God help you, but we’ll see what will
happen. Buonaparte has become a great commander among
them! Hm!..’
‘I don’t at all say that all the plans are good,’ said Prince
Andrew, ‘I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte.
You may laugh as much as you like, but all the same
Bonaparte is a great generall.’
‘Michael Ivanovich!’ cried the old prince to the architect
who, busy with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten:
‘Didn’t I tell you Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he
says same thing.’
‘To be sure, your excellency.’ replied the architect.
The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
‘Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
He has got splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking
Germans. And only idlers have failed to beat the Germans.
Since the world began everybody has beaten the Germans.
They beat no oneexcept one another. He made his reputation
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fighting them.’
And the prince began explaining all the blunders which,
according to him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns
and even in politics. His son made no rejoinder, but it was
evident that whatever arguments were presented he was as
little able as his father to change his opinion. He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this
old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could
know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and political events.
‘You think I’m an old man and don’t understand the present state of affairs?’ concluded his father. ‘But it troubles me.
I don’t sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown his skill?’ he concluded.
‘That would take too long to tell,’ answered the son.
‘Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here’s another admirer of that powder-monkey
emperor of yours,’ he exclaimed in excellent French.
‘You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!’
‘Dieu sait quand reviendra”... hummed the prince out of
tune and, with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
The little princess during the whole discussion and the
rest of the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look
now at her father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When
they left the table she took her sister-in-law’s arm and drew
her into another room.
‘What a clever man your father is,’ said she; ‘perhaps that
is why I am afraid of him.’
‘Oh, he is so kind!’ answered Princess Mary.


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Chapter XXVIII
Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince,
not altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little princess was in her sister-in-law’s room. Prince Andrew
in a traveling coat without epaulettes had been packing
with his valet in the rooms assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he
ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he
always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a
large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and
a sabera present from his father who had brought it from
the siege of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince
Andrew’s were in very good order: new, clean, and in cloth
covers carefully tied with tapes.
When starting on a journey or changing their mode
of life, men capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments one reviews the past
and plans for the future. Prince Andrew’s face looked very
thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced
briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight
before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear
going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?perhaps
both, but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood,
for hearing footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped
his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the cover of the small
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box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he
heard.
‘I hear you have given orders to harness,’ she cried, panting (she had apparently been running), ‘and I did so wish to
have another talk with you alone! God knows how long we
may again be parted. You are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,’ she added, as if to
explain such a question.
She smiled as she uttered his pet name, ‘Andrusha.’ It
was obviously strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be Andrushathe slender mischievous boy
who had been her playfellow in childhood.
‘And where is Lise?’ he asked, answering her question
only by a smile.
‘She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in
my room. Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have,’
said she, sitting down on the sofa, facing her brother. ‘She
is quite a child: such a dear, merry child. I have grown so
fond of her.’
Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the
ironical and contemptuous look that showed itself on his
face.
‘One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free
from them, Andrew? Don’t forget that she has grown up
and been educated in society, and so her position now is not
a rosy one. We should enter into everyone’s situation. Tout
comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.* Think it must be for her,
poor thing, after what she has been used to, to be parted


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from her husband and be left alone the country, in her condition! It’s very hard.’
*To understand all is to forgive all.
Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we
smile at those we think we thoroughly understand.
‘You live in the country and don’t think the life terrible,’
he replied.
‘I... that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want any
other life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young society woman to be buried in the country
during the best years of her life, all alonefor Papa is always
busy, and I... well, you know what poor resources I have for
entertaining a woman used to the best society. There is only
Mademoiselle Bourienne...’
‘I don’t like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all,’ said
Prince Andrew.
‘No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much
to be pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t
need her, and she’s even in my way. You know I always was
a savage, and now am even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and Michael Ivanovich are the
two people to whom he is always gentle and kind, because
he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: ‘We
don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as
for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she
was homeless after losing her own father. She is very goodnatured, and my father likes her way of reading. She reads
to him in the evenings and reads splendidly.’
‘To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father’s character
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sometimes makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?’ Prince
Andrew asked suddenly.
Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this
question.
‘For me? For me?... Trying for me!...’ said she.
‘He always was rather harsh; and now I should think
he’s getting very trying,’ said Prince Andrew, apparently
speaking lightly of their father in order to puzzle or test his
sister.
‘You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a
kind of intellectual pride,’ said the princess, following the
train of her own thoughts rather than the trend of the
conversation‘and that’s a great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling except veneration
could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy
as I am.’
Her brother shook his head incredulously.
‘The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the
truth, Andrew... is Father’s way of treating religious subjects.
I don’t understand how a man of his immense intellect can
fail to see what is as clear as day, and can go so far astray.
That is the only thing that makes me unhappy. But even in
this I can see lately a shade of improvement. His satire has
been less bitter of late, and there was a monk he received
and had a long talk with.’
‘Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting
your powder,’ said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
‘Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear


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me. Andrew...’ she said timidly after a moment’s silence, ‘I
have a great favor to ask of you.’
‘What is it, dear?’
‘Nopromise that you will not refuse! It will give you no
trouble and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort
me. Promise, Andrusha!...’ said she, putting her hand in her
reticule but not yet taking out what she was holding inside
it, as if what she held were the subject of her request and
must not be shown before the request was granted.
She looked timidly at her brother.
‘Even if it were a great deal of trouble...’ answered Prince
Andrew, as if guessing what it was about.
‘Think what you please! I know you are just like Father.
Think as you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father’s father, our grandfather, wore it in all his wars.’ (She
still did not take out what she was holding in her reticule.)
‘So you promise?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise
me you will never take it off. Do you promise?’
‘If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won’t break
my neck... To please you...’ said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the pained expression his joke had brought
to his sister’s face, he repented and added: ‘I am glad; really,
dear, I am very glad.’
‘Against your will He will save and have mercy on you
and bring you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and
peace,’ said she in a voice trembling with emotion, solemnly
holding up in both hands before her brother a small, oval,
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antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a gold setting, on
a finely wrought silver chain.
She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.
‘Please, Andrew, for my sake!..’
Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes.
Those eyes lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made
it beautiful. Her brother would have taken the icon, but she
stopped him. Andrew understood, crossed himself and
kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for he was
touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
‘Thank you, my dear.’ She kissed him on the forehead and
sat down again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
‘As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as
you always used to be. Don’t judge Lise harshly,’ she began.
‘She is so sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a
very hard one.’
‘I do not think I have complained of my wife to you,
Masha, or blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?’
Red patches appeared on Princess Mary’s face and she
was silent as if she felt guilty.
‘I have said nothing to you, but you have already been
talked to. And I am sorry for that,’ he went on.
The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and
cheeks. She tried to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the little princess had been crying
after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings about her
confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained
of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After cry

189

ing she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his
sister.
‘Know this, Masha: I can’t reproach, have not reproached,
and never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself with anything in regard to her; and
that always will be so in whatever circumstances I may be
placed. But if you want to know the truth... if you want to
know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why
this is so I don’t know..’
As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping,
kissed her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful,
kindly, and unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking
not at his sister but over her head toward the darkness of
the open doorway.
‘Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Orgo and wake and
I’ll come in a moment. Petrushka!’ he called to his valet:
‘Come here, take these away. Put this on the seat and this
to the right.’
Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped
and said: ‘Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned
to God and asked Him to give you the love you do not feel,
and your prayer would have been answered.’
‘Well, may be!’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Go, Masha; I’ll
come immediately.’
On the way to his sister’s room, in the passage which
connected one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met
Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling sweetly. It was the third
time that day that, with an ecstatic and artless smile, she
had met him in secluded passages.
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‘Oh! I thought you were in your room,’ she said, for some
reason blushing and dropping her eyes.
Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression
of anger suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her
but looked at her forehead and hair, without looking at her
eyes, with such contempt that the Frenchwoman blushed
and went away without a word. When he reached his sister’s
room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door.
She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long selfrestraint she wished to make up for lost time.
‘No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false
curls and her mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying
to cheat old age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!’
This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same
laugh Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in
the presence of others some five times. He entered the room
softly. The little princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an
easy chair with her work in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases.
Prince Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she
felt rested after their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.
The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It
was an autumn night, so dark that the coachman could
not see the carriage pole. Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense house was brilliant
with lights shining through its lofty windows. The domestic
serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to


191

the young prince. The members of the household were all
gathered in the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary, and the little princess.
Prince Andrew had been called to his father’s study as the
latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All were waiting
for them to come out.
When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in
his old-age spectacles and white dressing gown, in which
he received no one but his son, sat at the table writing. He
glanced round.
‘Going?’ And he went on writing.
‘I’ve come to say good-by.’
‘Kiss me here,’ and he touched his cheek: ‘Thanks,
thanks!’
‘What do you thank me for?’
‘For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman’s
apron strings. The Service before everything. Thanks,
thanks!’ And he went on writing, so that his quill spluttered
and squeaked. ‘If you have anything to say, say it. These two
things can be done together,’ he added.
‘About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on
your hands..’
‘Why talk nonsense? Say what you want.’
‘When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an
accoucheur.... Let him be here...’
The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his stern eyes on his son.
‘I know that no one can help if nature does not do her
work,’ said Prince Andrew, evidently confused. ‘I know that
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out of a million cases only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been telling her things. She has had
a dream and is frightened.’
‘Hm... Hm...’ muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what he was writing. ‘I’ll do it.’
He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his
son began to laugh.
‘It’s a bad business, eh?’
‘What is bad, Father?’
‘The wife!’ said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
‘I don’t understand!’ said Prince Andrew.
‘No, it can’t be helped, lad,’ said the prince. ‘They’re all
like that; one can’t unmarry. Don’t be afraid; I won’t tell
anyone, but you know it yourself.’
He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers,
shook it, looked straight into his son’s face with keen eyes
which seemed to see through him, and again laughed his
frigid laugh.
The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. The old man continued to fold and seal his
letter, snatching up and throwing down the wax, the seal,
and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.
‘What’s to be done? She’s pretty! I will do everything.
Make your mind easy,’ said he in abrupt sentences while
sealing his letter.
Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his father understood him. The old man got up
and gave the letter to his son.
‘Listen!’ said he; ‘don’t worry about your wife: what can


193

be done shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.* I have written that he should make use of you in
proper places and not keep you long as an adjutant: a bad
position! Tell him I remember and like him. Write and tell
me how he receives you. If he is all rightserve him. Nicholas
Bolkonski’s son need not serve under anyone if he is in disfavor. Now come here.’
*Kutuzov.
He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words,
but his son was accustomed to understand him. He led him
to the desk, raised the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out
an exercise book filled with his bold, tall, close handwriting.
‘I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are
my memoirs; hand them to the Emperor after my death.
Now here is a Lombard bond and a letter; it is a premium for
the man who writes a history of Suvorov’s wars. Send it to
the Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read when I
am gone. You will find them useful.’
Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt
live a long time yet. He felt that he must not say it.
‘I will do it all, Father,’ he said.
‘Well, now, good-by!’ He gave his son his hand to kiss,
and embraced him. ‘Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they
kill you it will hurt me, your old father...’ he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous voice suddenly shrieked:
‘but if I hear that you have not behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!’
‘You need not have said that to me, Father,’ said the son
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with a smile.
The old man was silent.
‘I also wanted to ask you,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘if
I’m killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away
from youas I said yesterday... let him grow up with you....
Please.’
‘Not let the wife have him?’ said the old man, and
laughed.
They stood silent, facing one another. The old man’s sharp
eyes were fixed straight on his son’s. Something twitched in
the lower part of the old prince’s face.
‘We’ve said good-by. Go!’ he suddenly shouted in a loud,
angry voice, opening his door.
‘What is it? What?’ asked both princesses when they saw
for a moment at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of
the old man in a white dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
‘Well!’ he said, turning to his wife.
And this ‘Well!’ sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,: ‘Now go through your performance.’
‘Andrew, already!’ said the little princess, turning pale
and looking with dismay at her husband.
He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on
his shoulder.
He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked
into her face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
‘Adieu, Mary,’ said he gently to his sister, taking her by
the hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with


195

rapid steps.
The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle
Bourienne chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting
her sister-in-law, still looked with her beautiful eyes full of
tears at the door through which Prince Andrew had gone
and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From the
study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old
man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew
gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.
‘Gone? That’s all right!’ said he; and looking angrily at
the unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed the door.

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BOOK TWO: 1805



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Chapter I
In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other
regiments freshly arriving from Russia were settling near
the fortress of Braunau and burdening the inhabitants on
whom they were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters
of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.
On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that
had just reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the
town, waiting to be inspected by the commander in chief.
Despite the un-Russian appearance of the locality and surroundingsfruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs, and hills
in the distanceand despite the fact that the inhabitants (who
gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not Russians, the
regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
On the evening of the last day’s march an order had been
received that the commander in chief would inspect the
regiment on the march. Though the words of the order were
not clear to the regimental commander, and the question
arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or
not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion
commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on
the principle that it is always better to ‘bow too low than
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not bow low enough.’ So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile
march, were kept mending and cleaning all night long
without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning
the regimentinstead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it
had been on its last march the day beforepresented a wellordered array of two thousand men each of whom knew his
place and his duty, had every button and every strap in place,
and shone with cleanliness. And not only externally was all
in order, but had it pleased the commander in chief to look
under the uniforms he would have found on every man a
clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number
of articles, ‘awl, soap, and all,’ as the soldiers say. There was
only one circumstance concerning which no one could be
at ease. It was the state of the soldiers’ boots. More than half
the men’s boots were in holes. But this defect was not due
to any fault of the regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not been issued by the Austrian
commissariat, and the regiment had marched some seven
hundred miles.
The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows
and whiskers, and wider from chest to back than across the
shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform showing the
creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes
which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive
shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one
of the most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in
front of the line and at every step pulled himself up, slightly


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arching his back. It was plain that the commander admired
his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides
military matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied
no small part of his thoughts.
‘Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?’ he said, addressing one of
the battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward
(it was plain that they both felt happy). ‘We had our hands
full last night. However, I think the regiment is not a bad
one, eh?’
The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and
laughed.
‘It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin
Meadow.’
‘What?’ asked the commander.
At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been posted, two men appeared on horse back.
They were an aide-decamp followed by a Cossack.
The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which
had not been clearly worded the day before, namely, that the
commander in chief wished to see the regiment just in the
state in which it had been on the march: in their greatcoats,
and packs, and without any preparation whatever.
A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come
to Kutuzov the day before with proposals and demands for
him to join up with the army of the Archduke Ferdinand
and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his
view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in
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which the troops arrived from Russia. With this object he
intended to meet the regiment; so the worse the condition
it was in, the better pleased the commander in chief would
be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the
men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order,
and that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the regimental commander hung
his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his
arms with a choleric gesture.
‘A fine mess we’ve made of it!’ he remarked.
‘There now! Didn’t I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if
it was said ‘on the march’ it meant in greatcoats?’ said he
reproachfully to the battalion commander. ‘Oh, my God!’
he added, stepping resolutely forward. ‘Company commanders!’ he shouted in a voice accustomed to command.
‘Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?’ he asked the
aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relating to the personage he was referring to.
‘In an hour’s time, I should say.’
‘Shall we have time to change clothes?’
‘I don’t know, General...’
The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the soldiers to change into their greatcoats.
The company commanders ran off to their companies, the
sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats were not in
very good condition), and instantly the squares that had up
to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and
stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were run

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ning to and fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of
their shoulders and pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and drawing the sleeves on with
upraised arms.
In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares
had become gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky steps to the front of the
regiment and examined it from a distance.
‘Whatever is this? This!’ he shouted and stood still. ‘Commander of the third company!’
‘Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to the general... third company to the
commander.’ The words passed along the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.
When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their
destination in a cry of: ‘The general to the third company,’
the missing officer appeared from behind his company and,
though he was a middle-aged man and not in the habit of
running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his toes toward
the general. The captain’s face showed the uneasiness of a
schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not learned.
Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched
nervously. The general looked the captain up and down as
he came up panting, slackening his pace as he approached.
‘You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What
is this?’ shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the
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trasted with the others. ‘What have you been after? The
commander in chief is expected and you leave your place?
Eh? I’ll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... Eh...?’
The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on
his superior, pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to
his cap, as if in this pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
‘Well, why don’t you speak? Whom have you got there
dressed up as a Hungarian?’ said the commander with an
austere gibe.
‘Your excellency..’
‘Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what
about your excellency?... nobody knows.’
‘Your excellency, it’s the officer Dolokhov, who has been
reduced to the ranks,’ said the captain softly.
‘Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into
a soldier? If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation
uniform like the others.’
‘Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the
march.’
‘Gave him leave? Leave? That’s just like you young men,’
said the regimental commander cooling down a little.
‘Leave indeed.... One says a word to you and you... What?’
he added with renewed irritation, ‘I beg you to dress your
men decently.’
And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant,
directed his jerky steps down the line. He was evidently
pleased at his own display of anger and walking up to the
regiment wished to find a further excuse for wrath. Having


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snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another
because his line was not straight, he reached the third company.
‘H-o-o-w are you standing? Where’s your leg? Your leg?’
shouted the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice,
while there were still five men between him and Dolokhov
with his bluish-gray uniform.
Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking
straight with his clear, insolent eyes in the general’s face.
‘Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change
his coat... the ras...’ he did not finish.
‘General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure...’ Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.
‘No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!’
‘Not bound to endure insults,’ Dolokhov concluded in
loud, ringing tones.
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general
became silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
‘I request you to have the goodness to change your coat,’
he said as he turned away.

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Chapter II
‘He’s coming!’ shouted the signaler at that moment.
The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse,
seized the stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body
across the saddle, righted himself, drew his saber, and with
a happy and resolute countenance, opening his mouth awry,
prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.
‘Att-ention!’ shouted the regimental commander in a
soul-shaking voice which expressed joy for himself, severity
for the regiment, and welcome for the approaching chief.
Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by
trees, came a high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly
creaking on its springs and drawn by six horses at a smart
trot. Behind the caleche galloped the suite and a convoy of
Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general, in a white
uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones.
The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov and
the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled slightly as treading heavily he stepped down
from the carriage just as if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental commander did not
exist.
The word of command rang out, and again the regiment
quivered, as with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then


205

amidst a dead silence the feeble voice of the commander in
chief was heard. The regiment roared, ‘Health to your ex...
len... len... lency!’ and again all became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment moved; then he and the
general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between
the ranks.
From the way the regimental commander saluted the
commander in chief and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and from the way he walked
through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward
and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from
the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the
commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his
duty as a subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as
a commander. Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its
commander the regiment, in comparison with others that
had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything
was in good order except the boots.
Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few friendly words to officers he had known in
the Turkish war, sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at
their boots he several times shook his head sadly, pointing
them out to the Austrian general with an expression which
seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could
not help noticing what a bad state of things it was. The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion,
fearing to miss a single word of the commander in chief’s
regarding the regiment. Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that
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allowed every softly spoken word to be heard, followed some
twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among
themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the
commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was
Prince Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski,
a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling,
handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitski could hardly keep
from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who
walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,
watched the regimental commander’s back and mimicked
his every movement. Each time the commander started and
bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed and nudged the
others to make them look at the wag.
Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of
eyes which were starting from their sockets to watch their
chief. On reaching the third company he suddenly stopped.
His suite, not having expected this, involuntarily came closer to him.
‘Ah, Timokhin!’ said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had been reprimanded on account of the blue
greatcoat.
One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch
himself more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental commander, but now that the
commander in chief addressed him he drew himself up to
such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained it
had the commander in chief continued to look at him, and


207

so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished
him nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his scarred and puffy face.
‘Another Ismail comrade,’ said he. ‘A brave officer! Are
you satisfied with him?’ he asked the regimental commander.
And the latterunconscious that he was being reflected in
the hussar officer as in a looking glassstarted, moved forward, and answered: ‘Highly satisfied, your excellency!’
‘We all have our weaknesses,’ said Kutuzov smiling and
walking away from him. ‘He used to have a predilection for
Bacchus.’
The regimental commander was afraid he might be
blamed for this and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed captain and his
drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help laughing.
Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete
control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume a most serious,
deferential, and innocent expression.
The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered,
apparently trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew
stepped forward from among the suite and said in French:
‘You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the ranks in this regiment.’
‘Where is Dolokhov?’ asked Kutuzov.
Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier’s gray
greatcoat, did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the
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fair-haired soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward
from the ranks, went up to the commander in chief, and
presented arms.
‘Have you a complaint to make?’ Kutuzov asked with a
slight frown.
‘This is Dolokhov,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Ah!’ said Kutuzov. ‘I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do
your duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan’t forget you
if you deserve well.’
The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just
as boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander,
seeming by their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates a commander in chief so widely from a
private.
‘One thing I ask of your excellency,’ Dolokhov said in
his firm, ringing, deliberate voice. ‘I ask an opportunity to
atone for my fault and prove my devotion to His Majesty the
Emperor and to Russia!’
Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with
which he had turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted
over his face. He turned away with a grimace as if to say
that everything Dolokhov had said to him and everything
he could say had long been known to him, that he was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away
and went to the carriage.
The regiment broke up into companies, which went to
their appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped
to receive boots and clothes and to rest after their hard
marches.


209

‘You won’t bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?’ said the
regimental commander, overtaking the third company on
its way to its quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin
who was walking in front. (The regimental commander’s
face now that the inspection was happily over beamed with
irrepressible delight.) ‘It’s in the Emperor’s service... it can’t
be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on parade... I am
the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very pleased!’
And he held out his hand to the captain.
‘Don’t mention it, General, as if I’d be so bold!’ replied
the captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile
which showed where two front teeth were missing that had
been knocked out by the butt end of a gun at Ismail.
‘And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won’t forget himhe may be
quite easy. And tell me, pleaseI’ve been meaning to askhow
is to askhow is he behaving himself, and in general..’
‘As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your
excellency; but his character...’ said Timokhin.
‘And what about his character?’ asked the regimental
commander.
‘It’s different on different days,’ answered the captain.
‘One day he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured,
and the next he’s a wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he
nearly killed a Jew.’
‘Oh, well, well!’ remarked the regimental commander.
‘Still, one must have pity on a young man in misfortune.
You know he has important connections... Well, then, you
just..’
‘I will, your excellency,’ said Timokhin, showing by his
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smile that he understood his commander’s wish.
‘Well, of course, of course!’
The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the
ranks and, reining in his horse, said to him:
‘After the next affair... epaulettes.’
Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor
did the mocking smile on his lips change.
‘Well, that’s all right,’ continued the regimental commander. ‘A cup of vodka for the men from me,’ he added
so that the soldiers could hear. ‘I thank you all! God be
praised!’ and he rode past that company and overtook the
next one.
‘Well, he’s really a good fellow, one can serve under him,’
said Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.
‘In a word, a hearty one...’ said the subaltern, laughing (the regimental commander was nicknamed King of
Hearts).
The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection
infected the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The
soldiers’ voices could be heard on every side.
‘And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?’
‘And so he is! Quite blind!’
‘No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and
leg bands... he noticed everything..’
‘When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..’
‘And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if
he were smeared with chalkas white as flour! I suppose they
polish him up as they do the guns.’
‘I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to be

211

gin? You were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte
himself was at Braunau.’
‘Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he
doesn’t know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are putting them down. When they’ve been
put down, the war with Buonaparte will begin. And he says
Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you’re a fool. You’d better
listen more carefully!’
‘What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is turning into the village already... they will have their
buckwheat cooked before we reach our quarters.’
‘Give me a biscuit, you devil!’
‘And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That’s just it,
friend! Ah, well, never mind, here you are.’
‘They might call a halt here or we’ll have to do another
four miles without eating.’
‘Wasn’t it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just
sit still and are drawn along.’
‘And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There
they all seemed to be Polesall under the Russian crownbut
here they’re all regular Germans.’
‘Singers to the front ‘ came the captain’s order.
And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to
the front. A drummer, their leader, turned round facing
the singers, and flourishing his arm, began a long-drawnout soldiers’ song, commencing with the words: ‘Morning
dawned, the sun was rising,’ and concluding: ‘On then,
brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kamenski.’ This song
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ing sung in Austria, the only change being that the words
‘Father Kamenski’ were replaced by ‘Father Kutuzov.’
Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and
waved his arms as if flinging something to the ground, the
drummera lean, handsome soldier of fortylooked sternly
at the singers and screwed up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him, he raised both
arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious object
above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, suddenly flung it down and began:
‘Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!’
‘Oh, my bower new...!’ chimed in twenty voices, and the
castanet player, in spite of the burden of his equipment,
rushed out to the front and, walking backwards before the
company, jerked his shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The soldiers, swinging their
arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long
steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses’ hoofs were heard.
Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in chief made a sign that the men should continue
to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed pleasure at
the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing soldier
and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file
from the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the
company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice.
It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in time to the song and looking at those driving past as
if he pitied all who were not at that moment marching with


213

the company. The hussar cornet of Kutuzov’s suite who had
mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the
carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.
Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg,
belonged to the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had
met Dolokhov abroad as a private and had not seen fit to
recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken to the
gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of
an old friend.
‘My dear fellow, how are you?’ said he through the singing, making his horse keep pace with the company.
‘How am I?’ Dolokhov answered coldly. ‘I am as you
see.’
The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free
and easy gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of Dolokhov’s reply.
‘And how do you get on with the officers?’ inquired
Zherkov.
‘All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the staff?’
‘I was attached; I’m on duty.’
Both were silent.
‘She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve,’
went the song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness. Their conversation would probably
have been different but for the effect of that song.
‘Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?’ asked Dolokhov.
‘The devil only knows! They say so.’
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‘I’m glad,’ answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the
song demanded.
‘I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a game
of faro!’ said Zherkov.
‘Why, have you too much money?’
‘Do come.’
‘I can’t. I’ve sworn not to. I won’t drink and won’t play till
I get reinstated.’
‘Well, that’s only till the first engagement.’
‘We shall see.’
They were again silent.
‘Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use
on the staff..’
Dolokhov smiled. ‘Don’t trouble. If I want anything, I
won’t begI’ll take it!’
‘Well, never mind; I only..’
‘And I only..’
‘Good-by.’
‘Good health..’
‘It’s
a
long,
long
way.
To my native land..’
Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then
settled down, galloped past the company, and overtook the
carriage, still keeping time to the song.



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Chapter III
On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into his private room and, calling his adjutant,
asked for some papers relating to the condition of the
troops on their arrival, and the letters that had come from
the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the room
with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a
plan was spread out.
‘Ah!...’ said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this
exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went
on with the conversation in French.
‘All I can say, General,’ said he with a pleasant elegance
of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to
each deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov
himself listened with pleasure to his own voice. ‘All I can
say, General, is that if the matter depended on my personal
wishes, the will of His Majesty the Emperor Francis would
have been fulfilled long ago. I should long ago have joined
the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme
command of the army into the hands of a better informed
and more skillful generalof whom Austria has so manyand
to lay down all this heavy responsibility. But circumstances
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are sometimes too strong for us, General.’
And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, ‘You
are quite at liberty not to believe me and I don’t even care
whether you do or not, but you have no grounds for telling
me so. And that is the whole point.’
The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to reply in the same tone.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, in a querulous and angry
tone that contrasted with his flattering words, ‘on the contrary, your excellency’s participation in the common action
is highly valued by His Majesty; but we think the present
delay is depriving the splendid Russian troops and their
commander of the laurels they have been accustomed to
win in their battles,’ he concluded his evidently prearranged
sentence.
Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.
‘But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has
honored me, I imagine that the Austrian troops, under the
direction of so skillful a leader as General Mack, have by
now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need
our aid,’ said Kutuzov.
The general frowned. Though there was no definite news
of an Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so
Kutuzov’s suggestion of an Austrian victory sounded much
like irony. But Kutuzov went on blandly smiling with the
same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to
suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had received from


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Mack’s army informed him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the army was very favorable.
‘Give me that letter,’ said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew. ‘Please have a look at it’and Kutuzov with an ironical
smile about the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian
general the following passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand’s letter:
We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy
thousand men with which to attack and defeat the enemy
should he cross the Lech. Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we
cannot be deprived of the advantage of commanding both
sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not cross the
Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his intention should he try to direct his whole force
against our faithful ally. We shall therefore confidently
await the moment when the Imperial Russian army will be
fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with it, easily
find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.
Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and
looked at the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
‘But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising
one to expect the worst,’ said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done with jests and to come to business.
He involuntarily looked round at the aide-de-camp.
‘Excuse me, General,’ interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince Andrew. ‘Look here, my dear fellow, get from
Kozlovski all the reports from our scouts. Here are two
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letters from Count Nostitz and here is one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these,’ he said,
handing him several papers, ‘make a neat memorandum in
French out of all this, showing all the news we have had of
the movements of the Austrian army, and then give it to his
excellency.’
Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the first not only what had been said but also
what Kutuzov would have liked to tell him. He gathered up
the papers and with a bow to both, stepped softly over the
carpet and went out into the waiting room.
Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew
had left Russia, he had changed greatly during that period.
In the expression of his face, in his movements, in his walk,
scarcely a trace was left of his former affected languor and
indolence. He now looked like a man who has time to think
of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with
agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more
satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile
and glance were brighter and more attractive.
Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received
him very kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished
him above the other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious commissions. From
Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew’s
father.
Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by
his industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself
fortunate to have such a subordinate by me.


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On Kutuzov’s staff, among his fellow officers and in the
army generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two quite opposite reputations. Some, a
minority, acknowledged him to be different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things of him,
listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them
Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and
disagreeable. But among these people Prince Andrew knew
how to take his stand so that they respected and even feared
him.
Coming out of Kutuzov’s room into the waiting room
with the papers in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his
comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty, Kozlovski, who was
sitting at the window with a book.
‘Well, Prince?’ asked Kozlovski.
‘I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why
we are not advancing.’
‘And why is it?’
Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
‘Any news from Mack?’
‘No.’
‘If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have
come.’
‘Probably,’ said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer
door.
But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat,
with the order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black
bandage round his head, who had evidently just arrived, en220

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tered quickly, slamming the door. Prince Andrew stopped
short.
‘Commander in Chief Kutuzov?’ said the newly arrived
general speaking quickly with a harsh German accent,
looking to both sides and advancing straight toward the inner door.
‘The commander in chief is engaged,’ said Kozlovski, going hurriedly up to the unknown general and blocking his
way to the door. ‘Whom shall I announce?’
The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was rather short, as if surprised that anyone
should not know him.
‘The commander in chief is engaged,’ repeated Kozlovski
calmly.
The general’s face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something
in pencil, tore out the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped
quickly to the window, and threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if asking, ‘Why do they look
at me?’ Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as if he
intended to say something, but immediately, with affected
indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer
sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway.
The general with the bandaged head bent forward as though
running away from some danger, and, making long, quick
strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.
‘Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,’ he uttered in a broken
voice.


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Kutuzov’s face as he stood in the open doorway remained
perfectly immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran
over his face like a wave and his forehead became smooth
again, he bowed his head respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before him, and closed the
door himself behind him.
The report which had been circulated that the Austrians
had been beaten and that the whole army had surrendered
at Ulm proved to be correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with orders which
showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose
chief interest lay in the general progress of the war. When
he saw Mack and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost, understood all
the difficulties of the Russian army’s position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to
play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought
of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week’s
time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He
feared that Bonaparte’s genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same time could not
admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.
Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew
went toward his room to write to his father, to whom he
wrote every day. In the corridor he met Nesvitski, with
whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkov; they were
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as usual laughing.
‘Why are you so glum?’ asked Nesvitski noticing Prince
Andrew’s pale face and glittering eyes.
‘There’s nothing to be gay about,’ answered Bolkonski.
Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov,
there came toward them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on Kutuzov’s staff
in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army, and the
member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor
for the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but
Zherkov, pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a
breathless voice,
‘They’re coming!... they’re coming!... Stand aside, make
way, please make way!’
The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished
to avoid embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag
Zherkov there suddenly appeared a stupid smile of glee
which he seemed unable to suppress.
‘Your excellency,’ said he in German, stepping forward
and addressing the Austrian general, ‘I have the honor to
congratulate you.’
He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and
then with the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing
lesson.
The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not
but give him a moment’s attention. He screwed up his eyes
showing that he was listening.


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‘I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has
arrived, quite well, only a little bruised just here,’ he added,
pointing with a beaming smile to his head.
The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
‘Gott, wie naiv!’* said he angrily, after he had gone a few
steps.
*”Good God, what simplicity!’
Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away
with an angry look and turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of Mack, the news of his
defeat, and the thought of what lay before the Russian army
found vent in anger at Zherkov’s untimely jest.
‘If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself,’ he said
sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, ‘I can’t prevent your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play
the fool in my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself.’
Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst
that they gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.
‘What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,’ said
Zherkov.
‘I am not jesting with you; please be silent!’ cried Bolkonski, and taking Nesvitski’s arm he left Zherkov, who did not
know what to say.
‘Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?’ said Nesvitski trying to soothe him.
‘What’s the matter?’ exclaimed Prince Andrew standing
still in his excitement. ‘Don’t you understand that either we
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are officers serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in
the successes and grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely lackeys who care nothing for
their master’s business. Quarante mille hommes massacres
et l’armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la le mot
pour rire,’* he said, as if strengthening his views by this
French sentence. ‘C’ est bien pour un garcon de rein comme
cet individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous,
pas pour vous.*[2] Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself
in this way,’ he added in Russianbut pronouncing the word
with a French accenthaving noticed that Zherkov could still
hear him.
*”Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our
allies destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!’
*[2] ‘It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow
of whom you have made a friend, but not for you, not for
you.’
He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he turned and went out of the corridor.



225

Chapter IV
The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from
Braunau. The squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served
as a cadet was quartered in the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were assigned to
cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov.
Cadet Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in
Poland, had lived with the squadron commander.
On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news of Mack’s defeat, the camp life of the
officers of this squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov,
who had been losing at cards all night, had not yet come
home when Rostov rode back early in the morning from
a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet uniform, with a
jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over
the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a
moment in the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse,
and at last sprang down and called to his orderly.
‘Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!’ said he to the hussar who
rushed up headlong to the horse. ‘Walk him up and down,
my dear fellow,’ he continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young people show to everyone
when they are happy.
‘Yes, your excellency,’ answered the Ukrainian gaily,
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tossing his head.
‘Mind, walk him up and down well!’
Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle
over the horse’s head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid to serve him. Rostov patted
the horse’s neck and then his flank, and lingered for a moment.
‘Splendid! What a horse he will be!’ he thought with a
smile, and holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran
up the steps of the porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat
and a pointed cap, pitchfork in hand, was clearing manure
from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face immediately
brightened on seeing Rostov. ‘Schon gut Morgen! Schon gut
Morgen!’* he said winking with a merry smile, evidently
pleased to greet the young man.
*”A very good morning! A very good morning!’
‘Schon fleissig?’* said Rostov with the same gay brotherly
smile which did not leave his eager face. ‘Hoch Oestreicher!
Hoch Russen! Kaiser Alexander hoch!’*[2] said he, quoting
words often repeated by the German landlord.
*”Busy already?’
*[2] ‘Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians!
Hurrah for Emperor Alexander!’
The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled
off his cap, and waving it above his head cried:
‘Und die ganze Welt hoch!’*
*”And hurrah for the whole world!’
Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German


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and ctied laughing, ‘Und vivat die ganze Welt!’ Though
neither the German cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back
with his platoon from foraging for hay had any reason for
rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and
brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual
affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to his
cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with
Denisov.
‘What about your master?’ he asked Lavrushka, Denisov’s orderly, whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.
‘Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been losing,’
answered Lavrushka. ‘I know by now, if he wins he comes
back early to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it
means he’s lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have
coffee?’
‘Yes, bring some.’
Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. ‘He’s
coming!’ said he. ‘Now for trouble!’ Rostov looked out of
the window and saw Denisov coming home. Denisov was a
small man with a red face, sparkling black eyes, and black
tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened cloak,
wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled
shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch
gloomily, hanging his head.
‘Lavwuska!’ he shouted loudly and angrily, ‘take it off,
blockhead!’
‘Well, I am taking it off,’ replied Lavrushka’s voice.
‘Ah, you’re up already,’ said Denisov, entering the room.
‘Long ago,’ answered Rostov, ‘I have already been for the
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hay, and have seen Fraulein Mathilde.’
‘Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday
like a damned fool!’ cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r’s.
‘Such ill luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and
went on. Hullo there! Tea!’
Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his
short strong teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both
hands to ruffle up his thick tangled black hair.
‘And what devil made me go to that wat?’ (an officer nicknamed ‘the rat’) he said, rubbing his forehead and whole
face with both hands. ‘Just fancy, he didn’t let me win a single cahd, not one cahd.’
He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped
it in his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks
fly, while he continued to shout.
‘He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one
doubles it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!’
He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and
threw it away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all
at once looked cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at
Rostov.
‘If at least we had some women here; but there’s nothing foh one to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting
soon. Hullo, who’s there?’ he said, turning to the door as he
heard a tread of heavy boots and the clinking of spurs that
came to a stop, and a respectful cough.
‘The squadron quartermaster!’ said Lavrushka.
Denisov’s face puckered still more.
‘Wetched!’ he muttered, throwing down a purse with


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some gold in it. ‘Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much
there is left and shove the purse undah the pillow,’ he said,
and went out to the quartermaster.
Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the
old and new coins in separate piles, began counting them.
‘Ah! Telyanin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last night,’
came Denisov’s voice from the next room.
‘Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,’ replied a piping voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the
same squadron, entered the room.
Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the
damp little hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some
reason had been transferred from the Guards just before
this campaign. He behaved very well in the regiment but
was not liked; Rostov especially detested him and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the
man.
‘Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?’ he
asked. (Rook was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)
The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to
straight in the face; his eyes continually wandered from one
object to another.
‘I saw you riding this morning...’ he added.
‘Oh, he’s all right, a good horse,’ answered Rostov, though
the horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was
not worth half that sum. ‘He’s begun to go a little lame on
the left foreleg,’ he added.
‘The hoof’s cracked! That’s nothing. I’ll teach you what to
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do and show you what kind of rivet to use.’
‘Yes, please do,’ said Rostov.
‘I’ll show you, I’ll show you! It’s not a secret. And it’s a
horse you’ll thank me for.’
‘Then I’ll have it brought round,’ said Rostov wishing to
avoid Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.
In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on
the threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face
and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to the room
where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned and gave a shudder
of disgust.
‘Ugh! I don’t like that fellow‘‘ he said, regardless of the
quartermaster’s presence.
Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: ‘Nor
do I, but what’s one to do?’ and, having given his order, he
returned to Telyanin.
Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which
Rostov had left him, rubbing his small white hands.
‘Well there certainly are disgusting people,’ thought Rostov as he entered.
‘Have you told them to bring the horse?’ asked Telyanin,
getting up and looking carelessly about him.
‘I have.’
‘Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov
about yesterday’s order. Have you got it, Denisov?’
‘Not yet. But where are you off to?’
‘I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,’ said
Telyanin.


231

They went through the porch and into the stable. The
lieutenant explained how to rivet the hoof and went away
to his own quarters.
When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and
a sausage on the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching
with his pen on a sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov’s face and said: ‘I am witing to her.’
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand
and, evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what
he wanted to write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.
‘You see, my fwiend,’ he said, ‘we sleep when we don’t
love. We are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and
one is a God, one is pua’ as on the first day of cweation...
Who’s that now? Send him to the devil, I’m busy!’ he shouted
to Lavrushka, who went up to him not in the least abashed.
‘Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It’s the
quartermaster for the money.’
Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but
stopped.
‘Wetched business,’ he muttered to himself. ‘How much
is left in the puhse?’ he asked, turning to Rostov.
‘Seven new and three old imperials.’
‘Oh, it’s wetched! Well, what are you standing there
for, you sca’cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh,’ he shouted to
Lavrushka.
‘Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you
know,’ said Rostov, blushing.
‘Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don’t,’
growled Denisov.
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‘But if you won’t accept money from me like a comrade,
you will offend me. Really I have some,’ Rostov repeated.
‘No, I tell you.’
And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
‘Where have you put it, Wostov?’
‘Under the lower pillow.’
‘It’s not there.’
Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was
not there.
‘That’s a miwacle.’
‘Wait, haven’t you dropped it?’ said Rostov, picking up
the pillows one at a time and shaking them.
He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not
there.
‘Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept it under your head like a treasure,’ said
Rostov. ‘I put it just here. Where is it?’ he asked, turning to
Lavrushka.
‘I haven’t been in the room. It must be where you put it.’
‘But it isn’t?..’
‘You’re always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget it. Feel in your pockets.’
‘No, if I hadn’t thought of it being a treasure,’ said Rostov, ‘but I remember putting it there.’
Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the
bed and under the table, searched everywhere, and stood
still in the middle of the room. Denisov silently watched
Lavrushka’s movements, and when the latter threw up his


233

arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found Denisov
glanced at Rostov.
‘Wostov, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks..’
Rostov felt Denisov’s gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes,
and instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had
seemed congested somewhere below his throat rushed to
his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.
‘And there hasn’t been anyone in the room except the
lieutenant and yourselves. It must be here somewhere,’ said
Lavrushka.
‘Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for it!’
shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at
the man with a threatening gesture. ‘If the purse isn’t found
I’ll flog you, I’ll flog you all.’
Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his
coat, buckled on his saber, and put on his cap.
‘I must have that purse, I tell you,’ shouted Denisov, shaking his orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against
the wall.
‘Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,’ said
Rostov, going toward the door without raising his eyes.
Denisov paused, thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted at, seized his arm.
‘Nonsense!’ he cried, and the veins on his forehead and
neck stood out like cords. ‘You are mad, I tell you. I won’t
allow it. The purse is here! I’ll flay this scoundwel alive, and
it will be found.’
‘I know who has taken it,’ repeated Rostov in an unsteady
voice, and went to the door.
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‘And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!’ shouted Denisov,
rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger
as though Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his
eyes directly on his face.
‘Do you understand what you’re saying?’ he said in a
trembling voice. ‘There was no one else in the room except
myself. So that if it is not so, then..’
He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
‘Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody,’ were the last
words Rostov heard.
Rostov went to Telyanin’s quarters.
‘The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,’ said
Telyanin’s orderly. ‘Has something happened?’ he added,
surprised at the cadet’s troubled face.
‘No, nothing.’
‘You’ve only just missed him,’ said the orderly.
The headquarters were situated two miles away from
Salzeneck, and Rostov, without returning home, took a
horse and rode there. There was an inn in the village which
the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to it and saw Telyanin’s horse at the porch.
In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting
over a dish of sausages and a bottle of wine.
‘Ah, you’ve come here too, young man!’ he said, smiling
and raising his eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the
word; and he sat down at the nearest table.
Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Rus

235

sian officer in the room. No one spoke and the only sounds
heard were the clatter of knives and the munching of the
lieutenant.
When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his
pocket a double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his
small, white, turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial,
and lifting his eyebrows gave it to the waiter.
‘Please be quick,’ he said.
The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.
‘Allow me to look at your purse,’ he said in a low, almost
inaudible, voice.
With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin
handed him the purse.
‘Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,’ he said, growing suddenly
pale, and added, ‘Look at it, young man.’
Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the
money in it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was
looking about in his usual way and suddenly seemed to
grow very merry.
‘If we get to Vienna I’ll get rid of it there but in these
wretched little towns there’s nowhere to spend it,’ said he.
‘Well, let me have it, young man, I’m going.’
Rostov did not speak.
‘And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed
you quite decently here,’ continued Telyanin. ‘Now then, let
me have it.’
He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly
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slipping it into the pocket of his riding breeches, with his
eyebrows lifted and his mouth slightly open, as if to say,
‘Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my pocket and that’s
quite simple and is no else’s business.’
‘Well, young man?’ he said with a sigh, and from under
his lifted brows he glanced into Rostov’s eyes.
Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin’s
eyes to Rostov’s and back, and back again and again in an
instant.
‘Come here,’ said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin’s
arm and almost dragging him to the window. ‘That money
is Denisov’s; you took it...’ he whispered just above Telyanin’s ear.
‘What? What? How dare you? What?’ said Telyanin.
But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and
an entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an
enormous load of doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at
the same instant began to pity the miserable man who stood
before him, but the task he had begun had to be completed.
‘Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine,’
muttered Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a
small empty room. ‘We must have an explanation..’
‘I know it and shall prove it,’ said Rostov.
‘I..’
Every muscle of Telyanin’s pale, terrified face began
to quiver, his eyes still shifted from side to side but with
a downward look not rising to Rostov’s face, and his sobs
were audible.
‘Count!... Don’t ruin a young fellow... here is this wretch

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ed money, take it...’ He threw it on the table. ‘I have an old
father and mother!..’
Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin’s eyes, and
went out of the room without a word. But at the door he
stopped and then retraced his steps. ‘O God,’ he said with
tears in his eyes, ‘how could you do it?’
‘Count...’ said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.
‘Don’t touch me,’ said Rostov, drawing back. ‘If you need
it, take the money,’ and he threw the purse to him and ran
out of the inn.

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Chapter V
That same evening there was an animated discussion
among the squadron’s officers in Denisov’s quarters.
‘And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the
colonel!’ said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and many wrinkles on his large features,
to Rostov who was crimson with excitement.
The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the
ranks for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.
‘I will allow no one to call me a liar!’ cried Rostov. ‘He
told me I lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He
may keep me on duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me apologize, because if he, as
commander of this regiment, thinks it beneath his dignity
to give me satisfaction, then..’
‘You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen,’ interrupted the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking
his long mustache. ‘You tell the colonel in the presence of
other officers that an officer has stolen..’
‘I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken
before them, but I am not a diplomatist. That’s why I joined
the hussars, thinking that here one would not need finesse;
and he tells me that I am lyingso let him give me satisfac

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tion..’
‘That’s all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that’s
not the point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand satisfaction of his regimental
commander?’
Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening
to the conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in
it. He answered the staff captain’s question by a disapproving shake of his head.
‘You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before
other officers,’ continued the staff captain, ‘and Bogdanich’
(the colonel was called Bogdanich) ‘shuts you up.’
‘He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth.’
‘Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him
and must apologize.’
‘Not on any account!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘I did not expect this of you,’ said the staff captain seriously and severely. ‘You don’t wish to apologize, but,
man, it’s not only to him but to the whole regimentall of
usyou’re to blame all round. The case is this: you ought to
have thought the matter over and taken advice; but no, you
go and blurt it all straight out before the officers. Now what
was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and disgrace
the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because
of one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don’t see it
like that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were
saying what was not true. It’s not pleasant, but what’s to be
done, my dear fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now,
when one wants to smooth the thing over, some conceit
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prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole
affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but
why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave
old colonel! You’re quick at taking offense, but you don’t
mind disgracing the whole regiment!’ The staff captain’s
voice began to tremble. ‘You have been in the regiment next
to no time, my lad, you’re here today and tomorrow you’ll
be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers
when it is said ‘There are thieves among the Pavlograd officers!’ But it’s not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov?
It’s not the same!’
Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.
‘You value your own pride and don’t wish to apologize,’
continued the staff captain, ‘but we old fellows, who have
grown up in and, God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the regiment, and Bogdanich
knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And all this is not
right, it’s not right! You may take offense or not but I always
stick to mother truth. It’s not right!’
And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.
‘That’s twue, devil take it’ shouted Denisov, jumping up.
‘Now then, Wostov, now then!’
Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at
one officer and then at the other.
‘No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite understand. You’re wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for


241

the honor of the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll show that in
action, and for me the honor of the flag... Well, never mind,
it’s true I’m to blame, to blame all round. Well, what else do
you want?..’
‘Come, that’s right, Count!’ cried the staff captain, turning round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big
hand.
‘I tell you,’ shouted Denisov, ‘he’s a fine fellow.’
‘That’s better, Count,’ said the staff captain, beginning to
address Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. ‘Go and apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!’
‘Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word
from me,’ said Rostov in an imploring voice, ‘but I can’t
apologize, by God I can’t, do what you will! How can I go
and apologize like a little boy asking forgiveness?’
Denisov began to laugh.
‘It’ll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you’ll
pay for your obstinacy,’ said Kirsten.
‘No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe the
feeling. I can’t..’
‘Well, it’s as you like,’ said the staff captain. ‘And what
has become of that scoundrel?’ he asked Denisov.
‘He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the
list tomowwow,’ muttered Denisov.
‘It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,’ said
the staff captain.
‘Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill
him!’ shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.
Just then Zherkov entered the room.
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‘What brings you here?’ cried the officers turning to the
newcomer.
‘We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his whole army.’
‘It’s not true!’
‘I’ve seen him myself!’
‘What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?’
‘Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such
news! But how did you come here?’
‘I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of
that devil, Mack. An Austrian general complained of me.
I congratulated him on Mack’s arrival... What’s the matter,
Rostov? You look as if you’d just come out of a hot bath.’
‘Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these last
two days.’
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the
news brought by Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.
‘We’re going into action, gentlemen!’
‘Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!’



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Chapter VI
Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind
him the bridges over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun
(near Linz). On October 23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian baggage train,
the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling through
the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse
that opened out before the heights on which the Russian
batteries stood guarding the bridge was at times veiled by
a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could be
clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down
below, the little town could be seen with its white, redroofed houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides
of which streamed jostling masses of Russian troops. At the
bend of the Danube, vessels, an island, and a castle with a
park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of the Enns
and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of
the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a
convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far
away on the other side of the Enns the enemy’s horse patrols
could be discerned.
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the gen244

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eral in command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer,
scanning the country through his fieldglass. A little behind
them Nesvitski, who had been sent to the rearguard by the
commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a
knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers gladly
gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting
Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
‘Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no
fool. It’s a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?’ Nesvitski was saying.
‘Thank you very much, Prince,’ answered one of the
officers, pleased to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. ‘It’s a lovely place! We passed close to the park and
saw two deer... and what a splendid house!’
‘Look, Prince,’ said another, who would have dearly liked
to take another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to
be examining the countryside‘See, our infantrymen have
already got there. Look there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something. They’ll ransack
that castle,’ he remarked with evident approval.
‘So they will,’ said Nesvitski. ‘No, but what I should like,’
added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome
mouth, ‘would be to slip in over there.’
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his
eyes narrowed and gleamed.
‘That would be fine, gentlemen!’
The officers laughed.


245

‘Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian
girls among them. On my word I’d give five years of my life
for it!’
‘They must be feeling dull, too,’ said one of the bolder officers, laughing.
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed
out something to the general, who looked through his field
glass.
‘Yes, so it is, so it is,’ said the general angrily, lowering the
field glass and shrugging his shoulders, ‘so it is! They’ll be
fired on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?’
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from their battery a milk-white cloud arose.
Then came the distant report of a shot, and our troops could
be seen hurrying to the crossing.
Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
‘Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?’ he
said.
‘It’s a bad business,’ said the general without answering
him, ‘our men have been wasting time.’
‘Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?’ asked Nesvitski.
‘Yes, please do,’ answered the general, and he repeated
the order that had already once been given in detail: ‘and
tell the hussars that they are to cross last and to fire the
bridge as I ordered; and the inflammable material on the
bridge must be reinspected.’
‘Very good,’ answered Nesvitski.
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He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put
away the knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person
easily into the saddle.
‘I’ll really call in on the nuns,’ he said to the officers who
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path
down the hill.
‘Now then, let’s see how far it will carry, Captain. Just
try!’ said the general, turning to an artillery officer. ‘Have a
little fun to pass the time.’
‘Crew, to your guns!’ commanded the officer.
In a moment the men came running gaily from their
campfires and began loading.
‘One!’ came the command.
Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out
with a deafening metallic roar, and a whistling grenade
flew above the heads of our troops below the hill and fell far
short of the enemy, a little smoke showing the spot where
it burst.
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound.
Everyone got up and began watching the movements of our
troops below, as plainly visible as if but a stone’s throw away,
and the movements of the approaching enemy farther off.
At the same instant the sun came fully out from behind the
clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
spirited impression.



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Chapter VII
Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the
bridge, where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince
Nesvitski, who had alighted from his horse and whose big
body was body was jammed against the railings. He looked
back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few steps behind
him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him
back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he
could do was to smile.
‘What a fine fellow you are, friend!’ said the Cossack to
a convoy soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the
infantrymen who were crowded together close to his wheels
and his horses. ‘What a fellow! You can’t wait a moment!
Don’t you see the general wants to pass?’
But the convoyman took no notice of the word ‘general’
and shouted at the soldiers who were blocking his way. ‘Hi
there, boys! Keep to the left! Wait a bit.’ But the soldiers,
crowded together shoulder to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense mass. Looking
down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the rapid, noisy
little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round
the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on
the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers,
shoulder straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long
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muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and feet
that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks
of the bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of
men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an
officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different from that
of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of
wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or
a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and
sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers’ or
company’s baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and
hemmed in on all sides, moved across the bridge.
‘It’s as if a dam had burst,’ said the Cossack hopelessly.
‘Are there many more of you to come?’
‘A million all but one!’ replied a waggish soldier in a torn
coat, with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an
old man.
‘If he’ (he meant the enemy) ‘begins popping at the bridge
now,’ said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, ‘you’ll forget to scratch yourself.’
That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.
‘Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?’ said
an orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the
back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some
merry soldiers who had evidently been drinking.
‘And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with
the butt end of his gun...’ a soldier whose greatcoat was well


249

tucked up said gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
‘Yes, the ham was just delicious...’ answered another with
a loud laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did
not learn who had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham
had to do with it.
‘Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they
think they’ll all be killed,’ a sergeant was saying angrily and
reproachfully.
‘As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,’ said a young
soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from
laughing, ‘I felt like dying of fright. I did, ‘pon my word, I
got that frightened!’ said he, as if bragging of having been
frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that
had gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses
led by a German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with a large udder was
attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned
baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright
red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently
these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission.
The eyes of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and
while the vehicle was passing at foot pace all the soldiers’
remarks related to the two young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about
the women.
‘Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!’
‘Sell me the missis,’ said another soldier, addressing the
German, who, angry and frightened, strode energetically
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along with downcast eyes.
‘See how smart she’s made herself! Oh, the devils!’
‘There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!’
‘I have seen as much before now, mate!’
‘Where are you going?’ asked an infantry officer who was
eating an apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not
understand.
‘Take it if you like,’ said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the
men on the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till
they had passed. When they had gone by, the same stream
of soldiers followed, with the same kind of talk, and at last
all stopped. As often happens, the horses of a convoy wagon
became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole crowd
had to wait.
‘And why are they stopping? There’s no proper order!’
said the soldiers. ‘Where are you shoving to? Devil take you!
Can’t you wait? It’ll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here’s
an officer jammed in too’different voices were saying in the
crowd, as the men looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge,
Nesvitski suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something
swiftly approaching... something big, that splashed into the
water.
‘Just see where it carries to!’ a soldier near by said sternly,


251

looking round at the sound.
‘Encouraging us to get along quicker,’ said another uneasily.
The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was
a cannon ball.
‘Hey, Cossack, my horse!’ he said. ‘Now, then, you there!
get out of the way! Make way!’
With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and
shouting continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed
themselves to make way for him, but again pressed on him
so that they jammed his leg, and those nearest him were not
to blame for they were themselves pressed still harder from
behind.
‘Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!’ came a hoarse
voice from behind him.
Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away
but separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska
Denisov, red and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his
black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over his shoulder.
‘Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!’ shouted
Denisov evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with
their bloodshot whites glittering and rolling as he waved his
sheathed saber in a small bare hand as red as his face.
‘Ah, Vaska!’ joyfully replied Nesvitski. ‘What’s up with
you?’
‘The squadwon can’t pass,’ shouted Vaska Denisov,
showing his white teeth fiercely and spurring his black
thoroughbred Arab, which twitched its ears as the bayonets
touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam from his bit,
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tramping the planks of the bridge with his hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let
him. ‘What is this? They’re like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of
the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart!
I’ll hack you with my saber!’ he shouted, actually drawing
his saber from its scabbard and flourishing it
The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified
faces, and Denisov joined Nesvitski.
‘How’s it you’re not drunk today?’ said Nesvitski when
the other had ridden up to him.
‘They don’t even give one time to dwink!’ answered Vaska Denisov. ‘They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo
all day. If they mean to fight, let’s fight. But the devil knows
what this is.’
‘What a dandy you are today!’ said Nesvitski, looking at
Denisov’s new cloak and saddlecloth.
Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief
that diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski’s
nose.
‘Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved, bwushed
my teeth, and scented myself.’
The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the determination of Denisov who flourished
his sword and shouted frantically, had such an effect that
they managed to squeeze through to the farther side of the
bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the bridge Nesvitski
found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order, and
having done this he rode back.
Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of


253

the bridge. Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he
watched his squadron draw nearer. Then the clang of hoofs,
as of several horses galloping, resounded on the planks of
the bridge, and the squadron, officers in front and men four
abreast, spread across the bridge and began to emerge on
his side of it.
The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the
bridge in the trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will, estrangement, and ridicule with which
troops of different arms usually encounter one another at
the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in regular
order.
‘Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!’ said one.
‘What good are they? They’re led about just for show!’
remarked another.
‘Don’t kick up the dust, you infantry!’ jested an hussar
whose prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
‘I’d like to put you on a two days’ march with a knapsack! Your fine cords would soon get a bit rubbed,’ said an
infantryman, wiping the mud off his face with his sleeve.
‘Perched up there, you’re more like a bird than a man.’
‘There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse.
You’d look fine,’ said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier
who bent under the weight of his knapsack.
‘Take a stick between your legs, that’ll suit you for a
horse!’ the hussar shouted back.
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Chapter VIII
The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge,
squeezing together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last the baggage wagons had all
crossed, the crush was less, and the last battalion came onto
the bridge. Only Denisov’s squadron of hussars remained
on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who
could be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was
not yet visible from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from
the valley through which the river flowed was formed by
the rising ground only half a mile away. At the foot of the
hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our Cossack
scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the
high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen.
These were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired
down the hill at a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov’s
squadron, though they tried to talk of other things and to
look in other directions, thought only of what was there on
the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy’s
troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the
sun was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark
hills around it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls
and the shouts of the enemy could be heard from the hill.
There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy


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except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some
seven hundred yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible,
and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was
all the more clearly felt.
‘One step beyond that boundary line which resembles
the line dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty,
suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?there
beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No
one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long
to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be
crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as
you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of
death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited,
and are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and
healthy men.’ So thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who
comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything
that takes place at such moments.
On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of
a cannon rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of
the hussar squadron. The officers who had been standing
together rode off to their places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole squadron.
All were looking at the enemy in front and at the squadron
commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and
a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at
the hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew
over the heads of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond
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them. The hussars did not look round, but at the sound of
each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron
with its rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its
breath while the ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank
back again. The soldiers without turning their heads glanced
at one another, curious to see their comrades’ impression.
Every face, from Denisov’s to that of the bugler, showed one
common expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement,
around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet
Mironov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostov on the
left flank, mounted on his Rooka handsome horse despite its
game leghad the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a
large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he
will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with
a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how
calmly he sat under fire. But despite himself, on his face too
that same indication of something new and stern showed
round the mouth.
‘Who’s that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That’s not
wight! Look at me,’ cried Denisov who, unable to keep still
on one spot, kept turning his horse in front of the squadron.
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and
his whole short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand
and stumpy fingers in which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually did, especially toward evening
when he had emptied his second bottle; he was only redder
than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds


257

when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the
sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank
of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to
look to their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain
on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to meet
him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always,
only his eyes were brighter than usual.
‘Well, what about it?’ said he to Denisov. ‘It won’t come to
a fight. You’ll seewe shall retire.’
‘The devil only knows what they’re about!’ muttered
Denisov. ‘Ah, Wostov,’ he cried noticing the cadet’s bright
face, ‘you’ve got it at last.’
And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the
cadet. Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander
appeared on the bridge. Denisov 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 Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge,
retired up the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl
Bogdanich Schubert, came up to Denisov’s squadron and
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rode at a footpace not far from Rostov, without taking any
notice of him although they were now meeting for the first
time since their encounter concerning Telyanin. Rostov,
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 Rostov that Bogdanich 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 Bogdanich 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 himRostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack,
Bogdanich would come up to him as he lay wounded and
would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the
Pavlograds as he had but recently left their regiment, rode
up to the colonel. After his dismissal from headquarters
Zherkov 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
Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order
from the commander of the rear guard.
‘Colonel,’ he said, addressing Rostov’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.


259

‘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.’’
Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode
up to the colonel of hussars with the same order. After him
the stout Nesvitski 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 Nesvitski.
‘You spoke to me of inflammable material,’ said he, ‘but
you said nothing about firing it.’
‘But, my dear sir,’ said Nesvitski 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 it burn, I could not know by the
holy spirit!’
‘Ah, that’s always the way!’ said Nesvitski with a wave of
the hand. ‘How did you get here?’ said he, turning to Zherkov.
‘On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring
you out!’
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‘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 Zherkov, 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 Rostov was
serving under Denisov, to return to the bridge.
‘There, it’s just as I thought,’ said Rostov 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. Rostov watched his enemy, the colonel, closelyto find in
his face confirmation of his own conjecture, but the colonel
did not once glance at Rostov, 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


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they were to do. The men were crossing themselves. Rostov 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. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and
shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the hussars
running all around him, their spurs catching and their sabers clattering.
‘Stretchers!’ shouted someone behind him.
Rostov 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.
Rostov 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 Bogdanich, without
looking at or recognizing Rostov, 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
Denisov, 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 Vaska Denisov,
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turning in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, 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 sidethe 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 heartwatching 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 Nesvitski; ‘they are
within grapeshot range now.’
‘He shouldn’t have taken so many men,’ said the officer
of the suite.
‘True enough,’ answered Nesvitski; ‘two smart fellows
could have done the job just as well.’
‘Ah, your excellency,’ put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on
the hussars, but still with that naive 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 Vladimir medal and
ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron


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may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.
Our Bogdanich 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 Nesvitski 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 Nesvitski,
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
Nesvitski 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
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the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them
over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, 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. Rostov 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 Rostov 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
wishing for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,’
thought Rostov. ‘In myself alone and in that sunshine there
is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and
this uncertainty and hurry... Therethey 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... An

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other 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 Rostov. 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!’ Rostov whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses;
their voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
‘Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!’ shouted Vaska
Denisov just above his ear.
‘It’s all over; but I am a cowardyes, a coward!’ thought
Rostov, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which
stood resting one foot, from the orderly and began to
mount.
‘Was that grapeshot?’ he asked Denisov.
‘Yes and no mistake!’ cried Denisov. ‘You worked like
wegular bwicks and it’s nasty work! An attack’s pleasant
work! Hacking away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the
very devil, with them shooting at you like a target.’
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near
Rostov, composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and
the officer from the suite.
‘Well, it seems that no one has noticed,’ thought Rostov.
And this was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation which the cadet under fire for the
first time had experienced.
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‘Here’s something for you to report,’ said Zherkov. ‘See if
I don’t get promoted to a sublieutenancy.’
‘Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!’ said the colonel triumphantly and gaily.
‘And if he asks about the losses?’
‘A trifle,’ said the colonel in his bass voice: ‘two hussars
wounded, and one knocked out,’ he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and pronouncing the phrase ‘knocked
out’ with ringing distinctness.



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Chapter IX
Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men
under the command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it, losing confidence in its allies,
suffering from shortness of supplies, and compelled to act
under conditions of war unlike anything that had been
foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men
commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the
Danube, stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as necessary to enable it to
retreat without losing its heavy equipment. There had been
actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
courage and enduranceacknowledged even by the enemywith which the Russians fought, the only consequence of
these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops
that had escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at
Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces.
The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared
in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been
handed to Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable aim
remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces
that were advancing from Russia, without losing his army
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as Mack had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army
crossed to the left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with the river between himself and
the main body of the French. On the thirtieth he attacked
Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank, and broke it
up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,
after a fortnight’s retreat, the Russian troops had halted and
after a fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the
French. Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and
had lost a third of their number in killed, wounded, sick,
and stragglers; though a number of sick and wounded had
been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of
the enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in
Krems converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and wounded, yet the stand made
at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of
the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at
headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors were
rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of
some victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of
the frightened Bonaparte.
Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance
on the Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the
action. His horse had been wounded under him and his
own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief’s special favor he was sent with the news


269

of this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn.
Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could
endure physical fatigue far better than many very muscular
men, and on the night of the battle, having arrived at Krems
excited but not weary, with dispatches from Dokhturov to
Kutuzov, he was sent immediately with a special dispatch to
Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a reward but an important step toward promotion.
The night was dark but starry, the road showed black
in the snow that had fallen the previous daythe day of the
battle. Reviewing his impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the impression his news of a
victory would create, or recalling the send-off given him
by the commander in chief and his fellow officers, Prince
Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the
feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a longdesired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears
seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation
of victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were
running away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly
roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh
that this was not so but that on the contrary the French had
run away. He again recalled all the details of the victory and
his own calm courage during the battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night was followed by a
bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the
road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.
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At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded. The Russian officer in charge of the transport
lolled back in the front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier
with coarse abuse. In each of the long German carts six or
more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being jolted over the
stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian
words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children,
at the envoy hurrying past them.
Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier
in what action they had been wounded. ‘Day before yesterday, on the Danube,’ answered the soldier. Prince Andrew
took out his purse and gave the soldier three gold pieces.
‘That’s for them all,’ he said to the officer who came up.
‘Get well soon, lads!’ he continued, turning to the soldiers. ‘There’s plenty to do still.’
‘What news, sir?’ asked the officer, evidently anxious to
start a conversation.
‘Good news!... Go on!’ he shouted to the driver, and they
galloped on.
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled
over the paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the lights of shops, houses,
and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that atmosphere of
a large and active town which is always so attractive to a
soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace
felt even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day
before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts


271

followed one another with extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle,
no longer dim, but definite and in the concise form concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to the
Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions
that might be put to him and the answers he would give.
He expected to be at once presented to the Emperor. At the
chief entrance to the palace, however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that he was a special
messenger led him to another entrance.
‘To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There
you will find the adjutant on duty,’ said the official. ‘He will
conduct you to the Minister of War.’
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked
him to wait, and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and bowing with particular courtesy
ushered Prince Andrew before him along a corridor to the
cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off
any attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.
Prince Andrew’s joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he approached the door of the minister’s room. He
felt offended, and without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into one of disdain which was
quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly suggested to
him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the
adjutant and the minister. ‘Away from the smell of powder,
they probably think it easy to gain victories!’ he thought.
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His eyes narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of
the Minister of War with peculiarly deliberate steps. This
feeling of disdain was heightened when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers and making
pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes
taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each
side of the minister’s bent bald head with its gray temples.
He went on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at
the opening of the door and the sound of footsteps.
‘Take this and deliver it,’ said he to his adjutant, handing him the papers and still taking no notice of the special
messenger.
Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov’s
army interested the Minister of War less than any of the
other matters he was concerned with, or he wanted to give
the Russian special messenger that impression. ‘But that is a
matter of perfect indifference to me,’ he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them
evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and
distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the firm, intelligent expression on his face changed
in a way evidently deliberate and habitual to him. His face
took on the stupid artificial smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is continually
receiving many petitioners one after another.
‘From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?’ he asked. ‘I hope
it is good news? There has been an encounter with Mortier?
A victory? It was high time!’
He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and


273

began to read it with a mournful expression.
‘Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!’ he exclaimed in German. ‘What a calamity! What a calamity!’
Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the
table and looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering
something.
‘Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But
Mortier is not captured.’ Again he pondered. ‘I am very glad
you have brought good news, though Schmidt’s death is a
heavy price to pay for the victory. His Majesty will no doubt
wish to see you, but not today. I thank you! You must have
a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade. However,
I will let you know.’
The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was
speaking, reappeared.
‘Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to see you,’ he added, bowing his head.
When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the
interest and happiness the victory had afforded him had
been now left in the indifferent hands of the Minister of War
and the polite adjutant. The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed the memory of a
remote event long past.

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Chapter X
Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian
acquaintance of his in the diplomatic service.
‘Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome
visitor,’ said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew.
‘Franz, put the prince’s things in my bedroom,’ said he to
the servant who was ushering Bolkonski in. ‘So you’re a
messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting here
ill, as you see.’
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into
the diplomat’s luxurious study and sat down to the dinner
prepared for him. Bilibin settled down comfortably beside
the fire.
After his journey and the campaign during which he had
been deprived of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the
refinements of life, Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of
repose among luxurious surroundings such as he had been
accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian
(for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who
would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to
the Austrians which was then particularly strong.
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the
same circle as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but had become more intimate


275

when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as
Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising
high in the military profession, so to an even greater extent
Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He
still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had
entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris
and Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in
Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador in
Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those
many diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak
French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how
to do it, and despite his indolence would sometimes spend
a whole night at his writing table. He worked well whatever
the import of his work. It was not the question ‘What for?’
but the question ‘How?’ that interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great
pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin’s services were valued
not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in dealing
and conversing with those in the highest spheres.
Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it
could be made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited
an opportunity to say something striking and took part in a
conversation only when that was possible. His conversation
was always sprinkled with wittily original, finished phrases
of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the inner
laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally,
so that insignificant society people might carry them from
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drawing room to drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin’s witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing rooms
and often had an influence on matters considered important.
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always looked as clean and well washed as the
tips of one’s fingers after a Russian bath. The movement of
these wrinkles formed the principal play of expression on
his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds and
his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend
and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deepset eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.
‘Well, now tell me about your exploits,’ said he.
Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the engagement and his reception by the
Minister of War.
‘They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a
game of skittles,’ said he in conclusion.
Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
‘Cependant, mon cher,’ he remarked, examining his nails
from a distance and puckering the skin above his left eye,
‘malgre la haute estime que je professe pour the Orthodox
Russian army, j’avoue que votre victoire n’est pas des plus
victorieuses.’*
*”But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
particularly victorious.’
He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only
those words in Russian on which he wished to put a con

277

temptuous emphasis.
‘Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier
slips through your fingers! Where’s the victory?’
‘But seriously,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘we can at any rate say
without boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..’
‘Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?’
‘Because not everything happens as one expects or with
the smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you,
to get at their rear by seven in the morning but had not
reached it by five in the afternoon.’
‘And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning? You
ought to have been there at seven in the morning,’ returned
Bilibin with a smile. ‘You ought to have been there at seven
in the morning.’
‘Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by
diplomatic methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?’
retorted Prince Andrew in the same tone.
‘I know,’ interrupted Bilibin, ‘you’re thinking it’s very easy
to take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
still why didn’t you capture him? So don’t be surprised if not
only the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty
the Emperor and King Francis is not much delighted by your
victory. Even I, a poor secretary of the Russian Embassy, do
not feel any need in token of my joy to give my Franz a thaler,
or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater... True, we have
no Prater here..’
He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his forehead.
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‘It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,’ said
Bolkonski. ‘I confess I do not understand: perhaps there are
diplomatic subtleties here beyond my feeble intelligence, but
I can’t make it out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke
Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs of life and
make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at last gains a
real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility of the
French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear
the details.’
‘That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for the
Tsar, for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is
beautiful, but what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care
for your victories? Bring us nice news of a victory by the
Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one archduke’s as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only over a fire brigade
of Bonaparte’s, that will be another story and we’ll fire off
some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on purpose
to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up
its defenseas much as to say: ‘Heaven is with us, but heaven help you and your capital!’ The one general whom we all
loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit that more irritating news
than yours could not have been conceived. It’s as if it had
been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose you did
gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
victory, what effect would that have on the general course
of events? It’s too late now when Vienna is occupied by the
French army!’


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‘What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?’
‘Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and
the count, our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders.’
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt
that he could not take in the full significance of the words
he heard.
‘Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,’ Bilibin continued, ‘and showed me a letter in which the parade of the
French in Vienna was fully described: Prince Murat et tout
le tremblement... You see that your victory is not a matter for
great rejoicing and that you can’t be received as a savior.’
‘Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,’ said
Prince Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of
the battle before Krems was really of small importance in
view of such events as the fall of Austria’s capital. ‘How is
it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and its celebrated
bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard reports that
Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?’ he said.
‘Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and
is defending usdoing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge
has not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is
mined and orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise
we should long ago have been in the mountains of Bohemia,
and you and your army would have spent a bad quarter of an
hour between two fires.’
‘But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,’
said Prince Andrew.
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‘Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but
they daren’t say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of
the campaign, it won’t be your skirmishing at Durrenstein,
or gunpowder at all, that will decide the matter, but those
who devised it,’ said Bilibin quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing. ‘The only
question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia
joins the Allies, Austria’s hand will be forced and there will
be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up.’
‘What an extraordinary genius!’ Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed, clenching his small hand and striking the table
with it, ‘and what luck the man has!’
‘Buonaparte?’ said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his
forehead to indicate that he was about to say something witty. ‘Buonaparte?’ he repeated, accentuating the u: ‘I think,
however, now that he lays down laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l’u!* I shall certainly adopt an
innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!’
*”We must let him off the u!’
‘But joking apart,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘do you really
think the campaign is over?’
‘This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of,
and she is not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has
been fooled in the first place because her provinces have
been pillagedthey say the Holy Russian army loots terriblyher army is destroyed, her capital taken, and all this for the
beaux yeux* of His Sardinian Majesty. And thereforethis is


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between ourselvesI instinctively feel that we are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and
projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately.’
*Fine eyes.
‘Impossible!’ cried Prince Andrew. ‘That would be too
base.’
‘If we live we shall see,’ replied Bilibin, his face again becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an
end.
When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for
him and lay down in a clean shirt on the feather bed with its
warmed and fragrant pillows, he felt that the battle of which
he had brought tidings was far, far away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria’s treachery, Bonaparte’s new
triumph, tomorrow’s levee and parade, and the audience
with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed
to fill his ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the
musketeers were descending the hill, the French were firing,
and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode forward beside
Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around, and
he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done
since childhood.
He woke up...
‘Yes, that all happened!’ he said, and, smiling happily to
himself like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.

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Chapter XI
Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions,
the first thought that came into his mind was that today
he had to be presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War, the polite Austrian adjutant,
Bilibin, and last night’s conversation. Having dressed for
his attendance at court in full parade uniform, which he
had not worn for a long time, he went into Bilibin’s study
fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged.
In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps.
With Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the
embassy, Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the others.
The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin’s were young,
wealthy, gay society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a
special set which Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.* This
set, consisting almost exclusively of diplomats, evidently
had its own interests which had nothing to do with war or
politics but related to high society, to certain women, and
to the official side of the service. These gentlemen received
Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they did not
extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation,
they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.
*Ours.


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‘But the best of it was,’ said one, telling of the misfortune
of a fellow diplomat, ‘that the Chancellor told him flatly that
his appointment to London was a promotion and that he
was so to regard it. Can you fancy the figure he cut?..’
‘But the worst of it, gentlemenI am giving Kuragin away
to youis that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked
fellow, is taking advantage of it!’
Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his
legs over its arm. He began to laugh.
‘Tell me about that!’ he said.
‘Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!’ cried several voices.
‘You, Bolkonski, don’t know,’ said Bilibin turning to
Prince Andrew, ‘that all the atrocities of the French army (I
nearly said of the Russian army) are nothing compared to
what this man has been doing among the women!’
‘La femme est la compagne de l’homme,’* announced
Prince Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette
at his elevated legs.
*”Woman is man’s companion.’
Bilibin and the rest of ‘ours’ burst out laughing in Hippolyte’s face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of
whomhe had to admithe had almost been jealous on his
wife’s account, was the butt of this set.
‘Oh, I must give you a treat,’ Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski. ‘Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politicsyou
should see his gravity!’
He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew
and the others gathered round these two.
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‘The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance,’
began Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the
others, ‘without expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless His Majesty the Emperor derogates
from the principle of our alliance...
‘Wait, I have not finished...’ he said to Prince Andrew,
seizing him by the arm, ‘I believe that intervention will be
stronger than nonintervention. And...’ he paused. ‘Finally
one cannot impute the nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end.’ And he released Bolkonski’s
arm to indicate that he had now quite finished.
‘Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest
in thy golden mouth!’ said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on
his head moved with satisfaction.
Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone.
He was evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but
could not restrain the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
‘Well now, gentlemen,’ said Bilibin, ‘Bolkonski is my
guest in this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain
him as far as I can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we
were in Vienna it would be easy, but here, in this wretched
Moravian hole, it is more difficult, and I beg you all to help
me. Brunn’s attractions must be shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course
the women.’
‘We must let him see Amelie, she’s exquisite!’ said one of
‘ours,’ kissing his finger tips.
‘In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to


285

more humane interests,’ said Bilibin.
‘I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality, gentlemen, it is already time for me to go,’ replied Prince
Andrew looking at his watch.
‘Where to?’
‘To the Emperor.’
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir,
Prince! Come back early to dinner,’ cried several voices.
‘We’ll take you in hand.’
‘When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to
praise the way that provisions are supplied and the routes
indicated,’ said Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall.
‘I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the
facts, I can’t,’ replied Bolkonski, smiling.
‘Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion
for giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself
and can’t do it, as you will see.’

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Chapter XII
At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely
looked fixedly into his face and just nodded to him with to
him with his long head. But after it was over, the adjutant he
had seen the previous day ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give him an audience. The
Emperor Francis received him standing in the middle of the
room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was
struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and
blushed as if not knowing what to say.
‘Tell me, when did the battle begin?’ he asked hurriedly.
Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions
just as simple: ‘Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?’
and so on. The Emperor spoke as if his sole aim were to put
a given number of questionsthe answers to these questions,
as was only too evident, did not interest him.
‘At what o’clock did the battle begin?’ asked the Emperor.
‘I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o’clock the battle began at the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our
attack began after five in the afternoon,’ replied Bolkonski
growing more animated and expecting that he would have a
chance to give a reliable account, which he had ready in his
mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor smiled


287

and interrupted him.
‘How many miles?’
‘From where to where, Your Majesty?’
‘From Durrenstein to Krems.’
‘Three and a half miles, Your Majesty.’
‘The French have abandoned the left bank?’
‘According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts
during the night.’
‘Is there sufficient forage in Krems?’
‘Forage has not been supplied to the extent..’
The Emperor interrupted him.
‘At what o’clock was General Schmidt killed?’
‘At seven o’clock, I believe.’
‘At seven o’clock? It’s very sad, very sad!’
The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince
Andrew withdrew and was immediately surrounded by
courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he saw friendly looks and
heard friendly words. Yesterday’s adjutant reproached him
for not having stayed at the palace, and offered him his own
house. The Minister of War came up and congratulated him
on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which the
Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress’ chamberlain invited him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also
wished to see him. He did not know whom to answer, and
for a few seconds collected his thoughts. Then the Russian
ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the window, and began to talk to him.
Contrary to Bilibin’s forecast the news he had brought
was joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged,
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Kutuzov was awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa,
and the whole army received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning calling
on the principal Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five
in the afternoon, having made all his calls, he was returning
to Bilibin’s house thinking out a letter to his father about
the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin’s man, was dragging
a portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door.
Before returning to Bilibin’s Prince Andrew had gone to
bookshop to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some time in the shop.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Oh, your excellency!’ said Franz, with difficulty rolling
the portmanteau into the vehicle, ‘we are to move on still
farther. The scoundrel is again at our heels!’
‘Eh? What?’ asked Prince Andrew.
Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face
showed excitement.
‘There now! Confess that this is delightful,’ said he. ‘This
affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed
without striking a blow!’
Prince Andrew could not understand.
‘But where do you come from not to know what every
coachman in the town knows?’
‘I come from the archduchess’. I heard nothing there.’
‘And you didn’t see that everybody is packing up?’
‘I did not... What is it all about?’ inquired Prince Andrew
impatiently.


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‘What’s it all about? Why, the French have crossed the
bridge that Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was
not blown up: so Murat is now rushing along the road to
Brunn and will be here in a day or two.’
‘What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge,
if it was mined?’
‘That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte,
knows why.’
Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.
‘But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is
lost? It will be cut off,’ said he.
‘That’s just it,’ answered Bilibin. ‘Listen! The French
entered Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which
was yesterday, those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,*
Murat, Lannes,and Belliard, mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.) ‘Gentlemen,’ says one of
them, ‘you know the Thabor Bridge is mined and doubly
mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its head
and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to
blow up the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please
our sovereign the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge,
so let us three go and take it!’ ‘Yes, let’s!’ say the others. And
off they go and take the bridge, cross it, and now with their
whole army are on this side of the Danube, marching on us,
you, and your lines of communication.’
*The marshalls.
‘Stop jesting,’ said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously.
This news grieved him and yet he was pleased.
As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such
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a hopeless situation it occurred to him that it was he who
was destined to lead it out of this position; that here was
the Toulon that would lift him from the ranks of obscure
officers and offer him the first step to fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching the army
he would give an opinion at the war council which would
be the only one that could save the army, and how he alone
would be entrusted with the executing of the plan.
‘Stop this jesting,’ he said
‘I am not jesting,’ Bilibin went on. ‘Nothing is truer or
sadder. These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and
wave white handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty
that they, the marshals, are on their way to negotiate with
Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the tete-de-pont.*
They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war
is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting
with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,
and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen
embrace the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and
meanwhile a French battalion gets to the bridge unobserved,
flings the bags of incendiary material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length appears the lieutenant
general, our dear Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself.
‘Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another’s
hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to
make Prince Auersperg’s acquaintance.’ In a word, those
gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine
words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly established inti

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macy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the sight
of Murat’s mantle and ostrich plumes, qu’il n’y voit que du
feu, et oublie celui qu’il devait faire faire sur l’ennemi!’*[2]
In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did not forget
to pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation.
‘The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the
guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all,’ he went
on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest
of his own story, ‘is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire the mines and blow
up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French troops
were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than
his general, goes up to Auersperg and says: ‘Prince, you are
being deceived, here are the French!’ Murat, seeing that all
is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns to Auersperg
with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says:
‘I don’t recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if
you allow a subordinate to address you like that!’ It was a
stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake
and orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own
that this affair of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not
exactly stupidity, nor rascality...’
*Bridgehead.
*[2] That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he
ought to be firing at the enemy.
‘It may be treachery,’ said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder,
the sounds of firing, and the glory that awaited him.
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‘Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light,’
replied Bilibin.’It’s not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as at Ulm... it is...’he seemed to be trying to
find the right expression. ‘C’est... c’est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it is a bit of Mack. We are Macked],’ he
concluded, feeling that he had produced a good epigram,
a fresh one that would be repeated. His hitherto puckered
brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a slight
smile he began to examine his nails.
‘Where are you off to?’ he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had risen and was going toward his room.
‘I am going away.’
‘Where to?’
‘To the army.’
‘But you meant to stay another two days?’
‘But now I am off at once.’
And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to his room.
‘Do you know, mon cher,’ said Bilibin following him, ‘I
have been thinking about you. Why are you going?’
And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the
wrinkles vanished from his face.
Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no
reply.
‘Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to
gallop back to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is heroism!’
‘Not at all,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look


293

at the other side of the question and you will see that your
duty, on the contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to
those who are no longer fit for anything else.... You have not
been ordered to return and have not been dismissed from
here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our ill
luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmutz, and Olmutz
is a very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in
my caleche.’
‘Do stop joking, Bilibin,’ cried Bolkonski.
‘I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where
and why are you going, when you might remain here? You
are faced by one of two things,’ and the skin over his left
temple puckered, ‘either you will not reach your regiment
before peace is concluded, or you will share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov’s whole army.’
And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was insoluble.
‘I cannot argue about it,’ replied Prince Andrew coldly,
but he thought: ‘I am going to save the army.’
‘My dear fellow, you are a hero!’ said Bilibin.

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Chapter XIII
That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of
War, Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing
where he would find it and fearing to be captured by the
French on the way to Krems.
In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing
up, and the heavy baggage was already being dispatched to
Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince Andrew struck the high
road along which the Russian army was moving with great
haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage.
Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack
commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past
the baggage wagons, rode in search of the commander in
chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the
position of the army reached him as he went along, and
the appearance of the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.
‘Cette armee russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportee
des extremites de l’univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver
le meme sort(le sort de l’armee d’Ulm).’* He remembered
these words in Bonaparte’s address to his army at the beginning of the campaign, and they awoke in him astonishment
at the genius of his hero, a feeling of wounded pride, and a
hope of glory. ‘And should there be nothing left but to die?’


295

he thought. ‘Well, if need be, I shall do it no worse than others.’
*”That Russian army which has been brought from the
ends of the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the
same fate(the fate of the army at Ulm).’
He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of
detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and
blocking the muddy road, three and sometimes four abreast.
From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear could reach,
there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts and gun
carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts,
the urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road fallen horses
were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and broken-down
carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,
crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging
sacks. At each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were
yet denser and the din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers
floundering knee-deep in mud pushed the guns and wagons
themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped, traces broke, and
lungs were strained with shouting. The officers directing the
march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw
by their faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this disorder.
‘Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army,’ thought
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Bolkonski, recalling Bilibin’s words.
Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was,
he rode up to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a
strange one-horse vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers
out of any available materials and looking like something
between a cart, a cabriolet, and a caleche. A soldier was
driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew
rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier when
his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the
woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was
beating the soldier who was driving the woman’s vehicle for
trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell
on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the
apron and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen
shawl, cried:
‘Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven’s
sake... Protect me! What will become of us? I am the wife
of the doctor of the Seventh Chasseurs.... They won’t let us
pass, we are left behind and have lost our people..’
‘I’ll flatten you into a pancake!’ shouted the angry officer
to the soldier. ‘Turn back with your slut!’
‘Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?’
screamed the doctor’s wife.
‘Kindly let this cart pass. Don’t you see it’s a woman?’
said Prince Andrew riding up to the officer.
The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned
again to the soldier. ‘I’ll teach you to push on!... Back!’


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‘Let them pass, I tell you!’ repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his lips.
‘And who are you?’ cried the officer, turning on him
with tipsy rage, ‘who are you? Are you in command here?
Eh? I am commander here, not you! Go back or I’ll flatten
you into a pancake,’ repeated he. This expression evidently
pleased him.
‘That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,’ came a
voice from behind.
Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of
senseless, tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is
saying. He saw that his championship of the doctor’s wife in
her queer trap might expose him to what he dreaded more
than anything in the worldto ridicule; but his instinct urged
him on. Before the officer finished his sentence Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
his riding whip.
‘Kind...ly letthempass!’
The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
‘It’s all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there’s
this disorder,’ he muttered. ‘Do as you like.’
Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away
from the doctor’s wife, who was calling him her deliverer,
and recalling with a sense of disgust the minutest details of
this humiliating scene he galloped on to the village where
he was told that the commander in chief was.
On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the
nearest house, intending to rest if but for a moment, eat
something, and try to sort out the stinging and tormenting
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thoughts that confused his mind. ‘This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army,’ he was thinking as he went up to the
window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him
by name.
He turned round. Nesvitski’s handsome face looked out
of the little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he
chewed something, and flourishing his arm, called him to
enter.
‘Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come
quick...’ he shouted.
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant having something to eat. They hastily turned
round to him asking if he had any news. On their familiar
faces he read agitation and alarm. This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski’s usually laughing countenance.
‘Where is the commander in chief?’ asked Bolkonski.
‘Here, in that house,’ answered the adjutant.
‘Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?’ asked
Nesvitski.
‘I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was
all I could do to get here.’
‘And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to laugh
at Mack, we’re getting it still worse,’ said Nesvitski. ‘But sit
down and have something to eat.’
‘You won’t be able to find either your baggage or anything else now, Prince. And God only knows where your
man Peter is,’ said the other adjutant.
‘Where are headquarters?’
‘We are to spend the night in Znaim.’


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‘Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,’
said Nesvitski. ‘They’ve made up splendid packs for mefit
to cross the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad lookout,
old fellow! But what’s the matter with you? You must be ill
to shiver like that,’ he added, noticing that Prince Andrew
winced as at an electric shock.
‘It’s nothing,’ replied Prince Andrew.
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the
doctor’s wife and the convoy officer.
‘What is the commander in chief doing here?’ he asked.
‘I can’t make out at all,’ said Nesvitski.
‘Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
abominable, quite abominable!’ said Prince Andrew, and he
went off to the house where the commander in chief was.
Passing by Kutuzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle
horses of his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking
loudly together, Prince Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the house with Prince
Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little
Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk.
The clerk, with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub
turned bottom upwards. Kozlovski’s face looked wornhe
too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced at Prince
Andrew and did not even nod to him.
‘Second line... have you written it?’ he continued dictating to the clerk. ‘The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..’
‘One can’t write so fast, your honor,’ said the clerk, glancing angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.
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Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov’s voice, excited and dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar
voice. From the sound of these voices, the inattentive way
Kozlovski looked at him, the disrespectful manner of the
exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and Kozlovski were
squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander in
chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding
the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and disastrous was about to happen.
He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.
‘Immediately, Prince,’ said Kozlovski. ‘Dispositions for
Bagration.’
‘What about capitulation?’
‘Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.’
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence
voices were heard. Just as he was going to open it the sounds
ceased, the door opened, and Kutuzov with his eagle nose
and puffy face appeared in the doorway. Prince Andrew
stood right in front of Kutuzov but the expression of the
commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so
preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant’s face
without recognizing him.
‘Well, have you finished?’ said he to Kozlovski.
‘One moment, your excellency.’
Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height
with a firm, impassive face of Oriental type, came out after
the commander in chief.
‘I have the honor to present myself,’ repeated Prince An

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drew rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.
Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!’
Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.
‘Well, good-by, Prince,’ said he to Bagration. ‘My blessing, and may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!’
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes.
With his left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with
his right, on which he wore a ring, he made the sign of the
cross over him with a gesture evidently habitual, offering
his puffy cheek, but Bagration kissed him on the neck instead.
‘Christ be with you!’ Kutuzov repeated and went toward
his carriage. ‘Get in with me,’ said he to Bolkonski.
‘Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me
to remain with Prince Bagration’s detachment.’
‘Get in,’ said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still
delayed, he added: ‘I need good officers myself, need them
myself!’
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes
in silence.
‘There is still much, much before us,’ he said, as if with an
old man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in
Bolkonski’s mind. ‘If a tenth part of his detachment returns
I shall thank God,’ he added as if speaking to himself.
Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov’s face only a foot
distant from him and involuntarily noticed the carefully
washed seams of the scar near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye socket.
‘Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s death,’
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thought Bolkonski.
‘That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,’ he said.
Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what
he had been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying on the soft springs of the carriage,
he turned to Prince Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he questioned Prince
Andrew about the details of his interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the
Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.



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Chapter XIV
On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news
that the army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that the French, after crossing the
bridge at Vienna, were advancing in immense force upon
Kutuzov’s line of communication with the troops that
were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at
Krems, Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand
men would cut him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he would find himself
in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from
Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown
parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against
superior forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of
a junction with Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat
along the road from Krems to Olmutz, to unite with the
troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on
that road by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge,
and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having to
accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as
strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
Kutuzov chose this latter course.
The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna
bridge, were advancing by forced marches toward Znaim,
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which lay sixty-six miles off on the line of Kutuzov’s retreat.
If he reached Znaim before the French, there would be great
hope of saving the army; to let the French forestall him at
Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a disgrace
such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
the French with his whole army was impossible. The road
for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.
The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration’s
vanguard, four thousand strong, to the right across the hills
from the Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march without resting, and to halt
facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he succeeded in
forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road
to Znaim.
Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless
hills, with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third
of his men as stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on
the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of
the French who were approaching Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to march for some
days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration with
his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army that came upon him
at Hollabrunn, which was clearly impossible. But a freak
of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the
trick that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the
French without a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutuzov


305

in a similar way. Meeting Bagration’s weak detachment on
the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov’s whole army.
To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of
the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna,
and with this object offered a three days’ truce on condition
that both armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that negotiations for peace were already
proceeding, and that he therefore offered this truce to avoid
unnecessary bloodshed. Count Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed Murat’s emissary
and retired, leaving Bagration’s division exposed. Another
emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days’
truce. Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to
accept or refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to
report the offer he had received.
A truce was Kutuzov’s sole chance of gaining time, giving Bagration’s exhausted troops some rest, and letting the
transport and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French) advance if but one stage nearer
Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news he
immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode,
who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to
offer terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his
adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the movements of the
baggage trains of the entire army along the Krems-Znaim
road. Bagration’s exhausted and hungry detachment, which
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alone covered this movement of the transport and of the
whole army, had to remain stationary in face of an enemy
eight times as strong as itself.
Kutuzov’s expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were in no way binding) might give time for
part of the transport to pass, and also that Murat’s mistake
would very soon be discovered, proved correct. As soon as
Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen miles from
Hollabrunn) received Murat’s dispatch with the proposal of
a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the
following letter to Murat:
Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
at eight o’clock in the morning
To PRINCE MURAT,
I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure.
You command only my advance guard, and have no right
to arrange an armistice without my order. You are causing
me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so,
and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy
the Russian army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage
and artillery.
The Russian Emperor’s aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are nothing when they have no powers; this one had
none.... The Austrians let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are letting yourself be tricked


307

by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.
NAPOLEON
Bonaparte’s adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing
letter to Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all the Guards to the field of battle, afraid
of letting a ready victim escape, and Bagration’s four thousand men merrily lighted campfires, dried and warmed
themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time for three
days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in
store for him.

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Chapter XV
Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon Prince
Andrew, who had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived
at Grunth and reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte’s
adjutant had not yet reached Murat’s detachment and the
battle had not yet begun. In Bagration’s detachment no one
knew anything of the general position of affairs. They talked
of peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked
of a battle but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a favorite and
trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and special
marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably
be an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full
liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join the
rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, ‘which is
also very important.’
‘However, there will hardly be an engagement today,’
said Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.
‘If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to
earn a medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he wishes to stay with me, let him... he’ll be of
use here if he’s a brave officer,’ thought Bagration. Prince
Andrew, without replying, asked the prince’s permission to
ride round the position to see the disposition of the forces,
so as to know his bearings should he be sent to execute an


309

order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly dressed
man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond
of speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince Andrew.
On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers
dragging doors, benches, and fencing from the village.
‘There now, Prince! We can’t stop those fellows,’ said the
staff officer pointing to the soldiers. ‘The officers don’t keep
them in hand. And there,’ he pointed to a sutler’s tent, ‘they
crowd in and sit. This morning I turned them all out and
now look, it’s full again. I must go there, Prince, and scare
them a bit. It won’t take a moment.’
‘Yes, let’s go in and I will get myself a roll and some
cheese,’ said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to
eat anything.
‘Why didn’t you mention it, Prince? I would have offered
you something.’
They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers,
with flushed and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating
and drinking.
‘Now what does this mean, gentlemen?’ said the staff officer, in the reproachful tone of a man who has repeated
the same thing more than once. ‘You know it won’t do to
leave your posts like this. The prince gave orders that no one
should leave his post. Now you, Captain,’ and he turned to
a thin, dirty little artillery officer who without his boots (he
had given them to the canteen keeper to dry), in only his
stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not altogether
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comfortably.
‘Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?’
he continued. ‘One would think that as an artillery officer
you would set a good example, yet here you are without your
boots! The alarm will be sounded and you’ll be in a pretty position without your boots!’ (The staff officer smiled.)
‘Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of you, all!’ he
added in a tone of command.
Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the
artillery officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting
from one stockinged foot to the other, glanced inquiringly
with his large, intelligent, kindly eyes from Prince Andrew
to the staff officer.
‘The soldiers say it feels easier without boots,’ said Captain Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position,
evidently wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had
finished he felt that his jest was unacceptable and had not
come off. He grew confused.
‘Kindly return to your posts,’ said the staff officer trying
to preserve his gravity.
Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer’s
small figure. There was something peculiar about it, quite
unsoldierly, rather comic, but extremely attractive.
The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode on.
Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting
and overtaking soldiers and officers of various regiments,
they saw on their left some entrenchments being thrown
up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up red. Several


311

battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite the cold
wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white
ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up
from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and
the officer rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went
on again. Just behind it they came upon some dozens of
soldiers, continually replaced by others, who ran from the
entrenchment. They had to hold their noses and put their
horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned atmosphere of
these latrines.
‘Voila l’agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,’* said
the staff officer.
*”This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince.’
They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French
could already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began
examining the position.
‘That’s our battery,’ said the staff officer indicating the
highest point. ‘It’s in charge of the queer fellow we saw without his boots. You can see everything from there; let’s go
there, Prince.’
‘Thank you very much, I will go on alone,’ said Prince
Andrew, wishing to rid himself of this staff officer’s company, ‘please don’t trouble yourself further.’
The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew
rode on alone.
The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the
more orderly and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been in the baggage train he had
passed that morning on the Znaim road seven miles away
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from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and
alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to
the French lines the more confident was the appearance of
our troops. The soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in
lines, the sergeants major and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in the ribs
and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and
were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter;
around the fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying
their shirts and leg bands or mending boots or overcoats
and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers. In
one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample,
which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden
bowl to an officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had
been tasted.
Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies
had vodka, crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting a keg, filled one after
another the canteen lids held out to him. The soldiers lifted
the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked
away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their
greatcoats. All their faces were as serene as if all this were
happening at home awaiting peaceful encampment, and not
within sight of the enemy before an action in which at least
half of them would be left on the field. After passing a chas

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seur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiersfine
fellows busy with similar peaceful affairsnear the shelter of
the regimental commander, higher than and different from
the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of
grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held
him while two others were flourishing their switches and
striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked
unnaturally. A stout major was pacing up and down the
line, and regardless of the screams kept repeating:
‘It’s a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest, honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is
no honor in him, he’s a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!’
So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate
but unnatural screams, continued.
‘Go on, go on!’ said the major.
A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression
on his face stepped away from the man and looked round
inquiringly at the adjutant as he rode by.
Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along
it. Our front line and that of the enemy were far apart on
the right and left flanks, but in the center where the men
with a flag of truce had passed that morning, the lines were
so near together that the men could see one another’s faces
and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who formed
the picket line on either side, there were many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange
foreign enemies.
Since early morningdespite an injunction not to approach the picket linethe officers had been unable to keep
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sight-seers away. The soldiers forming the picket line, like
showmen exhibiting a curiosity, no longer looked at the
French but paid attention to the sight-seers and grew weary
waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a look
at the French.
‘Look! Look there!’ one soldier was saying to another,
pointing to a Russian musketeer who had gone up to the
picket line with an officer and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. ‘Hark to him jabbering!
Fine, isn’t it? It’s all the Frenchy can do to keep up with him.
There now, Sidorov!’
‘Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!’ answered Sidorov, who
was considered an adept at French.
The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen
to what he was saying. Dolokhov had come from the left
flank where their regiment was stationed, with his captain.
‘Now then, go on, go on!’ incited the officer, bending forward and trying not to lose a word of the speech which was
incomprehensible to him. ‘More, please: more! What’s he
saying?’
Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn
into a hot dispute with the French grenadier. They were
naturally talking about the campaign. The Frenchman,
confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was trying to
prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all the
way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.
‘We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive


315

you off,’ said Dolokhov.
‘Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!’ said the French grenadier.
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
‘We’ll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,’* said
Dolokhov.
*”On vous fera danser.’
‘Qu’ est-ce qu’il chante?’* asked a Frenchman.
*”What’s he singing about?’
‘It’s ancient history,’ said another, guessing that it referred to a former war. ‘The Emperor will teach your Suvara
as he has taught the others..’
‘Bonaparte...’ began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
‘Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!’ cried
he angrily.
‘The devil skin your Emperor.’
And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian
and shouldering his musket walked away.
‘Let us go, Ivan Lukich,’ he said to the captain.
‘Ah, that’s the way to talk French,’ said the picket soldiers. ‘Now, Sidorov, you have a try!’
Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to
jabber meaningless sounds very fast: ‘Kari, mala, tafa, safi,
muter, Kaska,’ he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
‘Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!’ came peals of
such healthy and good-humored laughter from the soldiers
that it infected the French involuntarily, so much so that the
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only thing left to do seemed to be to unload the muskets,
muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
quickly as possible.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and entrenchments looked out just as menacingly,
and the unlimbered cannon confronted one another as before.



317

Chapter XVI
Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to
left, Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from
which the staff officer had told him the whole field could be
seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest
of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an artillery
sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when
the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and
still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen’s bonfires.
To the left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small,
newly constructed wattle shed from which came the sound
of officers’ voices in eager conversation.
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the greater part of the enemy’s opened out from
this battery. Just facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill,
the village of Schon Grabern could be seen, and in three
places to left and right the French troops amid the smoke
of their campfires, the greater part of whom were evidently
in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from that
village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked
eye. Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline
which dominated the French position. Our infantry were
stationed there, and at the farthest point the dragoons. In
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the center, where Tushin’s battery stood and from which
Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest
and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating
us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to
a copse, in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who
were felling wood. The French line was wider than ours, and
it was plain that they could easily outflank us on both sides.
Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew
took out his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched
a plan of the position. He made some notes on two points,
intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,
to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly,
to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince
Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical accounts of battles, involuntarily
pictured to himself the course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only important
possibilities: ‘If the enemy attacks the right flank,’ he said
to himself, ‘the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs
must hold their position till reserves from the center come
up. In that case the dragoons could successfully make a
flank counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the
center battery on this high ground, shall withdraw the left
flank under its cover, and retreat to the dip by echelons.’
So he reasoned.... All the time he had been beside the gun,
he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly, but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were


319

saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming
from the shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not
but listen.
‘No, friend,’ said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince
Andrew, a familiar voice, ‘what I say is that if it were possible to know what is beyond death, none of us would be
afraid of it. That’s so, friend.’
Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: ‘Afraid or
not, you can’t escape it anyhow.’
‘All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,’ said
a third manly voice interrupting them both. ‘Of course you
artillery men are very wise, because you can take everything along with youvodka and snacks.’
And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry
officer, laughed.
‘Yes, one is afraid,’ continued the first speaker, he of the
familiar voice. ‘One is afraid of the unknown, that’s what it
is. Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we
know there is no sky but only an atmosphere.’
The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
‘Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin,’ it
said.
‘Why,’ thought Prince Andrew, ‘that’s the captain who
stood up in the sutler’s hut without his boots.’ He recognized the agreeable, philosophizing voice with pleasure.
‘Some herb vodka? Certainly!’ said Tushin. ‘But still, to
conceive a future life..’
He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the
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er, a cannon ball, as if it had not finished saying what was
necessary, thudded into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground
seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth and his kind, intelligent face rather pale,
rushed out of the shed followed by the owner of the manly
voice, a dashing infantry officer who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.



321

Chapter XVII
Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with
the battery, looking at the puff from the gun that had sent
the ball. His eyes ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only
saw that the hitherto motionless masses of the French now
swayed and that there really was a battery to their left. The
smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A small
but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the
hill, probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of
the first shot had not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report. The battle had begun! Prince
Andrew turned his horse and galloped back to Grunth to
find Prince Bagration. He heard the cannonade behind him
growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had
begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.
Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte’s
stern letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate
his fault, had at once moved his forces to attack the center
and outflank both the Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to crush the
contemptible detachment that stood before him.
‘It has begun. Here it is!’ thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood rush to his heart. ‘But where and how will my
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Toulon present itself?’
Passing between the companies that had been eating
porridge and drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before,
he saw everywhere the same rapid movement of soldiers
forming ranks and getting their muskets ready, and on all
their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled his
heart. ‘It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!’ was
what the face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.
Before he had reached the embankments that were being
thrown up, he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening,
mounted men coming toward him. The foremost, wearing
a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a white horse,
was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and
recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked
ahead while Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.
The feeling, ‘It has begun! Here it is!’ was seen even on
Prince Bagration’s hard brown face with its half-closed, dull,
sleepy eyes. Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at
that impassive face and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking and feeling at that moment.
‘Is there anything at all behind that impassive face?’ Prince
Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince Bagration bent
his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew told
him, and said, ‘Very good!’ in a tone that seemed to imply
that everything that took place and was reported to him
was exactly what he had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of
breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince Bagration,
uttering his words with an Oriental accent, spoke particu

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larly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no need
to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction of Tushin’s battery. Prince Andrew followed with the
suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite,
the prince’s personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer,
the staff officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a
civilianan accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of curiosity. The accountant, a stout,
full-faced man, looked around him with a naive smile of
satisfaction and presented a strange appearance among the
hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he
jolted on his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
‘He wants to see a battle,’ said Zherkov to Bolkonski,
pointing to the accountant, ‘but he feels a pain in the pit of
his stomach already.’
‘Oh, leave off!’ said the accountant with a beaming but
rather cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the
subject of Zherkov’s joke, and purposely trying to appear
stupider than he really was.
‘It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince,’ said the staff
officer. (He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a prince, but could not get it quite
right.)
By this time they were all approaching Tushin’s battery,
and a ball struck the ground in front of them.
‘What’s that that has fallen?’ asked the accountant with
a naive smile.
‘A French pancake,’ answered Zherkov.
‘So that’s what they hit with?’ asked the accountant.
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‘How awful!’
He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly
violent whistling which suddenly ended with a thud into
something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding a little to
their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with
his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant stopped,
facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.
Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round,
and, seeing the cause of the confusion, turned away with
indifference, as if to say, ‘Is it worth while noticing trifles?’ He reined in his horse with the case of a skillful rider
and, slightly bending over, disengaged his saber which had
caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of a kind
no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the
story of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and
the recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment.
They had reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had
been when he examined the battlefield.
‘Whose company?’ asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman standing by the ammunition wagon.
He asked, ‘Whose company?’ but he really meant, ‘Are
you frightened here?’ and the artilleryman understood
him.
‘Captain Tushin’s, your excellency!’ shouted the redhaired, freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to
attention.


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‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly
surrounded the gun they could see the gunners who had
seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One,
holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while
Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the
cannon’s mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain
Tushin, stumbling over the tail of the gun carriage, moved
forward and, not noticing the general, looked out shading
his eyes with his small hand.
‘Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,’ cried he in
a feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill
suited to his weak figure. ‘Number Two!’ he squeaked. ‘Fire,
Medvedev!’
Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers
to his cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like
a military salute but like a priest’s benediction, approached
the general. Though Tushin’s guns had been intended to
cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary balls at the
village of Schon Grabern visible just opposite, in front of
which large masses of French were advancing.
No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to
fire, but after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had great respect, he had decided that it
would be a good thing to set fire to the village. ‘Very good!’
said Bagration in reply to the officer’s report, and began de326

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liberately to examine the whole battlefield extended before
him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below
the height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the
hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling
and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to
the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to Bagration a French column that was outflanking
us. To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood.
Prince Bagration ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank. The officer of the
suite ventured to remark to the prince that if these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes
looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that
the officer’s remark was just and that really no answer could
be made to it. But at that moment an adjutant galloped up
with a message from the commander of the regiment in the
hollow and news that immense masses of the French were
coming down upon them and that his regiment was in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince
Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval.
He rode off at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to
the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that the
commander of the dragoons had already retreated beyond
the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been opened on
him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened
to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.
‘Very good!’ said Bagration.


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As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left
also, and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have
time to go there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to
tell the general in command (the one who had paraded his
regiment before Kutuzov at Braunau) that he must retreat as
quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear, as the right
flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy’s
attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion that had
been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened attentively to Bagration’s colloquies with the
commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to
his surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that
Prince Bagration tried to make it appear that everything
done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate
commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at
least in accord with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed,
however, that though what happened was due to chance and
was independent of the commander’s will, owing to the tact
Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers
who approached him with disturbed countenances became
calm; soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew more
cheerful in his presence, and were evidently anxious to display their courage before him.

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Chapter XVIII
Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of
our right flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of
musketry was heard but where on account of the smoke
nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to the hollow the
less they could see but the more they felt the nearness of the
actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One
with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along
by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There
was a gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or mouth. Another
was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been
hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat
as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and
his face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road
they descended a steep incline and saw several men lying on
the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom
were unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill
breathing heavily, and despite the general’s presence were
talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them rows of
gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an
officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the
crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration
rode up to the ranks along which shots crackled now here


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and now there, drowning the sound of voices and the shouts
of command. The whole air reeked with smoke. The excited
faces of the soldiers were blackened with it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans
or taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the
smoke which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant
humming and whistling of bullets were often heard. ‘What
is this?’ thought Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of
soldiers. ‘It can’t be an attack, for they are not moving; it
can’t be a squarefor they are not drawn up for that.’
The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking
old man with a pleasant smilehis eyelids drooping more
than half over his old eyes, giving him a mild expression,
rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as a host welcomes
an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had been
attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had
been repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said
the attack had been repulsed, employing this military term
to describe what had occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what had happened during that
half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and could not say
with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the
commencement of the action balls and shells began flying
all over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards
someone had shouted ‘Cavalry!’ and our men had begun
firing. They were still firing, not at the cavalry which had
disappeared, but at French infantry who had come into the
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hollow and were firing at our men. Prince Bagration bowed
his head as a sign that this was exactly what he had desired
and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to
bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom
they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the
changed expression on Prince Bagration’s face at this moment. It expressed the concentrated and happy resolution
you see on the face of a man who on a hot day takes a final
run before plunging into the water. The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of profound
thought. The round, steady, hawk’s eyes looked before him
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although his movements were still slow and measured.
The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating him to go back as it was too dangerous to
remain where they were. ‘Please, your excellency, for God’s
sake!’ he kept saying, glancing for support at an officer of the
suite who turned away from him. ‘There, you see!’ and he
drew attention to the bullets whistling, singing, and hissing
continually around them. He spoke in the tone of entreaty
and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who has
picked up an ax: ‘We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
your hands.’ He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him,
and his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to
his words. The staff officer joined in the colonel’s appeals,
but Bagration did not reply; he only gave an order to cease
firing and re-form, so as to give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain of smoke
that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, be

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gan to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible
hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about
on it, opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing against them and
winding down over the uneven ground. One could already
see the soldiers’ shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from
the men, and see the standard flapping against its staff.
‘They march splendidly,’ remarked someone in Bagration’s suite.
The head of the column had already descended into the
hollow. The clash would take place on this side of it...
The remains of our regiment which had been in action
rapidly formed up and moved to the right; from behind it,
dispersing the laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth
Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had reached Bagration,
the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in step could
be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagration, marched
a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy expressionthe same man who had rushed out
of the wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking
of nothing but how dashing a fellow he would appear as he
passed the commander.
With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped
lightly with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full height without the smallest effort, his
ease contrasting with the heavy tread of the soldiers who
were keeping step with him. He carried close to his leg a
narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a real
weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now
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back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful
body turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul
were concentrated on passing the commander in the best
possible manner, and feeling that he was doing it well he
was happy. ‘Left... left... left...’ he seemed to repeat to himself
at each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks and
muskets marched in step, and each one of these hundreds of
soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each alternate
step, ‘Left... left... left...’ A fat major skirted a bush, puffing
and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his
face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot, panting
to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the
air, flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell
into the column to the measure of ‘Left... left!’ ‘Close up!’
came the company commander’s voice in jaunty tones. The
soldiers passed in a semicircle round something where the
ball had fallen, and an old trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside the dead men, ran
to catch up his line and, falling into step with a hop, looked
back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed
to hear left... left... left.
‘Well done, lads!’ said Prince Bagration.
‘Glad to do our best, your ex’len-lency!’ came a confused
shout from the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left
turned his eyes on Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: ‘We know that ourselves!’ Another,
without looking round, as though fearing to relax, shouted


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with his mouth wide open and passed on.
The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past
him and dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took
off and handed over his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set
his cap straight. The head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.
‘Forward, with God!’ said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and
slightly swinging his arms, he went forward uneasily over
the rough field with the awkward gait of a cavalryman.
Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him
forward, and experienced great happiness.
The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking
beside Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers,
red epaulets, and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old
French officer who, with gaitered legs and turned-out toes,
climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no
further orders and silently continued to walk on in front of
the ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from
the French, smoke appeared all along their uneven ranks,
and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among
them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and
complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,
Bagration looked round and shouted, ‘Hurrah!’
‘Hurrahah!ah!’ rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks,
and passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed
in an irregular but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at
their disordered foe.
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Chapter XIX
The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of
our right flank. In the center Tushin’s forgotten battery,
which had managed to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The French were putting
out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus gave
us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other
side of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and
noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed. But
our leftwhich consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry
and the Pavlograd hussarswas simultaneously attacked and
outflanked by superior French forces under Lannes and was
thrown into confusion. Bagration had sent Zherkov to the
general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat
immediately.
Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned
his horse about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left
Bagration than his courage failed him. He was seized by
panic and could not go where it was dangerous.
Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the
front where the firing was, he began to look for the general
and his staff where they could not possibly be, and so did
not deliver the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority
to the commander of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed


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at Braunau and in which Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment in
which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose.
The two commanders were much exasperated with one
another and, long after the action had begun on the right
flank and the French were already advancing, were engaged
in discussion with the sole object of offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by
no means ready for the impending action. From privates to
general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged
in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and
the infantry collecting wood.
‘He higher iss dan I in rank,’ said the German colonel of
the hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had
ridden up, ‘so let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice
my hussars... Bugler, sount ze retreat!’
But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling together, thundered on the right and in the
center, while the capotes of Lannes’ sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and forming up within
twice the range of a musket shot. The general in command
of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and
having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall
and rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders
met with polite bows but with secret malevolence in their
hearts.
‘Once again, Colonel,’ said the general, ‘I can’t leave half
my men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you,’ he repeated,
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‘to occupy the position and prepare for an attack.’
‘I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!’ suddenly replied the irate colonel. ‘If you vere in the
cavalry..’
‘I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if you are not aware of the fact..’
‘Quite avare, your excellency,’ suddenly shouted the colonel, touching his horse and turning purple in the face. ‘Vill
you be so goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss
no goot? I don’t vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!’
‘You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my
own pleasure and I won’t allow it to be said!’
Taking the colonel’s outburst as a challenge to his courage, the general expanded his chest and rode, frowning,
beside him to the front line, as if their differences would be
settled there amongst the bullets. They reached the front,
several bullets sped over them, and they halted in silence.
There was nothing fresh to be seen from the line, for from
where they had been before it had been evident that it was
impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken
ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left.
The general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at
one another like two fighting cocks preparing for battle,
each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As there was
nothing to said, and neither wished to give occasion for it to
be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire,
they would have remained there for a long time testing each
other’s courage had it not been that just then they heard the


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rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them
in the wood. The French had attacked the men collecting
wood in the copse. It was no longer possible for the hussars
to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from the line
of retreat on the left by the French. However inconvenient
the position, it was now necessary to attack in order to cut
away through for themselves.
The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely
time to mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again,
as at the Enns bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that terrible dividing line of
uncertainty and fearresembling the line separating the living from the deadlay between them. All were conscious of
this unseen line, and the question whether they would they
would cross it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated
them all.
The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to
questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one
said anything definite, but the rumor of an attack spread
through the squadron. The command to form up rang
out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their
scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank,
infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not
himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself to the men.
‘If only they would be quick!’ thought Rostov, feeling that
at last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack
of which he had so often heard from his fellow hussars.
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‘Fo’ward, with God, lads!’ rang out Denisov’s voice. ‘At a
twot fo’ward!’
The horses’ croups began to sway in the front line. Rook
pulled at the reins and started of his own accord.
Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his
hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could
not see distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be
heard, but some way off.
‘Faster!’ came the word of command, and Rostov felt
Rook’s flanks drooping as he broke into a gallop.
Rostov anticipated his horse’s movements and became
more and more elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead
of him. This tree had been in the middle of the line that had
seemed so terribleand now he had crossed that line and not
only was there nothing terrible, but everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. ‘Oh, how I will
slash at him!’ thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.
‘Hur-a-a-a-ah!’ came a roar of voices. ‘Let anyone come
my way now,’ thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook
and letting him go at a full gallop so that he outstripped
the others. Ahead, the enemy was already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep over the
squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at that
instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead,
shot away from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he
continued to be carried forward with unnatural speed but
yet stayed on the same spot. From behind him Bondarchuk,
an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked angrily at
him. Bondarchuk’s horse swerved and galloped past.


339

‘How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!’
Rostov asked and answered at the same instant. He was
alone in the middle of a field. Instead of the moving horses
and hussars’ backs, he saw nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There was warm
blood under his arm. ‘No, I am wounded and the horse is
killed.’ Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his rider’s leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he
struggled but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell
back, his sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and where the French, he did not
know. There was no one near.
Having disentangled his leg, he rose. ‘Where, on which
side, was now the line that had so sharply divided the two
armies?’ he asked himself and could not answer. ‘Can something bad have happened to me?’ he wondered as he got up:
and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was
hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if it
were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying
to find blood on it. ‘Ah, here are people coming,’ he thought
joyfully, seeing some men running toward him. ‘They will
help me!’ In front came a man wearing a strange shako and
a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned, and with a hooked nose.
Then came two more, and many more running behind. One
of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among
the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was
a Russian hussar. He was being held by the arms and his
horse was being led behind him.
‘It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that
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they will take me too? Who are these men?’ thought Rostov,
scarcely believing his eyes. ‘Can they be French?’ He looked
at the approaching Frenchmen, and though but a moment
before he had been galloping to get at them and hack them
to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful that he could
not believe his eyes. ‘Who are they? Why are they running?
Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom
everyone is so fond of?’ He remembered his mother’s love
for him, and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s
intention to kill him seemed impossible. ‘But perhaps they
may do it!’ For more than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the situation. The foremost
Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was already so
close that the expression of his face could be seen. And the
excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down,
holding his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at
the Frenchman and ran with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the feeling of doubt and conflict
with which he had trodden the Enns bridge, but with the
feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed
his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across
the field with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay,
now and then turning his good-natured, pale, young face to
look back. A shudder of terror went through him: ‘No, better not look,’ he thought, but having reached the bushes he
glanced round once more. The French had fallen behind,
and just as he looked round the first man changed his run


341

to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade farther back. Rostov paused. ‘No, there’s some mistake,’
thought he. ‘They can’t have wanted to kill me.’ But at the
same time, his left arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound
weight were tied to it. He could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov closed his eyes and
stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled past
him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of
his left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind
these were some Russian sharpshooters.
CHAPTER XX
The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares
in the outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd.
One soldier, in his fear, uttered the senseless cry, ‘Cut off!’
that is so terrible in battle, and that word infected the whole
crowd with a feeling of panic.
‘Surrounded! Cut off? We’re lost!’ shouted the fugitives.
The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general realized that something dreadful had
happened to his regiment, and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years’ service who had never been
to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general,
and above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for
self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and,
spurring his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of
bullets which fell around, but fortunately missed him. His
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one desire was to know what was happening and at any cost
correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that
he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years’ service, who
had never been censured, should not be held to blame.
Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a
field behind the copse across which our men, regardless of
orders, were running and descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides the fate of battles
had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers attend
to the voice of their commander, or would they, disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts
that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his
former self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all
continued to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral hesitation which decided the fate of
battles was evidently culminating in a panic.
The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting
and of the powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that moment the French who
were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and
Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It
was Timokhin’s company, which alone had maintained its
order in the wood and, having lain in ambush in a ditch,
now attacked the French unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed
only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such a
desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination that,
taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their mus

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kets and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed
a Frenchman at close quarters and was the first to seize
the surrendering French officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions re-formed, and the French
who had nearly cut our left flank in half were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join up, and
the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and
Major Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the
retreating companies pass by them, when a soldier came up
and took hold of the commander’s stirrup, almost leaning
against him. The man was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was bandaged,
and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung.
He had an officer’s sword in his hand. The soldier was pale,
his blue eyes looked impudently into the commander’s face,
and his lips were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions to Major Ekonomov, he could
not help taking notice of the soldier.
‘Your excellency, here are two trophies,’ said Dolokhov,
pointing to the French sword and pouch. ‘I have taken an
officer prisoner. I stopped the company.’ Dolokhov breathed
heavily from weariness and spoke in abrupt sentences. ‘The
whole company can bear witness. I beg you will remember
this, your excellency!’
‘All right, all right,’ replied the commander, and turned
to Major Ekonomov.
But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood
congealed on his hair.
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‘A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember,
your excellency!’
Tushin’s battery had been forgotten and only at the very
end of the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the center, send his orderly staff officer, and later
Prince Andrew also, to order the battery to retire as quickly
as possible. When the supports attached to Tushin’s battery
had been moved away in the middle of the action by someone’s order, the battery had continued firing and was only
not captured by the French because the enemy could not
surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue
firing from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary,
the energetic action of that battery led the French to suppose
that herein the centerthe main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on
each occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from the
four isolated guns on the hillock.
Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had
succeeded in setting fire to Schon Grabern.
‘Look at them scurrying! It’s burning! Just see the smoke!
Fine! Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!’ exclaimed the
artillerymen, brightening up.
All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired
in the direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other
on, the soldiers cried at each shot: ‘Fine! That’s good! Look
at it... Grand!’ The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly
spreading. The French columns that had advanced beyond
the village went back; but as though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village


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and began firing them at Tushin’s battery.
In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck
in successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen
only noticed this battery when two balls, and then four
more, fell among our guns, one knocking over two horses
and another tearing off a munition-wagon driver’s leg. Their
spirits once roused were, however, not diminished, but
only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried
away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun
battery. Tushin’s companion officer had been killed at the
beginning of the engagement and within an hour seventeen
of the forty men of the guns’ crews had been disabled, but
the artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice
they noticed the French appearing below them, and then
they fired grapeshot at them.
Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling
his orderly to ‘refill my pipe for that one!’ and then, scattering sparks from it, ran forward shading his eyes with his
small hand to look at the French.
‘Smack at ‘em, lads!’ he kept saying, seizing the guns by
the wheels and working the screws himself.
Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports
which always made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe
from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now aiming, now
counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing
dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and
shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute.
His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man
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was killed or wounded did he frown and turn away from the
sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always the case,
hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers, for
the most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in
an artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice
as broad as their officerall looked at their commander like
children in an embarrassing situation, and the expression
on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.
Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest
unpleasant sense of fear, and the thought that he might be
killed or badly wounded never occurred to him. On the
contrary, he became more and more elated. It seemed to
him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he
had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the
corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he thought of everything, considered
everything, and did everything the best of officers could do
in his position, he was in a state akin to feverish delirium or
drunkenness.
From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him,
the whistle and thud of the enemy’s cannon balls, from the
flushed and perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the
guns, from the sight of the blood of men and horses, from
the little puffs of smoke on the enemy’s side (always followed
by a ball flying past and striking the earth, a man, a gun, a
horse), from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of
his own had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy’s guns were in his


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fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs were
blown by an invisible smoker.
‘There... he’s puffing again,’ muttered Tushin to himself,
as a small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak
to the left by the wind.
‘Now look out for the ball... we’ll throw it back.’
‘What do you want, your honor?’ asked an artilleryman,
standing close by, who heard him muttering.
‘Nothing... only a shell...’ he answered.
‘Come along, our Matvevna!’ he said to himself. ‘Matvevna”* was the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the
battery, which was large and of an old pattern. The French
swarming round their guns seemed to him like ants. In that
world, the handsome drunkard Number One of the second
gun’s crew was ‘uncle”; Tushin looked at him more often
than at anyone else and took delight in his every movement.
The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone’s breathing. He
listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.
*Daughter of Matthew.
‘Ah! Breathing again, breathing!’ he muttered to himself.
He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful
man who was throwing cannon balls at the French with
both hands.
‘Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don’t let me down!’
he was saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange,
unfamiliar voice called above his head: ‘Captain Tushin!
Captain!’
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Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer
who had turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was
shouting in a gasping voice:
‘Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat,
and you..’
‘Why are they down on me?’ thought Tushin, looking in
alarm at his superior.
‘I... don’t...’ he muttered, holding up two fingers to his
cap. ‘I..’
But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say.
A cannon ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and
bend over his horse. He paused, and just as he was about to
say something more, another ball stopped him. He turned
his horse and galloped off.
‘Retire! All to retire!’ he shouted from a distance.
The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same order.
It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding
up to the space where Tushin’s guns were stationed was an
unharnessed horse with a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses. Blood was gushing from
its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay several dead
men. One ball after another passed over as he approached
and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the
mere thought of being afraid roused him again. ‘I cannot
be afraid,’ thought he, and dismounted slowly among the
guns. He delivered the order and did not leave the battery.
He decided to have the guns removed from their positions
and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Tushin, step

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ping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the
French, he attended to the removal of the guns.
‘A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off,’
said an artilleryman to Prince Andrew. ‘Not like your honor!’
Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both
so busy as to seem not to notice one another. When having
limbered up the only two cannon that remained uninjured
out of the four, they began moving down the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince Andrew
rode up to Tushin.
‘Well, till we meet again...’ he said, holding out his hand
to Tushin.
‘Good-by, my dear fellow,’ said Tushin. ‘Dear soul!
Good-by, my dear fellow!’ and for some unknown reason
tears suddenly filled his eyes.

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Chapter XXI
The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the
powder smoke, hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing dark and the glow of two conflagrations
was the more conspicuous. The cannonade was dying down,
but the rattle of musketry behind and on the right sounded
oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns, continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was
out of range of fire and had descended into the dip, he was
met by some of the staff, among them the staff officer and
Zherkov, who had been twice sent to Tushin’s battery but
had never reached it. Interrupting one another, they all
gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,
silentlyfearing to speak because at every word he felt ready
to weep without knowing whyrode behind on his artillery nag. Though the orders were to abandon the wounded,
many of them dragged themselves after troops and begged
for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty infantry officer
who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin’s wattle
shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on ‘Matvevna’s’
carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked
for a seat.
‘Captain, for God’s sake! I’ve hurt my arm,’ he said tim

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idly. ‘For God’s sake... I can’t walk. For God’s sake!’
It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked
for a lift and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous
voice.
‘Tell them to give me a seat, for God’s sake!’
‘Give him a seat,’ said Tushin. ‘Lay a cloak for him to sit
on, lad,’ he said, addressing his favorite soldier. ‘And where
is the wounded officer?’
‘He has been set down. He died,’ replied someone.
‘Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out
the cloak, Antonov.’
The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the
other; he was pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly.
He was placed on ‘Matvevna,’ the gun from which they had
removed the dead officer. The cloak they spread under him
was wet with blood which stained his breeches and arm.
‘What, are you wounded, my lad?’ said Tushin, approaching the gun on which Rostov sat.
‘No, it’s a sprain.’
‘Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?’ inquired
Tushin.
‘It was the officer, your honor, stained it,’ answered the
artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as
if apologizing for the state of his gun.
It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise
aided by the infantry, and having reached the village of
Gruntersdorf they halted. It had grown so dark that one
could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces off, and the
firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
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right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot
gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and
was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses.
They all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin’s guns
could not move, and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they awaited their fate. The
firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly, streamed out
of a side street.
‘Not hurt, Petrov?’ asked one.
‘We’ve given it ‘em hot, mate! They won’t make another
push now,’ said another.
‘You couldn’t see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows! Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn’t there
something to drink?’
The French had been repulsed for the last time. And
again and again in the complete darkness Tushin’s guns
moved forward, surrounded by the humming infantry as
by a frame.
In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen
river was flowing always in one direction, humming with
whispers and talk and the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid
the general rumble, the groans and voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the
darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army
was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into
one with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on a white
horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing:
‘What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank


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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


357

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


359

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 and scorching the flesh of his
sprained arm and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed
his eyes.
For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things appeared to him in a dream: his mother and
her large white hand, Sonya’s thin little shoulders, Natasha’s
eyes and laughter, Denisov with his voice and mustache, and
Telyanin and all that affair with Telyanin and Bogdanich.
That affair was the same thing as this soldier with the harsh
voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that were so ago360

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nizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and always
dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them,
but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a
hair’s breadth. It would not acheit would be wellif only they
did not pull it, but it was immpossible to get rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of
night hung less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal.
Flakes of falling snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin
had not returned, the doctor had not come. He was alone
now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at the other
side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.
‘Nobody wants me!’ thought Rostov. ‘There is no one to
help me or pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy,
and loved.’ He sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
‘Eh, is anything hurting you?’ asked the soldier, shaking
his shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he
gave a grunt and added: ‘What a lot of men have been crippled todayfrightful!’
Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the
snowflakes fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm, bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his
quickly gliding sleigh, his healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. ‘And why did I come here?’ he
wondered.
Next day the French army did not renew their attack,
and the remnant of Bagration’s detachment was reunited to
Kutuzov’s army.



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BOOK THREE: 1805

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Chapter I
Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out
his plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his
own advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had
got on and to whom getting on had become a habit. Schemes
and devices for which he never rightly accounted to himself,
but which formed the whole interest of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had
not merely one or two in his head but dozens, some only
beginning to form themselves, some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He did not, for
instance, say to himself: ‘This man now has influence, I must
gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain
a special grant.’ Nor did he say to himself: ‘Pierre is a rich
man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and lend me
the forty thousand rubles I need.’ But when he came across
came across a man of position his instinct immediately told
him that this man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili took the first opportunity to gain
his confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him, and
finally make his request.
He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him
an appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at
that time conferred the status of Councilor of State, and in

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sisted on the young man accompanying him to Petersburg
and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right
thing, Prince Vasili did everything to get Pierre to marry
his daughter. Had he thought out his plans beforehand he
could not have been so natural and shown such unaffected
familiarity in intercourse with everybody both above and
below him in social standing. Something always drew him
toward those richer and more powerful than himself and
he had rare skill in seizing the most opportune moment for
making use of people.
Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and
a rich man, felt himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and preoccupied that only in bed
was he able to be by himself. He had to sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of which was
not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not even wish to know of his existence but would
now have been offended and grieved had he chosen not to
see them. These different peoplebusinessmen, relations, and
acquaintances alikewere all disposed to treat the young heir
in the most friendly and flattering manner: they were all
evidently firmly convinced of Pierre’s noble qualities. He
was always hearing such words as: ‘With your remarkable
kindness,’ or, ‘With your excellent heart,’ ‘You are yourself
so honorable Count,’ or, ‘Were he as clever as you,’ and so
on, till he began sincerely to believe in his own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so as
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in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that
he really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who
had formerly been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle and affectionate. The angry
eldest princess, with the long waist and hair plastered down
like a doll’s, had come into Pierre’s room after the funeral.
With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him she
was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did
not now feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for permission, after the blow she had received,
to remain for a few weeks longer in the house she so loved
and where she had sacrificed so much. She could not refrain
from weeping at these words. Touched that this statuesque
princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged
her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day
the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began
knitting a striped scarf for him.
‘Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put
up with a great deal from the deceased,’ said Prince Vasili to
him, handing him a deed to sign for the princess’ benefit.
Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw this bonea bill for thirty thousand rublesto
the poor princess that it might not occur to her to speak of
his share in the affair of the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed
the deed and after that the princess grew still kinder. The
younger sisters also became affectionate to him, especially
the youngest, the pretty one with the mole, who often made
him feel confused by her smiles and her own confusion
when meeting him.


365

It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like
him, and it would have seemed so unnatural had anyone
disliked him, that he could not but believe in the sincerity
of those around him. Besides, he had no time to ask himself
whether these people were sincere or not. He was always
busy and always felt in a state of mild and cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some important
and general movement; that something was constantly
expected of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve
and disappoint many people, but if he did this and that, all
would be well; and he did what was demanded of him, but
still that happy result always remained in the future.
More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession
of Pierre’s affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days.
From the death of Count Bezukhov he did not let go his
hold of the lad. He had the air of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for pity’s
sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son of
his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth,
to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the
few days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell
him what ought to be done in a tone of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding every time: ‘You know I am
overwhelmed with business and it is purely out of charity
that I trouble myself about you, and you also know quite
well that what I propose is the only thing possible.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last,’ said
Prince Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre’s
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elbow, speaking as if he were saying something which had
long since been agreed upon and could not now be altered.
‘We start tomorrow and I’m giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important business here is
now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. Here is
something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him
for you, and you have been entered in the diplomatic corps
and made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The diplomatic
career now lies open before you.’
Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with
which these words were pronounced, Pierre, who had so
long been considering his career, wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili interrupted him in the special
deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases when special
persuasion was needed.
‘Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my
conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No one
has ever complained yet of being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you could throw it up tomorrow. But you
will see everything for yourself when you get to Petersburg.
It is high time for you to get away from these terrible recollections.’ Prince Vasili sighed. ‘Yes, yes, my boy. And my
valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly forgetting,’
he added. ‘You know, mon cher, your father and I had some
accounts to settle, so I have received what was due from the
Ryazan estate and will keep it; you won’t require it. We’ll go
into the accounts later.’
By ‘what was due from the Ryazan estate’ Prince Vasi

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li meant several thousand rubles quitrent received from
Pierre’s peasants, which the prince had retained for himself.
In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of gentleness and affection. He could not refuse
the post, or rather the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince
Vasili had procured for him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous that, even
more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always in front
of him but never attained.
Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no
longer in Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front;
Dolokhov had been reduced to the ranks; Anatole was
in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend
his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his
mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and
whom he respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili’s house
in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.
Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre
the change of attitude toward him that had taken place in
society.
Formerly in Anna Pavlovna’s presence, Pierre had always felt that what he was saying was out of place, tactless
and unsuitable, that remarks which seemed to him clever
while they formed in his mind became foolish as soon as
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he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte’s stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre
said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so,
he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.
In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received
one of Anna Pavlovna’s usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: ‘You will find the beautiful Helene
here, whom it is always delightful to see.’
When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time
that some link which other people recognized had grown
up between himself and Helene, and that thought both
alarmed him, as if some obligation were being imposed on
him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an entertaining supposition.
Anna Pavlovna’s ‘At Home’ was like the former one, only
the novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very
latest details of the Emperor Alexander’s visit to Potsdam,
and of how the two august friends had pledged themselves
in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause of justice
against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently relating
to the young man’s recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure
Pierre that he was greatly afflicted by the death of the father
he had hardly known), and her melancholy was just like the
august melancholy she showed at the mention of her most
august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre felt


369

flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different
groups in her drawing room with her habitual skill. The
large group, in which were Prince Vasili and the generals,
had the benefit of the diplomat. Another group was at the
tea table. Pierre wished to join the former, but Anna Pavlovnawho was in the excited condition of a commander on a
battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in actionseeing Pierre,
touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:
‘Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening.’ (She glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) ‘My dear
Helene, be charitable to my poor aunt who adores you. Go
and keep her company for ten minutes. And that it will not
be too dull, here is the dear count who will not refuse to accompany you.’
The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained
Pierre, looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
‘Isn’t she exquisite?’ she said to Pierre, pointing to the
stately beauty as she glided away. ‘And how she carries herself! For so young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection
of manner! It comes from her heart. Happy the man who
wins her! With her the least worldly of men would occupy
a most brilliant position in society. Don’t you think so? I
only wanted to know your opinion,’ and Anna Pavlovna let
Pierre go.
Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene’s
perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was
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lently dignified in society.
The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene
and inclined rather to show her fear of Anna Pavlovna.
She looked at her niece, as if inquiring what she was to do
with these people. On leaving them, Anna Pavlovna again
touched Pierre’s sleeve, saying: ‘I hope you won’t say that it
is dull in my house again,’ and she glanced at Helene.
Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not
admit the possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt coughed, swallowed, and said in French
that she was very pleased to see Helene, then she turned to
Pierre with the same words of welcome and the same look.
In the middle of a dull and halting conversation, Helene
turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she
gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it
had so little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to
it. The aunt was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes
that had belonged to Pierre’s father, Count Bezukhov, and
showed them her own box. Princess Helene asked to see the
portrait of the aunt’s husband on the box lid.
‘That is probably the work of Vinesse,’ said Pierre, mentioning a celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the
table to take the snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.
He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed
him the snuffbox, passing it across Helene’s back. Helene
stooped forward to make room, and looked round with a
smile. She was, as always at evening parties, wearing a dress


371

such as was then fashionable, cut very low at front and back.
Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre,
was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but
perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near
to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to
have touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her
body, the scent of perfume, and the creaking of her corset
as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty forming
a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of her
body only covered by her garments. And having once seen
this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once seen through.
‘So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?’
Helene seemed to say. ‘You had not noticed that I am a
woman? Yes, I am a woman who may belong to anyoneto you too,’ said her glance. And at that moment Pierre felt
that Helene not only could, but must, be his wife, and that it
could not be otherwise.
He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been
standing at the altar with her. How and when this would be
he did not know, he did not even know if it would be a good
thing (he even felt, he knew not why, that it would be a bad
thing), but he knew it would happen.
Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished
once more to see her as a distant beauty far removed from
him, as he had seen her every day until then, but he could
no longer do it. He could not, any more than a man who
has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the mist
and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he
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has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly
close to him. She already had power over him, and between
them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of
his own will.
‘Well, I will leave you in your little corner,’ came Anna
Pavlovna’s voice, ‘I see you are all right there.’
And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he
had done anything reprehensible, looked round with a
blush. It seemed to him that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna
Pavlovna said to him: ‘I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?’
This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and Pierre, without knowing why, was having his
enormous Petersburg house done up.
‘That’s a good thing, but don’t move from Prince Vasili’s.
It is good to have a friend like the prince,’ she said, smiling
at Prince Vasili. ‘I know something about that. Don’t I? And
you are still so young. You need advice. Don’t be angry with
me for exercising an old woman’s privilege.’
She paused, as women always do, expecting something
after they have mentioned their age. ‘If you marry it will be
a different thing,’ she continued, uniting them both in one
glance. Pierre did not look at Helene nor she at him. But she
was just as terribly close to him. He muttered something
and colored.
When he got home he could not sleep for a long time
for thinking of what had happened. What had happened?


373

Nothing. He had merely understood that the woman he had
known as a child, of whom when her beauty was mentioned
he had said absent-mindedly: ‘Yes, she’s good looking,’ he
had understood that this woman might belong to him.
‘But she’s stupid. I have myself said she is stupid,’ he
thought. ‘There is something nasty, something wrong, in
the feeling she excites in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her and she with him, that there
was quite a scandal and that that’s why he was sent away.
Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her father... It’s
bad....’ he reflected, but while he was thinking this (the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and
was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up,
and while thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she would love him
become quite different, and how all he had thought and
heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not as
the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body
only veiled by its gray dress. ‘But no! Why did this thought
never occur to me before?’ and again he told himself that
it was impossible, that there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him dishonorable, in this marriage.
He recalled her former words and looks and the words and
looks of those who had seen them together. He recalled
Anna Pavlovna’s words and looks when she spoke to him
about his house, recalled thousands of such hints from
Prince Vasili and others, and was seized by terror lest he
had already, in some way, bound himself to do something
that was evidently wrong and that he ought not to do. But at
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the very time he was expressing this conviction to himself,
in another part of his mind her image rose in all its womanly beauty.



375

Chapter II
In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection in four different provinces. He had arranged this
for himself so as to visit his neglected estates at the same
time and pick up his son Anatole where his regiment was
stationed, and take him to visit Prince Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the daughter
of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters
with Pierre, who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at
home, that is, in Prince Vasili’s house where he was staying,
and had been absurd, excited, and foolish in Helene’s presence (as a lover should be), but had not yet proposed to her.
‘This is all very fine, but things must be settled,’ said
Prince Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that Pierre who was under such obligations to
him (“But never mind that’) was not behaving very well
in this matter. ‘Youth, frivolity... well, God be with him,’
thought he, relishing his own goodness of heart, ‘but it must
be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow will be Lelya’s
name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he does
not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affairyes, my affair. I am her father.’
Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna’s ‘At Home’ and after the
sleepless night when he had decided that to marry Helene
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would be a calamity and that he ought to avoid her and go
away, Pierre, despite that decision, had not left Prince Vasili’s and felt with terror that in people’s eyes he was every day
more and more connected with her, that it was impossible
for him to return to his former conception of her, that he
could not break away from her, and that though it would be
a terrible thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He
might perhaps have been able to free himself but that Prince
Vasili (who had rarely before given receptions) now hardly
let a day go by without having an evening party at which
Pierre had to be present unless he wished to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone’s expectation. Prince
Vasili, in the rare moments when he was at home, would
take Pierre’s hand in passing and draw it downwards, or
absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek
for Pierre to kiss and would say: ‘Till tomorrow,’ or, ‘Be in
to dinner or I shall not see you,’ or, ‘I am staying in for your
sake,’ and so on. And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed
in (as he said) for Pierre’s sake, hardly exchanged a couple
of words with him, Pierre felt unable to disappoint him.
Every day he said to himself one and the same thing: ‘It is
time I understood her and made up my mind what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No,
she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl,’ he sometimes said
to himself ‘she never makes a mistake, never says anything
stupid. She says little, but what she does say is always clear
and simple, so she is not stupid. She never was abashed and
is not abashed now, so she cannot be a bad woman!’ He had
often begun to make reflections or think aloud in her com

377

pany, and she had always answered him either by a brief but
appropriate remarkshowing that it did not interest heror
by a silent look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in
regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with
that smile.
She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding
smile meant for him alone, in which there was something
more significant than in the general smile that usually
brightened her face. Pierre knew that everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, and he
knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an
incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that
dreadful step. A thousand times during that month and a
half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer to that
dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: ‘What am I doing? I
need resolution. Can it be that I have none?’
He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that
in this matter he lacked that strength of will which he had
known in himself and really possessed. Pierre was one of
those who are only strong when they feel themselves quite
innocent, and since that day when he was overpowered by
a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at Anna
Pavlovna’s, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire paralyzed his will.
On Helene’s name day, a small party of just their own
peopleas his wife saidmet for supper at Prince Vasili’s. All
these friends and relations had been given to understand
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ning. The visitors were seated at supper. Princess Kuragina,
a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat
the more important guestsan old general and his wife, and
Anna Pavlovna Scherer. At the other end sat the younger
and less important guests, and there too sat the members
of the family, and Pierre and Helene, side by side. Prince
Vasili was not having any supper: he went round the table
in a merry mood, sitting down now by one, now by another,
of the guests. To each of them he made some careless and
agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened the whole party.
The wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal
gleamed, so did the ladies’ toilets and the gold and silver of
the men’s epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved round
the table, the clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled
with the animated hum of several conversations. At one
end of the table, the old chamberlain was heard assuring
an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at which she
laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center
of the table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody’s attention.
With a facetious smile on his face, he was telling the ladies
about last Wednesday’s meeting of the Imperial Council, at
which Sergey Kuzmich Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had received and read the then
famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander from the army
to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was
receiving from all sides declarations of the people’s loyalty,


379

that the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular
pleasure, and that he was proud to be at the head of such a
nation and would endeavor to be worthy of it. This rescript
began with the words: ‘Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me,’ etc.
‘Well, and so he never got farther than: ‘Sergey Kuzmich’?’ asked one of the ladies.
‘Exactly, not a hair’s breadth farther,’ answered Prince
Vasili, laughing, ‘‘Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From
all sides... Sergey Kuzmich...’ Poor Vyazmitinov could not
get any farther! He began the rescript again and again, but
as soon as he uttered ‘Sergey’ he sobbed, ‘Kuz-mi-ch,’ tears,
and ‘From all sides’ was smothered in sobs and he could get
no farther. And again his handkerchief, and again: ‘Sergey
Kuzmich, From all sides,’... and tears, till at last somebody
else was asked to read it.’
‘Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears,’ someone repeated laughing.
‘Don’t be unkind,’ cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of
the table holding up a threatening finger. ‘He is such a worthy and excellent man, our dear Vyazmitinov...’
Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in
high spirits and under the influence of a variety of exciting
sensations. Only Pierre and Helene sat silently side by side
almost at the bottom of the table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing to do with
Sergey Kuzmicha smile of bashfulness at their own feelings.
But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much
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as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless
and unobservant as they seemed of them, one could feel by
the occasional glances they gave that the story about Sergey
Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were all a pretense,
and that the whole attention of that company was directed
toPierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing
of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced
toward his daughter, and while he laughed the expression
on his face clearly said: ‘Yes... it’s getting on, it will all be
settled today.’ Anna Pavlovna threatened him on behalf of
‘our dear Vyazmitinov,’ and in her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read a congratulation
on his future son-in-law and on his daughter’s happiness.
The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to
the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh seemed to say: ‘Yes, there’s nothing left for
you and me but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the
time has come for these young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy.’ ‘And what nonsense all this is that I am
saying!’ thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces
of the lovers. ‘That’s happiness!’
Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests
uniting that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy and handsome young man and woman
for one another. And this human feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their affected chatter. Jests
fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation was
evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen


381

waiting at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant
face and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of
Pierre. It seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.
Pierre felt that he the center of it all, and this both pleased
and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed
in some occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand
anything clearly. Only now and then detached ideas and
impressions from the world of reality shot unexpectedly
through his mind.
‘So it is all finished!’ he thought. ‘And how has it all happened? How quickly! Now I know that not because of her
alone, nor of myself alone, but because of everyone, it must
inevitably come about. They are all expecting it, they are so
sure that it will happen that I cannot, I cannot, disappoint
them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it will certainly
happen!’ thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling shoulders close to his eyes.
Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what.
He felt it awkward to attract everyone’s attention and to
be considered a lucky man and, with his plain face, to be
looked on as a sort of Paris possessed of a Helen. ‘But no
doubt it always is and must be so!’ he consoled himself. ‘And
besides, what have I done to bring it about? How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then there
was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I
played cards with her and picked up her reticule and drove
out with her. How did it begin, when did it all come about?’
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And here he was sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing,
hearing, feeling her nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him
that it was not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and
that that was why they all looked so at him, and flattered
by this general admiration he would expand his chest, raise
his head, and rejoice at his good fortune. Suddenly he heard
a familiar voice repeating something to him a second time.
But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what
was said.
‘I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski,’
repeated Prince Vasili a third time. ‘How absent-minded
you are, my dear fellow.’
Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone
was smiling at him and Helene. ‘Well, what of it, if you all
know it?’ thought Pierre. ‘What of it? It’s the truth!’ and he
himself smiled his gentle childlike smile, and Helene smiled
too.
‘When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?’ repeated Prince Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in
order to settle a dispute.
‘How can one talk or think of such trifles?’ thought
Pierre.
‘Yes, from Olmutz,’ he answered, with a sigh.
After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others
into the drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some
without taking leave of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important occupation, came up to her for
a moment and made haste to go away, refusing to let her see


383

them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful silence as
he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre’s happiness. The
old general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his
leg was. ‘Oh, the old fool,’ he thought. ‘That Princess Helene
will be beautiful still when she’s fifty.’
‘I think I may congratulate you,’ whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old princess, kissing her soundly. ‘If I hadn’t
this headache I’d have stayed longer.’
The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her daughter’s happiness.
While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained
for a long time alone with Helene in the little drawing room
where they were sitting. He had often before, during the
last six weeks, remained alone with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was inevitable, but he
could not make up his mind to take the final step. He felt
ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else’s place
here beside Helene. ‘This happiness is not for you,’ some inner voice whispered to him. ‘This happiness is for those who
have not in them what there is in you.’
But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her
whether she was satisfied with the party. She replied in her
usual simple manner that this name day of hers had been
one of the pleasantest she had ever had.
Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were
sitting in the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to
Pierre with languid footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was
getting late. Prince Vasili gave him a look of stern inqui384

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ry, as though what Pierre had just said was so strange that
one could not take it in. But then the expression of severity
changed, and he drew Pierre’s hand downwards, made him
sit down, and smiled affectionately.
‘Well, Lelya?’ he asked, turning instantly to his daughter
and addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to parents who have petted their children
from babyhood, but which Prince Vasili had only acquired
by imitating other parents.
And he again turned to Pierre.
‘Sergey KuzmichFrom all sides-’ he said, unbuttoning
the top button of his waistcoat.
Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was
not the story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince
Vasili just then, and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this.
He suddenly muttered something and went away. It seemed
to Pierre that even the prince was disconcerted. The sight
of the discomposure of that old man of the world touched
Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: ‘Well, it is your own fault.’
‘The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!’ thought
Pierre, and he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey Kuzmich, asking what the point of the
story was as he had not heard it properly. Helene answered
with a smile that she too had missed it.
When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the
princess, his wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly
lady about Pierre.
‘Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my


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dear..’
‘Marriages are made in heaven,’ replied the elderly lady.
Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies,
and sat down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed
his eyes and seemed to be dozing. His head sank forward
and then he roused himself.
‘Aline,’ he said to his wife, ‘go and see what they are
about.’
The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing
room. Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as before.
‘Still the same,’ she said to her husband.
Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks
quivered and his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking himself, he rose, threw
back his head, and with resolute steps went past the ladies
into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant
that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it.
‘Thank God!’ said Prince Vasili. ‘My wife has told me
everything!(He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)‘My dear boy... Lelya... I am very
pleased.’ (His voice trembled.) ‘I loved your father... and she
will make you a good wife... God bless you!..’
He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and
kissed him with his malodorous mouth. Tears actually
moistened his cheeks.
‘Princess, come here!’ he shouted.
The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady
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was using her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he
kissed the beautiful Helene’s hand several times. After a
while they were left alone again.
‘All this had to be and could not be otherwise,’ thought
Pierre, ‘so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is
good because it’s definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt.’ Pierre held the hand of his betrothed in silence,
looking at her beautiful bosom as it rose and fell.
‘Helene!’ he said aloud and paused.
‘Something special is always said in such cases,’ he
thought, but could not remember what it was that people
say. He looked at her face. She drew nearer to him. Her face
flushed.
‘Oh, take those off... those...’ she said, pointing to his
spectacles.
Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange
look eyes have from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and inquiring look. He was
about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his lips
and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its
altered, unpleasantly excited expression.
‘It is too late now, it’s done; besides I love her,’ thought
Pierre.
‘Je vous aime!’* he said, remembering what has to be said
at such moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt
ashamed of himself.
*”I love you.’
Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count


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Bezukhov’s large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the
happy possessor, as people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.

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Chapter III
Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from
Prince Vasili in November, 1805, announcing that he and
his son would be paying him a visit. ‘I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I shall think nothing of an
extra seventy miles to come and see you at the same time,
my honored benefactor,’ wrote Prince Vasili. ‘My son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope
you will allow him personally to express the deep respect
that, emulating his father, he feels for you.’
‘It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out,
suitors are coming to us of their own accord,’ incautiously
remarked the little princess on hearing the news.
Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili’s servants came
one evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived
next day.
Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince
Vasili’s character, but more so recently, since in the new
reigns of Paul and Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high
position and honors. And now, from the hints contained in
his letter and given by the little princess, he saw which way
the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into a
feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he
mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili’s arrival, Prince


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Bolkonski was particularly discontented and out of temper.
Whether he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was
coming, or whether his being in a bad temper made him
specially annoyed at Prince Vasili’s visit, he was in a bad
temper, and in the morning Tikhon had already advised the
architect not to go the prince with his report.
‘Do you hear how he’s walking?’ said Tikhon, drawing the
architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps.
‘Stepping flat on his heelswe know what that means...’
However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat
with a sable collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It
had snowed the day before and the path to the hothouse,
along which the prince was in the habit of walking, had
been swept: the marks of the broom were still visible in the
snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the soft
snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince
went through the conservatories, the serfs’ quarters, and
the outbuildings, frowning and silent.
‘Can a sleigh pass?’ he asked his overseer, a venerable
man, resembling his master in manners and looks, who was
accompanying him back to the house.
‘The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your
honor.’
The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch.
‘God be thanked,’ thought the overseer, ‘the storm has
blown over!’
‘It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,’ he added. ‘I heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit
your honor.’
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The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his
eyes on him, frowning.
‘What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?’
he said in his shrill, harsh voice. ‘The road is not swept for
the princess my daughter, but for a minister! For me, there
are no ministers!’
‘Your honor, I thought..’
‘You thought!’ shouted the prince, his words coming
more and more rapidly and indistinctly. ‘You thought!...
Rascals! Blackgaurds!... I’ll teach you to think!’ and lifting his stick he swung it and would have hit Alpatych, the
overseer, had not the latter instinctively avoided the blow.
‘Thought... Blackguards...’ shouted the prince rapidly.
But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity
in avoiding the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his
bald head resignedly before him, or perhaps for that very
reason, the prince, though he continued to shout: ‘Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!’ did not lift his
stick again but hurried into the house.
Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew that the prince was in a bad humor, stood
awaiting him; Mademoiselle Bourienne with a radiant face
that said: ‘I know nothing, I am the same as usual,’ and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast eyes. What
she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but
could not. She thought: ‘If I seem not to notice he will think
that I do not sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of
spirits myself, he will say (as he has done before) that I’m in


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the dumps.’
The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and
snorted.
‘Fool... or dummy!’ he muttered.
‘And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling tales,’
he thoughtreferring to the little princess who was not in the
dining room.
‘Where is the princess?’ he asked. ‘Hiding?’
‘She is not very well,’ answered Mademoiselle Bourienne
with a bright smile, ‘so she won’t come down. It is natural
in her state.’
‘Hm! Hm!’ muttered the prince, sitting down.
His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to
a spot he flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a
footman. The little princess was not unwell, but had such
an overpowering fear of the prince that, hearing he was in a
bad humor, she had decided not to appear.
‘I am afraid for the baby,’ she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne: ‘Heaven knows what a fright might do.’
In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince
which she did not realize because the fear was so much the
stronger feeling. The prince reciprocated this antipathy,
but it was overpowered by his contempt for her. When the
little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald Hills,
she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent
whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her about the old prince and criticized him.
‘So we are to have visitors, mon prince?’ remarked Ma392

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demoiselle Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her
rosy fingers. ‘His Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his
son, I understand?’ she said inquiringly.
‘Hm!his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the service,’ said the prince disdainfully. ‘Why his
son is coming I don’t understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don’t want him.’ (He
looked at his blushing daughter.) ‘Are you unwell today? Eh?
Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that idiot Alpatych called him
this morning?’
‘No, mon pere.’
Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice of a subject, she did not stop talking,
but chattered about the conservatories and the beauty of a
flower that had just opened, and after the soup the prince
became more genial.
After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little
princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha,
her maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-law.
She was much altered. She was now plain rather than
pretty. Her cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her
eyes drawn down.
‘Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,’ she said in reply to the
prince’s question as to how she felt.
‘Do you want anything?’
‘No, merci, mon pere.’
‘Well, all right, all right.’
He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood with bowed head.


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‘Has the snow been shoveled back?’
‘Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake... It
was only my stupidity.’
‘All right, all right,’ interrupted the prince, and laughing
his unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to
kiss, and then proceeded to his study.
Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the
avenue by coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts,
dragged his sleighs up to one of the lodges over the road
purposely laden with snow.
Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned
to them.
Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms
akimbo before a table on a corner of which he smilingly and
absent-mindedly fixed his large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round of amusement
which someone for some reason had to provide for him.
And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich
and ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought,
turn out very well and amusingly. ‘And why not marry her if
she really has so much money? That never does any harm,’
thought Anatole.
He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance
which had become habitual to him and, his handsome head
held high, entered his father’s room with the good-humored
and victorious air natural to him. Prince Vasili’s two valets
were busy dressing him, and he looked round with much
animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter entered, as if to say: ‘Yes, that’s how I want you to look.’
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‘I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?’ Anatole
asked, as if continuing a conversation the subject of which
had often been mentioned during the journey.
‘Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful
and cautious with the old prince.’
‘If he starts a row I’ll go away,’ said Prince Anatole. ‘I
can’t bear those old men! Eh?’
‘Remember, for you everything depends on this.’
In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants’ rooms that the minister and his son had arrived, but
the appearance of both had been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room, vainly trying to
master her agitation.
‘Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can
never happen!’ she said, looking at herself in the glass. ‘How
shall I enter the drawing room? Even if I like him I can’t
now be myself with him.’ The mere thought of her father’s
look filled her with terror. The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received from Masha, the lady’s
maid, the necessary report of how handsome the minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and
with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs
while the son had followed him like an eagle, three steps at
a time. Having received this information, the little princess
and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose chattering voices had
reached her from the corridor, went into Princess Mary’s
room.
‘You know they’ve come, Marie?’ said the little princess,
waddling in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.


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She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore
in the morning, but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair
was carefully done and her face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded outlines. Dressed
as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still more
noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
toilet which rendered her fresh and prettyface yet more attractive.
‘What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?’ she began. ‘They’ll be announcing that the gentlemen
are in the drawing room and we shall have to go down, and
you have not smartened yourself up at all!’
The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of
how Princess Mary should be dressed. Princess Mary’s selfesteem was wounded by the fact that the arrival of a suitor
agitated her, and still more so by both her companions’ not
having the least conception that it could be otherwise. To tell
them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them would be
to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress
her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed,
her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face,
and it took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so
often wore, as she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women quite sincerely tried to
make her look pretty. She was so plain that neither of them
could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing her with
perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction
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women have that dress can make a face pretty.
‘No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,’ said Lise,
looking sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance.
‘You have a maroon dress, have it fetched. Really! You know
the fate of your whole life may be at stake. But this one is too
light, it’s not becoming!’
It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of
Princess Mary that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little princess felt this; they still
thought that if a blue ribbon were placed in the hair, the
hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on the
best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot
that the frightened face and the figure could not be altered,
and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that face, it would still remain piteous and plain.
After two or three changes to which Princess Mary meekly
submitted, just as her hair had been arranged on the top of
her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her looks)
and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf,
the little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting
a fold of the dress with her little hand, now arranging the
scarf and looking at her with her head bent first on one side
and then on the other.
‘No, it will not do,’ she said decidedly, clasping her hands.
‘No, Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you
in your little gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my
sake. Katie,’ she said to the maid, ‘bring the princess her
gray dress, and you’ll see, Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I
shall arrange it,’ she added, smiling with a foretaste of ar

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tistic pleasure.
But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess
Mary remained sitting motionless before the glass, looking
at her face, and saw in the mirror her eyes full of tears and
her mouth quivering, ready to burst into sobs.
‘Come, dear princess,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne,
‘just one more little effort.’
The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came
up to Princess Mary.
‘Well, now we’ll arrange something quite simple and becoming,’ she said.
The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s, and
Katie’s, who was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping of birds.
‘No, leave me alone,’ said Princess Mary.
Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping
of the birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts,
gazing shiningly and imploringly at them, and understood
that it was useless and even cruel to insist.
‘At least, change your coiffure,’ said the little princess.
‘Didn’t I tell you,’ she went on, turning reproachfully to Mademoiselle Bourienne, ‘Mary’s is a face which such a coiffure
does not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it.’
‘Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the
same to me,’ answered a voice struggling with tears.
Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to
own to themselves that Princess Mary in this guise looked
very plain, worse than usual, but it was too late. She was
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looking at them with an expression they both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess
Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her face, she
became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.
‘You will change it, won’t you?’ said Lise. And as Princess
Mary gave no answer, she left the room.
Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with
Lise’s request, she not only left her hair as it was, but did not
even look in her glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she
sat with downcast eyes and pondered. A husband, a man, a
strong dominant and strangely attractive being rose in her
imagination, and carried her into a totally different happy
world of his own. She fancied a child, her ownsuch as she
had seen the day before in the arms of her nurse’s daughterat her own breast, the husband standing by and gazing
tenderly at her and the child. ‘But no, it is impossible, I am
too ugly,’ she thought.
‘Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment,’
came the maid’s voice at the door.
She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been
thinking, and before going down she went into the room
where the icons hung and, her eyes fixed on the dark face
of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a lamp, she stood before
it with folded hands for a few moments. A painful doubt
filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a
man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary
dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest,


399

most deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more
she tried to hide this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. ‘O God,’ she said, ‘how am I to
stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil? How am
I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to
fulfill Thy will?’ And scarcely had she put that question than
God gave her the answer in her own heart. ‘Desire nothing
for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man’s
future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but
live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God’s
will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill
His will.’ With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope
for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down,
thinking neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she
would go in nor of what she would say. What could all that
matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose
care not a hair of man’s head can fall?

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Chapter IV
When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his
son were already in the drawing room, talking to the little
princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne. When she entered
with her heavy step, treading on her heels, the gentlemen
and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
indicating her to the gentlemen, said: ‘Voila Marie!’ Princess
Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince
Vasili’s face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but
immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting the impression ‘Marie’ produced on the visitors.
And she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and
pretty face, and her unusually animated look which was
fixed on him, but him she could not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and handsome moving toward her as
she entered the room. Prince Vasili approached first, and
she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand and
answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she
remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her.
She still could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking
hers firmly, and she touched with her lips a white forehead,
over which was beautiful light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was struck by his
beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a button
of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,


401

slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent,
looked with beaming face at the princess without speaking
and evidently not thinking about her at all. Anatole was not
quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in conversation, but he
had the faculty, so invaluable in society, of composure and
imperturbable self-possession. If a man lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and betrays
a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an
anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the
princess’ hair. It was evident that he could be silent in this
way for a very long time. ‘If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but I don’t want to‘‘ he seemed to say.
Besides this, in his behavior to women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them curiosity, awe, and
even lovea supercilious consciousness of his own superiority. It was was as if he said to them: ‘I know you, I know
you, but why should I bother about you? You’d be only too
glad, of course.’ Perhaps he did not really think this when
he met womeneven probably he did not, for in general he
thought very littlebut his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and as if wishing to show
him that she did not even dare expect to interest him, she
turned to his father. The conversation was general and animated, thanks to Princess Lise’s voice and little downy lip
that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with
that playful manner often employed by lively chatty people,
and consisting in the assumption that between the person
they so address and themselves there are some semi-private,
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long-established jokes and amusing reminiscences, though
no such reminiscences really existjust as none existed in
this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone and the
little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew,
into these amusing recollections of things that had never
occurred. Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and
even Princess Mary felt herself pleasantly made to share in
these merry reminiscences.
‘Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to ourselves, dear prince,’ said the little princess (of
course, in French) to Prince Vasili. ‘It’s not as at Annette’s*
receptions where you always ran away; you remember cette
chere Annette!’
*Anna Pavlovna.
‘Ah, but you won’t talk politics to me like Annette!’
‘And our little tea table?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘Why is it you were never at Annette’s?’ the little princess asked Anatole. ‘Ah, I know, I know,’ she said with a sly
glance, ‘your brother Hippolyte told me about your goings
on. Oh!’ and she shook her finger at him, ‘I have even heard
of your doings in Paris!’
‘And didn’t Hippolyte tell you?’ asked Prince Vasili,
turning to his son and seizing the little princess’ arm as if
she would have run away and he had just managed to catch
her, ‘didn’t he tell you how he himself was pining for the
dear princess, and how she showed him the door? Oh, she is
a pearl among women, Princess,’ he added, turning to Princess Mary.


403

When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne
for her part seized the opportunity of joining in the general
current of recollections.
She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long
since Anatole had left Paris and how he had liked that city.
Anatole answered the Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a smile, talked to her about her native land.
When he saw the pretty little Bourienne, Anatole came to
the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull either.
‘Not at all bad!’ he thought, examining her, ‘not at all bad,
that little companion! I hope she will bring her along with
her when we’re married, la petite est gentille.’*
*The little one is charming.
The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning
and considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. ‘What are Prince Vasili and that son of
his to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son,
no doubt, is a fine specimen,’ he grumbled to himself. What
angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived
in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle,
one about which he always deceived himself. The question
was whether he could ever bring himself to part from his
daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand
that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed
not only with his feelings but with the very possibility of
life. Life without Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value
her, was unthinkable to him. ‘And why should she marry?’
he thought. ‘To be unhappy for certain. There’s Lise, mar404

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ried to Andrewa better husband one would think could
hardly be found nowadaysbut is she contented with her lot?
And who would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward!
They’ll take her for her connections and wealth. Are there
no women living unmarried, and even the happier for it?’
So thought Prince Bolkonski while dressing, and yet the
question he was always putting off demanded an immediate
answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident
intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would
probably ask for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad. ‘Well, I’ve nothing against it,’ the prince
said to himself, ‘but he must be worthy of her. And that is
what we shall see.’
‘That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!’ he
added aloud.
He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step,
glancing rapidly round the company. He noticed the change
in the little princess’ dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess Mary’s unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s and Anatole’s smiles, and the loneliness of his
daughter amid the general conversation. ‘Got herself up like
a fool!’ he thought, looking irritably at her. ‘She is shameless, and he ignores her!’
He went straight up to Prince Vasili.
‘Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!’
‘Friendship laughs at distance,’ began Prince Vasili in his
usual rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. ‘Here is my second son; please love and befriend him.’
Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.


405

‘Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!’ he said. ‘Well,
come and kiss me,’ and he offered his cheek.
Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect composure, waiting for a display of the
eccentricities his father had told him to expect.
Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince
Vasili, pointed to it and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen attentively to what
Prince Vasili said, but kept glancing at Princess Mary.
‘And so they are writing from Potsdam already?’ he said,
repeating Prince Vasili’s last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his daughter.
‘Is it for visitors you’ve got yourself up like that, eh?’ said
he. ‘Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new
way for the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that
in future you are never to dare to change your way of dress
without my consent.’
‘It was my fault, mon pere,’ interceded the little princess,
with a blush.
‘You must do as you please,’ said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his daughter-in-law, ‘but she need not make a fool of
herself, she’s plain enough as it is.’
And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his
daughter, who was reduced to tears.
‘On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very
well,’ said Prince Vasili.
‘Now you, young prince, what’s your name?’ said Prince
Bolkonski, turning to Anatole, ‘come here, let us talk and
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get acquainted.’
‘Now the fun begins,’ thought Anatole, sitting down with
a smile beside the old prince.
‘Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve been educated abroad,
not taught to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me, my dear boy, are you serving in
the Horse Guards?’ asked the old man, scrutinizing Anatole
closely and intently.
‘No, I have been transferred to the line,’ said Anatole,
hardly able to restrain his laughter.
‘Ah! That’s a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to
serve the Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine
fellow must serve. Well, are you off to the front?’
‘No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am
attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?’ said Anatole,
turning to his father with a laugh.
‘A splendid soldier, splendid! ‘What am I attached to!’
Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed
still louder. Suddenly Prince Bolkonski frowned.
‘You may go,’ he said to Anatole.
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
‘And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili,
haven’t you?’ said the old prince to Prince Vasili.
‘I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the
education there is much better than ours.’
‘Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is
changed. The lad’s a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come
with me now.’ He took Prince Vasili’s arm and led him to
his study. As soon as they were alone together, Prince Vasili


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announced his hopes and wishes to the old prince.
‘Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can’t part
from her?’ said the old prince angrily. ‘What an idea! I’m
ready for it tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know
my son-in-law better. You know my principleseverything
aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow in your presence; if
she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and I’ll see.’
The old prince snorted. ‘Let her marry, it’s all the same to
me!’ he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
from his son.
‘I will tell you frankly,’ said Prince Vasili in the tone of
a crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning
with so keen-sighted companion. ‘You know, you see right
through people. Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest,
goodhearted lad; an excellent son or kinsman.’
‘All right, all right, we’ll see!’
As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any
length of time without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonski’s household
felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers
of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately increased
tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of
significance.
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and
coiffure. The handsome open face of the man who might
perhaps be her husband absorbed all her attention. He
seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams
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of a future family life continually rose in her imagination.
She drove them away and tried to conceal them.
‘But am I not too cold with him?’ thought the princess. ‘I
try to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too
near to him already, but then he cannot know what I think
of him and may imagine that I do not like him.’
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be
cordial to her new guest. ‘Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!’
thought Anatole.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement
by Anatole’s arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she,
a handsome young woman without any definite position,
without relations or even a country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkonski, to reading aloud
to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who,
able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain,
badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in
love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard
from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she liked
to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere)
appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a man without
being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched
to tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He
would carry her away and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself


409

in Mademoiselle Bourienne’s head at the very time she was
talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that
guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what
she should do), but all this had long been familiar to her,
and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself
around him and she wished and tried to please him as much
as possible.
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the
trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition,
prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any
ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the
role of a man tired of being run after by women, his vanity
was flattered by the spectacle of his power over these three
women. Besides that, he was beginning to feel for the pretty
and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne that passionate
animal feeling which was apt to master him with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless
actions.
After tea, the company went into the sitting room and
Princess Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits, came and leaned on his
elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle Bourienne.
Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic
world and the look she felt upon her made that world still
more poetic. But Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were
fixed on her, referred not to her but to the movements of
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Mademoiselle Bourienne’s little foot, which he was then
touching with his own under the clavichord. Mademoiselle
Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her
lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was
also new to the princess.
‘How she loves me!’ thought Princess Mary. ‘How happy
I am now, and how happy I may be with such a friend and
such a husband! Husband? Can it be possible?’ she thought,
not daring to look at his face, but still feeling his eyes gazing at her.
In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole kissed Princess Mary’s hand. She did not know
how she found the courage, but she looked straight into his
handsome face as it came near to her shortsighted eyes.
Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette, but
then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)
Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a
frightened look.
‘What delicacy! ‘ thought the princess. ‘Is it possible that
Amelie’ (Mademoiselle Bourienne) ‘thinks I could be jealous of her, and not value her pure affection and devotion
to me?’ She went up to her and kissed her warmly. Anatole
went up to kiss the little princess’ hand.
‘No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you
are behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till
then!’ she said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she
left the room.


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Chapter V
They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep
as soon as he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that
night.
‘Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so
kindyes, kind, that is the chief thing,’ thought Princess
Mary; and fear, which she had seldom experienced, came
upon her. She feared to look round, it seemed to her that
someone was there standing behind the screen in the dark
corner. And this someone was hethe deviland he was also
this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red
lips.
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her
room.
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long time that evening, vainly expecting
someone, now smiling at someone, now working herself up
to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.
The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was
badly made. She could not lie either on her face or on her
side. Every position was awkward and uncomfortable, and
her burden oppressed her now more than ever because Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the time when she
was not like that and when everything was light and gay.
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She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap
and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy
feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.
‘I told you it was all lumps and holes!’ the little princess
repeated. ‘I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it’s not
my fault!’ and her voice quivered like that of a child about
to cry.
The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep,
heard him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince
felt as though he had been insulted through his daughter.
The insult was the more pointed because it concerned not
himself but another, his daughter, whom he loved more
than himself. He kept telling himself that he would consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how
he should act, but instead of that he only excited himself
more and more.
‘The first man that turns upshe forgets her father and everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags
her tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over!
And she knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don’t I see
that that idiot had eyes only for BourienneI shall have to get
rid of her. And how is it she has not pride enough to see it?
If she has no pride for herself she might at least have some
for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks
nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no
pride... but I’ll let her see...’
The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was
making a mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary’s self-esteem would


413

be wounded and his point (not to be parted from her) would
be gained, so pacifying himself with this thought, he called
Tikhon and began to undress.
‘What devil brought them here?’ thought he, while Tikhon was putting the nightshirt over his dried-up old body
and gray-haired chest. ‘I never invited them. They came to
disturb my lifeand there is not much of it left.’
‘Devil take ‘em!’ he muttered, while his head was still
covered by the shirt.
Tikhon knew his master’s habit of sometimes thinking
aloud, and therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of the face that emerged from the
shirt.
‘Gone to bed?’ asked the prince.
Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his master’s thoughts. He guessed that the question
referred to Prince Vasili and his son.
‘They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency.’
‘No good... no good...’ said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of
his dressing gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.
Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne, they quite understood one another
as to the first part of their romance, up to the appearance
of the pauvre mere; they understood that they had much to
say to one another in private and so they had been seeking
an opportunity since morning to meet one another alone.
When Princess Mary went to her father’s room at the usual
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hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the conservatory.
Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special
trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody
know that her fate would be decided that day, but that they
also knew what she thought about it. She read this in Tikhon’s face and in that of Prince Vasili’s valet, who made her
a low bow when she met him in the corridor carrying hot
water.
The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his
treatment of his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well
knew this painstaking expression of her father’s. His face
wore that expression when his dry hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in arithmetic, when
rising from his chair he would walk away from her, repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.
He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.
‘I have had a proposition made me concerning you,’ he
said with an unnatural smile. ‘I expect you have guessed
that Prince Vasili has not come and brought his pupil with
him’ (for some reason Prince Bolkonski referred to Anatole
as a ‘pupil’) ‘for the sake of my beautiful eyes. Last night
a proposition was made me on your account and, as you
know my principles, I refer it to you.’
‘How am I to understand you, mon pere?’ said the princess, growing pale and then blushing.
‘How understand me!’ cried her father angrily. ‘Prince
Vasili finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes


415

a proposal to you on his pupil’s behalf. That’s how it’s to be
understood! ‘How understand it’!... And I ask you!’
‘I do not know what you think, Father,’ whispered the
princess.
‘I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I’m not
going to get married. What about you? That’s what I want
to know.’
The princess saw that her father regarded the matter
with disapproval, but at that moment the thought occurred
to her that her fate would be decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze under which she felt
that she could not think, but would only be able to submit
from habit, and she said: ‘I wish only to do your will, but if
I had to express my own desire...’ She had no time to finish.
The old prince interrupted her.
‘That’s admirable!’ he shouted. ‘He will take you with
your dowry and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She’ll be the wife, while you..’
The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had
produced on his daughter. She lowered her head and was
ready to burst into tears.
‘Now then, now then, I’m only joking!’ he said. ‘Remember this, Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has
a full right to choose. I give you freedom. Only remember
that your life’s happiness depends on your decision. Never
mind me!’
‘But I do not know, Father!’
‘There’s no need to talk! He receives his orders and will
marry you or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to
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your room, think it over, and come back in an hour and tell
me in his presence: yes or no. I know you will pray over it.
Well, pray if you like, but you had better think it over. Go!
Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!’ he still shouted when the
princess, as if lost in a fog, had already staggered out of the
study.
Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her
father had said about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure, but still it was terrible, and
she could not help thinking of it. She was going straight
on through the conservatory, neither seeing nor hearing
anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of
Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes,
and two steps away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to her. With a horrified
expression on his handsome face, Anatole looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of
Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.
‘Who’s that? Why? Wait a moment!’ Anatole’s face
seemed to say. Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She
could not understand it. At last Mademoiselle Bourienne
gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to Princess
Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in a laugh
at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders
went to the door that led to his own apartments.
An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the
old prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When
Tikhon came to her Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in
her room, holding the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in


417

her arms and gently stroking her hair. The princess’ beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance were looking
with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
pretty face.
‘No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘Why? I love you more than ever,’ said Princess Mary,
‘and I will try to do all I can for your happiness.’
‘But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so carried away by passion. Oh, only my
poor mother..’
‘I quite understand,’ answered Princess Mary, with a sad
smile. ‘Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father,’ she
said, and went out.
Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other
and a snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of
deep emotion on his face, as if stirred to his heart’s core and
himself regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when
Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.
‘Ah, my dear, my dear!’ he began, rising and taking her
by both hands. Then, sighing, he added: ‘My son’s fate is in
your hands. Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I
have always loved as a daughter!’
He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
‘Fr... fr...’ snorted Prince Bolkonski. ‘The prince is making a proposition to you in his pupil’sI mean, his son’sname.
Do you wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin’s wife?
Reply: yes or no,’ he shouted, ‘and then I shall reserve the
right to state my opinion also. Yes, my opinion, and only my
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opinion,’ added Prince Bolkonski, turning to Prince Vasili
and answering his imploring look. ‘Yes, or no?’
‘My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my life from yours. I don’t wish to marry,’ she answered
positively, glancing at Prince Vasili and at her father with
her beautiful eyes.
‘Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!’ cried
Prince Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter’s hand;
he did not kiss her, but only bending his forehead to hers
just touched it, and pressed her hand so that she winced and
uttered a cry.
Prince Vasili rose.
‘My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall
never, never forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little
hope of touching this heart, so kind and generous? Say ‘perhaps’... The future is so long. Say ‘perhaps.’’
‘Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank
you for the honor, but I shall never be your son’s wife.’
‘Well, so that’s finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to
have seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess.
Go!’ said the old prince. ‘Very, very glad to glad to have seen
you,’ repeated he, embracing Prince Vasili.
‘My vocation is a different one,’ thought Princess Mary.
‘My vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness,
the happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it
may, I will arrange poor Amelie’s happiness, she loves him
so passionately, and so passionately repents. I will do all I
can to arrange the match between them. If he is not rich I
will give her the means; I will ask my father and Andrew. I


419

shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so unfortunate,
a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how passionately
she must love him if she could so far forget herself! Perhaps
I might have done the same!...’ thought Princess Mary.

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Chapter VI
It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till
midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in
his son’s handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to
his study in alarm and haste, trying to escape notice, closed
the door, and began to read the letter.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that
passed in the house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter
went softly into the room and found the count with it in his
hand, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still living with the Rostovs.
‘My dear friend?’ said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,
prepared to sympathize in any way.
The count sobbed yet more.
‘Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank
God... How tell the little countess!’
Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own
handkerchief wiped the tears from his eyes and from the
letter, then having dried her own eyes she comforted the
count, and decided that at dinner and till teatime she would
prepare the countess, and after tea, with God’s help, would
inform her.
At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time


421

about the war news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when
the last letter had been received from him, though she knew
that already, and remarked that they might very likely be
getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these
hints began to make the countess anxious and she glanced
uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter
very adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha, who, of the whole family, was the most gifted
with a capacity to feel any shades of intonation, look, and
expression, pricked up her ears from the beginning of the
meal and was certain that there was some secret between
her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had something to
do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how
sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka,
did not venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was
too excited to eat anything and kept wriggling about on her
chair regardless of her governess’ remarks. After dinner, she
rushed head long after Anna Mikhaylovna and, dashing at
her, flung herself on her neck as soon as she overtook her in
the sitting room.
‘Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!’
‘Nothing, my dear.’
‘No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won’t give upI know you
know something.’
Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.
‘You are a little slyboots,’ she said.
‘A letter from Nikolenka! I’m sure of it!’ exclaimed
Natasha, reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna’s
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face.
‘But for God’s sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your mamma.’
‘I will, I will, only tell me! You won’t? Then I will go and
tell at once.’
Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents
of the letter, on condition that she should tell no one.
‘No, on my true word of honor,’ said Natasha,crossing
herself, ‘I won’t tell anyone!’ and she ran off at once to Sonya.
‘Nikolenka... wounded... a letter,’ she announced in gleeful triumph.
‘Nicholas!’ was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.
Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother’s
wound produced on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.
‘A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is
well now, he wrote himself,’ said she through her tears.
‘There now! It’s true that all you women are crybabies,’ remarked Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides.
‘Now I’m very glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has
distinguished himself so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing.’
Natasha smiled through her tears.
‘You haven’t read the letter?’ asked Sonya.
‘No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now an
officer.’
‘Thank God!’ said Sonya, crossing herself. ‘But perhaps


423

she deceived you. Let us go to Mamma.’
Petya paced the room in silence for a time.
‘If I’d been in Nikolenka’s place I would have killed even
more of those Frenchmen,’ he said. ‘What nasty brutes they
are! I’d have killed so many that there’d have been a heap
of them.’
‘Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!’
‘I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,’ said
Petya.
‘Do you remember him?’ Natasha suddenly asked, after
a moment’s silence.
Sonya smiled.
‘Do I remember Nicholas?’
‘No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember
him perfectly, remember everything?’ said Natasha, with
an expressive gesture, evidently wishing to give her words
a very definite meaning. ‘I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well,’ she said. ‘But I don’t remember Boris. I
don’t remember him a bit.’
‘What! You don’t remember Boris?’ asked Sonya in surprise.
‘It’s not that I don’t rememberI know what he is like, but
not as I remember Nikolenka. HimI just shut my eyes and
remember, but Boris... No!’ (She shut her eyes.)’No! there’s
nothing at all.’
‘Oh, Natasha!’ said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her friend as if she did not consider her worthy to
hear what she meant to say and as if she were saying it to
someone else, with whom joking was out of the question,
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‘I am in love with your brother once for all and, whatever
may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him
as long as I live.’
Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive
eyes, and said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the
truth, that there was such love as Sonya was speaking of.
But Natasha had not yet felt anything like it. She believed it
could be, but did not understand it.
‘Shall you write to him?’ she asked.
Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write
to Nicholas, and whether she ought to write, tormented her.
Now that he was already an officer and a wounded hero,
would it be right to remind him of herself and, as it might
seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on himself?
‘I don’t know. I think if he writes, I will write too,’ she
said, blushing.
‘And you won’t feel ashamed to write to him?’
Sonya smiled.
‘No.’
‘And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I’m not going to.’
‘Why should you be ashamed?’
‘Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward and would make me
ashamed.’
‘And I know why she’d be ashamed,’ said Petya, offended by Natasha’s previous remark. ‘It’s because she was in
love with that fat one in spectacles’ (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new Count Bezukhov) ‘and now
she’s in love with that singer’ (he meant Natasha’s Italian


425

singing master), ‘that’s why she’s ashamed!’
‘Petya, you’re a stupid!’ said Natasha.
‘Not more stupid than you, madam,’ said the nine-yearold Petya, with the air of an old brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna’s
hints at dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an
armchair, her eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son
on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her
eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna, with the letter, came on tiptoe to
the countess’ door and paused.
‘Don’t come in,’ she said to the old count who was following her. ‘Come later.’ And she went in, closing the door
behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then
Anna Mikhaylovna’s voice alone in a long speech, then a
cry, then silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the
door. Her face wore the proud expression of a surgeon who
has just performed a difficult operation and admits the public to appreciate his skill.
‘It is done!’ she said to the count, pointing triumphantly
to the countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox
with its portrait and in the other the letter, and pressing
them alternately to her lips.
When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to
him, embraced his bald head, over which she again looked
at the letter and the portrait, and in order to press them
again to her lips, she slightly pushed away the bald head.
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Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya now entered the room,
and the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he had
taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed
his father’s and mother’s hands asking for their blessing,
and that he kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that,
he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss,
and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him ‘dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever.’
When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came into
her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran
away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed
with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and
smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was crying.
‘Why are you crying, Mamma?’ asked Vera. ‘From all he
says one should be glad and not cry.’
This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and
Natasha looked at her reproachfully. ‘And who is it she takes
after?’ thought the countess.
Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and
those who were considered worthy to hear it had to come
to the countess, for she did not let it out of her hands. The
tutors came, and the nurses, and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter each time
with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
proofs of Nikolenka’s virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely
perceptible motion of whose tiny limbs she had felt twen

427

ty years ago within her, that son about whom she used to
have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who
had first learned to say ‘pear’ and then ‘granny,’ that this
son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man’s work
of his own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow imperceptibly
from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the countess.
Her son’s growth toward manhood, at each of its stages, had
seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed
the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way.
As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the little
creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever
cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could
not believe that that little creature could be this strong,
brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by this
letter, he now was.
‘What a style! How charmingly he describes!’ said she,
reading the descriptive part of the letter. ‘And what a soul!
Not a word about himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he himself, I dare say, is braver than
any of them. He says nothing about his sufferings. What a
heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was
only so highI always said...’
For more than a week preparations were being made,
rough drafts of letters to Nicholas from all the household
were written and copied out, while under the supervision
of the countess and the solicitude of the count, money and
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all things necessary for the uniform and equipment of the
newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by
favor with army authorities to secure advantageous means
of communication for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand Duke Constantine
Pavlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite
address, and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not
reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was decided to
send the letters and money by the Grand Duke’s courier to
Boris and Boris was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters
were from the old count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha,
and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles for
his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his
son.



429

Chapter VII
On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov’s active army, in
camp before Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next
day by the two Emperorsthe Russian and the Austrian. The
Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent the night ten miles
from Olmutz and next morning were to come straight to
the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o’clock.
That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris,
telling him that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for
the night ten miles from Olmutz and that he wanted to see
him as he had a letter and money for him. Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after their
active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp
swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews
offering all sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held
feast after feast, celebrating awards they had received for
the campaign, and made expeditions to Olmutz to visit a
certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had recently opened
a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. Rostov, who had
just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought Denisov’s horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades
and the sutlers. On receiving Boris’ letter he rode with a fellow officer to Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine,
and then set off alone to the Guards’ camp to find his old
playmate. Rostov had not yet had time to get his uniform.
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He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with a soldier’s
cross, equally shabby cadet’s riding breeches lined with
worn leather, and an officer’s saber with a sword knot. The
Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar
cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode
up to the camp he thought how he would impress Boris and
all his comrades of the Guards by his appearancethat of a
fighting hussar who had been under fire.
The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, parading their cleanliness and discipline. They
had come by easy stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts,
and the Austrian authorities had provided excellent dinners
for the officers at every halting place. The regiments had entered and left the town with their bands playing, and by the
Grand Duke’s orders the men had marched all the way in
step (a practice on which the Guards prided themselves),
the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Boris had been
quartered, and had marched all the way, with Berg who was
already in command of a company. Berg, who had obtained
his captaincy during the campaign, had gained the confidence of his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and
had arranged his money matters very satisfactorily. Boris,
during the campaign, had made the acquaintance of many
persons who might prove useful to him, and by a letter of
recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom
he hoped to obtain a post on the commander in chief’s staff.
Berg and Boris, having rested after yesterday’s march, were


431

sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a round table in the
clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess. Berg held a
smoking pipe between his knees. Boris, in the accurate way
characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg’s
move, and watched his opponent’s face, evidently thinking
about the game as he always thought only of whatever he
was engaged on.
‘Well, how are you going to get out of that?’ he remarked.
‘We’ll try to,’ replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing his hand.
At that moment the door opened.
‘Here he is at last!’ shouted Rostov. ‘And Berg too! Oh,
you petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!’ he exclaimed, imitating his Russian nurse’s French, at which he and Boris used
to laugh long ago.
‘Dear me, how you have changed!’
Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit
to steady and replace some chessmen that were falling. He
was about to embrace his friend, but Nicholas avoided him.
With that peculiar feeling of youth, that dread of beaten
tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner different from
that of its elders which is often insincere, Nicholas wished
to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted
to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss hima thing
everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced
him in a quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times.
They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the
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age when young men take their first steps on life’s road, each
saw immense changes in the other, quite a new reflection of
the society in which they had taken those first steps. Both
had changed greatly since they last met and both were in a
hurry to show the changes that had taken place in them.
‘Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you’d
been to a fete, not like us sinners of the line,’ cried Rostov,
with martial swagger and with baritone notes in his voice,
new to Boris, pointing to his own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov’s loud voice,
popped her head in at the door.
‘Eh, is she pretty?’ he asked with a wink.
‘Why do you shout so? You’ll frighten them!’ said Boris. ‘I did not expect you today,’ he added. ‘I only sent you
the note yesterday by Bolkonskian adjutant of Kutuzov’s,
who’s a friend of mine. I did not think he would get it to you
so quickly.... Well, how are you? Been under fire already?’
asked Boris.
Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier’s Cross of
St. George fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm, glanced at Berg with a smile.
‘As you see,’ he said.
‘Indeed? Yes, yes!’ said Boris, with a smile. ‘And we too
have had a splendid march. You know, of course, that His
Imperial Highness rode with our regiment all the time, so
that we had every comfort and every advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I can’t
tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our officers.’


433

And the two friends told each other of their doings, the
one of his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other
of the pleasures and advantages of service under members
of the Imperial family.
‘Oh, you Guards!’ said Rostov. ‘I say, send for some
wine.’
Boris made a grimace.
‘If you really want it,’ said he.
He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean
pillow, and sent for wine.
‘Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you,’ he
added.
Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the
sofa, put both arms on the table and began to read. After
reading a few lines, he glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the letter.
‘Well, they’ve sent you a tidy sum,’ said Berg, eying the
heavy purse that sank into the sofa. ‘As for us, Count, we get
along on our pay. I can tell you for myself..’
‘I say, Berg, my dear fellow,’ said Rostov, ‘when you
get a letter from home and meet one of your own people
whom you want to talk everything over with, and I happen to be there, I’ll go at once, to be out of your way! Do go
somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!’ he exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking amiably
into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his
words, he added, ‘Don’t be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I
speak from my heart as to an old acquaintance.’
‘Oh, don’t mention it, Count! I quite understand,’ said
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Berg, getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural
voice.
‘Go across to our hosts: they invited you,’ added Boris.
Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck
of dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair
on his temples upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor
Alexander, and, having assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had been noticed, left the room
with a pleasant smile.
‘Oh dear, what a beast I am!’ muttered Rostov, as he read
the letter.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have
given them such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!’ he repeated, flushing suddenly. ‘Well, have you sent Gabriel for some
wine? All right let’s have some!’
In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of
recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at
Anna Mikhaylovna’s advice had obtained through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take it to its
destination and make use of it.
‘What nonsense! Much I need it!’ said Rostov, throwing
the letter under the table.
‘Why have you thrown that away?’ asked Boris.
‘It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do
I want it for!’
‘Why ‘What the devil’?’ said Boris, picking it up and
reading the address. ‘This letter would be of great use to
you.’


435

‘I want nothing, and I won’t be anyone’s adjutant.’
‘Why not?’ inquired Boris.
‘It’s a lackey’s job!’
‘You are still the same dreamer, I see,’ remarked Boris,
shaking his head.
‘And you’re still the same diplomatist! But that’s not the
point... Come, how are you?’ asked Rostov.
‘Well, as you see. So far everything’s all right, but I confess I should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at
the front.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when once a man starts on military service, he
should try to make as successful a career of it as possible.’
‘Oh, that’s it!’ said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.
He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend’s eyes,
evidently trying in vain to find the answer to some question.
Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
‘Shouldn’t we now send for Berg?’ asked Boris. ‘He would
drink with you. I can’t.’
‘Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that
German?’ asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.
‘He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,’ answered Boris.
Again Rostov looked intently into Boris’ eyes and sighed.
Berg returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three officers became animated. The Guardsmen
told Rostov of their march and how they had been made
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much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They spoke of the
sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke,
and told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as
usual, kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in connection with the stories of the Grand Duke’s
quick temper he related with gusto how in Galicia he had
managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the latter made
a tour of the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a pleasant smile Berg related how
the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent passion,
shouting: ‘Arnauts!’ (“Arnauts’ was the Tsarevich’s favorite
expression when he was in a rage) and called for the company commander.
‘Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed,
because I knew I was right. Without boasting, you know,
I may say that I know the Army Orders by heart and know
the Regulations as well as I do the Lord’s Prayer. So, Count,
there never is any negligence in my company, and so my conscience was at ease. I came forward....’ (Berg stood up and
showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his cap,
and really it would have been difficult for a face to express
greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) ‘Well,
he stormed at me, as the saying is, stormed and stormed
and stormed! It was not a matter of life but rather of death,
as the saying is. ‘Albanians!’ and ‘devils!’ and ‘To Siberia!’’
said Berg with a sagacious smile. ‘I knew I was in the right
so I kept silent; was not that best, Count?... ‘Hey, are you
dumb?’ he shouted. Still I remained silent. And what do
you think, Count? The next day it was not even mentioned


437

in the Orders of the Day. That’s what keeping one’s head
means. That’s the way, Count,’ said Berg, lighting his pipe
and emitting rings of smoke.
‘Yes, that was fine,’ said Rostov, smiling.
But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of
Berg, and skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to
tell them how and where he got his wound. This pleased
Rostov and he began talking about it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his Schon
Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to
have been, as they have heard it described by others, and
as sounds well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was
a truthful young man and would on no account have told
a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily,
and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the
truth to his hearerswho like himself had often heard stories of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an
attack was and were expecting to hear just such a storythey
would either not have believed him or, still worse, would
have thought that Rostov was himself to blame since what
generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had
not happened to him. He could not tell them simply that
everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and
sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a
Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it
really happened, it would have been necessary to make an
effort of will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult
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to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it.
His hearers expected a story of how beside himself and all
aflame with excitement, he had flown like a storm at the
square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his saber
had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And
so he told them all that.
In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: ‘You cannot imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences during
an attack,’ Prince Andrew, whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who liked to help young
men, was flattered by being asked for his assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had managed to please
him the day before, he wished to do what the young man
wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutuzov to the
Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to find him alone.
When he came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits (Prince Andrew could not endure
that sort of man), he gave Boris a pleasant smile, frowned
as with half-closed eyes he looked at Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the sofa: he felt
it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company. Rostov
flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a
mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he
too seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.
In spite of Prince Andrew’s disagreeable, ironical tone,
in spite of the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of view, regarded all these little adjutants on
the staff of whom the newcomer was evidently one, Rostov
felt confused, blushed, and became silent. Boris inquired


439

what news there might be on the staff, and what, without
indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.
‘We shall probably advance,’ replied Bolkonski, evidently reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger.
Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness,
whether, as was rumored, the allowance of forage money
to captains of companies would be doubled. To this Prince
Andrew answered with a smile that he could give no opinion on such an important government order, and Berg
laughed gaily.
‘As to your business,’ Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris, ‘we will talk of it later’ (and he looked round
at Rostov). ‘Come to me after the review and we will do what
is possible.’
And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew
turned to Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish
embarrassment now changing to anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: ‘I think you were talking of the
Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?’
‘I was there,’ said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult
the aide-de-camp.
Bolkonski noticed the hussar’s state of mind, and it
amused him. With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said:
‘Yes, there are many stories now told about that affair!’
‘Yes, stories!’ repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes
suddenly grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski.
‘Yes, many stories! But our stories are the stories of men
who have been under the enemy’s fire! Our stories have
some weight, not like the stories of those fellows on the staff
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who get rewards without doing anything!’
‘Of whom you imagine me to be one?’ said Prince Andrew, with a quiet and particularly amiable smile.
A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for
this man’s self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov’s soul.
‘I am not talking about you,’ he said, ‘I don’t know you
and, frankly, I don’t want to. I am speaking of the staff in
general.’
‘And I will tell you this,’ Prince Andrew interrupted
in a tone of quiet authority, ‘you wish to insult me, and I
am ready to agree with you that it would be very easy to
do so if you haven’t sufficient self-respect, but admit that
the time and place are very badly chosen. In a day or two
we shall all have to take part in a greater and more serious
duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend
of yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to displease you. However,’ he added rising, ‘you know
my name and where to find me, but don’t forget that I do not
regard either myself or you as having been at all insulted,
and as a man older than you, my advice is to let the matter
drop. Well then, on Friday after the review I shall expect
you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!’ exclaimed Prince Andrew, and
with a bow to them both he went out.
Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think
of what he ought to have said. And he was still more angry
at having omitted to say it. He ordered his horse at once
and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode home. Should he go
to headquarters next day and challenge that affected ad

441

jutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question that
worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure
he would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail
but proud man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt
with surprise that of all the men he knew there was none he
would so much like to have for a friend as that very adjutant
whom he so hated.

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Chapter VIII
The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was
held of the Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly
arrived from Russia and those who had been campaigning
under Kutuzov. The two Emperors, the Russian with his
heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.
From early morning the smart clean troops were on
the move, forming up on the field before the fortress. Now
thousands of feet and bayonets moved and halted at the officers’ command, turned with banners flying, formed up at
intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat
of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, and
green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in
front mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again,
spreading out with the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun carriages and with the
smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled between
the infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position.
Not only the generals in full parade uniforms, with their
thin or thick waists drawn in to the utmost, their red necks
squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all
their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers,
but every soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face


443

and his weapons clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed till its coat shone like satin and every
hair of its wetted mane lay smoothfelt that no small matter
was happening, but an important and solemn affair. Every
general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and
yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part
of that enormous whole.
From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had
begun and by ten o’clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drown up on the vast field. The whole
army was extended in three lines: the cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the infantry.
A space like a street was left between each two lines of
troops. The three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov’s fighting army (with the Pavlograds on
the right flank of the front); those recently arrived from
Russia, both Guards and regiments of the line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines, under one
command, and in a like order.
Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: ‘They’re
coming! They’re coming!’ Alarmed voices were heard, and a
stir of final preparation swept over all the troops.
From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group
was seen approaching. And at that moment, though the day
was still, a light gust of wind blowing over the army slightly
stirred the streamers on the lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It looked as if by that
slight motion the army itself was expressing its joy at the
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approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard shouting:
‘Eyes front!’ Then, like the crowing of cocks at sunrise, this
was repeated by others from various sides and all became
silent.
In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was
heard. This was the Emperors’ suites. The Emperors rode
up to the flank, and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It seemed as though not the
trumpeters were playing, but as if the army itself, rejoicing
at the Emperors’ approach, had naturally burst into music.
Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of the
Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of
greeting, and the first regiment roared ‘Hurrah!’ so deafeningly, continuously, and joyfully that the men themselves
were awed by their multitude and the immensity of the
power they constituted.
Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov’s army
which the Tsar approached first, experienced the same
feeling as every other man in that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of might, and a passionate
attraction to him who was the cause of this triumph.
He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast
mass (and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go
through fire and water, commit crime, die, or perform deeds
of highest heroism, and so he could not but tremble and his
heart stand still at the imminence of that word.
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ thundered from all sides, one
regiment after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of
the march, and then ‘Hurrah!’... Then the general march,


445

and again ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ growing ever stronger and
fuller and merging into a deafening roar.
Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and
immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he
came up it became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the
whole line along which he had already passed. Through the
terrible and deafening roar of those voices, amid the square
masses of troops standing motionless as if turned to stone,
hundreds of riders composing the suites moved carelessly
but symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of them
two menthe Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely
passionate attention of that whole mass of men was concentrated.
The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its
peaks front and back, with his pleasant face and resonant
though not loud voice, attracted everyone’s attention.
Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his
keen sight had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty paces, and Nicholas
could clearly distinguish every detail of his handsome,
happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness and
ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and
every movement of the Tsar’s seemed to him enchanting.
Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself
and felt a still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He
longed to show that love in some way and knowing that this
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was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar called the colonel
of the regiment and said a few words to him.
‘Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke
to me?’ thought Rostov. ‘I should die of happiness!’
The Tsar addressed the officers also: ‘I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank you with my whole heart.’ To Rostov every
word sounded like a voice from heaven. How gladly would
he have died at once for his Tsar!
‘You have earned the St. George’s standards and will be
worthy of them.’
‘Oh, to die, to die for him ‘ thought Rostov.
The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear,
and the soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted ‘Hurrah!’
Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted ‘Hurrah!’
with all his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if only to express his rapture fully.
The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as
if undecided.
‘How can the Emperor be undecided?’ thought Rostov,
but then even this indecision appeared to him majestic and
enchanting, like everything else the Tsar did.
That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar’s foot,
in the narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the
groin of the bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a white
glove gathered up the reins, and he moved off accompanied
by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and
farther he rode away, stopping at other regiments, till at last
only his white plumes were visible to Rostov from amid the
suites that surrounded the Emperors.


447

Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed
Bolkonski, sitting his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their quarrel of yesterday and the question
presented itself whether he ought or ought not to challenge
Bolkonski. ‘Of course not!’ he now thought. ‘Is it worth
thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a time of
such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do any
of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now.’
When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments,
the troops began a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently purchased from Denisov, rode past
too, at the rear of his squadronthat is, alone and in full view
of the Emperor.
Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman, spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the
showy trot in which the animal went when excited. Bending
his foaming muzzle to his chest, his tail extended, Bedouin,
as if also conscious of the Emperor’s eye upon him, passed
splendidly, lifting his feet with a high and graceful action, as
if flying through the air without touching the ground.
Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn
in and feeling himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but blissful face ‘like a vewy devil,’ as
Denisov expressed it.
‘Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!’ remarked the Emperor.
‘My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap
into the fire this instant!’ thought Rostov.
When the review was over, the newly arrived officers,
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and also Kutuzov’s, collected in groups and began to talk
about the awards, about the Austrians and their uniforms,
about their lines, about Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if the Essen corps arrived and
Prussia took our side.
But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His every word and movement was described
with ecstasy.
They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the enemy under the Emperor’s command.
Commanded by the Emperor himself they could not fail to
vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought Rostov
and most of the officers after the review.
All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles would have made them.



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Chapter IX
The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and
with his comrade Berg’s best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness
and obtain for himself the best post he couldpreferably that
of adjutant to some important personage, a position in the
army which seemed to him most attractive. ‘It is all very
well for Rostov, whose father sends him ten thousand rubles
at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to anybody
and not be anyone’s lackey, but I who have nothing but my
brains have to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of them!’ he reflected.
He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but
the appearance of the town where the headquarters and
the diplomatic corps were stationed and the two Emperors
were living with their suites, households, and courts only
strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.
He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman’s
uniform, all these exalted personages passing in the streets
in their elegant carriages with their plumes, ribbons, and
medals, both courtiers and military men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could
not, be aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief, Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski,
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all the adjutants and even the orderlies looked at him as if
they wished to impress on him that a great many officers
like him were always coming there and that everybody was
heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather because of it,
next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked
for Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown
into a large hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in
which five beds now stood, and furniture of various kinds:
a table, chairs, and a clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the
door, was sitting at the table in a Persian dressing gown,
writing. Another, the red, stout Nesvitski, lay on a bed with
his arms under his head, laughing with an officer who had
sat down beside him. A third was playing a Viennese waltz
on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord,
sang the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his position on seeing Boris. The one who
was writing and whom Boris addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty and that he should
go through the door on the left into the reception room if
he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went to the
reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.
When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping
contemptuously (with that peculiar expression of polite
weariness which plainly says, ‘If it were not my duty I would
not talk to you for a moment’), was listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very erect, almost
on tiptoe, with a soldier’s obsequious expression on his pur

451

ple face, reporting something.
‘Very well, then, be so good as to wait,’ said Prince Andrew to the general, in Russian, speaking with the French
intonation he affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris, Prince Andrew, paying no more
heed to the general who ran after him imploring him to
hear something more, nodded and turned to him with a
cheerful smile.
At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised, that in the army, besides the subordination
and discipline prescribed in the military code, which he and
the others knew in the regiment, there was another, more
important, subordination, which made this tight-laced,
purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain Prince
Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskoy. More than ever was Boris resolved to serve
in future not according to the written code, but under this
unwritten law. He felt now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already risen above
the general who at the front had the power to annihilate
him, a lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to
him and took his hand.
‘I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was
fussing about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans start
being accurate, there’s no end to it!’
Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew
was alluding to as something generally known. But it the
first time he had heard Weyrother’s name, or even the term
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‘dispositions.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant?
I have been thinking about you.’
‘Yes, I was thinking’for some reason Boris could not help
blushing‘of asking the commander in chief. He has had a
letter from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask
because I fear the Guards won’t be in action,’ he added as if
in apology.
‘All right, all right. We’ll talk it over,’ replied Prince Andrew. ‘Only let me report this gentleman’s business, and I
shall be at your disposal.’
While Prince Andrew went to report about the purplefaced general, that gentlemanevidently not sharing Boris’
conception of the advantages of the unwritten code of subordinationlooked so fixedly at the presumptuous lieutenant
who had prevented his finishing what he had to say to the
adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned away and
waited impatiently for Prince Andrew’s return from the
commander in chief’s room.
‘You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you,’
said Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room
where the clavichord was. ‘It’s no use your going to the commander in chief. He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask
you to dinner’ (“That would not be bad as regards the unwritten code,’ thought Boris), ‘but nothing more would
come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us aides-decamp and adjutants! But this is what we’ll do: I have a good
friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince
Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the fact is


453

that now Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything is now centered round the Emperor. So we
will go to Dolgorukov; I have to go there anyhow and I have
already spoken to him about you. We shall see whether he
cannot attach you to himself or find a place for you somewhere nearer the sun.’
Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he
had to guide a young man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help of this kind for another,
which from pride he would never accept for himself, he kept
in touch with the circle which confers success and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris’ cause and went
with him to Dolgorukov.
It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at
Olmutz occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.
That same day a council of war had been held in which
all the members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council, contrary to the views of the
old generals Kutuzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it had
been decided to advance immediately and give battle to
Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when Prince
Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find
Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the
spell of the day’s council, at which the party of the young
had triumphed. The voices of those who counseled delay
and advised waiting for something else before advancing had been so completely silenced and their arguments
confuted by such conclusive evidence of the advantages of
attacking that what had been discussed at the councilthe
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coming battle and the victory that would certainly result
from itno longer seemed to be in the future but in the past.
All the advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior to Napoleon’s, were concentrated
in one place, the troops inspired by the Emperors’ presence
were eager for action. The strategic position where the operations would take place was familiar in all its details to the
Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had ordained
that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year
on the very fields where the French had now to be fought;
the adjacent locality was known and shown in every detail
on the maps, and Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.
Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack,
had just returned from the council, tired and exhausted but
eager and proud of the victory that had been gained. Prince
Andrew introduced his protege, but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand said nothing to Boris
and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts which were
uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince
Andrew in French.
‘Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God
grant that the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear fellow,’ he said abruptly and eagerly, ‘I
must confess to having been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What exactitude, what minuteness,
what knowledge of the locality, what foresight for every
eventuality, every possibility even to the smallest detail! No,
my dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones


455

could have been devised. This combination of Austrian precision with Russian valorwhat more could be wished for?’
‘So the attack is definitely resolved on?’ asked Bolkonski.
‘And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that
Bonaparte has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a
letter was received from him today for the Emperor.’ Dolgorukov smiled significantly.
‘Is that so? And what did he say?’ inquired Bolkonski.
‘What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to
gain time. I tell you he is in our hands, that’s certain! But
what was most amusing,’ he continued, with a sudden, goodnatured laugh, ‘was that we could not think how to address
the reply! If not as ‘Consul’ and of course not as ‘Emperor,’ it
seemed to me it should be to ‘General Bonaparte.’’
‘But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General Bonaparte, there is a difference,’ remarked
Bolkonski.
‘That’s just it,’ interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing.
‘You know Bilibinhe’s a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him as ‘Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.’’
Dolgorukov laughed merrily.
‘Only that?’ said Bolkonski.
‘All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for
the address. He is a wise and clever fellow.’
‘What was it?’
‘To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du
gouvernement francais,’ said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. ‘Good, wasn’t it?’
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‘Yes, but he will dislike it extremely,’ said Bolkonski.
‘Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he’s dined
with himthe present Emperormore than once in Paris,
and tells me he never met a more cunning or subtle diplomatistyou know, a combination of French adroitness and
Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and
Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew
how to handle him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!’
And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris,
now to Prince Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test
Markov, our ambassador, purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at Markov, probably
expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how Markov
immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up
without touching Bonaparte’s.
‘Delightful!’ said Bolkonski. ‘But I have come to you,
Prince, as a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You
see...’ but before Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-decamp came in to summon Dolgorukov to the Emperor.
‘Oh, what a nuisance,’ said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris.
‘You know I should be very glad to do all in my power both
for you and for this dear young man.’ Again he pressed the
hand of the latter with an expression of good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. ‘But you see... another time!’
Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the
higher powers as he felt himself to be at that moment. He
was conscious that here he was in contact with the springs


457

that set in motion the enormous movements of the mass of
which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny, obedient, and
insignificant atom. They followed Prince Dolgorukov out
into the corridor and metcoming out of the door of the Emperor’s room by which Dolgorukov had entereda short man
in civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting
jaw which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar
vivacity and shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an intimate friend and stared at
Prince Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward
him and evidently expecting him to bow or to step out of
his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of animosity
appeared on his face and the other turned away and went
down the side of the corridor.
‘Who was that?’ asked Boris.
‘He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of menthe Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince
Adam Czartoryski.... It is such men as he who decide the
fate of nations,’ added Bolkonski with a sigh he could not
suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the
very battle of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either
Prince Andrew or Dolgorukov again and remained for a
while with the Ismaylov regiment.

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Chapter X
At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov’s squadron, in which Nicholas Rostov served and which was in
Prince Bagration’s detachment, moved from the place
where it had spent the night, advancing into action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two
thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw
the Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of
hussars and infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go
forward and then Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride
past with their adjutants. All the fear before action which he
had experienced as previously, all the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself as a
true hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron
remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent that day in a
dull and wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard
firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought back (there were not many of them), and at
last he saw how a whole detachment of French cavalry was
brought in, convoyed by a sontnya of Cossacks. Evidently
the affair was over and, though not big, had been a successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke of a
brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau
and the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was
bright and sunny after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful


459

glitter of that autumn day was in keeping with the news of
victory which was conveyed, not only by the tales of those
who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful expression
on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and adjutants, as
they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who
had vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and
had spent that happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.
‘Come here, Wostov. Let’s dwink to dwown our gwief!’
shouted Denisov, who had settled down by the roadside
with a flask and some food.
The officers gathered round Denisov’s canteen, eating
and talking.
‘There! They are bringing another!’ cried one of the officers, indicating a captive French dragoon who was being
brought in on foot by two Cossacks.
One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French
horse he had taken from the prisoner.
‘Sell us that horse!’ Denisov called out to the Cossacks.
‘If you like, your honor!’
The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and
their prisoner. The French dragoon was a young Alsatian
who spoke French with a German accent. He was breathless
with agitation, his face was red, and when he heard some
French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
addressing first one, then another. He said he would not
have been taken, it was not his fault but the corporal’s who
had sent him to seize some horsecloths, though he had told
him the Russians were there. And at every word he added:
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‘But don’t hurt my little horse!’ and stroked the animal. It
was plain that he did not quite grasp where he was. Now he
excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his
soldierly discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with
him into our rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of
the French army, which was so alien to us.
The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being the richest of the officers now that he had received
his money, bought it.
‘But don’t hurt my little horse!’ said the Alsatian goodnaturedly to Rostov when the animal was handed over to
the hussar.
Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him
money.
‘Alley! Alley!’ said the Cossack, touching the prisoner’s
arm to make him go on.
‘The Emperor! The Emperor!’ was suddenly heard among
the hussars.
All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up
the road behind him several riders with white plumes in
their hats. In a moment everyone was in his place, waiting.
Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his
place and mounted. Instantly his regret at not having been
in action and his dejected mood amid people of whom he
was weary had gone, instantly every thought of himself had
vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to
the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made up to
him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when


461

the longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to
look round and without looking round, he was ecstatically
conscious of his approach. He felt it not only from the sound
of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but because as he
drew near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive around him. Nearer and nearer to
Rostov came that sun shedding beams of mild and majestic
light around, and already he felt himself enveloped in those
beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and majestic
voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with Rostov’s feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was
heard the Emperor’s voice.
‘The Pavlograd hussars?’ he inquired.
‘The reserves, sire!’ replied a voice, a very human one
compared to that which had said: ‘The Pavlograd hussars?’
The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander’s face was even more beautiful than it had been
three days before at the review. It shone with such gaiety
and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face of the
majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron,
the Emperor’s eyes met Rostov’s and rested on them for not
more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in Rostov’s soul (it seemed to
Rostov that he understood everything), at any rate his lightblue eyes gazed for about two seconds into Rostov’s face.
A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at once he
raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left
foot, and galloped on.
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The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be
present at the battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his
courtiers, at twelve o’clock left the third column with which
he had been and galloped toward the vanguard. Before he
came up with the hussars, several adjutants met him with
news of the successful result of the action.
This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French
squadron, was represented as a brilliant victory over the
French, and so the Emperor and the whole army, especially
while the smoke hung over the battlefield, believed that the
French had been defeated and were retreating against their
will. A few minutes after the Emperor had passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau itself, a
petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the
market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing
before the Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded
soldiers whom there had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite of officers and courtiers, was
riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a different one from that
which he had ridden at the review, and bending to one side
he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked at
a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head.
The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that
his proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw
how the Emperor’s rather round shoulders shuddered as if
a cold shiver had run down them, how his left foot began
convulsively tapping the horse’s side with the spur, and how
the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did
not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under


463

the arms to place him on a stretcher that had been brought.
The soldier groaned.
‘Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?’ said the
Emperor apparently suffering more than the dying soldier,
and he rode away.
Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard
him, as he was riding away, say to Czartoryski: ‘What a
terrible thing war is: what a terrible thing! Quelle terrible
chose que la guerre!’
The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight of the enemy’s lines, which all day long
had yielded ground to us at the least firing. The Emperor’s
gratitude was announced to the vanguard, rewards were
promised, and the men received a double ration of vodka.
The campfires crackled and the soldiers’ songs resounded
even more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who
had already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed
the Emperor’s health. ‘Not ‘our Sovereign, the Emperor,’ as
they say at official dinners,’ said he, ‘but the health of our
Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and great man! Let us
drink to his health and to the certain defeat of the French!’
‘If we fought before,’ he said, ‘not letting the French pass,
as at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at
the front? We will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not saying it right, I have drunk a good
dealbut that is how I feel, and so do you too! To the health of
Alexander the First! Hurrah!’
‘Hurrah!’ rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
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And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old
Rostov.
When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches,
went glass in hand to the soldiers’ bonfires and with his
long gray mustache, his white chest showing under his open
shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light of the campfire,
waving his uplifted arm.
‘Lads! here’s to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our enemies! Hurrah!’ he exclaimed in his dashing,
old, hussar’s baritone.
The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with
loud shouts.
Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his
short hand patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.
‘As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign, he’s
fallen in love with the Tsar,’ he said.
‘Denisov, don’t make fun of it!’ cried Rostov. ‘It is such a
lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..’
‘I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..’
‘No, you don’t understand!’
And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to dienot in
saving the Emperor’s life (he did not even dare to dream of
that), but simply to die before his eyes. He really was in love
with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms and the
hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to


465

experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in
the Russian army were then in love, though less ecstatically,
with their Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms.

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Chapter XI
The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At
headquarters and among the troops near by the news spread
that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and had slept
badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of
this indisposition was the strong impression made on his
sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who
had come with a flag of truce, demanding an audience with
the Russian Emperor, was brought into Wischau from our
outposts. This officer was Savary. The Emperor had only
just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday he
was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off
with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French
army.
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to
Alexander a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride
of the whole army, a personal interview was refused, and
instead of the Sovereign, Prince Dolgorukov, the victor at
Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate with Napoleon
if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were actuated by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to
the Tsar, and remained alone with him for a long time.


467

On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the
army advanced two days’ march and the enemy’s outposts
after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest
army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning
of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz
was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activitythe eager talk,
running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutantswas confined to the Emperor’s headquarters. But on the afternoon of
that day, this activity reached Kutiizov’s headquarters and
the staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening, the
adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and
in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole
eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to
the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one
enormous mass six miles long.
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started the
whole movement that followed was like the first movement
of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel slowly
moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels
began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to
work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to
advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads
to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the
moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts
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of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached.
Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another
and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their
movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred
years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it and
obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of
innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular
movement of the hands which show the time, so the result
of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians
and Frenchall their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations,
sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasmwas only
the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the
three Emperorsthat is to say, a slow movement of the hand
on the dial of human history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor’s
headquarters and after staying but a short time with the
Tsar went to see the grand marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that
Kutuzov was upset and dissatisfied about something and
that at headquarters they were dissatisfied with him, and
also that at the Emperor’s headquarters everyone adopted


469

toward him the tone of men who know something others do
not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.
‘Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?’ said Dolgorukov,
who was sitting at tea with Bilibin. ‘The fete is for tomorrow.
How is your old fellow? Out of sorts?’
‘I won’t say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like
to be heard.’
‘But they heard him at the council of war and will hear
him when he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for
something now when Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a
general battle is impossible.’
‘Yes, you have seen him?’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Well,
what is Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?’
‘Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing
so much as a general engagement,’ repeated Dolgorukov,
evidently prizing this general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with Napoleon. ‘If he weren’t
afraid of a battle why did he ask for that interview? Why
negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is so
contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is
afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark
my words!’
‘But tell me, what is he like, eh?’ said Prince Andrew
again.
‘He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should
call him ‘Your Majesty,’ but who, to his chagrin, got no title
from me! That’s the sort of man he is, and nothing more,’ replied Dolgorukov, looking round at Bilibin with a smile.
‘Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov,’ he continued,
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‘we should be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about
and so give him a chance to escape, or to trick us, now that
we certainly have him in our hands! No, we mustn’t forget
Suvorov and his rulenot to put yourself in a position to be
attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than all the
experience of old Cunctators.’
‘But in what position are we going to attack him? I have
been at the outposts today and it is impossible to say where
his chief forces are situated,’ said Prince Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he
had himself formed.
‘Oh, that is all the same,’ Dolgorukov said quickly, and
getting up he spread a map on the table. ‘All eventualities
have been foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..’
And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother’s plan of a flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan,
which might have been as good as Weyrother’s, but for the
disadvantage that Weyrother’s had already been approved.
As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate the defects
of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not
at the map, but at Prince Andrew’s face.
‘There will be a council of war at Kutuzov’s tonight,
though; you can say all this there,’ remarked Dolgorukov.
‘I will do so,’ said Prince Andrew, moving away from the
map.
‘Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?’ said Bil

471

ibin, who, till then, had listened with an amused smile to
their conversation and now was evidently ready with a joke.
‘Whether tomorrow brings victory or defeat, the glory of our
Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov, there is not a
single Russian in command of a column! The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le
Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally
Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names.’
‘Be quiet, backbiter!’ said Dolgorukov. ‘It is not true;
there are now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov,
and there would be a third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves
were not too weak.’
‘However, I think General Kutuzov has come out,’ said
Prince Andrew. ‘I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!’ he added and went out after shaking hands with
Dolgorukov and Bilibin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from
asking Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what
he thought of tomorrow’s battle.
Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause,
replied: ‘I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count
Tolstoy and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you
think he replied? ‘But, my dear general, I am engaged with
rice and cutlets, look after military matters yourself!’ Yes...
That was the answer I got!’

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Chapter XII
Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Weyrother drove
with his plans to Kutuzov’s quarters where the council of
war was to be held. All the commanders of columns were
summoned to the commander in chief’s and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to come, were all
there at the appointed time.
Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle,
by his eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast
to the dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly
played the part of chairman and president of the council of
war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be at the head of a
movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was
like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart.
Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not
know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to
consider what this movement might lead to. Weyrother had
been twice that evening to the enemy’s picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters
where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and now,
much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov’s.
He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked
rapidly and indistinctly, without looking at the man he was


473

addressing, and did not reply to questions put to him. He
was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was haughty and
self-confident.
Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman’s castle of modest dimensions near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room
which had become the commander in chief’s office were
gathered Kutuzov himself, Weyrother, and the members of
the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last Bagration’s
orderly came with the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in
chief of this and, availing himself of permission previously
given him by Kutuzov to be present at the council, he remained in the room.
‘Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin,’
said Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up
to the table on which an enormous map of the environs of
Brunn was spread out.
Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat
neck bulged over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost
asleep in a low chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound of Weyrother’s voice,
he opened his one eye with an effort.
‘Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late,’ said he, and nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted
during the reading that followed proved that the com474

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mander in chief at that moment was absorbed by a far more
serious matter than a desire to show his contempt for the
dispositions or anything elsehe was engaged in satisfying
the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep.
Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself
that he was asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:
‘Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind
Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805.’
The dispositions were very complicated and difficult.
They began as follows:
‘As the enemy’s left wing rests on wooded hills and his
right extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the
ponds that are there, while we, on the other hand, with our
left wing by far outflank his right, it is advantageous to attack
the enemy’s latter wing especially if we occupy the villages
of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can both fall on his
flank and pursue him over the plain between Schlappanitz
and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy’s front. For this
object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The
second column marches... The third column marches...’ and
so on, read Weyrother.
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden
stood, leaning his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a
burning candle, and seemed not to listen or even to wish


475

to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother, with
his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Miloradovich in a
military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands on his
knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly
silent, gazing at Weyrother’s face, and only turned away his
eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then
Miloradovich looked round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from that significant look whether
he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who,
with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern
French face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at
his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a
gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one
of the longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the
snuffbox, raised his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips interrupted Weyrother,
wishing to say something. But the Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as if
to say: ‘You can tell me your views later, but now be so good
as to look at the map and listen.’ Langeron lifted his eyes
with an expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking an explanation, but meeting the latter’s
impressive but meaningless gaze drooped his eyes sadly and
again took to twirling his snuffbox.
‘A geography lesson!’ he muttered as if to himself, but
loud enough to be heard.
Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness,
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held his hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of
a man absorbed in attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat
opposite Weyrother, with an assiduous and modest mien,
and stooping over the outspread map conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality. He asked
Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly
heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohkturov noted them down.
When the reading which lasted more than an hour was
over, Langeron again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at anyone in particular, began
to say how difficult it was to carry out such a plan in which
the enemy’s position was assumed to be known, whereas
it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement. Langeron’s objections were valid but it was obvious
that their chief aim was to show General Weyrotherwho
had read his dispositions with as much self-confidence as
if he were addressing school childrenthat he had to do, not
with fools, but with men who could teach him something in
military matters.
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother’s voice
ceased, Kutuzov opened his eye as a miller wakes up when
the soporific drone of the mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, ‘So you are
still at that silly business!’ quickly closed his eye again, and
let his head sink still lower.
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother’s vanity as author of the military plan, argued that
Bonaparte might easily attack instead of being attacked,


477

and so render the whole of this plan perfectly worthless.
Weyrother met all objections with a firm and contemptuous
smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections
be they what they might.
‘If he could attack us, he would have done so today,’ said
he.
‘So you think he is powerless?’ said Langeron.
‘He has forty thousand men at most,’ replied Weyrother,
with the smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a case.
‘In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,’ said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again
glancing round for support to Miloradovich who was near
him.
But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking
of anything rather than of what the generals were disputing
about.
‘Ma foi!’ said he, ‘tomorrow we shall see all that on the
battlefield.’
Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say
that to him it was strange and ridiculous to meet objections
from Russian generals and to have to prove to them what
he had not merely convinced himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
‘The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise
is heard from his camp,’ said he. ‘What does that mean? Either he is retreating, which is the only thing we need fear,
or he is changing his position.’ (He smiled ironically.) ‘But
even if he also took up a position in the Thuerassa, he mere478

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ly saves us a great deal of trouble and all our arrangements
to the minutest detail remain the same.’
‘How is that?...’ began Prince Andrew, who had for long
been waiting an opportunity to express his doubts.
Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked
round at the generals.
‘Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrowor rather for
today, for it is past midnightcannot now be altered,’ said he.
‘You have heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there is nothing more important...’ he paused,
‘than to have a good sleep.’
He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It
was past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.
The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not
been able to express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on
him a vague and uneasy impression. Whether Dolgorukov
and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, and the others who
did not approve of the plan of attack, were righthe did not
know. ‘But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to state his
views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account
of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of
lives, and my life, my life,’ he thought, ‘must be risked?’
‘Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,’ he
thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole
series of most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his
imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days when he first
loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her
and for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened


479

mood he went out of the hut in which he was billeted with
Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it.
The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed mysteriously. ‘Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!’ he
thought. ‘Tomorrow everything may be over for me! All
these memories will be no more, none of them will have any
meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly, I have
a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to show all
I can do.’ And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all
the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at
last. He firmly and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov,
to Weyrother, and to the Emperors. All are struck by the
justness of his views, but no one undertakes to carry them
out, so he takes a regiment, a divisionstipulates that no one
is to interfere with his arrangementsleads his division to the
decisive point, and gains the victory alone. ‘But death and
suffering?’ suggested another voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his
triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned
by him alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov’s staff, but he does everything alone. The next battle is
won by him alone. Kutuzov is removed and he is appointed... ‘Well and then?’ asked the other voice. ‘If before that
you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed, well...
what then?...’ ‘Well then,’ Prince Andrew answered himself,
‘I don’t know what will happen and don’t want to know, and
can’t, but if I want thiswant glory, want to be known to men,
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want to be loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it
and want nothing but that and live only for that. Yes, for
that alone! I shall never tell anyone, but, oh God! what am
I to do if I love nothing but fame and men’s esteem? Death,
wounds, the loss of familyI fear nothing. And precious and
dear as many persons are to mefather, sister, wifethose dearest to meyet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would
give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over
men, of love from men I don’t know and never shall know,
for the love of these men here,’ he thought, as he listened
to voices in Kutuzov’s courtyard. The voices were those of
the orderlies who were packing up; one voice, probably a
coachman’s, was teasing Kutuzov’s old cook whom Prince
Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying, ‘Tit,
I say, Tit!’
‘Well?’ returned the old man.
‘Go, Tit, thresh a bit!’ said the wag.
‘Oh, go to the devil!’ called out a voice, drowned by the
laughter of the orderlies and servants.
‘All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over
them all, I value this mystic power and glory that is floating
here above me in this mist!’



481

Chapter XIII
That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front of Bagration’s detachment. His hussars were
placed along the line in couples and he himself rode along
the line trying to master the sleepiness that kept coming
over him. An enormous space, with our army’s campfires
dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him; in
front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing,
peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something
gleamed gray, now there was something black, now little
lights seemed to glimmer where the enemy ought to be, now
he fancied it was only something in his own eyes. His eyes
kept closing, and in his fancy appearednow the Emperor,
now Denisov, and now Moscow memoriesand he again hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head
and ears of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when
he came within six paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was still the same misty darkness.
‘Why not?... It might easily happen,’ thought Rostov, ‘that
the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as he would
to any other officer; he’ll say: ‘Go and find out what’s there.’
There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in
just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What
if he gave me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him,
how I would tell him the truth, how I would unmask his
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deceivers!’ And in order to realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to himself an enemy
or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill with
pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started
and opened his eyes.
‘Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
watchwordshaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in reserve tomorrow,’ he thought. ‘I’ll ask leave
to go to the front, this may be my only chance of seeing the
Emperor. It won’t be long now before I am off duty. I’ll take
another turn and when I get back I’ll go to the general and
ask him.’ He readjusted himself in the saddle and touched
up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed
to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping
descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep
as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov
could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by
the moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses?
He even thought something moved on that white spot. ‘I
expect it’s snow... that spot... a spotune tache,’ he thought.
‘There now... it’s not a tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes...
Na... tasha... (Won’t she be surprised when I tell her how I’ve
seen the Emperor?) Natasha... take my sabretache...’‘Keep to
the right, your honor, there are bushes here,’ came the voice
of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk almost to his
horse’s mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. ‘But


483

what was I thinking? I mustn’t forget. How shall I speak
to the Emperor? No, that’s not itthat’s tomorrow. Oh yes!
Natasha... sabretache... saber them...Whom? The hussars...
Ah, the hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskaya Street
rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought about him too,
just opposite Guryev’s house... Old Guryev.... Oh, but Denisov’s a fine fellow. But that’s all nonsense. The chief thing is
that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished
to say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared
not. But that’s nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget
the important thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That’s right!’ And his head once more
sank to his horse’s neck. All at once it seemed to him that he
was being fired at. ‘What? What? What?... Cut them down!
What?...’ said Rostov, waking up. At the moment he opened
his eyes his eyes he heard in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His
horse and the horse of the hussar near him pricked their
ears at these shouts. Over there, where the shouting came
from, a fire flared up and went out again, then another, and
all along the French line on the hill fires flared up and the
shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov could hear the
sound of French words but could not distinguish them.
The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was:
‘ahahah!’ and ‘rrrr!’
‘What’s that? What do you make of it?’ said Rostov to the
hussar beside him. ‘That must be the enemy’s camp!’
The hussar did not reply.
‘Why, don’t you hear it?’ Rostov asked again, after wait484

War and Peace

ing for a reply.
‘Who can tell, your honor?’ replied the hussar reluctantly.
‘From the direction, it must be the enemy,’ repeated Rostov.
‘It may be he or it may be nothing,’ muttered the hussar.
‘It’s dark... Steady!’ he cried to his fidgeting horse.
Rostov’s horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground, pricking its ears at the noise and looking at
the lights. The shouting grew still louder and merged into
a general roar that only an army of several thousand men
could produce. The lights spread farther and farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no longer
wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy army had a stimulating effect on him. ‘Vive l’Empereur!
L’Empereur!’ he now heard distinctly.
‘They can’t be far off, probably just beyond the stream,’
he said to the hussar beside him.
The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed
angrily. The sound of horse’s hoofs approaching at a trot
along the line of hussars was heard, and out of the foggy
darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
‘Your honor, the generals!’ said the sergeant, riding up
to Rostov.
Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the
shouts, rode with the sergeant to meet some mounted men
who were riding along the line. One was on a white horse.
Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov with their adju

485

tants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
lights and shouts in the enemy’s camp. Rostov rode up to
Bagration, reported to him, and then joined the adjutants
listening to what the generals were saying.
‘Believe me,’ said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, ‘it is nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered
the rearguard to kindle fires and make a noise to deceive
us.’
‘Hardly,’ said Bagration. ‘I saw them this evening on
that knoll; if they had retreated they would have withdrawn
from that too.... Officer!’ said Bagration to Rostov, ‘are the
enemy’s skirmishers still there?’
‘They were there this evening, but now I don’t know,
your excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?’
replied Rostov.
Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov’s face in the mist.
‘Well, go and see,’ he said, after a pause.
‘Yes, sir.’
Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko
and two other hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted
downhill in the direction from which the shouting came.
He felt both frightened and pleased to be riding alone with
three hussars into that mysterious and dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration called
to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov
pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and
on, continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for
men and continually discovering his mistakes. Having de486

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scended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw either our own or
the enemy’s fires, but heard the shouting of the French more
loudly and distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached it he found it was a
road. Having come out onto the road he reined in his horse,
hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride over
the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it
would be easier to see people coming along it. ‘Follow me!’
said he, crossed the road, and began riding up the hill at a
gallop toward the point where the French pickets had been
standing that evening.
‘Your honor, there he is!’ cried one of the hussars behind
him. And before Rostov had time to make out what the
black thing was that had suddenly appeared in the fog, there
was a flash, followed by a report, and a bullet whizzing high
up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed out of hearing.
Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan. Rostov
turned his horse and galloped back. Four more reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the
fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse,
whose spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went
back at a footpace. ‘Well, some more! Some more!’ a merry
voice was saying in his soul. But no more shots came.
Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his
horse gallop again, and with his hand at the salute rode up
to the general.
Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had only lit fires to deceive us.


487

‘What does that prove?’ he was saying as Rostov rode up.
‘They might retreat and leave the pickets.’
‘It’s plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince,’ said
Bagration. ‘Wait till tomorrow morning, we’ll find out everything tomorrow.’
‘The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where
it was in the evening,’ reported Rostov, stooping forward
with his hand at the salute and unable to repress the smile
of delight induced by his ride and especially by the sound
of the bullets.
‘Very good, very good,’ said Bagration. ‘Thank you, officer.’
‘Your excellency,’ said Rostov, ‘may I ask a favor?’
‘What is it?’
‘Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to
be attached to the first squadron?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Count Rostov.’
‘Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me.’
‘Count Ilya Rostov’s son?’ asked Dolgorukov.
But Rostov did not reply.
‘Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?’
‘I will give the order.’
‘Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message
to the Emperor,’ thought Rostov.
‘Thank God!’
The fires and shouting in the enemy’s army were occasioned by the fact that while Napoleon’s proclamation was
being read to the troops the Emperor himself rode round
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his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him, lit wisps of straw
and ran after him, shouting, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Napoleon’s
proclamation was as follows:
Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to
avenge the Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since
to this place. The position we occupy is a strong one, and
while they are marching to go round me on the right they
will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will myself direct your
battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with your habitual
valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy’s ranks,
but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will
see your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the
enemy, for there must be no doubt of victory, especially on
this day when what is at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the honor of our nation.
Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the
wounded! Let every man be fully imbued with the thought
that we must defeat these hirelings of England, inspired by
such hatred of our nation! This victory will conclude our
campaign and we can return to winter quarters, where fresh
French troops who are being raised in France will join us,
and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my people,
of you, and of myself.
NAPOLEON



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Chapter XIV
At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops
of the center, the reserves, and Bagration’s right flank had
not yet moved, but on the left flank the columns of infantry,
cavalry, and artillery, which were to be the first to descend
the heights to attack the French right flank and drive it
into the Bohemian mountains according to plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which
they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes
smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly
drinking tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to warm themselves,
gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything
that they did not want or could not carry away with them.
Austrian column guides were moving in and out among
the Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance.
As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer’s quarters, the regiment began to move:
the soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their
boots, their bags into the carts, got their muskets ready, and
formed rank. The officers buttoned up their coats, buckled
on their swords and pouches, and moved along the ranks
shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and
packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and
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battalion and regimental commanders mounted, crossed
themselves, gave final instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who remained behind, and the
monotonous tramp of thousands of feet resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and unable,
from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see either the place they were leaving or that to
which they were going.
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by
his regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far
he has walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous
places he reaches, just as a sailor is always surrounded by
the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so the soldier
always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks,
the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company
dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely cares
to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the
day of battleheaven knows how and whencea stern note of
which all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of
an army, announcing the approach of something decisive
and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the soldiers excitedly try to get
beyond the interests of their regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning what is going on
around them.
The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing
light they could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like
gigantic trees and level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might encounter an enemy invisible


491

ten paces off. But the columns advanced for a long time,
always in the same fog, descending and ascending hills,
avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On
the contrary, the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns were moving
in the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that to
the unknown place where he was going, many more of our
men were going too.
‘There now, the Kurskies have also gone past,’ was being
said in the ranks.
‘It’s wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered,
lads! Last night I looked at the campfires and there was no
end of them. A regular Moscow!’
Though none of the column commanders rode up to the
ranks or talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at
the council of war, were out of humor and dissatisfied with
the affair, and so did not exert themselves to cheer the men
but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops marched
gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially
to an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour
in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to halt and
an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is
communicated is very difficult to define, but it certainly is
communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,
and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian
army been alone without any allies, it might perhaps have
been a long time before this consciousness of mismanage492

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ment became a general conviction, but as it was, the disorder
was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid Germans,
and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had
been occasioned by the sausage eaters.
‘Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we
already come up against the French?’
‘No, one can’t hear them. They’d be firing if we had.’
‘They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here
we stand in the middle of a field without rhyme or reason.
It’s all those damned Germans’ muddling! What stupid
devils!’
‘Yes, I’d send them on in front, but no fear, they’re crowding up behind. And now here we stand hungry.’
‘I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are
blocking the way,’ said an officer.
‘Ah, those damned Germans! They don’t know their own
country!’ said another.
‘What division are you?’ shouted an adjutant, riding up.
‘The Eighteenth.’
‘Then why are you here? You should have gone on long
ago, now you won’t get there till evening.’
‘What stupid orders! They don’t themselves know what
they are doing!’ said the officer and rode off.
Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not
in Russian.
‘Tafa-lafa! But what he’s jabbering no one can make out,’
said a soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away.
‘I’d shoot them, the scoundrels!’
‘We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we


493

haven’t got halfway. Fine orders!’ was being repeated on different sides.
And the feeling of energy with which the troops had
started began to turn into vexation and anger at the stupid
arrangements and at the Germans.
The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian
cavalry was moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center was too far separated from our
right flank and the cavalry were all ordered to turn back to
the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in front of the
infantry, who had to wait.
At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian
guide and a Russian general. The general shouted a demand
that the cavalry should be halted, the Austrian argued that
not he, but the higher command, was to blame. The troops
meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After an
hour’s delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The
fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a shot
was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying
intervalstrata... tatand then more and more regularly and
rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the
stream, and having stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no
encouraging word from their commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through the ranks,
and above all being unable to see anything in front or
around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots
with the enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, re494

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ceiving no timely orders from the officers or adjutants who
wandered about in the fog in those unknown surroundings
unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action
began for the first, second, and third columns, which had
gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which
Kutuzov was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still
thick fog; on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was going on in front. Whether
all the enemy forces were, as we supposed, six miles away, or
whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one knew
till after eight o’clock.
It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken
like a sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood with his marshals around
him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and
the sun’s vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float
on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French
army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not
on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and
Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this side, so close to
our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the
blue cloak which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat
on his small gray Arab horse a little in front of his marshals.
He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise out of the
sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving
in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the


495

valley. Not a single muscle of his facewhich in those days
was still thinmoved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently
on one spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the
Russian force had already descended into the valley toward
the ponds and lakes and part were leaving these Pratzen
Heights which he intended to attack and regarded as the
key to the position. He saw over the mist that in a hollow
between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one direction toward the valley and disappearing
one after another into the mist. From information he had
received the evening before, from the sound of wheels and
footsteps heard by the outposts during the night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to
be far away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted the center of the Russian army,
and that that center was already sufficiently weakened to be
successfully attacked. But still he did not begin the engagement.
Today was a great day for himthe anniversary of his
coronation. Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and
refreshed, vigorous, and in good spirits, he mounted his
horse and rode out into the field in that happy mood in
which everything seems possible and everything succeeds.
He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above the
mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,
self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy
happily in love. The marshals stood behind him not ventur496

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ing to distract his attention. He looked now at the Pratzen
Heights, now at the sun floating up out of the mist.
When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and
fields and mist were aglow with dazzling lightas if he had
only awaited this to begin the actionhe drew the glove from
his shapely white hand, made a sign with it to the marshals,
and ordered the action to begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and a
few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved
rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which were being
more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down
the valley to their left.



497

Chapter XV
At eight o’clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of
the fourth column, Miloradovich’s, the one that was to take
the place of Przebyszewski’s and Langeron’s columns which
had already gone down into the valley. He greeted the men
of the foremost regiment and gave them the order to march,
thereby indicating that he intended to lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen he halted.
Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number
forming the commander in chief’s suite. He was in a state of
suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly
calm as a man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment.
He was firmly convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he
did not know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality
and the position of our troops were known to him as far as
they could be known to anyone in our army. His own strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out,
was forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother’s plan, Prince
Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new
projects such as might call for his rapidity of perception and
decision.
To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of
unseen forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew
thought the fight would concentrate. ‘There we shall en498

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counter difficulties, and there,’ thought he, ‘I shall be sent
with a brigade or division, and there, standard in hand, I
shall go forward and break whatever is in front of me.’
He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing
battalions. Seeing them he kept thinking, ‘That may be the
very standard with which I shall lead the army.’
In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the
heights was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in
the valley to the left into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of firing. Above the
heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the vast orb
of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that sea of
mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there
the enemy probably was, for something could be descried.
On the right the Guards were entering the misty region
with a sound of hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam
of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar masses
of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In
front and behind moved infantry. The commander in chief
was standing at the end of the village letting the troops pass
by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and irritable.
The infantry passing before him came to a halt without any
command being given, apparently obstructed by something
in front.
‘Do order them to form into battalion columns and go
round the village!’ he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. ‘Don’t you understand, your excellency, my dear
sir, that you must not defile through narrow village streets


499

when we are marching against the enemy?’
‘I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,’ answered the general.
Kutuzov laughed bitterly.
‘You’ll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the
enemy! Very fine!’
‘The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According
to the dispositions..’
‘The dispositions!’ exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. ‘Who told
you that?... Kindly do as you are ordered.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘My dear fellow,’ Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew,
‘the old man is as surly as a dog.’
An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes
in his hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor’s name had the fourth column advanced into action.
Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye
happened to fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him.
Seeing him, Kutuzov’s malevolent and caustic expression
softened, as if admitting that what was being done was not
his adjutant’s fault, and still not answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.
‘Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division
has passed the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders.’
Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped
him.
‘And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted,’ he
added. ‘What are they doing? What are they doing?’ he
murmured to himself, still not replying to the Austrian.
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Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he
stopped the third division and convinced himself that there
really were no sharpshooters in front of our columns. The
colonel at the head of the regiment was much surprised at
the commander in chief’s order to throw out skirmishers.
He had felt perfectly sure that there were other troops in
front of him and that the enemy must be at least six miles
away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a
barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders
in the commander in chief’s name to rectify this omission,
Prince Andrew galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same
place, his stout body resting heavily in the saddle with the
lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily with closed eyes. The
troops were no longer moving, but stood with the butts of
their muskets on the ground.
‘All right, all right!’ he said to Prince Andrew, and turned
to a general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they
started as all the left-flank columns had already descended.
‘Plenty of time, your excellency,’ muttered Kutuzov in
the midst of a yawn. ‘Plenty of time,’ he repeated.
Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the
sound of regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came
nearer along the whole extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were greeting was
riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front
of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he rode a
little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the
road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of


501

horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by
side in front, at full gallop. One in a black uniform with
white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed chestnut horse, the
other who was in a white uniform rode a black one. These
were the two Emperors followed by their suites. Kutuzov,
affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave the
command ‘Attention!’ and rode up to the Emperors with a
salute. His whole appearance and manner were suddenly
transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys
without reasoning. With an affectation of respect which
evidently struck Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and
saluted.
This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young
and happy face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across
a clear sky and vanished. After his illness he looked rather
thinner that day than on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time abroad, but there was
still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same
capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted innocent youth.
At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here
he seemed brighter and more energetic. He was slightly
flushed after galloping two miles, and reining in his horse
he sighed restfully and looked round at the faces of his
suite, young and animated as his own. Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others, all
richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed,
fresh, only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and
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smiling, had stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor
Francis, a rosy, long faced young man, sat very erect on his
handsome black horse, looking about him in a leisurely and
preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white adjutants and asked some question‘Most likely he is asking at
what o’clock they started,’ thought Prince Andrew, watching his old acquaintance with a smile he could not repress
as he recalled his reception at Brunn. In the Emperors’ suite
were the picked young orderly officers of the Guard and
line regiments, Russian and Austrian. Among them were
grooms leading the Tsar’s beautiful relay horses covered
with embroidered cloths.
As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the
fields enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of success reached Kutuzov’s cheerless
staff with the galloping advent of all these brilliant young
men.
‘Why aren’t you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?’ said
the Emperor Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing
courteously at the same time at the Emperor Francis.
‘I am waiting, Your Majesty,’ answered Kutuzov, bending forward respectfully.
The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as
if he had not quite heard.
‘Waiting, Your Majesty,’ repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that Kutuzov’s upper lip twitched unnaturally
as he said the word ‘waiting.’) ‘Not all the columns have
formed up yet, Your Majesty.’
The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he


503

shrugged his rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as if complaining of Kutuzov.
‘You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not on
the Empress’ Field where a parade does not begin till all the
troops are assembled,’ said the Tsar with another glance at
the Emperor Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at
least to listen to what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about him and did not listen.
‘That is just why I do not begin, sire,’ said Kutuzov in a resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not
being heard, and again something in his face twitched‘That
is just why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade
and not on the Empress’ Field.’ said clearly and distinctly.
In the Emperor’s suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed dissatisfaction and reproach. ‘Old though he may
be, he should not, he certainly should not, speak like that,’
their glances seemed to say.
The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov’s
eye waiting to hear whether he would say anything more.
But Kutuzov, with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to
be waiting. The silence lasted for about a minute.
‘However, if you command it, Your Majesty,’ said Kutuzov, lifting his head and again assuming his former tone of
a dull, unreasoning, but submissive general.
He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich,
the commander of the column, gave him the order to advance.
The troops again began to move, and two battalions of
the Novgorod and one of the Apsheron regiment went for504

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ward past the Emperor.
As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced
Miloradovich, without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his
breast and an enormous tuft of plumes in his cocked hat
worn on one side with its corners front and back, galloped
strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute reined in his
horse before the Emperor.
‘God be with you, general!’ said the Emperor.
‘Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite, sire,’* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic
smiles among the gentlemen of the Tsar’s suite by his poor
French.
*”Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do,
Sire.’
Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed
himself a little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men,
excited by the Tsar’s presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk pace.
‘Lads!’ shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident,
and cheery voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect of battle, and by the sight of the gallant
Apsherons, his comrades in Suvorov’s time, now passing so
gallantly before the Emperors, that he forgot the sovereigns’
presence. ‘Lads, it’s not the first village you’ve had to take,’
cried he.
‘Glad to do our best!’ shouted the soldiers.
The Emperor’s horse started at the sudden cry. This horse
that had carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him
also here on the field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless


505

blows of his left foot and pricking its ears at the sound of
shots just as it had done on the Empress’ Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor of the nearness
of the Emperor Francis’ black cob, nor of all that was being
said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers
and made a remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.

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Chapter XVI
Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking
pace behind the carabineers.
When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of
the column he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had
probably once been an inn, where two roads parted. Both of
them led downhill and troops were marching along both.
The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were
already dimly visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on the left, the firing became
more distinct. Kutuzov had stopped and was speaking to
an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for
a field glass.
‘Look, look!’ said this adjutant, looking not at the troops
in the distance, but down the hill before him. ‘It’s the
French!’
The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field
glass, trying to snatch it from one another. The expression
on all their faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The
French were supposed to be a mile and a half away, but had
suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just in front of us.
‘It’s the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But
how is that?’ said different voices.
With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to


507

the right, not more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a dense French column coming up to
meet the Apsherons.
‘Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn
has come,’ thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse
he rode up to Kutuzov.
‘The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency,’ cried
he. But at that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all
round, firing was heard quite close at hand, and a voice of
naive terror barely two steps from Prince Andrew shouted,
‘Brothers! All’s lost!’ And at this as if at a command, everyone began to run.
Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running
back to where five minutes before the troops had passed the
Emperors. Not only would it have been difficult to stop that
crowd, it was even impossible not to be carried back with it
oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to lose touch with it, and
looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was
happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face, red
and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did
not ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner.
Kutuzov remained in the same place and without answering drew out a handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his
cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.
‘You are wounded?’ he asked, hardly able to master the
trembling of his lower jaw.
‘The wound is not here, it is there!’ said Kutuzov, pressing the handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to
the fleeing soldiers. ‘Stop them!’ he shouted, and at the same
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moment, probably realizing that it was impossible to stop
them, spurred his horse and rode to the right.
A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him
back with it.
The troops were running in such a dense mass that once
surrounded by them it was difficult to get out again. One
was shouting, ‘Get on! Why are you hindering us?’ Another
in the same place turned round and fired in the air; a third
was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode. Having by a
great effort got away to the left from that flood of men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode
toward a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his
way out of the crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying
to keep near Kutuzov, saw on the slope of the hill amid the
smoke a Russian battery that was still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian
infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor
backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry and approached Kutuzov.
Of Kutuzov’s suite only four remained. They were all pale
and exchanged looks in silence.
‘Stop those wretches!’ gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander, pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that
instant, as if to punish him for those words, bullets flew
hissing across the regiment and across Kutuzov’s suite like
a flock of little birds.
The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing at him. After this volley the regimental
commander clutched at his leg; several soldiers fell, and a


509

second lieutenant who was holding the flag let it fall from
his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on the muskets of
the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing without orders.
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked
around.... ‘Bolkonski!’ he whispered, his voice trembling
from a consciousness of the feebleness of age, ‘Bolkonski!’
he whispered, pointing to the disordered battalion and at
the enemy, ‘what’s that?’
But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew,
feeling tears of shame and anger choking him, had already
leapt from his horse and run to the standard.
‘Forward, lads!’ he shouted in a voice piercing as a
child’s.
‘Here it is!’ thought he, seizing the staff of the standard
and hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently
aimed at him. Several soldiers fell.
‘Hurrah!’ shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to
hold up the heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole battalion would follow him.
And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier
moved and then another and soon the whole battalion ran
forward shouting ‘Hurrah!’ and overtook him. A sergeant
of the battalion ran up and took the flag that was swaying
from its weight in Prince Andrew’s hands, but he was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard
and, dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In
front he saw our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting,
while others, having abandoned their guns, were running
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toward him. He also saw French infantry soldiers who were
seizing the artillery horses and turning the guns round.
Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above
him unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually groaned and dropped. But he did not look at them:
he looked only at what was going on in front of himat the
battery. He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop
while a French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the faces
of these two men, who evidently did not realize what they
were doing.
‘What are they about?’ thought Prince Andrew as he
gazed at them. ‘Why doesn’t the red-haired gunner run
away as he is unarmed? Why doesn’t the Frenchman stab
him? He will not get away before the Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him...’
And really another French soldier, trailing his musket,
ran up to the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired
gunner, who had triumphantly secured the mop and still
did not realize what awaited him, was about to be decided.
But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It seemed to
him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him on the
head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but
the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing what he had been looking at.
‘What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,’
thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping


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to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen with the gunners
ended, whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or
not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved.
But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing
but the skythe lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably
lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. ‘How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,’ thought Prince
Andrew‘not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as
the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry
faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds
glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see
that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it
at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite
sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not
exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..’

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Chapter XVII
On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine
o’clock the battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to
Dolgorukov’s demand to commence the action, and wishing
to avert responsibility from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to inquire of the commander
in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance between the
two flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger
were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found
the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he
would not be able to get back before evening.
Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round
his suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him.
‘And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in chief, your excellency?’ said Rostov, with his
hand to his cap.
‘You can give the message to His Majesty,’ said Dolgorukov, hurriedly interrupting Bagration.
On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed
to get a few hours’ sleep before morning and felt cheerful,
bold, and resolute, with elasticity of movement, faith in his
good fortune, and generally in that state of mind which
makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and easy.
All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there


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was to be a general engagement in which he was taking part,
more than that, he was orderly to the bravest general, and
still more, he was going with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps
even to the sovereign himself. The morning was bright, he
had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of joy
and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the
rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the
line of Bagration’s troops, which had not yet advanced into
action but were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvarov’s cavalry and here he noticed a stir
and signs of preparation for battle; having passed Uvarov’s
cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon and musketry
ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.
In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or
three musket shots at irregular intervals as before, followed
by one or two cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before Pratzen, interrupted by
such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes several of
them were not separated from one another but merged into
a general roar.
He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to
chase one another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon
smoke rolling, spreading, and mingling with one another.
He could also, by the gleam of bayonets visible through the
smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and narrow
lines of artillery with green caissons.
Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to
see what was going on, but strain his attention as he would
he could not understand or make out anything of what was
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happening: there in the smoke men of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops; but
why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make
out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his
energy and determination.
‘Go on! Go on! Give it them!’ he mentally exclaimed at
these sounds, and again proceeded to gallop along the line,
penetrating farther and farther into the region where the
army was already in action.
‘How it will be there I don’t know, but all will be well!’
thought Rostov.
After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the
next part of the line (the Guards) was already in action.
‘So much the better! I shall see it close,’ he thought.
He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of
men came galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans
who with disordered ranks were returning from the attack.
Rostov got out of their way, involuntarily noticed that one
of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
‘That is no business of mine,’ he thought. He had not ridden many hundred yards after that before he saw to his left,
across the whole width of the field, an enormous mass of
cavalry in brilliant white uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and across his path. Rostov
put his horse to full gallop to get out of the way of these men,
and he would have got clear had they continued at the same
speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of
the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud


515

of their hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their
horses, their figures, and even their faces, more and more
distinctly. They were our Horse Guards, advancing to attack
the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.
The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in
their horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard
the command: ‘Charge!’ shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to full speed. Rostov, fearing to be
crushed or swept into the attack on the French, galloped
along the front as hard as his horse could go, but still was
not in time to avoid them.
The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow,
frowned angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom
he would inevitably collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his Bedouin over (Rostov
felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic
men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman’s horse. The
heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back
its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge
spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and
extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the
Horse Guards passed Rostov before he heard them shout,
‘Hurrah!’ and looking back saw that their foremost ranks
were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with red epaulets,
probably French. He could see nothing more, for immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and
smoke enveloped everything.
At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed
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him, disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether
to gallop after them or to go where he was sent. This was
the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that amazed the
French themselves. Rostov was horrified to hear later that of
all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past
him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left
after the charge.
‘Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and
maybe I shall see the Emperor immediately! ‘ thought Rostov and galloped on.
When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed
that about them and around them cannon balls were flying,
of which he was aware not so much because he heard their
sound as because he saw uneasiness on the soldiers’ faces
and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the officers.
Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot
Guards he heard a voice calling him by name.
‘Rostov!’
‘What?’ he answered, not recognizing Boris.
‘I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!’ said Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of
young men who have been under fire for the first time.
Rostov stopped.
‘Have you?’ he said. ‘Well, how did it go?’
‘We drove them back!’ said Boris with animation, growing talkative. ‘Can you imagine it?’ and he began describing
how the Guards, having taken up their position and seeing
troops before them, thought they were Austrians, and all at


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once discovered from the cannon balls discharged by those
troops that they were themselves in the front line and had
unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse.
‘Where are you off to?’ asked Boris.
‘With a message to His Majesty.’
‘There he is!’ said Boris, thinking Rostov had said ‘His
Highness,’ and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his
high shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces
away from them in his helmet and Horse Guards’ jacket,
shouting something to a pale, white uniformed Austrian officer.
‘But that’s the Grand Duke, and I want the commander
in chief or the Emperor,’ said Rostov, and was about to spur
his horse.
‘Count! Count!’ shouted Berg who ran up from the other
side as eager as Boris. ‘Count! I am wounded in my right
hand’ (and he showed his bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) ‘and I remained at the front. I held my
sword in my left hand, Count. All our familythe von Bergshave been knights!’
He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear
it and rode away.
Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space,
Rostov, to avoid again getting in front of the first line as
he had done when the Horse Guards charged, followed the
line of reserves, going far round the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he
heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind
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our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy
to be.
‘What can it be?’ he thought. ‘The enemy in the rear of
our army? Impossible!’ And suddenly he was seized by a
panic of fear for himself and for the issue of the whole battle. ‘But be that what it may,’ he reflected, ‘there is no riding
round it now. I must look for the commander in chief here,
and if all is lost it is for me to perish with the rest.’
The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more and more confirmed the farther he rode into
the region behind the village of Pratzen, which was full of
troops of all kinds.
‘What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at?
Who is firing?’ Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian
and Austrian soldiers running in confused crowds across
his path.
‘The devil knows! They’ve killed everybody! It’s all up
now!’ he was told in Russian, German, and Czech by the
crowd of fugitives who understood what was happening as
little as he did.
‘Kill the Germans!’ shouted one.
‘May the devil take themthe traitors!’
‘Zum Henker diese Russen!’* muttered a German.
*”Hang these Russians!’
Several wounded men passed along the road, and words
of abuse, screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub,
then the firing died down. Rostov learned later that Russian
and Austrian soldiers had been firing at one another.
‘My God! What does it all mean?’ thought he. ‘And here,


519

where at any moment the Emperor may see them.... But no,
these must be only a handful of scoundrels. It will soon be
over, it can’t be that, it can’t be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!’
The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov’s
head. Though he saw French cannon and French troops on
the Pratzen Heights just where he had been ordered to look
for the commander in chief, he could not, did not wish to,
believe that.

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Chapter XVIII
Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the
Emperor near the village of Pratzen. But neither they nor
a single commanding officer were there, only disorganized
crowds of troops of various kinds. He urged on his already
weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but the farther
he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of
all arms, some wounded and some not. This whole mass
droned and jostled in confusion under the dismal influence
of cannon balls flying from the French batteries stationed
on the Pratzen Heights.
‘Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?’ Rostov kept
asking everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to
answer.
‘Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!’ said the soldier,
laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov
stopped the horse of a batman or groom of some important
personage and began to question him. The man announced
that the Tsar had been driven in a carriage at full speed
about an hour before along that very road and that he was


521

dangerously wounded.
‘It can’t be!’ said Rostov. ‘It must have been someone
else.’
‘I saw him myself.’ replied the man with a self-confident
smile of derision. ‘I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as
I see you.... There he sat in the carriage as pale as anything.
How they made the four black horses fly! Gracious me, they
did rattle past! It’s time I knew the Imperial horses and Ilya
Ivanych. I don’t think Ilya drives anyone except the Tsar!’
Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when
a wounded officer passing by addressed him:
‘Who is it you want?’ he asked. ‘The commander in chief?
He was killed by a cannon ballstruck in the breast before
our regiment.’
‘Not killedwounded!’ another officer corrected him.
‘Who? Kutuzov?’ asked Rostov.
‘Not Kutuzov, but what’s his namewell, never mind...
there are not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all
the commanders are there,’ said the officer, pointing to the
village of Hosjeradek, and he walked on.
Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to
whom he was now going. The Emperor was wounded, the
battle lost. It was impossible to doubt it now. Rostov rode
in the direction pointed out to him, in which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now
to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and
unwounded?
‘Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at
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once!’ a soldier shouted to him. ‘They’d kill you there!’
‘Oh, what are you talking about?’ said another. ‘Where is
he to go? That way is nearer.’
Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where
they said he would be killed.
‘It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I
to try to save myself?’ he thought. He rode on to the region
where the greatest number of men had perished in fleeing
from Pratzen. The French had not yet occupied that region,
and the Russiansthe uninjured and slightly woundedhad left
it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of manure on wellkept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded to
each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos
and threes and one could hear their distressing screams and
groans, sometimes feignedor so it seemed to Rostov. He put
his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men,
and he felt afraidafraid not for his life, but for the courage
he needed and which he knew would not stand the sight of
these unfortunates.
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with
dead and wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on
seeing an adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and
fired several shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling
sounds and of the corpses around him merged in Rostov’s
mind into a single feeling of terror and pity for himself. He
remembered his mother’s last letter. ‘What would she feel,’
thought he, ‘if she saw me here now on this field with the
cannon aimed at me?’
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops


523

retiring from the field of battle, who though still in some
confusion were less disordered. The French cannon did not
reach there and the musketry fire sounded far away. Here
everyone clearly saw and said that the battle was lost. No
one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the Emperor
or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was
wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained
the false rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped from the field of battle with
the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who
had ridden out to the battlefield with others in the Emperor’s suite. One officer told Rostov that he had seen someone
from headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither
Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease
his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles and
had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a
kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat
seemed familiar to Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov fancied he had seen before) rode
up to the ditch, struck his horse with his spurs, and giving
it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a little earth crumbled
from the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs. Turning the
horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently
suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his
attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand
and by that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lament524

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ed and adored monarch.
‘But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!’
thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head
and Rostov saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The Emperor was pale, his cheeks
sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm, the mildness of
his features, was all the greater. Rostov was happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded
were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that
he might and even ought to go straight to him and give the
message Dolgorukov had ordered him to deliver.
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares
not utter the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but
looks around for help or a chance of delay and flight when
the longed-for moment comes and he is alone with her, so
Rostov, now that he had attained what he had longed for
more than anything else in the world, did not know how to
approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to
him why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
‘What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage
of his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem
unpleasant or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him now, when my heart fails me
and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight of him?’ Not one
of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor that
he had composed in his imagination could he now recall.
Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions,
they were for the most part to be spoken at a moment of vic

525

tory and triumph, generally when he was dying of wounds
and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic deeds, and
while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
‘Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions
for the right flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and the
battle is lost? No, certainly I must not approach him, I must
not intrude on his reflections. Better die a thousand times
than risk receiving an unkind look or bad opinion from
him,’ Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and with a heart full
despair he rode away, continually looking back at the Tsar,
who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding
sadly away, Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same
spot, and seeing the Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him to cross the ditch on
foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling unwell, sat
down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside
him. Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse
how von Toll spoke long and warmly to the Emperor and
how the Emperor, evidently weeping, covered his eyes with
his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.
‘And I might have been in his place!’ thought Rostov, and
hardly restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode
on in utter despair, not knowing where to or why he was
now riding.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own
weakness was the cause his grief.
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to
the sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion
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to the Emperor and he had not made use of it.... ‘What have I
done?’ thought he. And he turned round and galloped back
to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but there was
no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that
Kutuzov’s staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles
were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked
Kutuzov’s groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came
a cart, and behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
‘Tit! I say, Tit!’ said the groom.
‘What?’ answered the old man absent-mindedly.
‘Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!’
‘Oh, you fool!’ said the old man, spitting angrily. Some
time passed in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all
points. More than a hundred cannon were already in the
hands of the French.
Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms.
Other columns after losing half their men were retreating in
disorderly confused masses.
The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhturov’s mingled
forces were crowding around the dams and banks of the
ponds near the village of Augesd.
After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a
hot cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to
be heard from numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of
the Pratzen Heights, directed at our retreating forces.


527

In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some
battalions kept up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that
was pursuing our troops. It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the old miller
had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up,
handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on
that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy
caps and blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse
carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty with flour
whitening their cartson that narrow dam amid the wagons
and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the
wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the
dying and killing one another, only to move on a few steps
and be killed themselves in the same way.
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air
around, or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng,
killing some and splashing with blood those near them.
Dolokhovnow an officerwounded in the arm, and on
foot, with the regimental commander on horseback and
some ten men of his company, represented all that was left
of that whole regiment. Impelled by the crowd, they had got
wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in on
all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen
under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front
and splashed Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing
forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few steps,
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and again stopped.
‘Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved,
remain here another two minutes and it is certain death,’
thought each one.
Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his
way to the edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their
feet, and ran onto the slippery ice that covered the millpool.
‘Turn this way!’ he shouted, jumping over the ice which
creaked under him; ‘turn this way!’ he shouted to those
with the gun. ‘It bears!..’
The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was
plain that it would give way not only under a cannon or a
crowd, but very soon even under his weight alone. The men
looked at him and pressed to the bank, hesitating to step
onto the ice. The general on horseback at the entrance to
the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the
crowd that everyone ducked. It flopped into something
moist, and the general fell from his horse in a pool of blood.
Nobody gave him a look or thought of raising him.
‘Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don’t you
hear? Go on!’ innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the general, the men themselves not
knowing what, or why, they were shouting.
One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam
turned off onto the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond. The ice gave way under
one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped into the


529

water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.
The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his
horse, but from behind still came the shouts: ‘Onto the ice,
why do you stop? Go on! Go on!’ And cries of horror were
heard in the crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their
arms and beat the horses to make them turn and move on.
The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty
men who were on it dashed, some forward and some back,
drowning one another.
Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and
flop onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among
the crowd that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank.

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Chapter XIX
On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the
flagstaff in his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding
profusely and unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and
childlike moan.
Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite
still. He did not know how long his unconsciousness lasted.
Suddenly he again felt that he was alive and suffering from
a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
‘Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now,
but saw today?’ was his first thought. ‘And I did not know
this suffering either,’ he thought. ‘Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all till now. But where am I?’
He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses,
and voices speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him
again was the same lofty sky with clouds that had risen and
were floating still higher, and between them gleamed blue
infinity. He did not turn his head and did not see those who,
judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up and
stopped near him.
It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp.
Bonaparte riding over the battlefield had given final orders
to strengthen the batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and
was looking at the killed and wounded left on the field.
‘Fine men!’ remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Rus

531

sian grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and
a blackened nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
‘The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted,
Your Majesty,’ said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were firing at Augesd.
‘Have some brought from the reserve,’ said Napoleon,
and having gone on a few steps he stopped before Prince
Andrew, who lay on his back with the flagstaff that had been
dropped beside him. (The flag had already been taken by
the French as a trophy.)
‘That’s a fine death!’ said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.
Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and
that it was Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he heard the words as he might have
heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only did they not interest
him, but he took no notice of them and at once forgot them.
His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death, and
he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He
knew it was Napoleonhis herobut at that moment Napoleon
seemed to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now between himself and that
lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over
him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people
were standing near him and only wished that they would
help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him
so beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it
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so differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter
a sound. He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly
groan which aroused his own pity.
‘Ah! He is alive,’ said Napoleon. ‘Lift this young man up
and carry him to the dressing station.’
Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal
Lannes, who, hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor
to congratulate him on the victory.
Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the terrible pain of being lifted onto the
stretcher, the jolting while being moved, and the probing
of his wound at the dressing station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other wounded
and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able
to look about him and even speak.
The first words he heard on coming to his senses were
those of a French convoy officer, who said rapidly: ‘We must
halt here: the Emperor will pass here immediately; it will
please him to see these gentlemen prisoners.’
‘There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole
Russian army, that he is probably tired of them,’ said another officer.
‘All the same! They say this one is the commander of all
the Emperor Alexander’s Guards,’ said the first one, indicating a Russian officer in the white uniform of the Horse
Guards.
Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met
in Petersburg society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen,


533

also a wounded officer of the Horse Guards.
Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his
horse.
‘Which is the senior?’ he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.
‘You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander’s
regiment of Horse Guards?’ asked Napoleon.
‘I commanded a squadron,’ replied Repnin.
‘Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably,’ said Napoleon.
‘The praise of a great commander is a soldier’s highest
reward,’ said Repnin.
‘I bestow it with pleasure,’ said Napoleon. ‘And who is
that young man beside you?’
Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
‘He’s very young to come to meddle with us.’
‘Youth is no hindrance to courage,’ muttered Sukhtelen
in a failing voice.
‘A splendid reply!’ said Napoleon. ‘Young man, you will
go far!’
Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor’s eyes to complete the show of prisoners,
could not fail to attract his attention. Napoleon apparently
remembered seeing him on the battlefield and, addressing
him, again used the epithet ‘young man’ that was connected
in his memory with Prince Andrew.
‘Well, and you, young man,’ said he. ‘How do you feel,
mon brave?’
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Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been
able to say a few words to the soldiers who were carrying
him, now with his eyes fixed straight on Napoleon, he was
silent.... So insignificant at that moment seemed to him all
the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his hero
himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear,
compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he
had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that
weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the nearness of
death aroused in him. Looking into Napoleon’s eyes Prince
Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the
still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which
no one alive could understand or explain.
The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away
and said to one of the officers as he went: ‘Have these gentlemen attended to and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor,
Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!’
and he spurred his horse and galloped away.
His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the little gold icon Princess Mary had hung
round her brother’s neck, but seeing the favor the Emperor
showed the prisoners, they now hastened to return the holy
image.
Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly


535

appeared upon his chest outside his uniform.
‘It would be good,’ thought Prince Andrew, glancing at
the icon his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, ‘it would be good if everything were as
clear and simple as it seems to Mary. How good it would be
to know where to seek for help in this life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I should
be if I could now say: ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’... But to
whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which
I cannot even express in wordsthe Great All or Nothing-’
said he to himself, ‘or to that God who has been sewn into
this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain, nothing at
all except the unimportance of everything I understand,
and the greatness of something incomprehensible but allimportant.
The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain; his feverishness increased and he grew
delirious. Visions of his father, wife, sister, and future son,
and the tenderness he had felt the night before the battle,
the figure of the insignificant little Napoleon, and above all
this the lofty sky, formed the chief subjects of his delirious
fancies.
The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills
presented itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little Napoleon had suddenly appeared with
his unsympathizing look of shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and torments had followed, and
only the heavens promised peace. Toward morning all these
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dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness of
unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon’s doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death
than in convalescence.
‘He is a nervous, bilious subject,’ said Larrey, ‘and will
not recover.’
And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was
left to the care of the inhabitants of the district.



537

BOOK FOUR: 1806

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Chapter I
Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home
on leave. Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to travel with him as far as Moscow and
to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at the last post
station but one before Moscow, Denisov had drunk three
bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts across
the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to
Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov,
who grew more and more impatient the nearer they got to
Moscow.
‘How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets, shops, bakers’ signboards, street lamps, and
sleighs!’ thought Rostov, when their leave permits had been
passed at the town gate and they had entered Moscow.
‘Denisov! We’re here! He’s asleep,’ he added, leaning forward with his whole body as if in that position he hoped to
hasten the speed of the sleigh.
Denisov gave no answer.
‘There’s the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman,
Zakhar, has his stand, and there’s Zakhar himself and still
the same horse! And here’s the little shop where we used to
buy gingerbread! Can’t you hurry up? Now then!’
‘Which house is it?’ asked the driver.
‘Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don’t you


539

see? That’s our house,’ said Rostov. ‘Of course, it’s our house!
Denisov, Denisov! We’re almost there!’
Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
‘Dmitri,’ said Rostov to his valet on the box, ‘those lights
are in our house, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, sir, and there’s a light in your father’s study.’
‘Then they’ve not gone to bed yet? What do you think?
Mind now, don’t forget to put out my new coat,’ added
Rostov, fingering his new mustache. ‘Now then, get on,’
he shouted to the driver. ‘Do wake up, Vaska!’ he went on,
turning to Denisov, whose head was again nodding. ‘Come,
get on! You shall have three rubles for vodkaget on!’ Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his
door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all.
At last the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance,
and Rostov saw overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit
of plaster broken off, the porch, and the post by the side of
the pavement. He sprang out before the sleigh stopped, and
ran into the hall. The house stood cold and silent, as if quite
regardless of who had come to it. There was no one in the
hall. ‘Oh God! Is everyone all right?’ he thought, stopping
for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to run along the hall and up the warped steps
of the familiar staircase. The well-known old door handle,
which always angered the countess when it was not properly
cleaned, turned as loosely as ever. A solitary tallow candle
burned in the anteroom.
Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was so strong that he could lift the back of the
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carriage from behind, sat plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening door and his expression
of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one of delighted
amazement.
‘Gracious heavens! The young count!’ he cried, recognizing his young master. ‘Can it be? My treasure!’ and
Prokofy, trembling with excitement, rushed toward the
drawing-room door, probably in order to announce him,
but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the
young man’s shoulder.
‘All well?’ asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.
‘Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They’ve just finished supper.
Let me have a look at you, your excellency.’
‘Is everything quite all right?’
‘The Lord be thanked, yes!’
Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on
tiptoe through the large dark ballroom. All was the same:
there were the same old card tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had already seen
the young master, and, before he had reached the drawing
room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado
and began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the same kind sprang from a second door
and a third; more hugging, more kissing, more outcries,
and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which was Papa,
which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted, talked,
and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not
there, he noticed that.


541

‘And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..’
‘Here he is... our own... Kolya,* dear fellow... How he has
changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..’
*Nicholas.
‘And me, kiss me!’
‘Dearest... and me!’
Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and
the old count were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and
maids, flocked into the room, exclaiming and oh-ing and
ah-ing.
Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, ‘And me too!’
Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and
covered his face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt
of his coat, sprang away and pranced up and down in one
place like a goat and shrieked piercingly.
All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy,
and all around were lips seeking a kiss.
Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant
with bliss, looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the
look for which she longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she
was very pretty, especially at this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not taking her eyes
off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave her a
grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were
heard at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be
his mother’s.
Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not
know, made since he had left. All the others let him go, and
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he ran to her. When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her face, but only pressed it to the
cold braiding of his hussar’s jacket. Denisov, who had come
into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped
his eyes at the sight.
‘Vasili Denisov, your son’s friend,’ he said, introducing
himself to the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.
‘You are most welcome! I know, I know,’ said the count,
kissing and embracing Denisov. ‘Nicholas wrote us...
Natasha, Vera, look! Here is Denisov!’
The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy
figure of Denisov.
‘Darling Denisov!’ screamed Natasha, beside herself with
rapture, springing to him, putting her arms round him, and
kissing him. This escapade made everybody feel confused.
Denisov blushed too, but smiled and, taking Natasha’s
hand, kissed it.
Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him,
and the Rostovs all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting
room.
The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing
it every moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round
him, watched every movement, word, or look of his, never
taking their blissfully adoring eyes off him. His brother and
sisters struggled for the places nearest to him and disputed
with one another who should bring him his tea, handkerchief, and pipe.
Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him;
but the first moment of meeting had been so beatific that


543

his present joy seemed insufficient, and he kept expecting
something more, more and yet more.
Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the
travelers slept till ten o’clock.
In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion
of sabers, satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and
dirty boots. Two freshly cleaned pairs with spurs had just
been placed by the wall. The servants were bringing in jugs
and basins, hot water for shaving, and their well-brushed
clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell of tobacco.
‘Hallo, Gwiskamy pipe!’ came Vasili Denisov’s husky
voice. ‘Wostov, get up!’
Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together,
raised his disheveled head from the hot pillow.
‘Why, is it late?’
‘Late! It’s nearly ten o’clock,’ answered Natasha’s voice. A
rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of girls’ voices came from the adjoining room. The door
was opened a crack and there was a glimpse of something
blue, of ribbons, black hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha,
Sonya, and Petya, who had come to see whether they were
getting up.
‘Nicholas! Get up!’ Natasha’s voice was again heard at the
door.
‘Directly!’
Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers
in the outer room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a
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ing for the girls to see men undressed, opened the bedroom
door.
‘Is this your saber?’ he shouted.
The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under
the blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for
help. The door, having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of
laughter came from behind it.
‘Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!’ said
Natasha’s voice.
‘Is this your saber?’ asked Petya. ‘Or is it yours?’ he said,
addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.
Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on
his dressing gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one
spurred boot and was just getting her foot into the other.
Sonya, when he came in, was twirling round and was about
to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down. They
were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and were both
fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking her brother’s arm, led him into the sitting room, where
they began talking. They hardly gave one another time to
ask questions and give replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not interest anyone but themselves.
Natasha laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was amusing, but
because she felt happy and was unable to control her joy
which expressed itself by laughter.
‘Oh, how nice, how splendid!’ she said to everything.
Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of


545

love, that childlike smile which had not once appeared on
his face since he left home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his soul and his face.
‘No, but listen,’ she said, ‘now you are quite a man, aren’t
you? I’m awfully glad you’re my brother.’ She touched his
mustache. ‘I want to know what you men are like. Are you
the same as we? No?’
‘Why did Sonya run away?’ asked Rostov.
‘Ah, yes! That’s a whole long story! How are you going to
speak to herthou or you?’
‘As may happen,’ said Rostov.
‘No, call her you, please! I’ll tell you all about it some
other time. No, I’ll tell you now. You know Sonya’s my dearest friend. Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake.
Look here!’
She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red
scar on her long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow
on that part that is covered even by a ball dress.
‘I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a
ruler in the fire and pressed it there!’
Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms,
in what used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into
Natasha’s wildly bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world
of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone
else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life; and the
burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not
seem to him senseless, he understood and was not surprised
at it.
‘Well, and is that all?’ he asked.
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‘We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she
loves anyone, does it for life, but I don’t understand that, I
forget quickly.’
‘Well, what then?’
‘Well, she loves me and you like that.’
Natasha suddenly flushed.
‘Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she
says you are to forget all that.... She says: ‘I shall love him
always, but let him be free.’ Isn’t that lovely and noble! Yes,
very noble? Isn’t it?’ asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what she was now saying she
had talked of before, with tears.
Rostov became thoughtful.
‘I never go back on my word,’ he said. ‘Besides, Sonya is
so charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness.’
‘No, no!’ cried Natasha, ‘she and I have already talked it
over. We knew you’d say so. But it won’t do, because you see,
if you say thatif you consider yourself bound by your promiseit will seem as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes
it as if you were marrying her because you must, and that
wouldn’t do at all.’
Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had already struck him by her beauty on the preceding
day. Today, when he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed
still more lovely. She was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did not doubt that
for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and even


547

marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so many
other pleasures and interests before him! ‘Yes, they have
taken a wise decision,’ he thought, ‘I must remain free.’
‘Well then, that’s excellent,’ said he. ‘We’ll talk it over later on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!
‘Well, and are you still true to Boris?’ he continued.
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ cried Natasha, laughing. ‘I don’t
think about him or anyone else, and I don’t want anything
of the kind.’
‘Dear me! Then what are you up now?’
‘Now?’ repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her
face. ‘Have you seen Duport?’
‘No.’
‘Not seen Duportthe famous dancer? Well then, you
won’t understand. That’s what I’m up to.’
Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her
little feet sharply together, and made some steps on the very
tips of her toes.
‘See, I’m standing! See!’ she said, but could not maintain
herself on her toes any longer. ‘So that’s what I’m up to! I’ll
never marry anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don’t tell
anyone.’
Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his
bedroom, felt envious and Natasha could not help joining
in.
‘No, but don’t you think it’s nice?’ she kept repeating.
‘Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?’
Natasha flared up. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone. And
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I’ll tell him so when I see him!’
‘Dear me!’ said Rostov.
‘But that’s all rubbish,’ Natasha chattered on. ‘And is
Denisov nice?’ she asked.
‘Yes, indeed!’
‘Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
Denisov?’
‘Why terrible?’ asked Nicholas. ‘No, Vaska is a splendid
fellow.’
‘You call him Vaska? That’s funny! And is he very nice?’
‘Very.’
‘Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast together.’
And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe,
like a ballet dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen
can smile. When Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room,
he reddened. He did not know how to behave with her. The
evening before, in the first happy moment of meeting, they
had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not be
done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see
how he would behave with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as youSonya. But their eyes met
and said thou, and exchanged tender kisses. Her looks asked
him to forgive her for having dared, by Natasha’s intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked him
for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom and told her that one way or another he would never
cease to love her, for that would be impossible.
‘How strange it is,’ said Vera, selecting a moment when


549

all were silent, ‘that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one
another and meet like strangers.’
Vera’s remark was correct, as her remarks always were,
but, like most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but
even the old countess, whodreading this love affair which
might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant matchblushed like a girl.
Denisov, to Rostov’s surprise, appeared in the drawing
room with pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform,
looking just as smart as he made himself when going into
battle, and he was more amiable to the ladies and gentlemen
than Rostov had ever expected to see him.

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Chapter II
On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov
was welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero,
and their darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming,
attractive, and polite young man; by his acquaintances as a
handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good dancer, and one of
the best matches in the city.
The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count
had money enough that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas, acquiring a trotter of his own,
very stylish riding breeches of the latest cut, such as no one
else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the latest fashion, with
extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs, passed his
time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be at home again. He felt that he had grown up and
matured very much. His despair at failing in a Scripture
examination, his borrowing money from Gavril to pay a
sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the slyhe now recalled all
this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind. Now
he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver,
and wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers
for bravery in action, and in the company of well-known,
elderly, and respected racing men was training a trotter of
his own for a race. He knew a lady on one of the boulevards


551

whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at the
Arkharovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal
Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate
terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in
Moscow. But still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke about him and about
his love for him, letting it be understood that he had not told
all and that there was something in his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole
soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for
the Emperor, who was spoken of as the ‘angel incarnate.’
During Rostov’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining
the army, he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted
away from her. She was very pretty and sweet, and evidently
deeply in love with him, but he was at the period of youth
when there seems so much to do that there is no time for
that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and
prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things.
When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he
said to himself, ‘Ah, there will be, and there are, many more
such girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will
be time enough to think about love when I want to, but now
I have no time.’ Besides, it seemed to him that the society
of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went
to balls and into ladies’ society with an affectation of doing
so against his will. The races, the English Club, sprees with
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ter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!
At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was
very busy arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration
at the English Club.
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing
gown, giving orders to the club steward and to the famous
Feoktist, the Club’s head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish for this dinner. The
count had been a member and on the committee of the Club
from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few
men knew so well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and still fewer men would be so well
able and willing to make up out of their own resources what
might be needed for the success of the fete. The club cook
and the steward listened to the count’s orders with pleased
faces, for they knew that under no other management could
they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a
dinner costing several thousand rubles.
‘Well then, mind and have cocks’ comb in the turtle
soup, you know!’
‘Shall we have three cold dishes then?’ asked the cook.
The count considered.
‘We can’t have lessyes, three... the mayonnaise, that’s
one,’ said he, bending down a finger.
‘Then am I to order those large sterlets?’ asked the steward.
‘Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah, dear
me! I was forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah,


553

goodness gracious!’ he clutched at his head. ‘Who is going
to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh, Dmitri! Gallop off to our
Moscow estate,’ he said to the factotum who appeared at
his call. ‘Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to set the
serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two
hundred pots here on Friday.’
Having given several more orders, he was about to go to
his ‘little countess’ to have a rest, but remembering something else of importance, he returned again, called back the
cook and the club steward, and again began giving orders.
A light footstep and the clinking of spurs were heard at the
door, and the young count, handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by his easy
life in Moscow, entered the room.
‘Ah, my boy, my head’s in a whirl!’ said the old man with
a smile, as if he felt a little confused before his son. ‘Now, if
you would only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall
have my own orchestra, but shouldn’t we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like that sort of thing.’
‘Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself
less before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now,’
said his son with a smile.
The old count pretended to be angry.
‘Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!’
And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd
and respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and son.
‘What have the young people come to nowadays, eh,
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Feoktist?’ said he. ‘Laughing at us old fellows!’
‘That’s so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a
good dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that’s not
their business!
‘That’s it, that’s it!’ exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his son by both hands, he cried, ‘Now I’ve got you, so
take the sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezukhob’s, and
tell him ‘Count Ilya has sent you to ask for strawberries and
fresh pineapples.’ We can’t get them from anyone else. He’s
not there himself, so you’ll have to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyaythe coachman
Ipatka knowsand look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who
danced at Count Orlov’s, you remember, in a white Cossack
coat, and bring him along to me.’
‘And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?’ asked
Nicholas, laughing. ‘Dear, dear!..’
At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the
businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which
never left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall.
Though she came upon the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
excuse his costume.
‘No matter at all, my dear count,’ she said, meekly closing her eyes. ‘But I’ll go to Bezukhov’s myself. Pierre has
arrived, and now we shall get anything we want from his
hothouses. I have to see him in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the
staff.’
The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna’s taking


555

upon herself one of his commissions and ordered the small
closed carriage for her.
‘Tell Bezukhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his
wife with him?’ he asked.
Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound
sadness was depicted on her face.
‘Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,’ she said. ‘If
what we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of
such a thing when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And
such a lofty angelic soul as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him
from my heart, and shall try to give him what consolation
I can.’
‘Wh-what is the matter?’ asked both the young and old
Rostov.
Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.
‘Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna’s son,’ she said in a mysterious whisper, ‘has compromised her completely, they say.
Pierre took him up, invited him to his house in Petersburg,
and now... she has come here and that daredevil after her!’
said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show her sympathy
for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile
betraying her sympathy for the ‘daredevil,’ as she called Dolokhov. ‘They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune.’
‘Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Clubit will all
blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet.’
Next day, the third of March, soon after one o’clock, two
hundred and fifty members of the English Club and fifty
guests were awaiting the guest of honor and hero of the
Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration, to dinner.
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On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz,
Moscow had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians
were so used to victories that on receiving news of the defeat
some would simply not believe it, while others sought some
extraordinary explanation of so strange an event. In the
English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,
and well informed forgathered when the news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and the
last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The
men who set the tone in conversationCount Rostopchin,
Prince Yuri Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince
Vyazemskidid not show themselves at the Club, but met in
private houses in intimate circles, and the Moscovites who
took their opinions from othersIlya Rostov among themremained for a while without any definite opinion on the
subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt
that something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news
was difficult, and so it was best to be silent. But after a while,
just as a jury comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club’s opinion reappeared, and everybody began
speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the
incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian
defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were
the treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the
treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman
Langeron, Kutuzov’s incapacity, and (it was whispered) the
youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted
worthless and insignificant people. But the army, the Rus

557

sian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had
achieved miracles of valor.The soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration,
distinguished by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat
from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column
unbroken and had all day beaten back an enemy force twice
as numerous as his own. What also conduced to Bagration’s
being selected as Moscow’s hero was the fact that he had
no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In his
person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one who was
associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the
name of Suvorov. Moreover, paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing disapproval and dislike
of Kutuzov.
‘Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent him,’ said the wit Shinshin, parodying the
words of Voltaire. Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some
who abused him in whispers, calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov’s saying: ‘If you
go on modeling and modeling you must get smeared with
clay,’ suggesting consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the words of Rostopchin, that
French soldiers have to be incited to battle by highfalutin
words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them
that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but
that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held
back! On all sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of
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individual examples of heroism shown by our officers and
men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another had
killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know
him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his
sword in the left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing
was said, and only those who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife with
his eccentric father.



559

Chapter III
On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club
were filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees
swarming in springtime. The members and guests of the
Club wandered hither and thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in evening dress, and a few
here and there with powdered hair and in Russian kaftans.
Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and smart
stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors’ every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those
present were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This
class of guests and members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those
present were casual guestschiefly young men, among whom
were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhovwho was now again an
officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young
people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that
expression of condescending respect for their elders which
seems to say to the older generation, ‘We are prepared to
respect and honor you, but all the same remember that the
future belongs to us.’
Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre,
who at his wife’s command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles, went about the rooms fashionably
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dressed but looking sad and dull. Here, as elsewhere, he was
surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his wealth,
and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
treated them with absent-minded contempt.
By his age he should have belonged to the younger men,
but by his wealth and connections he belonged to the groups
old and honored guests, and so he went from one group to
another. Some of the most important old men were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully
to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles
formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and Naryshkin.
Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been
overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their
way through them with bayonets.
Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been
sent from Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed
like a cock in reply to the nonsense talked by the Austrian
generals. Shinshin, standing close by, tried to make a joke,
saying that Kutuzov had evidently failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a cock,
but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making
him feel that in that place and on that day, it was improper
to speak so of Kutuzov.
Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about
in his soft boots between the dining and drawing rooms,
hastily greeting the important and unimportant, all of


561

whom he knew, as if they were all equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up young son, resting
on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov stood at
a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately
made and highly valued. The old count came up to them
and pressed Dolokhov’s hand.
‘Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been
together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili Ignatovich... How d’ye do, old fellow?’ he said, turning to an old
man who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a general stir, and a footman who had run in
announced, with a frightened face: ‘He’s arrived!’
Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, andlike rye
shaken together in a shovelthe guests who had been scattered about in different rooms came together and crowded
in the large drawing room by the door of the ballroom.
Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom
without hat or sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the hall porter. He had no lambskin
cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of the battle of
Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and
foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast.
Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his
hair and whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance
for the worse. There was something naively festive in his air,
which, in conjunction with his firm and virile features, gave
him a rather comical expression. Bekleshev and Theodore
Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway
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to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration
was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he
did at last enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over
the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing what
to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over
a plowed field under fire, as he had done at the head of the
Kursk regiment at Schon Grabernand he would have found
that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door
and, expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored
guest, took possession of him as it were, without waiting
for his reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing
room. It was at first impossible to enter the drawing-room
door for the crowd of members and guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration over each
other’s shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count Ilya
Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, ‘Make way, dear
boy! Make way, make way!’ pushed through the crowd more
energetically than anyone, led the guests into the drawing
room, and seated them on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the
most respected members of the Club, beset the new arrivals.
Count Ilya, again thrusting his way through the crowd, went
out of the drawing room and reappeared a minute later with
another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver which
he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some
verses composed and printed in the hero’s honor. Bagration,
on seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though
seeking help. But all eyes demanded that he should submit.
Feeling himself in their power, he resolutely took the salver


563

with both hands and looked sternly and reproachfully at
the count who had presented it to him. Someone obligingly
took the dish from Bagration (or he would, it seemed, have
held it till evening and have gone in to dinner with it) and
drew his attention to the verses.
‘Well, I will read them, then!’ Bagration seemed to say,
and, fixing his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them
with a fixed and serious expression. But the author himself
took the verses and began reading them aloud. Bagration
bowed his bead and listened:
Bring
glory
then
to
Alexander’s
reign
And
on
the
throne
our
Titus
shield.
A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
E’en
fortunate
Napoleon
Knows
by
experience,
now,
Bagration,
And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...
But before he had finished reading, a stentorian majordomo announced that dinner was ready! The door opened,
and from the dining room came the resounding strains of
the polonaise:
Conquest’s
joyful
thunder
waken,
Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who
went on reading his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone
rose, feeling that dinner was more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the rest, went in to
dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two
AlexandersBekleshev and Naryshkinwhich was a signifi564

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cant allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred
persons took their seats in the dining room, according to
their rank and importance: the more important nearer to
the honored guest, as naturally as water flows deepest where
the land lies lowest.
Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son
to Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words
to him, disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he
spoke that day, and Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly
around while Bagration spoke to his son.
Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance,
Dolokhov, sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them
sat Pierre, beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with
the other members of the committee sat facing Bagration
and, as the very personification of Moscow hospitality, did
the honors to the prince.
His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the
Lenten and the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not
feel quite at ease till the end of the meal. He winked at the
butler, whispered directions to the footmen, and awaited
each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of
which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the
footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne
glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the
count exchanged glances with the other committeemen.
‘There will be many toasts, it’s time to begin,’ he whispered,
and taking up his glass, he rose. All were silent, waiting for
what he would say.


565

‘To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!’ he cried,
and at the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with
tears of joy and enthusiasm. The band immediately struck
up ‘Conquest’s joyful thunder waken...’ All rose and cried
‘Hurrah!’ Bagration also rose and shouted ‘Hurrah!’ in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it on the field
at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov’s ecstatic voice could be
heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. ‘To
the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!’ he roared, ‘Hurrah!’ and emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the
floor. Many followed his example, and the loud shouting
continued for a long time. When the voices subsided, the
footmen cleared away the broken glass and everybody sat
down again, smiling at the noise they had made and exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced
at a note lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, ‘To
the health of the hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter
Ivanovich Bagration!’ and again his blue eyes grew moist.
‘Hurrah!’ cried the three hundred voices again, but instead
of the band a choir began singing a cantata composed by
Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:
Russians!
O’er
all
barriers
on!
Courage
conquest
guarantees;
Have
we
not
Bagration?
He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.
As soon as the singing was over, another and another
toast was proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more
and more moved, more glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshev, Naryshkin,
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Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the committee,
to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the
banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief
and, covering his face, wept outright.



567

Chapter IV
Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As
usual, he ate and drank much, and eagerly. But those who
knew him intimately noticed that some great change had
come over him that day. He was silent all through dinner
and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes
and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing
the bridge of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy.
He seemed to see and hear nothing of what was going on
around him and to be absorbed by some depressing and unsolved problem.
The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused
by hints given by the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov’s intimacy with his wife, and by an
anonymous letter he had received that morning, which in
the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said
that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife’s
connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre absolutely disbelieved both the princess’ hints
and the letter, but he feared now to look at Dolokhov, who
was sitting opposite him. Every time he chanced to meet
Dolokhov’s handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt something
terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
away. Involuntarily recalling his wife’s past and her relations
with Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the
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letter might be true, or might at least seem to be true had it
not referred to his wife. He involuntarily remembered how
Dolokhov, who had fully recovered his former position after
the campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come to him.
Availing himself of his friendly relations with Pierre as a
boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his house,
and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of
Dolokhov’s living at their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife’s beauty to him and from that time
till they came to Moscow had not left them for a day.
‘Yes, he is very handsome,’ thought Pierre, ‘and I know
him. It would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor
my name and ridicule me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him, and helped him. I know
and understand what a spice that would add to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it were
true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can’t,
believe it.’ He remembered the expression Dolokhov’s face
assumed in his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them into the water, or
when he challenged a man to a duel without any reason, or
shot a post-boy’s horse with a pistol. That expression was
often on Dolokhov’s face when looking at him. ‘Yes, he is a
bully,’ thought Pierre, ‘to kill a man means nothing to him.
It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that
must please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of
himand in fact I am afraid of him,’ he thought, and again
he felt something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul.


569

Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were now sitting opposite
Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking merrily to
his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the
other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then
he glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absentminded, and massive figure was a very noticeable one at
the dinner. Rostov looked inimically at Pierre, first because
Pierre appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a wordan old woman; and secondly
because Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness
had not recognized Rostov and had not responded to his
greeting. When the Emperor’s health was drunk, Pierre,
lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.
‘What are you about?’ shouted Rostov, looking at him in
an ecstasy of exasperation. ‘Don’t you hear it’s His Majesty
the Emperor’s health?’
Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and,
waiting till all were seated again, turned with his kindly
smile to Rostov.
‘Why, I didn’t recognize you!’ he said. But Rostov was
otherwise engaged; he was shouting ‘Hurrah!’
‘Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?’ said Dolokhov
to Rostov.
‘Confound him, he’s a fool!’ said Rostov.
‘One should make up to the husbands of pretty women,’
said Denisov.
Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they
were talking about him. He reddened and turned away.
‘Well, now to the health of handsome women!’ said Do570

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lokhov, and with a serious expression, but with a smile
lurking at the corners of his mouth, he turned with his glass
to Pierre.
‘Here’s to the health of lovely women, Peterkinand their
lovers!’ he added.
Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman,
who was distributing leaflets with Kutuzov’s cantata, laid
one before Pierre as one of the principal guests. He was just
going to take it when Dolokhov, leaning across, snatched it
from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and
monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and
took possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body
across the table.
‘How dare you take it?’ he shouted.
Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed,
Nesvitski and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in
alarm to Bezukhov.
‘Don’t! Don’t! What are you about?’ whispered their
frightened voices.
Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel
eyes, and that smile of his which seemed to say, ‘Ah! This
is what I like!’
‘You shan’t have it!’ he said distinctly.
Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
‘You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!’ he ejaculated,
and, pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
At the very instant he did this and uttered those words,


571

Pierre felt that the question of his wife’s guilt which had
been tormenting him the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative. He hated her and was
forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov’s request that
he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to be
Dolokhov’s second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov’s second.
Pierre went home, but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov
stayed on at the Club till late, listening to the gypsies and
other singers.
‘Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,’said Dolokhov, as
he took leave of Rostov in the Club porch.
‘And do you feel quite calm?’ Rostov asked.
Dolokhov paused.
‘Well, you see, I’ll tell you the whole secret of dueling in
two words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a
will and write affectionate letters to your parents, and if you
think you may be killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm intention of killing your man as
quickly and surely as possible, and then all will be right, as
our bear huntsman at Kostroma used to tell me. ‘Everyone
fears a bear,’ he says, ‘but when you see one your fear’s all
gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!’ And
that’s how it is with me. A demain, mon cher.’*
*Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski
drove to the Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov,
and Rostov already there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which had no connection with
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the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow. He had
evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly
and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was
entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife’s guilt, of
which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt,
and the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to
preserve the honor of a man who was nothing to him....
‘I should perhaps have done the same thing in his place,’
thought Pierre. ‘It’s even certain that I should have done the
same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill
him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. Can’t
I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?’
passed through his mind. But just at moments when such
thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a particularly
calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of
the onlookers, ‘Will it be long? Are things ready?’
When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark
the barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to
Pierre.
‘I should not be doing my duty, Count,’ he said in timid
tones, ‘and should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in choosing me for your second, if at
this grave, this very grave, moment I did not tell you the
whole truth. I think there is no sufficient ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were not right, not
quite in the right, you were impetuous..’
‘Oh yes, it is horribly stupid,’ said Pierre.
‘Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure
your opponent will accept them,’ said Nesvitski (who like


573

the others concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that the affair had come to
an actual duel). ‘You know, Count, it is much more honorable to admit one’s mistake than to let matters become
irreparable. There was no insult on either side. Allow me to
convey...’
‘No! What is there to talk about?’ said Pierre. ‘It’s all the
same.... Is everything ready?’ he added. ‘Only tell me where
to go and where to shoot,’ he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about
the working of the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol
in his handa fact that he did not to confess.
‘Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,’ said he.
‘No apologies, none whatever,’ said Dolokhov to Denisov
(who on his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and
he also went up to the appointed place.
The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from
the road, where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest covered with melting snow, the frost
having begun to break up during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther edge of the
clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in
the deep wet snow between the place where they had been
standing and Nesvitski’s and Dolokhov’s sabers, which were
stuck intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier.
It was thawing and misty; at forty paces’ distance nothing
could be seen. For three minutes all had been ready, but
they still delayed and all were silent.
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Chapter V
‘Well begin!’ said Dolokhov.
‘All right,’ said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A
feeling of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair
so lightly begun could no longer be averted but was taking
its course independently of men’s will.
Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: ‘As the
adve’sawies have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed.
Take your pistols, and at the word thwee begin to advance.
‘O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!’ he shouted angrily and stepped
aside.
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks,
nearer and nearer to one another, beginning to see one
another through the mist. They had the right to fire when
they liked as they approached the barrier. Dolokhov walked
slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with his
bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist’s face. His
mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.
‘So I can fire when I like!’ said Pierre, and at the word
‘three,’ he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path
and stepping into the deep snow. He held the pistol in his
right hand at arm’s length, apparently afraid of shooting
himself with it. His left hand he held carefully back, because
he wished to support his right hand with it and knew he
must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed off


575

the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then
quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he
had been shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report,
Pierre shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own
sensations, stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the
mist, prevented him from seeing anything for an instant,
but there was no second report as he had expected. He only
heard Dolokhov’s hurried steps, and his figure came in view
through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left
side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face
was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something.
‘No-o-o!’ muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, ‘no, it’s
not over.’ And after stumbling a few staggering steps right
up to the saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand
was bloody; he wiped it on his coat and supported himself
with it. His frowning face was pallid and quivered.
‘Plea...’ began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce
the word.
‘Please,’ he uttered with an effort.
Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov and was about to cross the space between
the barriers, when Dolokhov cried:
‘To your barrier!’ and Pierre, grasping what was meant,
stopped by his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the snow, greedily bit at it, again
raised his head, adjusted himself, drew in his legs and sat
up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and sucked
and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes,
still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he
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mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and
aimed.
‘Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!’ ejaculated
Nesvitski.
‘Cover yourself!’ even Denisov cried to his adversary.
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms
and legs helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov,
Rostov, and Nesvitski closed their eyes. At the same instant
they heard a report and Dolokhov’s angry cry.
‘Missed!’ shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face
downwards on the snow.
Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into
the forest, trampling through the deep snow, and muttering
incoherent words:
‘Folly... folly! Death... lies...’ he repeated, puckering his
face.
Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.
Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.
The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did
not answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on
entering Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head
with an effort, took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by
the hand. Rostov was struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dolokhov’s
face.
‘Well? How do you feel?’ he asked.
‘Bad! But it’s not that, my friend-’ said Dolokhov with a


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gasping voice. ‘Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don’t
matter, but I have killed her, killed... She won’t get over it!
She won’t survive...’
‘Who?’ asked Rostov.
‘My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel
mother,’ and Dolokhov pressed Rostov’s hand and burst
into tears.
When he had become a little quieter, he explained to
Rostov that he was living with his mother, who, if she saw
him dying, would not survive it. He implored Rostov to go
on and prepare her.
Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his
great surprise learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old mother and a
hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and
brothers.

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Chapter VI
Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in Moscow their house was always full of
visitors. The night after the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his father’s room,
that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that had happened to him, but could not do so. Such
a storm of feelings, thoughts, and memories suddenly arose
within him that he could not fall asleep, nor even remain
in one place, but had to jump up and pace the room with
rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her
Dolokhov’s handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as
he had seen it at the banquet, and then that same face pale,
quivering, and suffering, as it had been when he reeled and
sank on the snow.
‘What has happened?’ he asked himself. ‘I have killed
her lover, yes, killed my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it! And
why? How did I come to do it?’‘Because you married her,’
answered an inner voice.
‘But in what was I to blame?’ he asked. ‘In marrying her
without loving her; in deceiving yourself and her.’ And he
vividly recalled that moment after supper at Prince Vasili’s,


579

when he spoke those words he had found so difficult to utter: ‘I love you.’ ‘It all comes from that! Even then I felt it,’ he
thought. ‘I felt then that it was not so, that I had no right to
do it. And so it turns out.’
He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection. Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was
the recollection of how one day soon after his marriage he
came out of the bedroom into his study a little before noon
in his silk dressing gown and found his head steward there,
who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at his
dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful understanding of his employer’s happiness.
‘But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty and social tact,’ thought he; ‘been proud of my
house, in which she received all Petersburg, proud of her
unapproachability and beauty. So this is what I was proud
of! I then thought that I did not understand her. How often
when considering her character I have told myself that I was
to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding
that constant composure and complacency and lack of all
interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible
truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that
terrible word to myself all has become clear.
‘Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and
used to kiss her naked shoulders. She did not give him the
money, but let herself be kissed. Her father in jest tried to
rouse her jealousy, and she replied with a calm smile that
she was not so stupid as to be jealous: ‘Let him do what he
pleases,’ she used to say of me. One day I asked her if she felt
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any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously
and said she was not a fool to want to have children, and
that she was not going to have any children by me.’
Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her
thoughts and the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had been brought up in the most
aristocratic circles.
‘I’m not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
promener,’* she used to say. Often seeing the success she
had with young and old men and women Pierre could not
understand why he did not love her.
*”You clear out of this.’
‘Yes, I never loved her,’ said he to himself; ‘I knew she
was a depraved woman,’ he repeated, ‘but dared not admit
it to myself. And now there’s Dolokhov sitting in the snow
with a forced smile and perhaps dying, while meeting my
remorse with some forced bravado!’
Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant
in their troubles. He digested his sufferings alone.
‘It is all, all her fault,’ he said to himself; ‘but what of that?
Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say ‘Je vous aime’*
to her, which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and
must endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for
life? Oh, that’s nonsense,’ he thought. ‘The slur on my name
and honorthat’s all apart from myself.
*I love you.
‘Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a criminal,’ came into Pierre’s head, ‘and


581

from their point of view they were right, as were those too
who canonized him and died a martyr’s death for his sake.
Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot. Who is
right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alivelive: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is
it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment
of life in comparison with eternity?’
But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed
by such reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she
was at the moments when he had most strongly expressed
his insincere love for her, and he felt the blood rush to his
heart and had again to get up and move about and break
and tear whatever came to his hand. ‘Why did I tell her that
‘Je vous aime’?’ he kept repeating to himself. And when he
had said it for the tenth time, Molibre’s words: ‘Mais que diable alloit-il faire dans cette galere?’ occurred to him, and
he began to laugh at himself.
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to
go to Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak
to her now. He resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his intention to part from her forever.
Next morning when the valet came into the room with
his coffee, Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an
open book in his hand.
He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled
expression, unable to realize where he was.
‘The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency
was at home,’ said the valet.
But before Pierre could decide what answer he would
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send, the countess herself in a white satin dressing gown
embroidered with silver and with simply dressed hair (two
immense plaits twice round her lovely head like a coronet)
entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was
a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow.
With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak
in front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to
speak about it. She waited till the valet had set down the
coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked at her timidly
over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by hounds
who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless
before her enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling
this to be senseless and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at him with a
contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.
‘Well, what’s this now? What have you been up to now, I
should like to know?’ she asked sternly.
‘I? What have I...?’ stammered Pierre.
‘So it seems you’re a hero, eh? Come now, what was this
duel about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you.’
Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened
his mouth, but could not reply.
‘If you won’t answer, I’ll tell you...’ Helene went on. ‘You
believe everything you’re told. You were told...’ Helene
laughed, ‘that Dolokhov was my lover,’ she said in French
with her coarse plainness of speech, uttering the word
amant as casually as any other word, ‘and you believed it!
Well, what have you proved? What does this duel prove?
That you’re a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew


583

that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk
and not knowing what you were about, challenged a man
you are jealous of without cause.’ Helene raised her voice
and became more and more excited, ‘A man who’s a better
man than you in every way..’
‘Hm... Hm...!’ growled Pierre, frowning without looking
at her, and not moving a muscle.
‘And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his company? If you were cleverer and more
agreeable, I should prefer yours.’
‘Don’t speak to me... I beg you,’ muttered Pierre hoarsely.
‘Why shouldn’t I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell
you plainly that there are not many wives with husbands
such as you who would not have taken lovers (des amants),
but I have not done so,’ said she.
Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes
whose strange expression she did not understand, and lay
down again. He was suffering physically at that moment,
there was a weight on his chest and he could not breathe. He
knew that he must do something to put an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too terrible.
‘We had better separate,’ he muttered in a broken voice.
‘Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune,’
said Helene. ‘Separate! That’s a thing to frighten me with!’
Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
‘I’ll kill you!’ he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a
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table with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step
toward her brandishing the slab.
Helene’s face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang
aside. His father’s nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the
fascination and delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab,
broke it, and swooping down on her with outstretched hands
shouted, ‘Get out!’ in such a terrible voice that the whole
house heard it with horror. God knows what he would have
done at that moment had Helene not fled from the room.
A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all
his estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of
his property, and left for Petersburg alone.



585

Chapter VII
Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of
Austerlitz and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald
Hills, and in spite of the letters sent through the embassy
and all the searches made, his body had not been found nor
was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst of all for his
relations was the fact that there was still a possibility of his
having been picked up on the battlefield by the people of the
place and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying,
alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself.
The gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the
defeat at Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the Russians had had
to retreat and had made their withdrawal in perfect order.
The old prince understood from this official report that our
army had been defeated. A week after the gazette report of
the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.
‘Your son,’ wrote Kutuzov, ‘fell before my eyes, a standard in his hand and at the head of a regimenthe fell as a
hero, worthy of his father and his fatherland. To the great
regret of myself and of the whole army it is still uncertain
whether he is alive or not. I comfort myself and you with
the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise he would have
been mentioned among the officers found on the field of
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battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce.’
After receiving this news late in the evening, when he
was alone in his study, the old prince went for his walk as
usual next morning, but he was silent with his steward, the
gardener, and the architect, and though he looked very grim
he said nothing to anyone.
When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he
was working at his lathe and, as usual, did not look round
at her.
‘Ah, Princess Mary!’ he said suddenly in an unnatural
voice, throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to
revolve by its own impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel, which merged in her
memory with what followed.)
She approached him, saw his face, and something gave
way within her. Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of
her father’s face, not sad, not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over her and about
to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the worst in life,
one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and incomprehensiblethe death of one she loved.
‘Father! Andrew!’said the ungraceful, awkward princess
with such an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father could not bear her look but turned
away with a sob.
‘Bad news! He’s not among the prisoners nor among the
killed! Kutuzov writes...’ and he screamed as piercingly as
if he wished to drive the princess away by that scream...
‘Killed!’


587

The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already
pale, but on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if
joya supreme joy apart from the joys and sorrows of this
worldoverflowed the great grief within her. She forgot all
fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy neck.
‘Father’ she said, ‘do not turn away from me, let us weep
together.’
‘Scoundrels! Blackguards!’ shrieked the old man, turning his face away from her. ‘Destroying the army, destroying
the men! And why? Go, go and tell Lise.’
The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her
father and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been
at the moment when he took leave of her and of Lise, his
look tender yet proud. She saw him tender and amused as
he was when he put on the little icon. ‘Did he believe? Had
he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the
realms of eternal peace and blessedness?’ she thought.
‘Father, tell me how it happened,’ she asked through her
tears.
‘Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men
and Russia’s glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess
Mary. Go and tell Lise. I will follow.’
When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little
princess sat working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm peculiar to pregnant women.
It was evident that her eyes did not see Princess Mary but
were looking within... into herself... at something joyful and
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mysterious taking place within her.
‘Mary,’ she said, moving away from the embroidery
frame and lying back, ‘give me your hand.’ She took her sister-in-law’s hand and held it below her waist.
Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose
and remained lifted in childlike happiness.
Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in
the folds of her sister-in-law’s dress.
‘There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you
know, Mary, I am going to love him very much,’ said Lise,
looking with bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.
Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
‘What is the matter, Mary?’
‘Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew,’ she said,
wiping away her tears on her sister-in-law’s knee.
Several times in the course of the morning Princess
Mary began trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every
time began to cry. Unobservant as was the little princess,
these tears, the cause of which she did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as if
in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of
whom she was always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again
without saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then
sat thinking for a while with that expression of attention to
something within her that is only seen in pregnant women,
and suddenly began to cry.
‘Has anything come from Andrew?’ she asked.
‘No, you know it’s too soon for news. But my father is


589

anxious and I feel afraid.’
‘So there’s nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with
her radiant eyes at her sister-in-law.
She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her
father to hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which was expected within a few days. Princess
Mary and the old prince each bore and hid their grief in
their own way. The old prince would not cherish any hope:
he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed,
and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for traces
of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he
intended to erect in his own garden to his memory, and he
told everybody that his son had been killed. He tried not to
change his former way of life, but his strength failed him.
He walked less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every
day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting news of his return.

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Chapter VIII
‘Dearest,’ said the little princess after breakfast on the
morning of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip
rose from old habit, but as sorrow was manifest in every
smile, the sound of every word, and even every footstep in
that house since the terrible news had come, so now the
smile of the little princessinfluenced by the general mood
though without knowing its causewas such as to remind
one still more of the general sorrow.
‘Dearest, I’m afraid this morning’s fruschtique*as Foka
the cook calls ithas disagreed with me.’
*Fruhstuck: breakfast.
‘What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale.
Oh, you are very pale!’ said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft, ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
‘Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent
for?’ said one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the neighboring town, who
had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)
‘Oh yes,’ assented Princess Mary, ‘perhaps that’s it. I’ll
go. Courage, my angel.’ She kissed Lise and was about to
leave the room.
‘Oh, no, no!’ And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on the little princess’ face, an expression of childish
fear of inevitable pain showed itself.


591

‘No, it’s only indigestion?... Say it’s only indigestion, say
so, Mary! Say...’ And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a suffering child and to wring her little hands
even with some affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the
room to fetch Mary Bogdanovna.
‘Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!’ she heard as she left the
room.
The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing
her small, plump white hands with an air of calm importance.
‘Mary Bogdanovna, I think it’s beginning!’ said Princess Mary looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of
alarm.
‘Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess,’ said Mary Bogdanovna, not hastening her steps. ‘You young ladies should
not know anything about it.’
‘But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?’
said the princess. (In accordance with Lise’s and Prince Andrew’s wishes they had sent in good time to Moscow for a
doctor and were expecting him at any moment.)
‘No matter, Princess, don’t be alarmed,’ said Mary Bogdanovna. ‘We’ll manage very well without a doctor.’
Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard
something heavy being carried by. She looked out. The men
servants were carrying the large leather sofa from Prince
Andrew’s study into the bedroom. On their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the
sounds in the house, now and then opening her door when
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someone passed and watching what was going on in the
passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in and out
of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away.
She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door
again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her
prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her
surprise and distress she found that her prayers did not
calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened softly and
her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who hardly ever came to
that room as the old prince had forbidden it, appeared on
the threshold with a shawl round her head.
‘I’ve come to sit with you a bit, Masha,’ said the nurse,
‘and here I’ve brought the prince’s wedding candles to light
before his saint, my angel,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Oh, nurse, I’m so glad!’
‘God is merciful, birdie.’
The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat
down by the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took
a book and began reading. Only when footsteps or voices
were heard did they look at one another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in
the house was dominated by the same feeling that Princess
Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the
superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the
less a woman in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend
not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary
staid and respectful good manners habitual in the prince’s
household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and
a consciousness that something great and mysterious was


593

being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.
There was no laughter in the maids’ large hall. In the
men servants’ hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the
outlying serfs’ quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old prince, stepping on his heels,
paced up and down his study and sent Tikhon to ask Mary
Bogdanovna what news.‘Say only that ‘the prince told me to
ask,’ and come and tell me her answer.’
‘Inform the prince that labor has begun,’ said Mary Bogdanovna, giving the messenger a significant look.
Tikhon went and told the prince.
‘Very good!’ said the prince closing the door behind him,
and Tikhon did not hear the slightest sound from the study
after that.
After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles,
and, seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him,
noticed his perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to
him silently kissed him on the shoulder and left the room
without snuffing the candles or saying why he had entered.
The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course.
Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and
softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable did
not lessen but increased. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights when winter seems
to wish to resume its sway and scatters its last snows and
storms with desperate fury. A relay of horses had been sent
up the highroad to meet the German doctor from Moscow
who was expected every moment, and men on horseback
with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over
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the country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools
of water.
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat
silent, her luminous eyes fixed on her nurse’s wrinkled face
(every line of which she knew so well), on the lock of gray
hair that escaped from under the kerchief, and the loose
skin that hung under her chin.
Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low
tones, scarcely hearing or understanding her own words,
what she had told hundreds of times before: how the late
princess had given birth to Princess Mary in Kishenev with
only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a midwife.
‘God is merciful, doctors are never needed,’ she said.
Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the window, from which the double frame had been
removed (by order of the prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks returned), and,
forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask curtain
flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, snowy draft.
Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the
stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning
out tried to catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped
the ends of her kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.
‘Princess, my dear, there’s someone driving up the avenue! ‘ she said, holding the casement and not closing it.
‘With lanterns. Most likely the doctor.’
‘Oh, my God! thank God!’ said Princess Mary. ‘I must go
and meet him, he does not know Russian.’


595

Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to
meet the newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she
saw through the window a carriage with lanterns, standing
at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft.
On the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking
scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond the
turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to
Princess Mary was saying something.
‘Thank God!’ said the voice. ‘And Father?’
‘Gone to bed,’ replied the voice of Demyan the house
steward, who was downstairs.
Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied,
and the steps in the felt boots approached the unseen bend
of the staircase more rapidly.
‘It’s Andrew!’ thought Princess Mary. ‘No it can’t be, that
would be too extraordinary,’ and at the very moment she
thought this, the face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur
cloak the deep collar of which covered with snow, appeared
on the landing where the footman stood with the candle.
Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the
stairs and embraced his sister.
‘You did not get my letter?’ he asked, and not waiting for
a replywhich he would not have received, for the princess
was unable to speakhe turned back, rapidly mounted the
stairs again with the doctor who had entered the hall after
him (they had met at the last post station), and again em596

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braced his sister.
‘What a strange fate, Masha darling!’ And having taken
off his cloak and felt boots, he went to the little princess’
apartment.



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Chapter IX
The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white
cap on her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her
black hair lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks,
her charming rosy mouth with its downy lip was open
and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered and
paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was
lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression.
‘I love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must
I suffer so? Help me!’ her look seemed to say. She saw her
husband, but did not realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa
and kissed her forehead.
‘My darling!’ he saida word he had never used to her before. ‘God is merciful...’
She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
‘I expected help from you and I get none, none from you
either!’ said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having
come; she did not realize that he had come. His coming had
nothing to do with her sufferings or with their relief. The
pangs began again and Mary Bogdanovna advised Prince
Andrew to leave the room.
The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meet598

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ing Princess Mary, again joined her. They began talking in
whispers, but their talk broke off at every moment. They
waited and listened.
‘Go, dear,’ said Princess Mary.
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting
in the room next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became confused when
she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his hands
and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up,
went to the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.
‘You can’t come in! You can’t!’ said a terrified voice from
within.
He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a
few more seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriekit
could not be hers, she could not scream like thatcame from
the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to the door; the scream
ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.
‘What have they taken a baby in there for?’ thought
Prince Andrew in the first second. ‘A baby? What baby...?
Why is there a baby there? Or is the baby born?’
Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of
that wail; tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the
window sill be began to cry, sobbing like a child. The door
opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves tucked up, without
a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out of the room.
Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman


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rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating
on the threshold. He went into his wife’s room. She was
lying dead, in the same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of the
cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike
face with its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.
‘I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and
what have you done to me?’said her charming, pathetic,
dead face.
In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a
grunt and squealed in Mary Bogdanovna’s trembling white
hands.
Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into
his father’s room. The old man already knew everything. He
was standing close to the door and as soon as it opened his
rough old arms closed like a vise round his son’s neck, and
without a word he began to sob like a child.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince
Andrew went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give
her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same
face, though with closed eyes. ‘Ah, what have you done
to me?’ it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew felt that
something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a
sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep.
The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little hands
that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and
to him, too, her face seemed to say: ‘Ah, what have you done
to me, and why?’ And at the sight the old man turned angrily away.
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Another five days passed, and then the young Prince
Nicholas Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her while the priest with a goose feather
anointed the boy’s little red and wrinkled soles and palms.
His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and
afraid of dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed him over to the godmother,
Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another room, faint
with fear lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and
awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up
joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and
nodded approval when she told him that the wax with the
baby’s hair had not sunk in the font but had floated.



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Chapter X
Rostov’s share in Dolokhov’s duel with Bezukhov was
hushed up by the efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks as he expected he was appointed
an adjutant to the governor general of Moscow. As a result
he could not go to the country with the rest of the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties.
Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with
him during his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother’s who loved him passionately and tenderly, and old Mary
Ivanovna, who had grown fond of Rostov for his friendship
to her Fedya, often talked to him about her son.
‘Yes, Count,’ she would say, ‘he is too noble and puresouled for our present, depraved world. No one now loves
virtue; it seems like a reproach to everyone. Now tell me,
Count, was it right, was it honorable, of Bezukhov? And
Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn’t they
do it together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while
Fedya had to bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy
what he had to go through! It’s true he has been reinstated,
but how could they fail to do that? I think there were not
many such gallant sons of the fatherland out there as he.
And nowthis duel! Have these people no feeling, or hon602

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or? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and
shoot so straight! It’s well God had mercy on us. And what
was it for? Who doesn’t have intrigues nowadays? Why, if
he was so jealous, as I see things he should have shown it
sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And then to call him
out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting because he owed him
money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am
so fond of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a
lofty, heavenly soul!’
Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to
Rostov in a way no one would have expected of him.
‘I know people consider me a bad man!’ he said. ‘Let
them! I don’t care a straw about anyone but those I love;
but those I love, I love so that I would give my life for them,
and the others I’d throttle if they stood in my way. I have
an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three friendsyou
among themand as for the rest I only care about them in
so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them are
harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy,’ he continued, ‘I have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have
not yet met any womencountesses or cookswho were not venal. I have not yet met that divine purity and devotion I look
for in women. If I found such a one I’d give my life for her!
But those!... and he made a gesture of contempt. ‘And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because I still hope
to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate, purify,
and elevate me. But you don’t understand it.’
‘Oh, yes, I quite understand, ‘answered Rostov, who was


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under his new friend’s influence.
In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter Denisov also came back and stayed with
them. The first half of the winter of 1806, which Nicholas
Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of the happiest, merriest
times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought many
young men to his parents’ house. Vera was a handsome girl
of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an
opening flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was
now childishly amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
At that time in the Rostovs’ house there prevailed an
amorous atmosphere characteristic of homes where there
are very young and very charming girls. Every young man
who came to the houseseeing those impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own happiness),
feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful
bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly
prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hopeexperienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of
the Rostovs’ household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the
first was Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She almost quarreled with her brother about
him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and that in the duel
with Bezukhov, Pierre was right and Dolokhov wrong, and
further that he was disagreeable and unnatural.
‘There’s nothing for me to understand,’ cried out with
resolute self-will, ‘he is wicked and heartless. There now, I
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like your Denisov though he is a rake and all that, still I like
him; so you see I do understand. I don’t know how to put
it... with this one everything is calculated, and I don’t like
that. But Denisov..’
‘Oh, Denisov is quite different,’ replied Nicholas, implying that even Denisov was nothing compared to
Dolokhov‘you must understand what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his mother. What a heart!’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, but I am uncomfortable
with him. And do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?’
‘What nonsense..’
‘I’m certain of it; you’ll see.’
Natasha’s prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not
usually care for the society of ladies, began to come often to
the house, and the question for whose sake he came (though
no one spoke of it) was soon settled. He came because of
Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never have dared to
say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dolokhov appeared.
Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs’, never missed a
performance at which they were present, and went to Iogel’s
balls for young people which the Rostovs always attended.
He was pointedly attentive to Sonya and looked at her in
such a way that not only could she not bear his glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha blushed
when they saw his looks.
It was evident that this strange, strong man was under
the irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved


605

another.
Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov’s relations
with Sonya, but he did not explain to himself what these
new relations were. ‘They’re always in love with someone,’
he thought of Sonya and Natasha. But he was not as much
at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as before and was less frequently at home.
In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with Napoleon with even greater warmth
than the year before. Orders were given to raise recruits,
ten men in every thousand for the regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia.
Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow
nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov
family the whole interest of these preparations for war lay
in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of remaining in
Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denisov’s furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment.
His approaching departure did not prevent his amusing
himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the
greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.

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Chapter XI
On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home,
a thing he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell
dinner, as he and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people were present,
including Dolokhov and Denisov.
Never had love been so much in the air, and never had
the amorous atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the
Rostovs’ house as at this holiday time. ‘Seize the moments of
happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the
world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in
here,’ said the spirit of the place.
Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses,
without visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he
had been invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon
as he entered he noticed and felt the tension of the amorous
air in the house, and also noticed a curious embarrassment
among some of those present. Sonya, Dolokhov, and the old
countess were especially disturbed, and to a lesser degree
Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have
happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and
with the kindly sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle
and wary with them both at dinner. On that same evening
there was to be one of the balls that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the holidays.


607

‘Nicholas, will you come to Iogel’s? Please do!’ said
Natasha. ‘He asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich* is also going.’
*Denisov.
‘Where would I not go at the countess’ command!’ said
Denisov, who at the Rostovs’ had jocularly assumed the role
of Natasha’s knight. ‘I’m even weady to dance the pas de
chale.’
‘If I have time,’ answered Nicholas. ‘But I promised the
Arkharovs; they have a party.’
‘And you?’ he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had
asked the question he noticed that it should not have been
put.
‘Perhaps,’ coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing
at Sonya, and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as
he had given Pierre at the Club dinner.
‘There is something up,’ thought Nicholas, and he was
further confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and
asked her what was the matter.
‘And I was looking for you,’ said Natasha running out to
him. ‘I told you, but you would not believe it,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He has proposed to Sonya!’
Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of
late, something seemed to give way within him at this news.
Dolokhov was a suitable and in some respects a brilliant
match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From the point of view
of the old countess and of society it was out of the question
for her to refuse him. And therefore Nicholas’ first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with Sonya.... He
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tried to say, ‘That’s capital; of course she’ll forget her childish promises and accept the offer,’ but before he had time to
say it Natasha began again.
‘And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!’ adding, after a pause, ‘she told him she loved another.’
‘Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!’ thought
Nicholas.
‘Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know
she won’t change once she has said..’
‘And Mamma pressed her!’ said Nicholas reproachfully.
‘Yes,’ said Natasha. ‘Do you know, Nicholasdon’t be angrybut I know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows
how, but I know for certain that you won’t marry her.’
‘Now don’t know that at all!’ said Nicholas. ‘But I must
talk to her. What a darling Sonya is!’ he added with a
smile.
‘Ah, she is indeed a darling! I’ll send her to you.’
And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.
A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty,
and scared look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her
hand. This was the first time since his return that they had
talked alone and about their love.
‘Sophie,’ he began, timidly at first and then more and
more boldly, ‘if you wish to refuse one who is not only a
brilliant and advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..’
Sonya interrupted him.
‘I have already refused,’ she said hurriedly.
‘If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..’


609

Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring,
frightened look.
‘Nicholas, don’t tell me that!’ she said.
‘No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is
best to say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell
you the whole truth. I love you, and I think I love you more
than anyone else...’
‘That is enough for me,’ said Sonya, blushing.
‘No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall
fall in love again, though for no one have I such a feeling
of friendship, confidence, and love as I have for you. Then
I am young. Mamma does not wish it. In a word, I make
no promise. And I beg you to consider Dolokhov’s offer,’ he
said, articulating his friend’s name with difficulty.
‘Don’t say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a
brother and always shall, and I want nothing more.’
‘You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid
of misleading you.’
And Nicholas again kissed her hand.

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Chapter XII
Iogel’s were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said
the mothers as they watched their young people executing
their newly learned steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they were ready to drop,
and so said the grown-up young men and women who came
to these balls with an air of condescension and found them
most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these
balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and were married and so further increased the
fame of these dances. What distinguished them from others
was the absence of host or hostess and the presence of the
good-natured Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing
according to the rules of his art, as he collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that only those
came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of
thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for
the first time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were,
or seemed to be, prettyso rapturous were their smiles and
so sparkling their eyes. Sometimes the best of the pupils, of
whom Natasha, who was exceptionally graceful, was first,
even danced the pas de chale, but at this last ball only the
ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka, which was just
coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a ballroom in Bezukhov’s house, and the ball, as everyone said,


611

was a great success. There were many pretty girls and the
Rostov girls were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay. That evening, proud of Dolokhov’s
proposal, her refusal, and her explanation with Nicholas,
Sonya twirled about before she left home so that the maid
could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was transparently
radiant with impulsive joy.
Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being
at a real ball was even happier. They were both dressed in
white muslin with pink ribbons.
Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the
ballroom. She was not in love with anyone in particular, but
with everyone. Whatever person she happened to look at
she was in love with for that moment.
‘Oh, how delightful it is!’ she kept saying, running up to
Sonya.
Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly patronage at the dancers.
‘How sweet she isshe will be a weal beauty!’ said Denisov.
‘Who?’
‘Countess Natasha,’ answered Denisov.
‘And how she dances! What gwace!’ he said again after
a pause.
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘About your sister,’ ejaculated Denisov testily.
Rostov smiled.
‘My dear count, you were one of my best pupilsyou must
dance,’ said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. ‘Look how
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many charming young ladies-’ He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a former pupil of his.
‘No, my dear fellow, I’ll be a wallflower,’ said Denisov.
‘Don’t you wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?’
‘Oh no!’ said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. ‘You were
only inattentive, but you had talentoh yes, you had talent!’
The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka.
Nicholas could not refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance.
Denisov sat down by the old ladies and, leaning on his saber
and beating time with his foot, told them something funny
and kept them amused, while he watched the young people
dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best pupil,
were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with his
little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with
Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her
steps. Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time
with his saber in a way that clearly indicated that if he was
not dancing it was because he would not and not because he
could not. In the middle of a figure he beckoned to Rostov
who was passing:
‘This is not at all the thing,’ he said. ‘What sort of Polish
mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly.’
Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland
for the masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natasha:
‘Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!’
he said.
When it came to Natasha’s turn to choose a partner, she
rose and, tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed


613

with bows, ran timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She
saw that everybody was looking at her and waiting. Nicholas
saw that Denisov was refusing though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.
‘Please, Vasili Dmitrich,’ Natasha was saying, ‘do come!’
‘Oh no, let me off, Countess,’ Denisov replied.
‘Now then, Vaska,’ said Nicholas.
‘They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!’ said Denisov
jokingly.
‘I’ll sing for you a whole evening,’ said Natasha.
‘Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!’ said Denisov, and he unhooked his saber. He came out from behind
the chairs, clasped his partner’s hand firmly, threw back his
head, and advanced his foot, waiting for the beat. Only on
horse back and in the mazurka was Denisov’s short stature
not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked sideways
at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly
stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball,
and flew round the room taking his partner with him. He
glided silently on one foot half across the room, and seeming
not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at them, when
suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs, he
stopped short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on
the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round, and,
striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a
circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to him followed his lead hardly knowing how.
First he spun her round, holding her now with his left, now
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with his right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her
round him, and again jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through the
whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he
suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round
in front of her chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and
bowed to her, Natasha did not even make him a curtsy. She
fixed her eyes on him in amazement, smiling as if she did
not recognize him.
‘What does this mean?’ she brought out.
Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real
mazurka, everyone was delighted with Denisov’s skill, he
was asked again and again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about Poland and the good old days.
Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself
with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not
leave her for the rest of the evening.



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Chapter XIII
For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his
own or at Dolokhov’s home: on the third day he received a
note from him:
As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons
you know of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am
giving a farewell supper tonight to my friendscome to the
English Hotel.
About ten o’clock Rostov went to the English Hotel
straight from the theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once shown to the best room,
which Dolokhov had taken for that evening. Some twenty
men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper
money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen
him since his proposal and Sonya’s refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they would meet.
Dolokhov’s clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he
entered the door, as though he had long expected him.
‘It’s a long time since we met,’ he said. ‘Thanks for coming. I’ll just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come
with his chorus.’
‘I called once or twice at your house,’ said Rostov, reddening.
Dolokhov made no reply.
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‘You may punt,’ he said.
Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation
he had once had with Dolokhov. ‘None but fools trust to
luck in play,’ Dolokhov had then said.
‘Or are you afraid to play with me?’ Dolokhov now asked
as if guessing Rostov’s thought.
Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had
shown at the Club dinner and at other times, when as if
tired of everyday life he had felt a need to escape from it by
some strange, and usually cruel, action.
Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some
joke with which to reply to Dolokhov’s words. But before
he had thought of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in
his face, said slowly and deliberately so that everyone could
hear:
‘Do you remember we had a talk about cards... ‘He’s a
fool who trusts to luck, one should make certain,’ and I
want to try.’
‘To try his luck or the certainty?’ Rostov asked himself.
‘Well, you’d better not play,’ Dolokhov added, and springing a new pack of cards said: ‘Bank, gentlemen!’
Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov
sat down by his side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept
glancing at him.
‘Why don’t you play?’ he asked.
And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help
taking up a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning
to play.
‘I have no money with me,’ he said.


617

‘I’ll trust you.’
Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again,
and again lost. Dolokhov ‘killed,’ that is, beat, ten cards of
Rostov’s running.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some
time. ‘Please place your money on the cards or I may get
muddled in the reckoning.’
One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
‘Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts
mixed. So I ask you to put the money on your cards,’ replied
Dolokhov. ‘Don’t stint yourself, we’ll settle afterwards,’ he
added, turning to Rostov.
The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
All Rostov’s cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored up against him. He wrote ‘800 rubles’ on
a card, but while the waiter filled his glass he changed his
mind and altered it to his usual stake of twenty rubles.
‘Leave it,’ said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be
even looking at Rostov, ‘you’ll win it back all the sooner. I
lose to the others but win from you. Or are you afraid of
me?’ he asked again.
Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and
laid down a seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had
picked up from the floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts, on which with
a broken bit of chalk he had written ‘800 rubles’ in clear
upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm champagne
that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov’s words, and
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with a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed
at Dolokhov’s hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov’s winning or losing on that seven of hearts.
On the previous Sunday the old count had given his son
two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all
he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more
economical this time. Nicholas had replied that it would
be more than enough for him and that he gave his word of
honor not to take anything more till the spring. Now only
twelve hundred rubles was left of that money, so that this
seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of sixteen
hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word.
With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov’s hands and
thought, ‘Now then, make haste and let me have this card
and I’ll take my cap and drive home to supper with Denisov,
Natasha, and Sonya, and will certainly never touch a card
again.’ At that moment his home life, jokes with Petya, talks
with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his father, and
even his comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya
rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm
that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss,
long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left,
might deprive him of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and plunge him into the depths of
unknown and undefined misery. That could not be, yet he
awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov’s
hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists vis

619

ible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took
up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.
‘So you are not afraid to play with me?’ repeated Dolokhov, and as if about to tell a good story he put down the
cards, leaned back in his chair, and began deliberately with
a smile:
‘Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been told there’s a rumor going
about Moscow that I’m a sharper, so I advise you to be careful.’
‘Come now, deal!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘Oh, those Moscow gossips!’ said Dolokhov, and he took
up the cards with a smile.
‘Aah!’ Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his
head. The seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first
card in the pack. He had lost more than he could pay.
‘Still, don’t ruin yourself!’ said Dolokhov with a side
glance at Rostov as he continued to deal.

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Chapter XIV
An hour and a half later most of the players were but little
interested in their own play.
The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen hundred rubles he had a long column of
figures scored against him, which he had reckoned up to
ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely supposed, must
have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already exceeded
twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement
of Rostov’s hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the
score against him. He had decided to play until that score
reached forty-three thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of his and Sonya’s joint
ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled
wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression
did not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands
with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those
hands which he loved and hated, held him in their power.
‘Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it
back’s impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The
knave, double or quits... it can’t be!... And why is he doing
this to me?’ Rostov pondered. Sometimes he staked a large
sum, but Dolokhov refused to accept it and fixed the stake


621

himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at one moment
prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge
over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came
first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would
save him, now counted the cords on his coat and took a card
with that number and tried staking the total of his losses on
it, then he looked round for aid from the other players, or
peered at the now cold face of Dolokhov and tried to read
what was passing in his mind.
‘He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can’t
want my ruin. Wasn’t he my friend? Wasn’t I fond of him?
But it’s not his fault. What’s he to do if he has such luck?...
And it’s not my fault either,’ he thought to himself, ‘I have
done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone, or insulted or
wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible misfortune?
And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to this
table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy
that casket for Mamma’s name day and then going home. I
was so happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize
how happy I was! When did that end and when did this new,
terrible state of things begin? What marked the change? I sat
all the time in this same place at this table, chose and placed
cards, and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the
same way. When did it happen and what has happened? I
am well and strong and still the same and in the same place.
No, it can’t be! Surely it will all end in nothing!’
He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the
room was not hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see,
especially from its helpless efforts to seem calm.
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The score against him reached the fateful sum of fortythree thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending
the corner of which he meant to double the three thousand
just put down to his score, when Dolokhov, slamming down
the pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding up
the total of Rostov’s debt, breaking the chalk as he marked
the figures in his clear, bold hand.
‘Supper, it’s time for supper! And here are the gypsies!’
Some swarthy men and women were really entering
from the cold outside and saying something in their gypsy
accents. Nicholas understood that it was all over; but he said
in an indifferent tone:
‘Well, won’t you go on? I had a splendid card all ready,’ as
if it were the fun of the game which interested him most.
‘It’s all up! I’m lost!’ thought he. ‘Now a bullet through
my brainthat’s all that’s left me! ‘ And at the same time he
said in a cheerful voice:
‘Come now, just this one more little card!’
‘All right!’ said Dolokhov, having finished the addition.
‘All right! Twenty-one rubles,’ he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum
of forty-three thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared
to deal. Rostov submissively unbent the corner of his card
and, instead of the six thousand he had intended, carefully
wrote twenty-one.
‘It’s all the same to me,’ he said. ‘I only want to see whether you will let me win this ten, or beat it.’
Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that moment those hands with their short reddish


623

fingers and hairy wrists, which held him in their power....
The ten fell to him.
‘You owe forty-three thousand, Count,’ said Dolokhov,
and stretching himself he rose from the table. ‘One does get
tired sitting so long,’ he added.
‘Yes, I’m tired too,’ said Rostov.
Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was
not for him to jest.
‘When am I to receive the money, Count?’
Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.
‘I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?’
he said.
‘I say, Rostov,’ said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas straight in the eyes, ‘you know the saying,
‘Lucky in love, unlucky at cards.’ Your cousin is in love with
you, I know.’
‘Oh, it’s terrible to feel oneself so in this man’s power,’
thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on
his father and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what
a relief it would be to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov
knew that he could save him from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does with a
mouse.
‘Your cousin...’ Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.
‘My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not necessary to mention her!’ he exclaimed fiercely.
‘Then when am I to have it?’
‘Tomorrow,’ replied Rostov and left the room.
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Chapter XV
To say ‘tomorrow’ and keep up a dignified tone was not
difficult, but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess and ask for money he had no right to
after giving his word of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people,
after returning from the theater, had had supper and were
grouped round the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered,
he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere of love which
pervaded the Rostov household that winter and, now after
Dolokhov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown
thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a
thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses
they had worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious
of it, were standing by the clavichord, happy and smiling.
Vera was playing chess with Shinshin in the drawing room.
The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and
son, sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who
lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short
fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang,
with his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called ‘Enchantress,’ which he had composed, and to which he was
trying to fit music:
Enchantress,
say,
to
my
forsaken
lyre


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What magic power is this recalls me still?
What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing
with his sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and
happy Natasha.
‘Splendid! Excellent!’ exclaimed Natasha. ‘Another verse,
she said, without noticing Nicholas.
‘Everything’s still the same with them,’ thought Nicholas, glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and
his mother with the old lady.
‘Ah, and here’s Nicholas!’ cried Natasha, running up to
him.
‘Is Papa at home?’ he asked.
‘I am so glad you’ve come!’ said Natasha, without answering him. ‘We are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is
staying a day longer for my sake! Did you know?’
‘No, Papa is not back yet,’ said Sonya.
‘Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!’ called the
old countess from the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down
silently at her table began to watch her hands arranging the
cards. From the dancing room, they still heard the laughter
and merry voices trying to persuade Natasha to sing.
‘All wight! All wight!’ shouted Denisov. ‘It’s no good
making excuses now! It’s your turn to sing the ba’cawollaI
entweat you!’
The countess glanced at her silent son.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked.
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‘Oh, nothing,’ said he, as if weary of being continually
asked the same question. ‘Will Papa be back soon?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing
about it! Where am I to go?’ thought Nicholas, and went
again into the dancing room where the clavichord stood.
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude
to Denisov’s favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to
sing. Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
‘Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing?
There’s nothing to be happy about!’ thought he.
Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.
‘My God, I’m a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet
through my brain is the only thing left menot singing! ‘ his
thoughts ran on. ‘Go away? But where to? It’s onelet them
sing!’
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at
Denisov and the girls and avoiding their eyes.
‘Nikolenka, what is the matter?’ Sonya’s eyes fixed on
him seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had
happened to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her
quick instinct, had instantly noticed her brother’s condition. But, though she noticed it, she was herself in such
high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow, sadness, or
self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as young
people often do. ‘No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s sorrow,’ she felt, and she


627

said to herself: ‘No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling
happy, just as I am.’
‘Now, Sonya!’ she said, going to the very middle of the
room, where she considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly,
as ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her
heels to her toes, stepped to the middle of the room and
stood still.
‘Yes, that’s me!’ she seemed to say, answering the rapt
gaze with which Denisov followed her.
‘And what is she so pleased about?’ thought Nicholas,
looking at his sister. ‘Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?’
Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest
rose, her eyes became serious. At that moment she was
oblivious of her surroundings, and from her smiling lips
flowed sounds which anyone may produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which leave you cold a
thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill you
and make you weep.
Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing
seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in
her singing that comical, childish, painstaking effect that
had been in it before; but she did not yet sing well, as all the
connoisseurs who heard her said: ‘It is not trained, but it is
a beautiful voice that must be trained.’ Only they generally
said this some time after she had finished singing. While
that untrained voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs
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said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear
it again. In her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained
velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in
singing that it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be
altered without spoiling it.
‘What is this?’ thought Nicholas, listening to her with
widely opened eyes. ‘What has happened to her? How she is
singing today!’ And suddenly the whole world centered for
him on anticipation of the next note, the next phrase, and
everything in the world was divided into three beats: ‘Oh
mio crudele affetto.’... One, two, three... one, two, three...
One... ‘Oh mio crudele affetto.’... One, two, three... One.
‘Oh, this senseless life of ours!’ thought Nicholas. ‘All this
misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honorit’s
all nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now
then, dearest! Now then, darling! How will she take that si?
She’s taken it! Thank God!’ And without noticing that he
was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third
below the high note. ‘Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take
it? How fortunate!’ he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest in Rostov’s soul! And this something
was apart from everything else in the world and above everything in the world. ‘What were losses, and Dolokhov,
and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob
and yet be happy..’



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Chapter XVI
It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from
music as he did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than reality again presented itself. He
got up without saying a word and went downstairs to his
own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count came
in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing
him drive up, went to meet him.
‘Wellhad a good time?’ said the old count, smiling gaily
and proudly at his son.
Nicholas tried to say ‘Yes,’ but could not: and he nearly
burst into sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not
notice his son’s condition.
‘Ah, it can’t be avoided!’ thought Nicholas, for the first
and last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which
made him feel ashamed feel of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him have the carriage to drive to
town:
‘Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly
forgetting. I need some money.’
‘Dear me!’ said his father, who was in a specially good
humor. ‘I told you it would not be enough. How much?’
‘Very much,’ said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid
careless smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, ‘I have lost a little, I mean a good deal, a great dealforty
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three thousand.’
‘What! To whom?... Nonsense!’ cried the count, suddenly
reddening with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as
old people do.
‘I promised to pay tomorrow,’ said Nicholas.
‘Well!...’ said the old count, spreading out his arms and
sinking helplessly on the sofa.
‘It can’t be helped It happens to everyone!’ said the son,
with a bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could
not atone for his crime. He longed to kiss his father’s hands
and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but said, in a careless and
even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!
The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son’s
words and began bustlingly searching for something.
‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered, ‘it will be difficult, I fear, difficult
to raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?’
And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count
went out of the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all expected this.
‘Papa! Pa-pa!’ he called after him, sobbing, ‘forgive me!’
And seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and
burst into tears.
While father and son were having their explanation, the
mother and daughter were having one not less important.
Natasha came running to her mother, quite excited.
‘Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..’
‘Made what?’
‘Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!’ she ex

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claimed.
The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so
long ago was playing with dolls and who was still having
lessons.
‘Don’t, Natasha! What nonsense!’ she said, hoping it was
a joke.
‘Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,’ said Natasha
indignantly. ‘I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
‘nonsense!’’
The countess shrugged her shoulders.
‘If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell him he is a fool, that’s all!’
‘No, he’s not a fool!’ replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.
‘Well then, what do you want? You’re all in love nowadays. Well, if you are in love, marry him!’ said the countess,
with a laugh of annoyance. ‘Good luck to you!’
‘No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him, I suppose I’m not
in love with him.’
‘Well then, tell him so.’
‘Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, dear! Is it my
fault?’
‘No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and
tell him?’ said the countess smiling.
‘No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It’s all
very well for you,’ said Natasha, with a responsive smile.
‘You should have seen how he said it! I know he did not
mean to say it, but it came out accidently.’
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‘Well, all the same, you must refuse him.’
‘No, I mustn’t. I am so sorry for him! He’s so nice.’
‘Well then, accept his offer. It’s high time for you to be
married,’ answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
‘No, Mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know how
I’m to say it.’
‘And there’s nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him
myself,’ said the countess, indignant that they should have
dared to treat this little Natasha as grown up.
‘No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you’ll
listen at the door,’ and Natasha ran across the drawing room
to the dancing hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same
chair by the clavichord with his face in his hands.
He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
‘Nataly,’ he said, moving with rapid steps toward her,
‘decide my fate. It is in your hands.’
‘Vasili Dmitrich, I’m so sorry for you!... No, but you are
so nice... but it won’t do...not that... but as a friend, I shall
always love you.’
Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange
sounds she did not understand. She kissed his rough curly
black head. At this instant, they heard the quick rustle of
the countess’ dress. She came up to them.
‘Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor,’ she said,
with an embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to
Denisov‘but my daughter is so young, and I thought that,
as my son’s friend, you would have addressed yourself first
to me. In that case you would not have obliged me to give
this refusal.’


633

‘Countess...’ said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a
guilty face. He tried to say more, but faltered.
Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a
plight. She began to sob aloud.
‘Countess, I have done w’ong,’ Denisov went on in an unsteady voice, ‘but believe me, I so adore your daughter and
all your family that I would give my life twice over...’ He
looked at the countess, and seeing her severe face said: ‘Well,
good-by, Countess,’ and kissing her hand, he left the room
with quick resolute strides, without looking at Natasha.
Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay
another day in Moscow. All Denisov’s Moscow friends gave
him a farewell entertainment at the gypsies’, with the result
that he had no recollection of how he was put in the sleigh
or of the first three stages of his journey.
After Denisov’s departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow, without going out of the house, waiting
for the money his father could not at once raise, and he
spent most of his time in the girls’ room.
Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever.
It was as if she wanted to show him that his losses were an
achievement that made her love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of her.
He filled the girls’ albums with verses and music, and
having at last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his receipt, he left at the end of
November, without taking leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.
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BOOK FIVE: 1806 07



635

Chapter I
After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the Torzhok post station, either there were no
horses or the postmaster would not supply them. Pierre was
obliged to wait. Without undressing, he lay down on the
leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big feet in their
overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
‘Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed
got ready, and tea?’ asked his valet.
Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had begun to think of the last station and was still
pondering on the same questionone so important that he
took no notice of what went on around him. Not only was
he indifferent as to whether he got to Petersburg earlier or
later, or whether he secured accommodation at this station,
but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was
a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few
hours or for the rest of his life.
The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering
their services. Without changing his careless attitude, Pierre
looked at them over his spectacles unable to understand
what they wanted or how they could go on living without
having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had
been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day he
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returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that
first agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of
the journey, they seized him with special force. No matter
what he thought about, he always returned to these same
questions which he could not solve and yet could not cease
to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the chief screw
which held his life together were stripped, so that the screw
could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the
same place.
The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg
his excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what
might, he would let his excellency have the courier horses.
It was plain that he was lying and only wanted to get more
money from the traveler.
‘Is this good or bad?’ Pierre asked himself. ‘It is good for
me, bad for another traveler, and for himself it’s unavoidable, because he needs money for food; the man said an
officer had once given him a thrashing for letting a private
traveler have the courier horses. But the officer thrashed
him because he had to get on as quickly as possible. And
I,’ continued Pierre, ‘shot Dolokhov because I considered
myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they
considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed
those who executed himalso for some reason. What is bad?
What is good? What should one love and what hate? What
does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is
death? What power governs all?’
There was no answer to any of these questions, except
one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to


637

them. The answer was: ‘You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die
and know all, or cease asking.’ But dying was also dreadful.
The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went
on offering her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers.
‘I have hundreds of rubles I don’t know what to do with, and
she stands in her tattered cloak looking timidly at me,’ he
thought. ‘And what does she want the money for? As if that
money could add a hair’s breadth to happiness or peace of
mind. Can anything in the world make her or me less a prey
to evil and death?death which ends all and must come today or tomorrowat any rate, in an instant as compared with
eternity.’ And again he twisted the screw with the stripped
thread, and again it turned uselessly in the same place.
His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form
of letters, by Madame de Souza. He began reading about
the sufferings and virtuous struggles of a certain Emilie
de Mansfeld. ‘And why did she resist her seducer when she
loved him?’ he thought. ‘God could not have put into her
heart an impulse that was against His will. My wifeas she
once wasdid not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has been found out, nothing discovered,’ Pierre again
said to himself. ‘All we can know is that we know nothing.
And that’s the height of human wisdom.’
Everything within and around him seemed confused,
senseless, and repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all
his circumstances Pierre found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.
‘I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for
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this gentleman,’ said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another traveler, also detained for lack of horses.
The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced,
wrinkled old man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging
bright eyes of an indefinite grayish color.
Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down
on a bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and
then at the newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face,
was wearily taking off his wraps with the aid of his servant,
and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt boots on his
thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn, nankeen-covered,
sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa, leaned
back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped
hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish
to speak to the stranger, but by the time he had made up his
mind to ask him a question about the roads, the traveler
had closed his eyes. His shriveled old hands were folded and
on the finger of one of them Pierre noticed a large cast iron
ring with a seal representing a death’s head. The stranger
sat without stirring, either resting or, as it seemed to Pierre,
sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant was
also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache, evidently not because he was shaven but because they
had never grown. This active old servant was unpacking
the traveler’s canteen and preparing tea. He brought in a
boiling samovar. When everything was ready, the stranger
opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a tumbler with tea
for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom he


639

passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation
with this stranger.
The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside
down,* with an unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if
anything more would be wanted.
*To indicate he did not want more tea.
‘No. Give me the book,’ said the stranger.
The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to
be a devotional work, and the traveler became absorbed in
it. Pierre looked at him. All at once the stranger closed the
book, putting in a marker, and again, leaning with his arms
on the back of the sofa, sat in his former position with his
eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not time to turn
away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady
and severe gaze straight on Pierre’s face.
Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but
the bright old eyes attracted him irresistibly.

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Chapter II
‘I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I
am not mistaken,’ said the stranger in a deliberate and loud
voice.
Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his
spectacles.
‘I have heard of you, my dear sir, ‘continued the stranger, ‘and of your misfortune.’ He seemed to emphasize the
last word, as if to say‘Yes, misfortune! Call it what you
please, I know that what happened to you in Moscow was a
misfortune.’‘I regret it very much, my dear sir.’
Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from
the bed, bent forward toward the old man with a forced and
timid smile.
‘I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir,
but for greater reasons.’
He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on
the sofa by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside
him. Pierre felt reluctant to enter into conversation with
this old man, but, submitting to him involuntarily, came up
and sat down beside him.
‘You are unhappy, my dear sir,’ the stranger continued.
‘You are young and I am old. I should like to help you as far
as lies in my power.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Pierre, with a forced smile. ‘I am very


641

grateful to you. Where are you traveling from?’
The stranger’s face was not genial, it was even cold and
severe, but in spite of this, both the face and words of his
new acquaintance were irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
‘But if for reason you don’t feel inclined to talk to me,’
said the old man, ‘say so, my dear sir.’ And he suddenly
smiled, in an unexpected and tenderly paternal way.
‘Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to
make your acquaintance,’ said Pierre. And again, glancing
at the stranger’s hands, he looked more closely at the ring,
with its skulla Masonic sign.
‘Allow me to ask,’ he said, ‘are you a Mason?’
‘Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons,’
said the stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre’s
eyes. ‘And in their name and my own I hold out a brotherly
hand to you.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between
the confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in
him and his own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs‘I
am afraid I am very far from understandinghow am I to put
it?I am afraid my way of looking at the world is so opposed
to yours that we shall not understand one another.’
‘I know your outlook,’ said the Mason, ‘and the view
of life you mention, and which you think is the result of
your own mental efforts, is the one held by the majority of
people, and is the invariable fruit of pride, indolence, and
ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I had not known
it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is a regrettable delusion.’
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‘Just as I may suppose you to be deluded,’ said Pierre,
with a faint smile.
‘I should never dare to say that I know the truth,’ said the
Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their
precision and firmness. ‘No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of
all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam
to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God,’ he added, and closed
his eyes.
‘I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe
in God, said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it
essential to speak the whole truth.
The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich
man with millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow
who told him that he, poor man, had not the five rubles that
would make him happy.
‘Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir,’ said the Mason.
‘You cannot know Him. You do not know Him and that is
why you are unhappy.’
‘Yes, yes, I am unhappy,’ assented Pierre. ‘But what am
I to do?’
‘You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You do not know Him, but He is here, He is in me,
He is in my words, He is in thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!’ pronounced the Mason
in a stern and tremulous voice.
He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.
‘If He were not,’ he said quietly, ‘you and I would not be


643

speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we
speaking? Whom hast thou denied?’ he suddenly asked with
exulting austerity and authority in his voice. ‘Who invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence came thy conception
of the existence of such an incomprehensible Being? didst
thou, and why did the whole world, conceive the idea of the
existence of such an incomprehensible Being, a Being allpowerful, eternal, and infinite in all His attributes?..’
He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
‘He exists, but to understand Him is hard,’ the Mason
began again, looking not at Pierre but straight before him,
and turning the leaves of his book with his old hands which
from excitement he could not keep still. ‘If it were a man
whose existence thou didst doubt I could bring him to thee,
could take him by the hand and show him to thee. But how
can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, His
infinity, and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts
his eyes that he may not see or understand Him and may
not see or understand his own vileness and sinfulness?’ He
paused again. ‘Who art thou? Thou dreamest that thou art
wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words,’
he went on, with a somber and scornful smile. ‘And thou
art more foolish and unreasonable than a little child, who,
playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares to
say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For
ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to
attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our
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aim; but in our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and His greatness...’
Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason’s face with shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning
him, but believing with his whole soul what the stranger
said. Whether he accepted the wise reasoning contained in
the Mason’s words, or believed as a child believes, in the
speaker’s tone of conviction and earnestness, or the tremor of the speaker’s voicewhich sometimes almost brokeor
those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this conviction, or the
calm firmness and certainty of his vocation, which radiated
from his whole being (and which struck Pierre especially
by contrast with his own dejection and hopelessness)at any
rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe and he did
believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and
return to life.
‘He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life,’ said
the Mason.
‘I do not understand,’ said Pierre, feeling with dismay
doubts reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness,
any weakness, in the Mason’s arguments; he dreaded not to
be able to believe in him. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘how
it is that the mind of man cannot attain the knowledge of
which you speak.’
The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.
‘The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid
we may wish to imbibe,’ he said. ‘Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel and judge of its purity? Only by
the inner purification of myself can I retain in some degree


645

of purity the liquid I receive.’
‘Yes, yes, that is so,’ said Pierre joyfully.
‘The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone,
not on those worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry,
and the like, into which intellectual knowledge is divided.
The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom has but one
sciencethe science of the wholethe science explaining the
whole creation and man’s place in it. To receive that science
it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner self, and so
before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect
one’s self. And to attain this end, we have the light called
conscience that God has implanted in our souls.’
‘Yes, yes,’ assented Pierre.
‘Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit,
and ask thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What
hast thou attained relying on reason only? What art thou?
You are young, you are rich, you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all these good gifts?
Are you content with yourself and with your life?’
‘No, I hate my life,’ Pierre muttered, wincing.
‘Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as
thou art purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life,
my dear sir. How have you spent it? In riotous orgies and
debauchery, receiving everything from society and giving
nothing in return. You have become the possessor of wealth.
How have you used it? What have you done for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands of
slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No!
You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That
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is what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you
might be of service to your neighbor? No! You have spent
your life in idleness. Then you married, my dear sirtook on
yourself responsibility for the guidance of a young woman;
and what have you done? You have not helped her to find
the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an
abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you
shot him, and you say you do not know God and hate your
life. There is nothing strange in that, my dear sir!’
After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, again leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and
closed his eyes. Pierre looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face and moved his lips without uttering
a sound. He wished to say, ‘Yes, a vile, idle, vicious life!’ but
dared not break the silence.
The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and
called his servant.
‘How about the horses?’ he asked, without looking at
Pierre.
‘The exchange horses have just come,’ answered the servant. ‘Will you not rest here?’
‘No, tell them to harness.’
‘Can he really be going away leaving me alone without
having told me all, and without promising to help me?’
thought Pierre, rising with downcast head; and he began to
pace the room, glancing occasionally at the Mason. ‘Yes, I
never thought of it, but I have led a contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not want to,’ thought
Pierre. ‘But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to,


647

could disclose it to me.’
Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare
to. The traveler, having packed his things with his practiced
hands, began fastening his coat. When he had finished, he
turned to Bezukhov, and said in a tone of indifferent politeness:
‘Where are you going to now, my dear sir?’
‘I?... I’m going to Petersburg,’ answered Pierre, in a childlike, hesitating voice. ‘I thank you. I agree with all you have
said. But do not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole
soul I wish to be what you would have me be, but I have
never had help from anyone.... But it is I, above all, who am
to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, and perhaps I
may..’
Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently
considering.
‘Help comes from God alone,’ he said, ‘but such measure
of help as our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear
sir. You are going to Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski’ (he took out his notebook and wrote a few words on
a large sheet of paper folded in four). ‘Allow me to give you
a piece of advice. When you reach the capital, first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and do not
resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good
journey, my dear sir,’ he added, seeing that his servant had
entered... ‘and success.’
The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre
saw from the postmaster’s book. Bazdeev had been one of
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the best-known Freemasons and Martinists, even in Novikov’s time. For a long while after he had gone, Pierre did
not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down the
room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous
sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful, irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy.
It seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he
had somehow forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a
trace of his former doubts remained in his soul. He firmly
believed in the possibility of the brotherhood of men united
in the aim of supporting one another in the path of virtue,
and that is how Freemasonry presented itself to him.



649

Chapter III
On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know
of his arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in
reading Thomas a Kempis, whose book had been sent him
by someone unknown. One thing he continually realized
as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of
believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in
the possibility of active brotherly love among men, which
Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had
known slightly in Petersburg society, came into his room
one evening in the official and ceremonious manner in
which Dolokhov’s second had called on him, and, having
closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that there
was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.
‘I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count,’
he said without sitting down. ‘A person of very high standing in our Brotherhood has made application for you to be
received into our Order before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I consider it a sacred duty to
fulfill that person’s wishes. Do you wish to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?’
The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost
always before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of
the most brilliant women, surprised Pierre.
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‘Yes, I do wish it,’ said he.
Willarski bowed his head.
‘One more question, Count,’ he said, ‘which beg you to
answer in all sinceritynot as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you renounced your former convictionsdo
you believe in God?’
Pierre considered.
‘Yes... yes, I believe in God,’ he said.
‘In that case...’ began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted
him.
‘Yes, I do believe in God,’ he repeated.
‘In that case we can go,’ said Willarski. ‘My carriage is at
your service.’
Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre’s inquiries as to what he must do and how he should answer,
Willarski only replied that brothers more worthy than he
would test him and that Pierre had only to tell the truth.
Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the
Lodge had its headquarters, and having ascended a dark
staircase, they entered a small well-lit anteroom where they
took off their cloaks without the aid of a servant. From there
they passed into another room. A man in strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him, said
something to him in French in an undertone and then went
up to a small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments
such as he had never seen before. Having taken a kerchief
from the cupboard, Willarski bound Pierre’s eyes with it
and tied it in a knot behind, catching some hairs painfully
in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed him, and


651

taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in
the knot hurt Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face
and a shamefaced smile. His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a puckered, though smiling face, moved
after Willarski with uncertain, timid steps.
Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.
‘Whatever happens to you,’ he said, ‘you must bear it
all manfully if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood.’ (Pierre nodded affirmatively.) ‘When you hear
a knock at the door, you will uncover your eyes,’ added
Willarski. ‘I wish you courage and success,’ and, pressing
Pierre’s hand, he went out.
Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once
or twice he shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief,
as if wishing to take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour.
His arms felt numb, his legs almost gave way, it seemed to
him that he was tired out. He experienced a variety of most
complex sensations. He felt afraid of what would happen to
him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be
revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had come when he would at last start on that path of
regeneration and on the actively virtuous life of which he
had been dreaming since he met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud
knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took the bandage off
his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black
darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something
white. Pierre went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a
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black table on which lay an open book. The book was the
Gospel, and the white thing with the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After reading the first
words of the Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word and
the Word was with God,’ Pierre went round the table and
saw a large open box filled with something. It was a coffin
with bones inside. He was not at all surprised by what he
saw. Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite unlike the
old one, he expected everything to be unusual, even more
unusual than what he was seeing. A skull, a coffin, the Gospelit seemed to him that he had expected all this and even
more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.
‘God, death, love, the brotherhood of man,’ he kept saying
to himself, associating these words with vague yet joyful
ideas. The door opened and someone came in.
By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, he saw rather short man. Having evidently come
from the light into the darkness, the man paused, then
moved with cautious steps toward the table and placed on it
his small leather-gloved hands.
This short man had on a white leather apron which
covered his chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of
necklace above which rose a high white ruffle, outlining his
rather long face which was lit up from below.
‘For what have you come hither?’ asked the newcomer,
turning in Pierre’s direction at a slight rustle made by the
latter. ‘Why have you, who do not believe in the truth of the
light and who have not seen the light, come here? What do
you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue, enlightenment?’


653

At the moment the door opened and the stranger came
in, Pierre felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had
experienced in his boyhood at confession; he felt himself
in the presence of one socially a complete stranger, yet
nearer to him through the brotherhood of man. With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor
(by which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer,
he recognized in the Rhetor a man he knew, Smolyaninov,
and it mortified him to think that the newcomer was an acquaintancehe wished him simply a brother and a virtuous
instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so that
the Rhetor had to repeat his question.
‘Yes... I... I... desire regeneration,’ Pierre uttered with difficulty.
‘Very well,’ said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: ‘Have
you any idea of the means by which our holy Order will help
you to reach your aim?’ said he quietly and quickly.
‘I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration,’ said
Pierre, with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his excitement and to being unaccustomed to
speak of abstract matters in Russian.
‘What is your conception of Freemasonry?’
‘I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who have virtuous aims,’ said Pierre, feeling
ashamed of the inadequacy of his words for the solemnity
of the moment, as he spoke. ‘I imagine..’
‘Good!’ said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with
this answer. ‘Have you sought for means of attaining your
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aim in religion?’
‘No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it,’ said
Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked
him what he was saying. ‘I have been an atheist,’ answered
Pierre.
‘You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in
your life, therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not
so?’ said the Rhetor, after a moment’s pause.
‘Yes, yes,’ assented Pierre.
The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands
on his breast, and began to speak.
‘Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order,’
he said, ‘and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood with profit. The first and chief object of
our Order, the foundation on which it rests and which no
human power can destroy, is the preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important mystery... which
has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from the
first mana mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind
depends. But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use it unless he be prepared by long and
diligent self-purification, not everyone can hope to attain it
quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim, that of preparing
our members as much as possible to reform their hearts, to
purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to us
by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery, and thereby to render them capable of receiving it.
‘By purifying and regenerating our members we try,
thirdly, to improve the whole human race, offering it in


655

our members an example of piety and virtue, and thereby
try with all our might to combat the evil which sways the
world. Think this over and I will come to you again.’
‘To combat the evil which sways the world...’ Pierre repeated, and a mental image of his future activity in this
direction rose in his mind. He imagined men such as he
had himself been a fortnight ago, and he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself vicious
and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and
deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last,
that of improving mankind, especially appealed to Pierre.
The important mystery mentioned by the Rhetor, though
it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential, and
the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself,
did not much interest him because at that moment he felt
with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all that was good.
Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the
seeker of the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven
steps of Solomon’s temple, which every Freemason should
cultivate in himself. These virtues were: 1. Discretion, the
keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to those of
higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. Love of mankind.
5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
‘In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of
death,’ the Rhetor said, ‘to bring yourself to regard it not as
a dreaded foe, but as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue from this distressful life, and leads
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it to its place of recompense and peace.’
‘Yes, that must be so,’ thought Pierre, when after these
words the Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. ‘It must be so, but I am still so weak that I love my
life, the meaning of which is only now gradually opening
before me.’ But five of the other virtues which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in his
soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and
especially obediencewhich did not even seem to him a virtue, but a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own
lawlessness and to submit his will to those who knew the
indubitable truth.) He forgot what the seventh virtue was
and could not recall it.
The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and
asked Pierre whether he was still firm in his intention and
determined to submit to all that would be required of him.
‘I am ready for everything,’ said Pierre.
‘I must also inform you,’ said the Rhetor, ‘that our Order delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other
means, which may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after wisdom and virtue than mere words. This
chamber with what you see therein should already have
suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, more than words
could do. You will perhaps also see in your further initiation a like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates
the ancient societies that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph,’ said the Rhetor, ‘is an emblem of
something not cognizable by the senses but which possesses
qualities resembling those of the symbol.’


657

Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared
not speak. He listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from
all he said that his ordeal was about to begin.
‘If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation,’ said the
Rhetor coming closer to Pierre. ‘In token of generosity I ask
you to give me all your valuables.’
‘But I have nothing here,’ replied Pierre, supposing that
he was asked to give up all he possessed.
‘What you have with you: watch, money, rings...’
Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could
not manage for some time to get the wedding ring off his fat
finger. When that had been done, the Rhetor said:
‘In token of obedience, I ask you to undress.’
Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to the Rhetor’s instructions. The Mason drew the shirt
back from Pierre’s left breast, and stooping down pulled up
the left leg of his trousers to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly
began taking off his right boot also and was going to tuck
up the other trouser leg to save this stranger the trouble, but
the Mason told him that was not necessary and gave him a
slipper for his left foot. With a childlike smile of embarrassment, doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on his face
against his will, Pierre stood with his arms hanging down
and legs apart, before his brother Rhetor, and awaited his
further commands.
‘And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me
your chief passion,’ said the latter.
‘My passion! I have had so many,’ replied Pierre.
‘That passion which more than all others caused you to
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waver on the path of virtue,’ said the Mason.
Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
‘Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger?
Women?’ He went over his vices in his mind, not knowing
to which of them to give the pre-eminence.
‘Women,’ he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.
The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing
after this answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking
the kerchief that lay on the table, again bound his eyes.
‘For the last time I say to youturn all your attention upon
yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness,
not in passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without us but within...’
Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing source of blessedness which now flooded his heart
with glad emotion.



659

Chapter IV
Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch
Pierre, not the Rhetor but Pierre’s sponsor, Willarski, whom
he recognized by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre replied: ‘Yes, yes, I agree,’ and
with a beaming, childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered,
stepping unevenly and timidly in one slippered and one
booted foot, he advanced, while Willarski held a sword to
his bare chest. He was conducted from that room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last
brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he
was answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors
opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to who he was, when and where he
was born, and so on. Then he was again led somewhere still
blindfold, and as they went along he was told allegories of
the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of the Eternal
Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which
he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre noticed that he was spoken of now as the
‘Seeker,’ now as the ‘Sufferer,’ and now as the ‘Postulant,’ to
the accompaniment of various knockings with mallets and
swords. As he was being led up to some object he noticed a
hesitation and uncertainty among his conductors. He heard
those around him disputing in whispers and one of them
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insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After
that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and
told him to hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with
the other hand and to repeat after someone who read aloud
an oath of fidelity to the laws of the Order. The candles were
then extinguished and some spirit lighted, as Pierre knew
by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint
light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several
men standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor’s
and holding swords in their hands pointed at his breast.
Among them stood a man whose white shirt was stained
with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved forward with his
breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce it. But
the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once
blindfolded again.
‘Now thou hast seen the lesser light,’ uttered a voice.
Then the candles were relit and he was told that he would
see the full light; the bandage was again removed and more
than ten voices said together: ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’
Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked
about at the room and at the people in it. Round a long table
covered with black sat some twelve men in garments like
those he had already seen. Some of them Pierre had met
in Petersburg society. In the President’s chair sat a young
man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from
his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had
met at Anna Pavlovna’s two years before. There were also
present a very distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had


661

formerly been tutor at the Kuragins’. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words of the President, who
held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was a star-shaped
light. At one side of the table was a small carpet with various
figures worked upon it, at the other was something resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round
it stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches.
Two of the brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet
at right angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must
prostrate himself at the Gates of the Temple.
‘He must first receive the trowel,’ whispered one of the
brothers.
‘Oh, hush, please!’ said another.
Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted
eyes without obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his
mind. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Aren’t they laughing at me? Shan’t I be ashamed to remember this?’ But these
doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the serious
faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He
was aghast at his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling, prostrated himself before the Gates
of the Temple. And really, the feeling of devotion returned
to him even more strongly than before. When he had lain
there some time, he was told to get up, and a white leather
apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand
Master addressed him. He told him that he should try to do
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ized strength and purity; then of the unexplained trowel, he
told him to toil with it to cleanse his own heart from vice,
and indulgently to smooth with it the heart of his neighbor.
As to the first pair of gloves, a man’s, he said that Pierre
could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second pair of man’s gloves he was to wear at the meetings,
and finally of the third, a pair of women’s gloves, he said:
‘Dear brother, these woman’s gloves are intended for you
too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most
of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to
her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry.’ And after a pause, he added: ‘But beware, dear brother,
that these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean.’ While
the Grand Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre
that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more
confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes,
began looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause
followed.
This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led
Pierre up to the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation of all the figures on it: the sun,
the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a trowel, a rough stone
and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and so on.
Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs
of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted
to sit down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes.
They were very long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and
embarrassment, was not in a state to understand what was
being read. He managed to follow only the last words of the


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statutes and these remained in his mind.
‘In our temples we recognize no other distinctions,’
read the Grand Master, ‘but those between virtue and
vice. Beware of making any distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother’s aid whoever he may be,
exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth, never
bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and
courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share
thy happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim
the purity of that bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge
thyself except by doing him good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of the ancient dignity which
thou hast lost.’
He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre,
who, with tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not
knowing how to answer the congratulations and greetings
from acquaintances that met him on all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all these men only
brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work with
them.
The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down in their places, and one of them read an
exhortation on the necessity of humility.
The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be
performed, and the distinguished dignitary who bore the
title of ‘Collector of Alms’ went round to all the brothers.
Pierre would have liked to subscribe all he had, but fearing
that it might look like pride subscribed the same amount as
the others.
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The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre
felt as if he had returned from a long journey on which he
had spent dozens of years, had become completely changed,
and had quite left behind his former habits and way of life.



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Chapter V
The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre
was sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom
the significance of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third physical things,
and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then his
attention wandered from the book and the Square and he
formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous
evening at the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel
had reached the Emperor and that it would be wiser for him
to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going to his estates in
the south and there attending to the welfare of his serfs. He
was joyfully planning this new life, when Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.
‘My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow?
Why have you quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are
under a delusion,’ said Prince Vasili, as he entered. ‘I know
all about it, and I can tell you positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was before the Jews.’
Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted
him.
‘And why didn’t you simply come straight to me as to a
friend? I know all about it and understand it all,’ he said.
‘You behaved as becomes a man values his honor, perhaps
too hastily, but we won’t go into that. But consider the po666

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sition in which you are placing her and me in the eyes of
society, and even of the court,’ he added, lowering his voice.
‘She is living in Moscow and you are here. Remember, dear
boy,’ and he drew Pierre’s arm downwards, ‘it is simply a
misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us
write her a letter at once, and she’ll come here and all will
be explained, or else, my dear boy, let me tell you it’s quite
likely you’ll have to suffer for it.’
Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.
‘I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress
is taking a keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is
very gracious to Helene.’
Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand,
Prince Vasili did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to speak in the tone of decided refusal
and disagreement in which he had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the Masonic
statutes, ‘be kindly and courteous,’ recurred to him. He
blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling
with himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing
in lifeto say an unpleasant thing to a man’s face, to say what
the other, whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so
used to submitting to Prince Vasili’s tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he would be unable to withstand it now,
but he also felt that on what he said now his future dependedwhether he would follow the same old road, or that new
path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on which he
firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life.
‘Now, dear boy,’ said Prince Vasili playfully, ‘say ‘yes,’


667

and I’ll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf.’
But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech,
Pierre, without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that
made him like his father, muttered in a whisper:
‘Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!’ And he
jumped up and opened the door for him.
‘Go!’ he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see
the look of confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince
Vasili’s face.
‘What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?’
‘Go!’ the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had
to go without receiving any explanation.
A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends,
the Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them
for alms, went away to his estates. His new brethren gave
him letters to the Kiev and Odessa Masons and promised to
write to him and guide him in his new activity.

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Chapter VI
The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up
and, in spite of the Emperor’s severity regarding duels at
that time, neither the principals nor their seconds suffered
for it. But the story of the duel, confirmed by Pierre’s rupture with his wife, was the talk of society. Pierre who had
been regarded with patronizing condescension when he was
an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was the
best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society after his marriagewhen the marriageable daughters and
their mothers had nothing to hope from himespecially as
he did not know how, and did not wish, to court society’s
favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had happened,
he was said to be insanely jealous and subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre’s
departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received
by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with
a shade of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her husband Helene assumed a dignified
expression, which with characteristic tact she had acquired
though she did not understand its significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to endure her troubles
uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross laid
upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more
openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was men

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tioned and, pointing to his forehead, remarked:
‘A bit touchedI always said so.’
‘I said from the first,’ declared Anna Pavlovna referring
to Pierre, ‘I said at the time and before anyone else’ (she insisted on her priority) ‘that that senseless young man was
spoiled by the depraved ideas of these days. I said so even at
the time when everybody was in raptures about him, when
he had just returned from abroad, and when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my soirees. And
how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then and
foretold all that has happened.’
Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the
same kind of soirees as beforesuch as she alone had the gift
of arrangingat which was to be found ‘the cream of really
good society, the bloom of the intellectual essence of Petersburg,’ as she herself put it. Besides this refined selection of
society Anna Pavlovna’s receptions were also distinguished
by the fact that she always presented some new and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the state
of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court
society so dearly and distinctly indicated.
Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon’s destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt
and the surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had
been received, when our troops had already entered Prussia
and our second war with Napoleon was beginning, Anna
Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The ‘cream of really good
society’ consisted of the fascinating Helene, forsaken by her
husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte who
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had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old
aunt, a young man referred to in that drawing room as ‘a
man of great merit’ (un homme de beaucoup de merite), a
newly appointed maid of honor and her mother, and several
other less noteworthy persons.
The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests
that evening was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as
a special messenger from the Prussian army and was aidede-camp to a very important personage.
The temperature shown by the political thermometer to
the company that evening was this:
‘Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders
may do to countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and
us in general, annoyance and mortification, our opinion of
Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not cease to express our
sincere views on that subject, and can only say to the King
Prussia and others: ‘So much the worse for you. Tu l’as voulu, George Dandin,’ that’s all we have to say about it!’
When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests,
entered the drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna,
was about our diplomatic relations with Austria and the
hope of an alliance with her.
Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and
self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed
in the uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted
to pay his respects to the aunt and then brought back to the
general circle.
Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss


671

and introduced him to several persons whom he did not
know, giving him a whispered description of each. charge
d’affaires from Copenhagena profound intellect,’ and simply, ‘Mr. Shitova man of great merit’this of the man usually
so described.
Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna’s efforts, his own tastes,
and the peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his service to place himself very advantageously.
He was aide-de-camp to a very important personage, had
been sent on a very important mission to Prussia, and had
just returned from there as a special messenger. He had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with
which he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to
which an ensign might rank incomparably higher than a
general, and according to which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or courage, or
perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with
those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of
others to understand these things. In consequence of this
discovery his whole manner of life, all his relations with
old friends, all his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich, but would spend his last groat to be
better dressed than others, and would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a
shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in
an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of only those above him in position and who
could therefore be of use to him. He liked Petersburg and
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despised Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostovs’ house
and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant to him
and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of
his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room he considered an important step up in the service,
and he at once understood his role, letting his hostess make
use of whatever interest he had to offer. He himself carefully
scanned each face, appraising the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present, and the advantages
that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to him beside
the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation.
‘Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so
unattainable that not even a continuity of most brilliant
successes would secure them, and she doubts the means we
have of gaining them. That is the actual phrase used by the
Vienna cabinet,’ said the Danish charge d’affaires.
‘The doubt is flattering,’ said ‘the man of profound intellect,’ with a subtle smile.
‘We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and
the Emperor of Austria,’ said Mortemart. ‘The Emperor of
Austria can never have thought of such a thing, it is only the
cabinet that says it.’
‘Ah, my dear vicomte,’ put in Anna Pavlovna, ‘L’Urope’
(for some reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined French pronunciation which she could allow
herself when conversing with a Frenchman), ‘L’Urope ne
sera jamais notre alliee sincere.’*
*”Europe will never be our sincere ally.’
After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firm

673

ness of the King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the
conversation.
Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting
his turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several
times met those of the handsome young aide-de-camp with
a smile.
Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna
very naturally asked Boris to tell them about his journey to
Glogau and in what state he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told them in pure, correct
French many interesting details about the armies and the
court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of
his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time
he engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt
that the novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris’
narrative was shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in the
state of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she
turned to him with her usual smile.
‘You absolutely must come and see me,’ she said in a tone
that implied that, for certain considerations he could not
know of, this was absolutely necessary.
‘On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great
pleasure.’
Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin
a conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him
away on the pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.
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‘You know her husband, of course?’ said Anna Pavlovna,
closing her eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. ‘Ah, she is such an unfortunate and charming woman!
Don’t mention him before herplease don’t! It is too painful
for her!’



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Chapter VII
When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others
Prince Hippolyte had the ear of the company.
Bending forward in his armchair he said: ‘Le Roi de
Prusse!’ and having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
‘Le Roi de Prusse?’ Hippolyte said interrogatively, again
laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his
chair. Anna Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he
seemed quite decided to say no more she began to tell of how
at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the sword of
Frederick the Great.
‘It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...’ she began, but Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: ‘Le Roi
de Prusse...’ and again, as soon as soon as all turned toward
him, excused himself and said no more.
Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s friend,
addressed him firmly.
‘Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?’
Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...’ (he wanted to repeat a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been
trying all that evening to get in) ‘I only wished to say that we
are wrong to fight pour le Roi de Prusse!’
Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as
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ironical or appreciative according to the way the joke was
received. Everybody laughed.
‘Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,’ said Anna
Pavlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
‘We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right
principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!’ she said.
The conversation did not flag all evening and turned
chiefly on the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the evening when the rewards
bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
‘You know NNreceived a snuffbox with the portrait last
year?’ said ‘the man of profound intellect.’ ‘Why shouldn’t
SSget the same distinction?’
‘Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor’s portrait is
a reward but not a distinction,’ said the diplomatist‘a gift,
rather.’
‘There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg.’
‘It’s impossible,’ replied another.
‘Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...’
When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken
very little all the evening again turned to Boris, asking him
in a tone of caressing significant command to come to her
on Tuesday.
‘It is of great importance to me,’ she said, turning with a
smile toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the
same sad smile with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene’s wish.
It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that


677

evening about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly
found it necessary to see him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene’s splendid salon, Boris received no clear explanation of why it had
been necessary for him to come. There were other guests and
the countess talked little to him, and only as he kissed her
hand on taking leave said unexpectedly and in a whisper,
with a strangely unsmiling face: ‘Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!’
During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the countess’ house.

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Chapter VIII
The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier.
Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, ‘the enemy of
mankind.’ Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in
the villages, and from the seat of war came contradictory
news, false as usual and therefore variously interpreted. The
life of old Prince Bolkonski, Prince Andrew, and Princess
Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief then appointed to supervise the enrollment
decreed throughout Russia. Despite the weakness of age,
which had become particularly noticeable since the time
when he thought his son had been killed, he did not think it
right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the
Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave
him new energy and strength. He was continually traveling
through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his
subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons
in mathematics from her father, and when the old prince
was at home went to his study with the wet nurse and little
Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called him). The baby
Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse Savishna
in the late princess’ rooms and Princess Mary spent most


679

of the day in the nursery, taking a mother’s place to her little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too,
seemed passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary
often deprived herself to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angelas she called her nephewand playing
with him.
Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel
was a marble monument brought from Italy, representing
an angel with outspread wings ready to fly upwards. The angel’s upper lip was slightly raised as though about to smile,
and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andrew and
Princess Mary admitted to one another that the angel’s face
reminded them strangely of the little princess. But what was
still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to
his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel’s face, Prince Andrew read the same
mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead wife: ‘Ah,
why have you done this to me?’
Soon after Prince Andrew’s return the old prince made
over to him a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five
miles from Bald Hills. Partly because of the depressing
memories associated with Bald Hills, partly because Prince
Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with his father’s peculiarities, and partly because he needed solitude,
Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building
and spent most of his time there.
After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly
resolved not to continue his military service, and when the
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war recommenced and everybody had to serve, he took a
post under his father in the recruitment so as to avoid active
service. The old prince and his son seemed to have changed
roles since the campaign of 1805. The old man, roused by
activity, expected the best results from the new campaign,
while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the
war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of
his circuits. Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual
during his father’s absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell
for four days. The coachman who had driven the old prince
to town returned bringing papers and letters for Prince Andrew.
Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went
with the letters to Princess Mary’s apartments, but did not
find him there. He was told that the prince had gone to the
nursery.
‘If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought
some papers,’ said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew
who was sitting on a child’s little chair while, frowning and
with trembling hands, he poured drops from a medicine
bottle into a wineglass half full of water.
‘What is it?’ he said crossly, and, his hand shaking unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He
threw the mixture onto the floor and asked for some more
water. The maid brought it.
There were in the room a child’s cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a table, a child’s table, and the little chair on which
Prince Andrew was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a


681

single candle was burning on the table, screened by a bound
music book so that the light did not fall on the cot.
‘My dear,’ said Princess Mary, addressing her brother
from beside the cot where she was standing, ‘better wait a
bit... later..’
‘Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting
things offand this is what comes of it!’ said Prince Andrew
in an exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his
sister.
‘My dear, really... it’s better not to wake him... he’s asleep,’
said the princess in a tone of entreaty.
Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little
bed, wineglass in hand.
‘Perhaps we’d really better not wake him,’ he said hesitating.
‘As you please... really... I think so... but as you please,’
said Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused
that her opinion had prevailed. She drew her brother’s attention to the maid who was calling him in a whisper.
It was the second night that neither of them had slept,
watching the boy who was in a high fever. These last days,
mistrusting their household doctor and expecting another
for whom they had sent to town, they had been trying first
one remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness
and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one another and reproached and disputed with each other.
‘Petrusha has come with papers from your father,’ whispered the maid.
Prince Andrew went out.
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‘Devil take them!’ he muttered, and after listening to
the verbal instructions his father had sent and taking the
correspondence and his father’s letter, he returned to the
nursery.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Still the same. Wait, for heaven’s sake. Karl Ivanich always says that sleep is more important than anything,’
whispered Princess Mary with a sigh.
Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was
burning hot.
‘Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!’ He took the glass
with the drops and again went up to the cot.
‘Andrew, don’t!’ said Princess Mary.
But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering
in his eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
‘But I wish it,’ he said. ‘I beg yougive it him!’
Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass
submissively and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced
and, clutching his head, went out and sat down on a sofa in
the next room.
He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then
using abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on
blue paper as follows:
Have just this moment received by special messenger
very joyful newsif it’s not false. Bennigsen seems to have
obtained a complete victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In
Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and the rewards sent to


683

the army are innumerable. Though he is a GermanI congratulate him! I can’t make out what the commander at
Korchevoa certain Khandrikovis up to; till now the additional men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to
him at once and say I’ll have his head off if everything is
not here in a week. Have received another letter about the
Preussisch-Eylau battle from Petenkahe took part in itand
it’s all true. When mischief-makers don’t meddle even a
German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great
disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without delay
and carry out instructions!
Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was a closely written letter of two sheets from
Bilibin. He folded it up without reading it and reread his father’s letter, ending with the words: ‘Gallop off to Korchevo
and carry out instructions!’
‘No, pardon me, I won’t go now till the child is better,’
thought he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.
‘Ah yes, and what else did he say that’s unpleasant?’
thought Prince Andrew, recalling his father’s letter. ‘Yes,
we have gained a victory over Bonaparte, just when I’m not
serving. Yes, yes, he’s always poking fun at me.... Ah, well!
Let him!’ And he began reading Bilibin’s letter which was
written in French. He read without understanding half of
it, read only to forget, if but for a moment, what he had too
long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all
else.
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Chapter IX
Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and though he wrote in French and used French jests
and French idioms, he described the whole campaign with
a fearless self-censure and self-derision genuinely Russian.
Bilibin wrote that the obligation of diplomatic discretion
tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince Andrew
a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile
he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done
in the army. The letter was old, having been written before
the battle at Preussisch-Eylau.
‘Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz,’ wrote
Bilibin, ‘as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is
just as well for me; what I have seen during these last three
months is incredible.
‘I begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,’ as you
know, attacks the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful
allies who have only betrayed us three times in three years.
We take up their cause, but it turns out that ‘the enemy of
the human race’ pays no heed to our fine speeches and in his
rude and savage way throws himself on the Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had begun,
and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens
and installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.


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‘‘I most ardently desire,’ writes the King of Prussia to
Bonaparte, ‘that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in
so far as circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all
steps to that end. May I have succeeded!’ The Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the French and lay
down their arms at the first demand.
‘The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand
men, asks the King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All this is absolutely true.
‘In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike
attitude, it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war,
and what is more, in war on our own frontiers, with and
for the King of Prussia. We have everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely, a commander in
chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success might
have been more decisive had the commander in chief not
been so young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and
of Prozorovski and Kamenski the latter was preferred. The
general comes to us, Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy and triumph.
‘On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg.
The mails are taken to the field marshal’s room, for he likes
to do everything himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those meant for us. The field marshal looks
on and waits for letters addressed to him. We search, but
none are to be found. The field marshal grows impatient and
sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor to
Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of
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his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes
the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor
addressed to others. ‘Ah! So that’s the way they treat me! No
confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very
well then! Get along with you!’ So he writes the famous order of the day to General Bennigsen:
‘I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the army. You have brought your army corps
to Pultusk, routed: here it is exposed, and without fuel or
forage, so something must be done, and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must think of
retreating to our frontierwhich do today.’
‘‘From all my riding,’ he writes to the Emperor, ‘I have
got a saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my riding and commanding so vast an
army, so I have passed on the command to the general next
in seniority, Count Buxhowden, having sent him my whole
staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack
of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for
only one day’s ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders,
Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had
has been eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly submit
my report, with the information that if the army remains
in its present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a
healthy man left in it by spring.
‘‘Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man
who is already in any case dishonored by being unable to


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fulfill the great and glorious task for which he was chosen.
I shall await your most gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a secretary rather
than commander in the army. My removal from the army
does not produce the slightest stira blind man has left it.
There are thousands such as I in Russia.’
‘The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he
punishes us all, isn’t it logical?
‘This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly interesting and entertaining. After the field
marshal’s departure it appears that we are within sight of
the enemy and must give battle. Buxhowden is commander
in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen does not quite
see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who are
within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the opportunity to fight a battle ‘on his own hand’ as the Germans
say. He does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great victory but in my opinion was nothing of
the kind. We civilians, as you know, have a very bad way
of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who
retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say; and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In short,
we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg
with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to
receive from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as
a reward for his victory, does not give up the command of
the army to General Buxhowden. During this interregnum
we begin a very original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should be, to avoid or attack
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the enemy, but solely to avoid General Buxhowden who by
right of seniority should be our chief. So energetically do we
pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable river we
burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy, who
at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General
Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior
enemy force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhowden pursues uswe scuttle.
He hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross to
the other. At last our enemy. Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the result is a challenge
on Buxhowden’s part and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen’s.
But at the critical moment the courier who carried the news
of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our
appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the
second, Bonaparte. But as it turns out, just at that moment
a third enemy rises before usnamely the Orthodox Russian
soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder,
and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads impassable.
The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last
campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form
bands and scour the countryside and put everything to fire
and sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals
overflow with sick, and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our headquarters, and the commander
in chief has to ask for a battalion to disperse them. During
one of these attacks they carried off my empty portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give


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all commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders,
but I much fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot
the other.’
At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after
a while, in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was
safe to trust Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him
more and more. When he had read thus far, he crumpled
the letter up and threw it away. It was not what he had read
that vexed him, but the fact that the life out there in which
he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his eyes,
rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what
he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he thought he heard a strange noise through
the door. He was seized with alarm lest something should
have happened to the child while he was reading the letter.
He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened it.
Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him with a scared look and that Princess Mary
was no longer by the cot.
‘My dear,’ he heard what seemed to him her despairing
whisper behind him.
As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was seized by an unreasoning panicit occurred to
him that the child was dead. All that he saw and heard
seemed to confirm this terror.
‘All is over,’ he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on
his forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he
would find it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the
dead baby. He drew the curtain aside and for some time his
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frightened, restless eyes could not find the baby. At last he
saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he lay across the
bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking
his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if
he had already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister
had taught him, tried with his lips whether the child was
still feverish. The soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew
touched the head with his hand; even the hair was wet, so
profusely had the child perspired. He was not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. Prince
Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his
heart, this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He
stood over him, gazing at his head and at the little arms and
legs which showed under the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under the curtain of the
cot. He did not look round, but still gazing at the infant’s
face listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was
Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with noiseless
steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind her.
Prince Andrew recognized her without looking and held
out his hand to her. She pressed it.
‘He has perspired,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘I was coming to tell you so.’
The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed
his forehead against the pillow.
Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow
of the curtain her luminous eyes shone more brightly than
usual from the tears of joy that were in them. She leaned


691

over to her brother and kissed him, slightly catching the
curtain of the cot. Each made the other a warning gesture
and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain as if not
wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut
off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move
away, ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain.
‘Yes, this is the one thing left me now,’ he said with a
sigh.

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Chapter X
Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood,
Pierre went to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest
number of serfs, taking with him full directions which he
had written down for his own guidance as to what he should
do on his estates.
When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the
head office and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps would be taken immediately to
free his serfsand that till then they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies were
not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs,
punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and
hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on
all the estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with alarm, supposing
these words to mean that the young count was displeased
with their management and embezzlement of money, some
after their first fright were amused by Pierre’s lisp and the
new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed
hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among
them, including the chief steward, understood from this
speech how they could best handle the master for their own
ends.
The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre’s


693

intentions, but remarked that besides these changes it would
be necessary to go into the general state of affairs which was
far from satisfactory.
Despite Count Bezukhov’s enormous wealth, since he
had come into an income which was said to amount to
five hundred thousand rubles a year, Pierre felt himself far
poorer than when his father had made him an allowance of
ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the following budget:
About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the
Land Bank, about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate
near Moscow, the town house, and the allowance to the
three princesses; about 15,000 was given in pensions and
the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was sent
to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The
building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about
10,000 in each of the last two years, and he did not know how
the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every
year he was obliged to borrow. Besides this the chief steward
wrote every year telling him of fires and bad harvests, or of
the necessity of rebuilding factories and workshops. So the
first task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very
little aptitude or inclinationpractical business.
He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he felt that this did not forward matters at all. He
felt that these consultations were detached from real affairs
and did not link up with them or make them move. On the
one hand, the chief steward put the state of things to him
in the very worst light, pointing out the necessity of paying
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off the debts and undertaking new activities with serf labor,
to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre
demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs,
which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent
impossibility of a speedy emancipation.
The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the
land lower down the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which operations according
to him were connected with such complicated measuresthe
removal of injunctions, petitions, permits, and so onthat
Pierre became quite bewildered and only replied:
‘Yes, yes, do so.’
Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would
have enabled him to attend to the business himself and so
he disliked it and only tried to pretend to the steward that
he was attending to it. The steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered these consultations very
valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to himself.
In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers
hastened to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed
the rich newcomer, the largest landowner of the province.
Temptations to Pierre’s greatest weaknessthe one to which
he had confessed when admitted to the Lodgewere so strong
that he could not resist them. Again whole days, weeks, and
months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much
occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls,
giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead


695

of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old life,
only in new surroundings.
Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized
that he did not fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason
to set an example of moral life, and that of the seven virtues
he lacked twomorality and the love of death. He consoled
himself with the thought that he fulfilled another of the
preceptsthat of reforming the human raceand had other
virtueslove of his neighbor, and especially generosity.
In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg.
On the way he intended to visit all his estates and see for
himself how far his orders had been carried out and in what
state were the serfs whom God had entrusted to his care and
whom he intended to benefit.
The chief steward, who considered the young count’s attempts almost insaneunprofitable to himself, to the count,
and to the serfsmade some concessions. Continuing to
represent the liberation of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large buildingsschools, hospitals,
and asylumson all the estates before the master arrived.
Everywhere preparations were made not for ceremonious
welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for just
such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and
the bread and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of his master, would touch and delude him.
The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in
a Vienna carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a
gladdening effect on Pierre. The estates he had not before
visited were each more picturesque than the other; the serfs
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everywhere seemed thriving and touchingly grateful for the
benefits conferred on them. Everywhere were receptions,
which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a joyful
feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants
presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter
and Saint Paul, asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had conferred on them, to build a
new chantry to the church at their own expense in honor of
Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing
them from hard work. On a third estate the priest, bearing
a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom,
by the count’s generosity, he was instructing in reading,
writing, and religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his
own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of erection, all
on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which
were soon to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards’
accounts, according to which the serfs’ manorial labor had
been diminished, and heard the touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.
What Pierre did not know was that the place where they
presented him with bread and salt and wished to build a
chantry in honor of Peter and Paul was a market village
where a fair was held on St. Peter’s day, and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun the
chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in
that villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did
not know that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent
to work on his land, they did still harder work on their own


697

land. He did not know that the priest who met him with the
cross oppressed the peasants by his exactions, and that the
pupils’ parents wept at having to let him take their children
and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not
know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being built
by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though
lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward
had shown him in the accounts that the serfs’ payments had
been diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work
had been increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted
with his visit to his estates and quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left Petersburg, and wrote
enthusiastic letters to his ‘brother-instructor’ as he called
the Grand Master.
‘How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much
good,’ thought Pierre, ‘and how little attention we pay to
it!’
He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt
abashed at receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how
much more he might do for these simple, kindly people.
The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who
saw perfectly through the naive and intelligent count and
played with him as with a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre, pressed him still harder
with proofs of the impossibility and above all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was.
Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it
would be difficult to imagine happier people, and that God
only knew what would happen to them when they were
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free, but he insisted, though reluctantly, on what he thought
right. The steward promised to do all in his power to carry
out the count’s wishes, seeing clearly that not only would
the count never be able to find out whether all measures had
been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to release
them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even
inquire and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing empty and that the serfs continued to
give in money and work all that other people’s serfs gavethat
is to say, all that could be got out of them.



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Chapter XI
Returning from his journey through South Russia in the
happiest state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he
had long had of visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had
not seen for two years.
Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among fields and forests of fir and birch, which were
partly cut down. The house lay behind a newly dug pond
filled with water to the brink and with banks still bare of
grass. It was at the end of a village that stretched along the
highroad in the midst of a young copse in which were a few
fir trees.
The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house
with semicircular facade still in course of construction.
Round the house was a garden newly laid out. The fences
and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a water
cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight,
the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore
an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply to inquiries as to where the
prince lived, pointed out a small newly built lodge close to
the pond. Anton, a man who had looked after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said
that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean
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little anteroom.
Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though
clean house after the brilliant surroundings in which he had
last met his friend in Petersburg.
He quickly entered the small reception room with its
still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would
have gone farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and
knocked at a door.
‘Well, what is it?’ came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
‘A visitor,’ answered Anton.
‘Ask him to wait,’ and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed back.
Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to face with Prince Andrew, who came out
frowning and looking old. Pierre embraced him and lifting
his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek and looked at
him closely.
‘Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad,’ said Prince
Andrew.
Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with
surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words
were kindly and there was a smile on his lips and face, but
his eyes were dull and lifeless and in spite of his evident wish
to do so he could not give them a joyous and glad sparkle.
Prince Andrew had grown thinner, paler, and more manlylooking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got
used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.
As is usually the case with people meeting after a pro

701

longed separation, it was long before their conversation
could settle on anything. They put questions and gave brief
replies about things they knew ought to be talked over at
length. At last the conversation gradually settled on some of
the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans for
the future, Pierre’s journeys and occupations, the war, and
so on. The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre
had noticed in his friend’s look was now still more clearly
expressed in the smile with which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past or
the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to
sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The
latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in
Prince Andrew’s presence. He was ashamed to express his
new Masonic views, which had been particularly revived
and strengthened by his late tour. He checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible desire to show
his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
‘I can’t tell you how much I have lived through since
then. I hardly know myself again.’
‘Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then,’ said
Prince Andrew.
‘Well, and you? What are your plans?’
‘Plans!’ repeated Prince Andrew ironically. ‘My plans?’
he said, as if astonished at the word. ‘Well, you see, I’m
building. I mean to settle here altogether next year...’
Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince An702

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drew’s face, which had grown much older.
‘No, I meant to ask...’ Pierre began, but Prince Andrew
interrupted him.
‘But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your
travels and all you have been doing on your estates.’
Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates,
trying as far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been made. Prince Andrew several
times prompted Pierre’s story of what he had been doing,
as though it were all an old-time story, and he listened not
only without interest but even as if ashamed of what Pierre
was telling him.
Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his
friend’s company and at last became silent.
‘I’ll tell you what, my dear fellow,’ said Prince Andrew,
who evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his
visitor, ‘I am only bivouacking here and have just come to
look round. I am going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know her already,’ he
said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with whom he
now found nothing in common. ‘We will go after dinner.
And would you now like to look round my place?’
They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political news and common acquaintances like
people who do not know each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and interest only of the
new homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but
even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a talk
explaining the future arrangements of the house, he inter

703

rupted himself:
‘However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner,
and then we’ll set off.’
At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre’s marriage.
‘I was very much surprised when I heard of it,’ said
Prince Andrew.
Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned,
and said hurriedly: ‘I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you know it is all over, and forever.’
‘Forever?’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Nothing’s forever.’
‘But you know how it all ended, don’t you? You heard of
the duel?’
‘And so you had to go through that too!’
‘One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man,’
said Pierre.
‘Why so?’ asked Prince Andrew. ‘To kill a vicious dog is
a very good thing really.’
‘No, to kill a man is badwrong.’
‘Why is it wrong?’ urged Prince Andrew. ‘It is not given
to man to know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err, and in nothing more than in
what they consider right and wrong.’
‘What does harm to another is wrong,’ said Pierre, feeling with pleasure that for the first time since his arrival
Prince Andrew was roused, had begun to talk, and wanted
to express what had brought him to his present state.
‘And who has told you what is bad for another man?’ he
asked.
‘Bad! Bad!’ exclaimed Pierre. ‘We all know what is bad
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for ourselves.’
‘Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in
myself is something I cannot inflict on others,’ said Prince
Andrew, growing more and more animated and evidently
wishing to express his new outlook to Pierre. He spoke in
French. ‘I only know two very real evils in life: remorse and
illness. The only good is the absence of those evils. To live
for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy
now.’
‘And love of one’s neighbor, and self-sacrifice?’ began
Pierre. ‘No, I can’t agree with you! To live only so as not
to do evil and not to have to repent is not enough. I lived
like that, I lived for myself and ruined my life. And only
now when I am living, or at least trying’ (Pierre’s modesty
made him correct himself) ‘to live for others, only now have
I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall not agree
with you, and you do not really believe what you are saying.’ Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic
smile.
‘When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you’ll get on
with her,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you are right for yourself,’ he
added after a short pause, ‘but everyone lives in his own
way. You lived for yourself and say you nearly ruined your
life and only found happiness when you began living for
others. I experienced just the reverse. I lived for glory.And
after all what is glory? The same love of others, a desire to do
something for them, a desire for their approval.So I lived for
others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have
become calmer since I began to live only for myself.’


705

‘But what do you mean by living only for yourself?’ asked
Pierre, growing excited. ‘What about your son, your sister,
and your father?’
‘But that’s just the same as myselfthey are not others,’
explained Prince Andrew. ‘The others, one’s neighbors, le
prochain, as you and Princess Mary call it, are the chief
source of all error and evil. Le prochainyour Kiev peasants
to whom you want to do good.’
And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He evidently wished to draw him on.
‘You are joking,’ replied Pierre, growing more and more
excited. ‘What error or evil can there be in my wishing to
do good, and even doing a littlethough I did very little and
did it very badly? What evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people like ourselves, were growing
up and dying with no idea of God and truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed
in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and consolation? What evil and error are there in
it, if people were dying of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be rendered, and I supplied
them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum for the aged?
And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a peasant,
or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
them rest and leisure?’ said Pierre, hurrying and lisping.
‘And I have done that though badly and to a small extent;
but I have done something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good action, and more than that,
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self. And the main thing is,’ he continued, ‘that I know, and
know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is
the only sure happiness in life.’
‘Yes, if you put it like that it’s quite a different matter,’
said Prince Andrew. ‘I build a house and lay out a garden,
and you build hospitals. The one and the other may serve as
a pastime. But what’s right and what’s good must be judged
by one who knows all, but not by us. Well, you want an argument,’ he added, come on then.’
They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance
porch which served as a veranda.
‘Come, let’s argue then,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘You talk
of schools,’ he went on, crooking a finger, ‘education and so
forth; that is, you want to raise him’ (pointing to a peasant
who passed by them taking off his cap) ‘from his animal
condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems
to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy
him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving
him my means. Then you say, ‘lighten his toil.’ But as I see
it, physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You
can’t help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning,
thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking, just as he can’t help
plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he would go to the drink
shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical
labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand
my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third


707

thingwhat else was it you talked about?’ and Prince Andrew
crooked a third finger. ‘Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has
a fit, he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him
up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to everybody,
for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for
him to die. Others are being born and there are plenty of
them as it is. It would be different if you grudged losing a laborerthat’s how I regard himbut you want to cure him from
love of him. And he does not want that. And besides, what a
notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!’
said he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.
Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was evident he had reflected on this subject
more than once, and he spoke readily and rapidly like a
man who has not talked for a long time. His glance became
more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.
‘Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!’ said Pierre. ‘I don’t understand how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments
myself not long ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at
such times I collapsed so that I don’t live at alleverything
seems hateful to me... myself most of all. Then I don’t eat,
don’t wash... and how is it with you?..’
‘Why not wash? That is not cleanly,’ said Prince Andrew;
‘on the contrary one must try to make one’s life as pleasant
as possible. I’m alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out
my life as best I can without hurting others.’
‘But with such ideas what motive have you for living?
One would sit without moving, undertaking nothing...’
‘Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to
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do nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have
done me the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was
all I could do to get out of it. They could not understand
that I have not the necessary qualifications for itthe kind of
good-natured, fussy shallowness necessary for the position.
Then there’s this house, which must be built in order to have
a nook of one’s own in which to be quiet. And now there’s
this recruiting.’
‘Why aren’t you serving in the army?’
‘After Austerlitz!’ said Prince Andrew gloomily. ‘No,
thank you very much! I have promised myself not to serve
again in the active Russian army. And I won’tnot even if
Bonaparte were here at Smolensk threatening Bald Hillseven then I wouldn’t serve in the Russian army! Well, as I
was saying,’ he continued, recovering his composure, ‘now
there’s this recruiting. My father is chief in command of the
Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is
to serve under him.’
‘Then you are serving?’
‘I am.’
He paused a little while.
‘And why do you serve?’
‘Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of his time. But he is growing old, and though
not exactly cruel he has too energetic a character. He is so
accustomed to unlimited power that he is terrible, and now
he has this authority of a commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late
a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster’s clerk at


709

Yukhnovna hanged,’ said Prince Andrew with a smile. ‘So
I am serving because I alone have any influence with my
father, and now and then can save him from actions which
would torment him afterwards.’
‘Well, there you see!’
‘Yes, but it is not as you imagine,’ Prince Andrew continued. ‘I did not, and do not, in the least care about that
scoundrel of a clerk who had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been very glad to see him hanged,
but I was sorry for my fatherthat again is for myself.’
Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes
glittered feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in
his actions there was no desire to do good to his neighbor.
‘There now, you wish to liberate your serfs,’ he continued;
‘that is a very good thing, but not for youI don’t suppose
you ever had anyone flogged or sent to Siberiaand still less
for your serfs. If they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia,
I don’t suppose they are any the worse off. In Siberia they
lead the same animal life, and the stripes on their bodies
heal, and they are happy as before. But it is a good thing for
proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of
being able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is
those people I pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You may not have seen, but I have seen, how
good men brought up in those traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable, become cruel and
harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain themselves
and grow more and more miserable.’
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Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not
help thinking that these thoughts had been suggested to
Prince Andrew by his father’s case.
He did not reply.
‘So that’s what I’m sorry forhuman dignity, peace of
mind, purity, and not the serfs’ backs and foreheads, which,
beat and shave as you may, always remain the same backs
and foreheads.’
‘No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with
you,’ said Pierre.



711

Chapter XII
In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at
Pierre, broke the silence now and then with remarks which
showed that he was in a good temper.
Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he
was making in his husbandry.
Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had
gone astray, did not see the true light, and that he, Pierre,
ought to aid, enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he
thought of what he should say, he felt that Prince Andrew
with one word, one argument, would upset all his teaching,
and he shrank from beginning, afraid of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.
‘No, but why do you think so?’ Pierre suddenly began,
lowering his head and looking like a bull about to charge,
‘why do you think so? You should not think so.’
‘Think? What about?’ asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
‘About life, about man’s destiny. It can’t be so. I myself
thought like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don’t smile. Freemasonry is not a religious
ceremonial sect, as I thought it was: Freemasonry is the best
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expression of the best, the eternal, aspects of humanity.’
And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it
to Prince Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching
of Christianity freed from the bonds of State and Church, a
teaching of equality, brotherhood, and love.
‘Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all
the rest is a dream,’ said Pierre. ‘Understand, my dear fellow,
that outside this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood
and I agree with you that nothing is left for an intelligent and
good man but to live out his life, like you, merely trying not
to harm others. But make our fundamental convictions your
own, join our brotherhood, give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once feel yourself, as I have
felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the beginning
of which is hidden in heaven,’ said Pierre.
Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened
in silence to Pierre’s words. More than once, when the noise
of the wheels prevented his catching what Pierre said, he
asked him to repeat it, and by the peculiar glow that came
into Prince Andrew’s eyes and by his silence, Pierre saw that
his words were not in vain and that Prince Andrew would
not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and
which they had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and
horses were being placed on it, they also stepped on the raft.
Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed
silently at the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
‘Well, what do you think about it?’ Pierre asked. ‘Why are
you silent?’


713

‘What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It’s all
very well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show
you the aim of life, the destiny of man, and the laws which
govern the world. But who are we? Men. How is it you know
everything? Why do I alone not see what you see? You see a
reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I don’t see it.’
Pierre interrupted him.
‘Do you believe in a future life?’ he asked.
‘A future life?’ Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the
more readily as he knew Prince Andrew’s former atheistic
convictions.
‘You say you can’t see a reign of goodness and truth on
earth. Nor could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our
life here as the end of everything. On earth, here on this
earth’ (Pierre pointed to the fields), ‘there is no truth, all is
false and evil; but in the universe, in the whole universe there
is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now the children of
earth areeternallychildren of the whole universe. Don’t I feel
in my soul that I am part of this vast harmonious whole?
Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
beings in whom the Deitythe Supreme Power if you prefer
the termis manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man, why should I suppose it breaks off at
me and does not go farther and farther? I feel that I cannot
vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall
always exist and always have existed. I feel that beyond me
and above me there are spirits, and that in this world there
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is truth.’
‘Yes, that is Herder’s theory,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘but it
is not that which can convince me, dear friendlife and death
are what convince. What convinces is when one sees a being
dear to one, bound up with one’s own life, before whom one
was to blame and had hoped to make it right’ (Prince Andrew’s voice trembled and he turned away), ‘and suddenly
that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to exist....
Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe
there is.... That’s what convinces, that is what has convinced
me,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Pierre, ‘isn’t that what I’m saying?’
‘No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me
of the necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand
in hand with someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and you yourself are left facing that
abyss, and look in. And I have looked in...’
‘Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and
there is a Someone? There is the future life. The Someone
isGod.’
Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses
had long since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and
reharnessed. The sun had sunk half below the horizon and
an evening frost was starring the puddles near the ferry, but
Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the footmen,
coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft and talked.
‘If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good,
and man’s highest happiness consists in striving to attain


715

them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that
we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived
and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,’ said Pierre, and
he pointed to the sky.
Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red
reflection of the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was
perfect stillness. Pierre became silent. The raft had long since
stopped and only the waves of the current beat softly against
it below. Prince Andrew felt as if the sound of the waves kept
up a refrain to Pierre’s words, whispering:
‘It is true, believe it.’
He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender
look at Pierre’s face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior friend.
‘Yes, if it only were so!’ said Prince Andrew. ‘However, it is
time to get on,’ he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked
up at the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first
time since Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had
seen while lying on that battlefield; and something that had
long been slumbering, something that was best within him,
suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul. It vanished
as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of his
life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know
how to develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre
formed an epoch in Prince Andrew’s life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he
began a new life.
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Chapter XIII
It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre
drove up to the front entrance of the house at Bald Hills.
As they approached the house, Prince Andrew with asmile
drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion going on at the back
porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her back,
and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment
had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving
up. Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking
round at the carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back
porch.
‘Those are Mary’s ‘God’s folk,’’ said Prince Andrew.
‘They have mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter
in which she disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be
driven away, but she receives them.’
‘But what are ‘God’s folk’?’ asked Pierre.
Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants
came out to meet them, and he asked where the old prince
was and whether he was expected back soon.
The old prince had gone to the town and was expected
back any minute.
Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which
were always kept in perfect order and readiness for him in
his father’s house; he himself went to the nursery.
‘Let us go and see my sister,’ he said to Pierre when he


717

returned. ‘I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her ‘God’s folk.’ It will serve her right, she will be
confused, but you will see her ‘God’s folk.’ It’s really very
curious.’
‘What are ‘God’s folk’?’ asked Pierre.
‘Come, and you’ll see for yourself.’
Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face when they went in. In her snug room,
with lamps burning before the icon stand, a young lad with
a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk’s cassock, sat
on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an
armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on her childlike face.
‘Andrew, why didn’t you warn me?’ said the princess,
with mild reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a
hen before her chickens.
‘Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,’*
she said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him
as a child, and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and above all his kindly, simple face
disposed her favorably toward him. She looked at him with
her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, ‘I like you very
much, but please don’t laugh at my people.’ After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.
*”Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you.’
‘Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!’ said Prince Andrew,
glancing with a smile at the young pilgrim.
‘Andrew!’ said Princess Mary, imploringly. ‘Il faut que
vous sachiez que c’est une femme,’* said Prince Andrew to
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Pierre.
‘Andrew, au nom de Dieu!’*[2] Princess Mary repeated.
*”You must know that this is a woman.’
*[2] ‘For heaven’s sake.’
It was evident that Prince Andrew’s ironical tone toward
the pilgrims and Princess Mary’s helpless attempts to protect them were their customary long-established relations
on the matter.
‘Mais, ma bonne amie,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘vous devriez au contraire m’etre reconnaissante de ce que j’explique a
Pierre votre intimite avec ce jeune homme.’*
*”But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this
young man.’
‘Really?’ said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with
curiosity and seriousness (for which Princess Mary was
specially grateful to him) into Ivanushka’s face, who, seeing
that she was being spoken about, looked round at them all
with crafty eyes.
Princess Mary’s embarrassment on her people’s account
was quite unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed.
The old woman, lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had turned her cup upside down and
placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and sat quietly in her
armchair, though hoping to be offered another cup of tea.
Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.
‘Where have you been? To Kiev?’ Prince Andrew asked
the old woman.


719

‘I have, good sir,’ she answered garrulously. ‘Just at
Christmastime I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy
and heavenly sacrament at the shrine of the saint. And now
I’m from Kolyazin, master, where a great and wonderful
blessing has been revealed.’
‘And was Ivanushka with you?’
‘I go by myself, benefactor,’ said Ivanushka, trying to
speak in a bass voice. ‘I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..’
Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently
wished to tell what she had seen.
‘In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed.’
‘What is it? Some new relics?’ asked Prince Andrew.
‘Andrew, do leave off,’ said Princess Mary. ‘Don’t tell
him, Pelageya.’
‘No... why not, my dear, why shouldn’t I? I like him. He
is kind, he is one of God’s chosen, he’s a benefactor, he once
gave me ten rubles, I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy
Cyril says to me (he’s one of God’s own and goes barefoot
summer and winter), he says, ‘Why are you not going to the
right place? Go to Kolyazin where a wonder-working icon
of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.’ On hearing
those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went.’
All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones, drawing in her breath.
‘So I come, master, and the people say to me: ‘A great
blessing has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks
of our blessed Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God’...’
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‘All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards,’ said Princess Mary, flushing.
‘Let me ask her,’ said Pierre. ‘Did you see it yourselves?’
he inquired.
‘Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness
on the face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed
Mother’s cheek it drops and drops...’
‘But, dear me, that must be a fraud!’ said Pierre, naively,
who had listened attentively to the pilgrim.
‘Oh, master, what are you saying?’ exclaimed the horrified Pelageya, turning to Princess Mary for support.
‘They impose on the people,’ he repeated.
‘Lord Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself. ‘Oh, don’t speak so, master! There was a general
who did not believe, and said, ‘The monks cheat,’ and as
soon as he’d said it he went blind. And he dreamed that the
Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came to him
and said, ‘Believe in me and I will make you whole.’ So he
begged: ‘Take me to her, take me to her.’ It’s the real truth
I’m telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought, quite
blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down
and says, ‘Make me whole,’ says he, ‘and I’ll give thee what
the Tsar bestowed on me.’ I saw it myself, master, the star
is fixed into the icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It’s a sin to speak so. God will punish you,’
she said admonishingly, turning to Pierre.
‘How did the star get into the icon?’ Pierre asked.
‘And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?’ said Prince Andrew, with a smile.


721

Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her
hands.
‘Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!’
she began, her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. ‘Master, what have you said? God forgive you!’ And she crossed
herself. ‘Lord forgive him! My dear, what does it mean?...’
she asked, turning to Princess Mary. She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She evidently felt
frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a house
where such things could be said, and was at the same time
sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.
‘Now, why need you do it?’ said Princess Mary. ‘Why did
you come to me?..’
‘Come, Pelageya, I was joking,’ said Pierre. ‘Princesse,
ma parole, je n’ai pas voulu l’offenser.* I did not mean anything, I was only joking,’ he said, smiling shyly and trying
to efface his offense. ‘It was all my fault, and Andrew was
only joking.’
*”Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her.’
Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre’s face there
was such a look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew
glanced so meekly now at her and now at Pierre, that she
was gradually reassured.

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Chapter XIV
The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged
to talk, gave a long account of Father Amphilochus, who
led so holy a life that his hands smelled of incense, and how
on her last visit to Kiev some monks she knew let her have
the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking some dried
bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with
the saints. ‘I’d pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go
on to another. I’d sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the
relics, and there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don’t want to come out, even into the light of
heaven again.’
Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince
Andrew went out of the room, and then, leaving ‘God’s folk’
to finish their tea, Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.
‘You are very kind,’ she said to him.
‘Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them so well and have the greatest respect for them.’
Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.
‘I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of
you as of a brother,’ she said. ‘How do you find Andrew?’ she
added hurriedly, not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words. ‘I am very anxious about him. His health was


723

better in the winter, but last spring his wound reopened and
the doctor said he ought to go away for a cure. And I am also
very much afraid for him spiritually. He has not a character
like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in
good spirits, but that is the effect of your visithe is not often
like that. If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs
activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him. Others don’t notice it, but I see it.’
Toward ten o’clock the men servants rushed to the front
door, hearing the bells of the old prince’s carriage approaching. Prince Andrew and Pierre also went out into the
porch.
‘Who’s that?’ asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he
got out of, the carriage.
‘Ah! Very glad! Kiss me,’ he said, having learned who the
young stranger was.
The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious
to Pierre.
Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father’s study, found him disputing hotly with his visitor.
Pierre was maintaining that a time would come when there
would be no more wars. The old prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.
‘Drain the blood from men’s veins and put in water
instead, then there will be no more war! Old women’s nonsenseold women’s nonsense!’ he repeated, but still he patted
Pierre affectionately on the shoulder, and then went up to
the table where Prince Andrew, evidently not wishing to
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join in the conversation, was looking over the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to him
and began to talk business.
‘The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn’t sent half his contingent. He came to town and wanted to invite me to dinnerI
gave him a pretty dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well,
my boy,’ the old prince went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. ‘A fine fellowyour friendI like
him! He stirs me up. Another says clever things and one
doesn’t care to listen, but this one talks rubbish yet stirs an
old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps I’ll come and
sit with you at supper. We’ll have another dispute. Make
friends with my little fool, Princess Mary,’ he shouted after
Pierre, through the door.
Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the strength and charm of his friendship with Prince
Andrew. That charm was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his family and with the household.
With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid Princess
Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre at once
felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already.
Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but
even the one-year-old ‘Prince Nicholas’ (as his grandfather
called him) smiled at Pierre and let himself be taken in his
arms, and Michael Ivanovich and Mademoiselle Bourienne
looked at him with pleasant smiles when he talked to the
old prince.
The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on


725

Pierre’s account. And during the two days of the young
man’s visit he was extremely kind to him and told him to
visit them again.
When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together, they began to express their opinions of
him as people always do after a new acquaintance has left,
but as seldom happens, no one said anything but what was
good of him.

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Chapter XV
When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first
time, how close was the bond that united him to Denisov
and and the whole regiment.
On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when
approaching his home in Moscow. When he saw the first
hussar with the unbuttoned uniform of his regiment, when
he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the picket
ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully shouted
to his master, ‘The count has come!’ and Denisov, who had
been asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut
to embrace him, and the officers collected round to greet the
new arrival, Rostov experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister had embraced him, and tears of
joy choked him so that he could not speak. The regiment
was also a home, and as unalterably dear and precious as
his parents’ house.
When he had reported himself to the commander of
the regiment and had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had gone out foraging, when he
had again entered into all the little interests of the regiment
and felt himself deprived of liberty and bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense of
peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home
here in his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof.


727

But here was none of all that turmoil of the world at large,
where he did not know his right place and took mistaken
decisions; here was no Sonya with whom he ought, or ought
not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four
hours in the day which could be spent in such a variety of
ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of
whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than
another; there were none of those uncertain and undefined
money relations with his father, and nothing to recall that
terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in the regiment, all was
clear and simple. The whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all the
rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment,
everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain,
who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who
was a comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one’s
pay came every four months, there was nothing to think out
or decide, you had only to do nothing that was considered
bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order, to
do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely orderedand all
would be well.
Having once more entered into the definite conditions of
this regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man
feels on lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this
campaign, was all the pleasanter for him, because, after his
loss to Dolokhov (for which, in spite of all his family’s efforts to console him, he could not forgive himself), he had
made up his mind to atone for his fault by serving, not as
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he had done before, but really well, and by being a perfectly
first-rate comrade and officerin a word, a splendid man altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world,
but so possible in the regiment.
After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt
to his parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now resolved to take only two thousand and
leave the rest to repay the debt to his parents.
Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near
Bartenstein. It was awaiting the Emperor’s arrival and the
beginning of a new campaign.
The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the
army which had served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in Russia, and arrived too late to take
part in the first actions of the campaign. It had been neither
at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and, when it joined the
army in the field in the second half of the campaign, was attached to Platov’s division.
Platov’s division was acting independently of the main
army. Several times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had
exchanged shots with the enemy, had taken prisoners, and
once had even captured Marshal Oudinot’s carriages. In
April the Pavlograds were stationed immovably for some
weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German village.
A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the
river broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the men nor fodder for the horses had
been issued. As no transports could arrive, the men dis

729

persed about the abandoned and deserted villages, searching
for potatoes, but found few even of these.
Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had
all fledif any remained, they were worse than beggars and
nothing more could be taken from them; even the soldiers,
usually pitiless enough, instead of taking anything from
them, often gave them the last of their rations.
The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had lost nearly half its men from hunger
and sickness. In the hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling that came from
bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and hardly able to
drag their legs went to the front rather than to the hospitals.
When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for
some reason, they called ‘Mashka’s sweet root.’ It was very
bitter, but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug
it out with their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered
not to do so, as it was a noxious plant. That spring a new
disease broke out broke out among the soldiers, a swelling
of the arms, legs, and face, which the doctors attributed to
eating this root. But in spite of all this, the soldiers of Denisov’s squadron fed chiefly on ‘Mashka’s sweet root,’ because
it was the second week that the last of the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man and the last
potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.
The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw
from the thatched roofs and had become terribly thin,
though still covered with tufts of felty winter hair.
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Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on
living just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the hussars formed line for roll call, kept
things in order, groomed their horses, polished their arms,
brought in straw from the thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from which
they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food and
their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires,
steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out
and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to
stories of Potemkin’s and Suvorov’s campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest’s laborer Mikolka.
The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the
roofless, half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect
straw and potatoes and, in general, food for the men. The
younger ones occupied themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money, though there was no
food), some with more innocent games, such as quoits and
skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it,
partly because there was a vague feeling that in the main it
was going badly.
Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they had become more friendly than ever. Denisov
never spoke of Rostov’s family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostov felt that the elder
hussar’s luckless love for Natasha played a part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to expose
Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action


731

greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which
he had come in search of provisions, Rostov found a family
consisting of an old Pole and his daughter with an infant in
arms. They were half clad, hungry, too weak to get away on
foot and had no means of obtaining a conveyance. Rostov
brought them to his quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was
recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began
chaffing Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of
them and that it would not be a bad thing if he introduced
to them the pretty Polish girl he had saved. Rostov took the
joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things
to the officer that it was all Denisov could do to prevent a
duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov, who did not
himself know what Rostov’s relations with the Polish girl
might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper,
and Rostov replied:
‘Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can’t
tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...’
Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly
pacing the room without looking at Rostov, as was his way
at moments of deep feeling.
‘Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!’ he muttered,
and Rostov noticed tears in his eyes.

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Chapter XVI
In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor’s arrival, but Rostov had no chance of being present at the
review he held at Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the
outposts far beyond that place.
They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living
in an earth hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed
with branches and turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come into vogue. A trench was
dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight inches deep,
and eight feet long. At one end of the trench, steps were cut
out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The trench
itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the
squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end
opposite the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of
the trench, the earth was cut out to a breadth of about two
and a half feet, and this did duty for bedsteads and couches.
The roof was so constructed that one could stand up in the
middle of the trench and could even sit up on the beds if one
drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living luxuriously
because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a
board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken
but mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold,
embers from the soldiers’ campfire were placed on a bent
sheet of iron on the steps in the ‘reception room’as Denisov


733

called that part of the hutand it was then so warm that the
officers, of whom there were always some with Denisov and
Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.
In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and eight, returning after a sleepless night, he
sent for embers, changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said
his prayers, drank tea, got warm, then tidied up the things on
the table and in his own corner, and, his face glowing from
exposure to the wind and with nothing on but his shirt, lay
down on his back, putting his arms under his head. He was
pleasantly considering the probability of being promoted in
a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was
awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with
whom he wanted a talk.
Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice
behind the hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to
the window to see whom he was speaking to, and saw the
quartermaster, Topcheenko.
‘I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!’
Denisov was shouting. ‘And I saw with my own eyes how
Lazarchuk bwought some fwom the fields.’
‘I have given the order again and again, your honor, but
they don’t obey,’ answered the quartermaster.
Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: ‘Let him fuss and bustle now, my job’s done and I’m
lying downcapitally!’ He could hear that Lavrushkathat sly,
bold orderly of Denisov’swas talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying something about loaded
wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when he had gone
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out for provisions.
Then Denisov’s voice was heard shouting farther and
farther away. ‘Saddle! Second platoon!’
‘Where are they off to now?’ thought Rostov.
Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed
with muddy boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his
saber, and went out again. In answer to Rostov’s inquiry
where he was going, he answered vaguely and crossly that
he had some business.
‘Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!’
said Denisov going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing through the mud. He did not even
trouble to find out where Denisov had gone. Having got
warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave the
hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The
weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers
and a cadet were playing svayka, laughing as they threw
their missiles which buried themselves in the soft mud.
Rostov joined them. In the middle of the game, the officers
saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on their
skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the
hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars
surrounded them.
‘There now, Denisov has been worrying,’ said Rostov,
‘and here are the provisions.’
‘So they are!’ said the officers. ‘Won’t the soldiers be
glad!’
A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied


735

by two infantry officers with whom he was talking.
Rostov went to meet them.
‘I warn you, Captain,’ one of the officers, a short thin
man, evidently very angry, was saying.
‘Haven’t I told you I won’t give them up?’ replied Denisov.
‘You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutinyseizing the
transport of one’s own army. Our men have had nothing to
eat for two days.’
‘And mine have had nothing for two weeks,’ said Denisov.
‘It is robbery! You’ll answer for it, sir!’ said the infantry
officer, raising his voice.
‘Now, what are you pestewing me for?’ cried Denisov,
suddenly losing his temper. ‘I shall answer for it and not
you, and you’d better not buzz about here till you get hurt.
Be off! Go!’ he shouted at the officers.
‘Very well, then!’ shouted the little officer, undaunted
and not riding away. ‘If you are determined to rob, I’ll..’
‘Go to the devil! quick ma’ch, while you’re safe and
sound!’ and Denisov turned his horse on the officer.
‘Very well, very well!’ muttered the officer, threateningly,
and turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.
‘A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!’
shouted Denisov after him (the most insulting expression
a cavalryman can address to a mounted infantryman) and
riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.
‘I’ve taken twansports from the infantwy by force!’ he
said. ‘After all, can’t let our men starve.’
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The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka
that the transport was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars
had seized it by force. The soldiers had biscuits dealt out
to them freely, and they even shared them with the other
squadrons.
The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said:
‘This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it
and won’t begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over
to the staff and settle the business there in the commissariat
department and if possible sign a receipt for such and such
stores received. If not, as the demand was booked against
an infantry regiment, there will be a row and the affair may
end badly.’
From the regimental commander’s, Denisov rode straight
to the staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the
evening he came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen him in. Denisov could not speak and
gasped for breath. When Rostov asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and threats in a
hoarse, feeble voice.
Alarmed at Denisov’s condition, Rostov suggested that
he should undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.
‘Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them
twy me, but I’ll always thwash scoundwels... and I’ll tell the
Empewo’... Ice...’ he muttered.
The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was abso

737

lutely necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black
blood was taken from his hairy arm and only then was he
able to relate what had happened to him.
‘I get there,’ began Denisov. ‘‘Now then, where’s your
chief’s quarters?’ They were pointed out. ‘Please to wait.’
‘I’ve widden twenty miles and have duties to attend to and
no time to wait. Announce me.’ Vewy well, so out comes
their head chiefalso took it into his head to lecture me: ‘It’s
wobbewy!’‘Wobbewy,’ I say, ‘is not done by man who seizes
pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him who takes them
to fill his own pockets!’ ‘Will you please be silent?’ ‘Vewy
good!’ Then he says: ‘Go and give a weceipt to the commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.’ I
go to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do
you think? No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that’s starving us?’
shouted Denisov, hitting the table with the fist of his newly
bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke down and
the tumblers on it jumped about. ‘Telyanin! ‘What? So it’s
you who’s starving us to death! Is it? Take this and this!’
and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his snout... ‘Ah, what a...
what...!’ and I sta’ted fwashing him... Well, I’ve had a bit of
fun I can tell you!’ cried Denisov, gleeful and yet angry, his
showing under his black mustache. ‘I’d have killed him if
they hadn’t taken him away!’
‘But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself,’ said Rostov. ‘You’ve set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie
it up again.’
Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day
he woke calm and cheerful.
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But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov’s and Denisov’s dugout with a grave and serious face
and regretfully showed them a paper addressed to Major
Denisov from the regimental commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday’s occurrence. The adjutant
told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad turn:
that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view
of the severity with which marauding and insubordination
were now regarded, degradation to the ranks would be the
best that could be hoped for.
The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that,
after seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk,
went to the chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief, threatened to strike him, and on
being led out had rushed into the office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm of one of them.
In answer to Rostov’s renewed questions, Denisov said,
laughing, that he thought he remembered that some other
fellow had got mixed up in it, but that it was all nonsense
and rubbish, and he did not in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack him he would
give them an answer that they would not easily forget.
Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but
Rostov knew him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart he feared a court-martial and
was worried over the affair, which was evidently taking a
bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices from the
court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered
to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and ap

739

pear before the staff of his division to explain his violence at
the commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two Cossack regiments and two squadrons of
hussars. Denisov, as was his wont, rode out in front of the
outposts, parading his courage. A bullet fired by a French
sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at
another time Denisov would not have left the regiment for
so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to excuse
himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.

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War and Peace

Chapter XVII
In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the
Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice
was proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend’s absence very
much, having no news of him since he left and feeling very
anxious about his wound and the progress of his affairs,
took advantage of the armistice to get leave to visit Denisov
in hospital.
The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been
twice devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it
was summer, when it is so beautiful out in the fields, the
little town presented a particularly dismal appearance with
its broken roofs and fences, its foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken soldiers wandering about.
The hospital was in a brick building with some of the
window frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a wooden fence that had been
pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in the sunshine in
the yard.
Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a
smell of putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met
a Russian army doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian assistant.
‘I can’t tear myself to pieces,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Come


741

to Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there.’
The assistant asked some further questions.
‘Oh, do the best you can! Isn’t it all the same?’ The doctor
noticed Rostov coming upstairs.
‘What do you want, sir?’ said the doctor. ‘What do you
want? The bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a pesthouse, sir.’
‘How so?’ asked Rostov.
‘Typhus, sir. It’s death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and
I’ (he pointed to the assistant), ‘keep on here. Some five of us
doctors have died in this place.... When a new one comes he
is done for in a week,’ said the doctor with evident satisfaction. ‘Prussian doctors have been invited here, but our allies
don’t like it at all.’
Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of
the hussars, who was wounded.
‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone
in charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred
patients! It’s well that the charitable Prussian ladies send
us two pounds of coffee and some lint each month or we
should be lost!’ he laughed. ‘Four hundred, sir, and they’re
always sending me fresh ones. There are four hundred? Eh?’
he asked, turning to the assistant.
The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed
and impatient for the talkative doctor to go.
‘Major Denisov,’ Rostov said again. ‘He was wounded at
Molliten.’
‘Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?’ queried the doctor, in a tone
of indifference.
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The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor’s
words.
‘Is he tall and with reddish hair?’ asked the doctor.
Rostov described Denisov’s appearance.
‘There was one like that,’ said the doctor, as if pleased.
‘That one is dead, I fancy. However, I’ll look up our list. We
had a list. Have you got it, Makeev?’
‘Makar Alexeevich has the list,’ answered the assistant.
‘But if you’ll step into the officers’ wards you’ll see for yourself,’ he added, turning to Rostov.
‘Ah, you’d better not go, sir,’ said the doctor, ‘or you may
have to stay here yourself.’
But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and
asked the assistant to show him the way.
‘Only don’t blame me!’ the doctor shouted up after him.
Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The
smell was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had
to pause and collect his strength before he could go on. A
door opened to the right, and an emaciated sallow man on
crutches, barefoot and in underclothing, limped out and,
leaning against the doorpost, looked with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at the door,
Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the
floor on straw and overcoats.
‘May I go in and look?’
‘What is there to see?’ said the assistant.
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want
him to go in, Rostov entered the soldiers’ ward. The foul air,
to which he had already begun to get used in the corridor,


743

was still stronger here. It was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where it originated.
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the
large windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with
their heads to the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle.
Most of them were unconscious and paid no attention to the
newcomers. Those who were conscious raised themselves or
lifted their thin yellow faces, and all looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief, reproach,
and envy of another’s health. Rostov went to the middle of
the room and looking through the open doors into the two
adjoining rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still,
looking silently around. He had not at all expected such a
sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack
to judge by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his
huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was purple, his
eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen, and
on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins
stood out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head
against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he
kept repeating. Rostov listened and made out the word. It
was ‘drink, drink, a drink!’ Rostov glanced round, looking
for someone who would put this man back in his place and
bring him water.
‘Who looks after the sick here?’ he asked the assistant.
Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came
in from the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in
front of Rostov.
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War and Peace

‘Good day, your honor!’ he shouted, rolling his eyes at
Rostov and evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital
authorities.
‘Get him to his place and give him some water,’ said Rostov, pointing to the Cossack.
‘Yes, your honor,’ the soldier replied complacently, and
rolling his eyes more than ever he drew himself up still
straighter, but did not move.
‘No, it’s impossible to do anything here,’ thought Rostov, lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became
aware of an intense look fixed on him on his right, and
he turned. Close to the corner, on an overcoat, sat an old,
unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a skeleton, with
a stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed on Rostov. The
man’s neighbor on one side whispered something to him,
pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to
speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had
only one leg bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His neighbor on the other side, who lay
motionless some distance from him with his head thrown
back, was a young soldier with a snub nose. His pale waxen
face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled back. Rostov
looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his
back.
‘Why, this one seems...’ he began, turning to the assistant.
‘And how we’ve been begging, your honor,’ said the old
soldier, his jaw quivering. ‘He’s been dead since morning.
After all we’re men, not dogs.’


745

‘I’ll send someone at once. He shall be taken awaytaken
away at once,’ said the assistant hurriedly. ‘Let us go, your
honor.’
‘Yes, yes, let us go,’ said Rostov hastily, and lowering his
eyes and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the
rows of reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him,
and went out of the room.

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Chapter XVIII
Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to
the officers’ wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of
which stood open. There were beds in these rooms and the
sick and wounded officers were lying or sitting on them.
Some were walking about the rooms in hospital dressing
gowns. The first person Rostov met in the officers’ ward was
a thin little man with one arm, who was walking about the
first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a
pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.
‘See where we’ve met again!’ said the little man. ‘Tushin,
Tushin, don’t you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon
Grabern? And I’ve had a bit cut off, you see...’ he went on
with a smile, pointing to the empty sleeve of his dressing
gown. ‘Looking for Vasili Dmitrich Denisov? My neighbor,’
he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted. ‘Here, here,’
and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence came
sounds of several laughing voices.
‘How can they laugh, or even live at all here?’ thought
Rostov, still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that
had been so strong in the soldiers’ ward, and still seeming
to see fixed on him those envious looks which had followed
him out from both sides, and the face of that young soldier
with eyes rolled back.


747

Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the
blanket, though it was nearly noon.
‘Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?’ he called out,
still in the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed
sadly that under this habitual ease and animation some
new, sinister, hidden feeling showed itself in the expression
of Denisov’s face and the intonations of his voice.
His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even
now, six weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same
swollen pallor as the faces of the other hospital patients, but
it was not this that struck Rostov. What struck him was that
Denisov did not seem glad to see him, and smiled at him
unnaturally. He did not ask about the regiment, nor about
the general state of affairs, and when Rostov spoke of these
matters did not listen.
Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of the regiment, or in general of that other free life
which was going on outside the hospital. He seemed to try
to forget that old life and was only interested in the affair
with the commissariat officers. On Rostov’s inquiry as to
how the matter stood, he at once produced from under his
pillow a paper he had received from the commission and the
rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when
he began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov’s attention to the stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies.
His hospital companions, who had gathered round Rostova
fresh arrival from the world outsidegradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his answer. Rostov
noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had already
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heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only
the man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued
to sit on his bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe,
and little one-armed Tushin still listened, shaking his head
disapprovingly. In the middle of the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.
‘But what I say is,’ he said, turning to Rostov, ‘it would
be best simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say
great rewards will now be distributed, and surely a pardon
would be granted...’
‘Me petition the Empewo’!’ exclaimed Denisov, in a voice
to which he tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but
which sounded like an expression of irritable impotence.
‘What for? If I were a wobber I would ask mercy, but I’m
being court-martialed for bwinging wobbers to book. Let
them twy me, I’m not afwaid of anyone. I’ve served the Tsar
and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I
to be degwaded?... Listen, I’m w’iting to them stwaight. This
is what I say: ‘If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...’’
‘It’s certainly well written,’ said Tushin, ‘but that’s not
the point, Vasili Dmitrich,’ and he also turned to Rostov.
‘One has to submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn’t want to.
You know the auditor told you it was a bad business.
‘Well, let it be bad,’ said Denisov.
‘The auditor wrote out a petition for you,’ continued
Tushin, ‘and you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to
take it. No doubt he’ (indicating Rostov) ‘has connections
on the staff. You won’t find a better opportunity.’
‘Haven’t I said I’m not going to gwovel?’ Denisov inter

749

rupted him, went on reading his paper.
Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though
he instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the
other officers was the safest, and though he would have been
glad to be of service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will
and straightforward hasty temper.
When the reading of Denisov’s virulent reply, which
took more than an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and
he spent the rest of the day in a most dejected state of mind
amid Denisov’s hospital comrades, who had round him,
telling them what he knew and listening to their stories.
Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.
Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he
asked Denisov whether he had no commission for him.
‘Yes, wait a bit,’ said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and taking his papers from under his pillow he went
to the window, where he had an inkpot, and sat down to
write.
‘It seems it’s no use knocking one’s head against a wall!’
he said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large
envelope. In it was the petition to the Emperor drawn up
by the auditor, in which Denisov, without alluding to the
offenses of the commissariat officials, simply asked for pardon.
‘Hand it in. It seems..’
He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.

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Chapter XIX
Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of Denisov’s affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit
with the letter to the Emperor.
On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the
important personage on whom he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the stay at Tilsit.
‘I should like to see the great man,’ he said, alluding to
Napoleon, whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always
called Buonaparte.
‘You are speaking of Buonaparte?’ asked the general,
smiling.
Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately
saw that he was being tested.
‘I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon,’ he
replied. The general patted him on the shoulder, with a
smile.
‘You will go far,’ he said, and took him to Tilsit with
him.
Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the
day the two Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with
monograms, saw Napoleon pass before the French Guards
on the farther bank of the river, saw the pensive face of the
Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a tavern on the


751

bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon’s arrival, saw both
Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleonreaching
the raft firststepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and
held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the
pavilion. Since he had begun to move in the highest circles
Boris had made it his habit to watch attentively all that went
on around him and to note it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of those who had come with
Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and listened
attentively to words spoken by important personages. At
the moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked
at his watch, and did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The interview had lasted an hour and
fifty-three minutes. He noted this down that same evening,
among other facts he felt to be of historic importance. As the
Emperor’s suite was a very small one, it was a matter of great
importance, for a man who valued his success in the service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between
the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt
that henceforth his position was fully assured. He had not
only become known, but people had grown accustomed to
him and accepted him. Twice he had executed commissions
to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew his face, and
all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as at first
when they considered him a newcomer, would now have
been surprised had he been absent.
Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count
Zhilinski. Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich,
and passionately fond of the French, and almost every day
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of the stay at Tilsit, French officers of the Guard and from
French headquarters were dining and lunching with him
and Boris.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of
honor was an aide-de-camp of Napoleon’s, there were also
several French officers of the Guard, and a page of Napoleon’s, a young lad of an old aristocratic French family. That
same day, Rostov, profiting by the darkness to avoid being
recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit and went to the
lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.
Rostov, in common with the whole army from which
he came, was far from having experienced the change of
feeling toward Napoleon and the Frenchwho from being
foes had suddenly become friendsthat had taken place at
headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte and the
French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,
contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov’s Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon
were taken prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign,
but as a criminal. Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the road, Rostov had maintained
with heat that peace was impossible between a legitimate
sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers
in Boris’ lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see from quite a different point of view from the
outposts of the flank. As soon as he noticed a French officer,
who thrust his head out of the door, that warlike feeling of


753

hostility which he always experienced at the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the threshold and
asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there. Boris,
hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet
him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face on first recognizing Rostov.
‘Ah, it’s you? Very glad, very glad to see you,’ he said,
however, coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had
noticed his first impulse.
‘I’ve come at a bad time I think. I should not have come,
but I have business,’ he said coldly.
‘No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from
your regiment. Dans un moment je suis a vous,’* he said,
answering someone who called him.
*”In a minute I shall be at your disposal.’
‘I see I’m intruding,’ Rostov repeated.
The look of annoyance had already disappeared from
Boris’ face: having evidently reflected and decided how to
act, he very quietly took both Rostov’s hands and led him
into the next room. His eyes, looking serenely and steadily
at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by something, as if screened
by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to Rostov.
‘Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!’
said Boris, and he led him into the room where the supper
table was laid and introduced him to his guests, explaining
that he was not a civilian, but an hussar officer, and an old
friend of his.
‘Count Zhilinskile Comte N. N.le Capitaine S. S.,’ said he,
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naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed reluctantly, and remained silent.
Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov.
Boris did not appear to notice the constraint the newcomer
produced and, with the same pleasant composure and the
same veiled look in his eyes with which he had met Rostov,
tried to enliven the conversation. One of the Frenchmen,
with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen, addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the
latter had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.
‘No, I came on business,’ replied Rostov, briefly.
Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look of dissatisfaction on Boris’ face, and as always
happens to those in a bad humor, it seemed to him that
everyone regarded him with aversion and that he was in everybody’s way. He really was in their way, for he alone took
no part in the conversation which again became general.
The looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: ‘And what
is he sitting here for?’ He rose and went up to Boris.
‘Anyhow, I’m in your way,’ he said in a low tone. ‘Come
and talk over my business and I’ll go away.’
‘Oh, no, not at all,’ said Boris. ‘But if you are tired, come
and lie down in my room and have a rest.’
‘Yes, really..’
They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov,
without sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris
were to blame in some way) telling him about Denisov’s
affair, asking him whether, through his general, he could


755

and would intercede with the Emperor on Denisov’s behalf
and get Denisov’s petition handed in. When he and Boris
were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not
look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one leg crossed over the other and stroking his left
hand with the slender fingers of his right, listened to Rostov
as a general listens to the report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight into Rostov’s eyes with
the same veiled look. Each time this happened Rostov felt
uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.
‘I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty
is very severe in such affairs. I think it would be best not to
bring it before the Emperor, but to apply to the commander
of the corps.... But in general, I think..’
‘So you don’t want to do anything? Well then, say so!’
Rostov almost shouted, not looking Boris in the face.
Boris smiled.
‘On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..’
At that moment Zhilinski’s voice was heard calling Boris.
‘Well then, go, go, go...’ said Rostov, and refusing supper
and remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and
down for a long time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.
CHAPTER XX
Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on Denisov’s behalf. He could not himself go to the
general in attendance as he was in mufti and had come to
Tilsit without permission to do so, and Boris, even had he
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wished to, could not have done so on the following day. On
that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were signed.
The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received
the Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order
of St. Andrew of the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening, given by a battalion of the French
Guards to the Preobrazhensk battalion. The Emperors were
to be present at that banquet.
Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris
that, when the latter looked in after supper, he pretended
to be asleep, and early next morning went away, avoiding
Boris. In his civilian clothes and a round hat, he wandered
about the town, staring at the French and their uniforms
and at the streets and houses where the Russian and French
Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables being set
up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the
streets, with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of
the houses also flags and bunting were displayed.
‘Boris doesn’t want to help me and I don’t want to ask
him. That’s settled,’ thought Nicholas. ‘All is over between
us, but I won’t leave here without having done all I can for
Denisov and certainly not without getting his letter to the
Emperor. The Emperor!... He is here!’ thought Rostov, who
had unconsciously returned to the house where Alexander
lodged.
Saddled horses were standing before the house and the
suite were assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor
to come out.


757

‘I may see him at any moment,’ thought Rostov. ‘If only I
were to hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could
they really arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He
would understand on whose side justice lies. He understands
everything, knows everything. Who can be more just, more
magnanimous than he? And even if they did arrest me for
being here, what would it matter?’ thought he, looking at an
officer who was entering the house the Emperor occupied.
‘After all, people do go in.... It’s all nonsense! I’ll go in and
hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse
for Drubetskoy who drives me to it!’ And suddenly with a
determination he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the
letter in his pocket and went straight to the house.
‘No, I won’t miss my opportunity now, as I did after
Austerlitz,’ he thought, expecting every moment to meet
the monarch, and conscious of the blood that rushed to his
heart at the thought. ‘I will fall at his feet and beseech him.
He will lift me up, will listen, and will even thank me. ‘I am
happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice is the
greatest happiness,’’ Rostov fancied the sovereign saying.
And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he
entered the porch of the Emperor’s house.
A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to
the right he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase,
was a door leading to the lower floor.
‘Whom do you want?’ someone inquired.
‘To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty,’ said Nicholas, with a tremor in his voice.
‘A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on duty’
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(he was shown the door leading downstairs), ‘only it won’t
be accepted.’
On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened
at what he was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so fascinating and consequently so
alarming that he was ready to run away, but the official who
had questioned him opened the door, and Rostov entered.
A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and
high boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just
put on, standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of his breeches a new pair of handsome
silk-embroidered braces that, for some reason, attracted
Rostov’s attention. This man was was speaking to someone
in the adjoining room.
‘A good figure and in her first bloom,’ he was saying, but
on seeing Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.
‘What is it? A petition?’
‘What is it?’ asked the person in the other room.
‘Another petitioner,’ answered the man with the braces.
‘Tell him to come later. He’ll be coming out directly, we
must go.’
‘Later... later! Tomorrow. It’s too late..’
Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the
braces stopped him.
‘Whom have you come from? Who are you?’
‘I come from Major Denisov,’ answered Rostov.
‘Are you an officer?’
‘Lieutenant Count Rostov.’
‘What audacity! Hand it in through your commander.


759

And go along with you... go,’ and he continued to put on the
uniform the valet handed him.
Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the
porch there were many officers and generals in full parade
uniform, whom he had to pass.
Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of
finding himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to shame and arrested in his presence,
fully alive now to the impropriety of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was making his
way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.
‘What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?’ asked a
deep voice.
It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor’s
special favor during this campaign, and who had formerly
commanded the division in which Rostov was serving.
Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing
the kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and
in an excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him
to intercede for Denisov, whom the general knew. Having
heard Rostov to the end, the general shook his head gravely.
‘I’m sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter.’
Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished
explaining Denisov’s case, when hasty steps and the jingling
of spurs were heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving
him, went to the porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor’s
suite ran down the stairs and went to their horses. Hayne,
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the same groom who had been at Austerlitz, led up the Emperor’s horse, and the faint creak of a footstep Rostov knew
at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the danger of
being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together
with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years,
saw those features he adored: that same face and same look
and step, and the same union of majesty and mildness....
And the feeling of enthusiasm and love for his sovereign
rose again in Rostov’s soul in all its old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regimentwhite chamois-leather
breeches and high bootsand wearing a star Rostov did not
know (it was that of the Legion d’honneur), the monarch
came out into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying
his hat under his arm. He stopped and looked about him,
brightening everything around by his glance. He spoke a
few words to some of the generals, and, recognizing the former commander of Rostov’s division, smiled and beckoned
to him.
All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for some time to the Emperor.
The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step
toward his horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite
and street gazers (among whom was Rostov) moved nearer
to the Emperor. Stopping beside his horse, with his hand on
the saddle, the Emperor turned to the cavalry general and
said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be heard by all:
‘I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is
stronger than I,’ and he raised his foot to the stirrup.
The general bowed his head respectfully, and the mon

761

arch mounted and rode down the street at a gallop. Beside
himself with enthusiasm, Rostov ran after him with the
crowd.

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Chapter XXI
The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the
right and a battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin
caps on the left.
As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which
presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to
the opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It could be no one else. He came at a gallop,
wearing a small hat, a blue uniform open over a white vest,
and the St. Andrew ribbon over his shoulder. He was riding
a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse with a crimson
gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching Alexander
he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his cavalryman’s eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit
well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Napoleon said something to
Alexander, and both Emperors dismounted and took each
other’s hands. Napoleon’s face wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying something affable to
him.
In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes’ horses, which were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes
on every movement of Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck
him as a surprise that Alexander treated Bonaparte as an


763

equal and that the latter was quite at ease with the Tsar, as
if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday matter
to him.
Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their
suites, approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came straight up to the crowd standing there.
The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the front row, was afraid he
might be recognized.
‘Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the bravest of your soldiers,’ said a sharp, precise voice,
articulating every letter.
This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up
straight into Alexander’s eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to him and, bending his head, smiled
pleasantly.
‘To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last
war,’ added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with
a composure and assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran
his eyes over the Russian ranks drawn up before him, who
all presented arms with their eyes fixed on their Emperor.
‘Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?’ said
Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the commander of the battalion.
Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his
small white hand, tore it in doing so, and threw it away.
An aide-de-camp behind him rushed forward and picked
it up.
‘To whom shall it be given?’ the Emperor Alexander
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asked Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.
‘To whomever Your Majesty commands.’
The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and,
glancing back, remarked:
‘But we must give him an answer.’
Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included
Rostov in his scrutiny.
‘Can it be me?’ thought Rostov.
‘Lazarev!’ the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev,
the first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.
‘Where are you off to? Stop here!’ voices whispered to
Lazarev who did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped,
casting a sidelong look at his colonel in alarm. His face
twitched, as often happens to soldiers called before the
ranks.
Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump
little hand out behind him as if to take something. The
members of his suite, guessing at once what he wanted,
moved about and whispered as they passed something from
one to another, and a pagethe same one Rostov had seen the
previous evening at Boris’ran forward and, bowing respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting
a moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon,
without looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge
was between them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled
his eyes and persistently gazed at his own monarch), looked
round at the Emperor Alexander to imply that what he was
now doing was done for the sake of his ally, and the small
white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev’s but

765

tons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary
for his hand to deign to touch that soldier’s breast for the
soldier to be forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished
from everyone else in the world. Napoleon merely laid the
cross on Lazarev’s breast and, dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the cross would adhere
there. And it really did.
Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized
the cross and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced
morosely at the little man with white hands who was doing
something to him and, still standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into Alexander’s eyes, as
if asking whether he should stand there, or go away, or do
something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for
some time in that rigid position.
The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion, breaking rank, mingled with the French
Guards and sat down at the tables prepared for them.
Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French
officers embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his
hands. Crowds of officers and civilians drew near merely to
see him. A rumble of Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables in the square. Two officers
with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy, passed by
Rostov.
‘What d’you think of the treat? All on silver plate,’ one of
them was saying. ‘Have you seen Lazarev?’
‘I have.’
‘Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them
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a dinner.’
‘Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs’
pension for life.’
‘Here’s a cap, lads!’ shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier,
donning a shaggy French cap.
‘It’s a fine thing! First-rate!’
‘Have you heard the password?’ asked one Guards’ officer of another. ‘The day before yesterday it was ‘Napoleon,
France, bravoure’; yesterday, ‘Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.’
One day our Emperor gives it and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George’s Cross to the
bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He must
respond in kind.’
Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov
standing by the corner of a house.
‘Rostov! How d’you do? We missed one another,’ he said,
and could not refrain from asking what was the matter, so
strangely dismal and troubled was Rostov’s face.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ replied Rostov.
‘You’ll call round?’
‘Yes, I will.’
Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching
the feast from a distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful
process was going on which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he remembered
Denisov with his changed expression, his submission, and
the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt
and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of


767

dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came
from. Next he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with
his small white hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and
respected by Alexander. Then why those severed arms and
legs and those dead men?... Then again he thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He
caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was
frightened.
The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating
and a sense of hunger recalled him from these reflections;
he had to get something to eat before going away. He went
to a hotel he had noticed that morning. There he found so
many people, among them officers who, like himself, had
come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in getting
a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The
conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his
comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the
peace concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that
had we held out a little longer Napoleon would have been
done for, as his troops had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly the latter) in silence.
He finished a couple of bottles of wine by himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without reaching
a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet
could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers’
saying that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore
much to the surprise of the officers:
‘How can you judge what’s best?’ he cried, the blood sud768

War and Peace

denly rushing to his face. ‘How can you judge the Emperor’s
actions? What right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor’s or his actions!’
‘But I never said a word about the Emperor!’ said the officer, justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov’s
outburst, except on the supposition that he was drunk.
But Rostov did not listen to him.
‘We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and
nothing more,’ he went on. ‘If we are ordered to die, we
must die. If we’re punished, it means that we have deserved
it, it’s not for us to judge. If the Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an alliance
with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If once
we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing
sacred will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no
Godnothing!’ shouted Nicholas, banging the tablevery little
to the point as it seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly
to the course of his own thoughts.
‘Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think!
That’s all....’ said he.
‘And to drink,’ said one of the officers, not wishing to
quarrel.
‘Yes, and to drink,’ assented Nicholas. ‘Hullo there! Another bottle!’ he shouted.
In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh
interview with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg there was much talk of the grandeur of
this important meeting.


769

Chapter XXII
In 1809 the intimacy between ‘the world’s two arbiters,’ as
Napoleon and Alexander were called, was such that when
Napoleon declared war on Austria a Russian corps crossed
the frontier to co-operate with our old enemy Bonaparte
against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and in court
circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and
one of Alexander’s sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations of foreign policy, the attention of Russian society
was at that time keenly directed on the internal changes
that were being undertaken in all the departments of government.
Life meanwhilereal life, with its essential interests of
health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship,
hatred, and passionswent on as usual, independently of and
apart from political friendship or enmity with Napoleon
Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction.

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BOOK SIX: 1808 10



771

Chapter I
Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the
country.
All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estatesand
constantly changing from one thing to another had never
accomplishedwere carried out by Prince Andrew without
display and without perceptible difficulty.
He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which
Pierre lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set
things going.
On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and became free agricultural laborersthis being one of
the first examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates
the serfs’ compulsory labor was commuted for a quitrent.
A trained midwife was engaged for Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and writing to
the children of the peasants and household serfs.
Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his
father and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The
other half he spent in ‘Bogucharovo Cloister,’ as his father
called Prince Andrew’s estate. Despite the indifference to
the affairs of the world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received many books, and
to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people
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lagged behind himselfwho never left the countryin knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.
Besides being occupied with his estates and reading
a great variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time
busy with a critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for a reform of the
army rules and regulations.
In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates
which had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he
was.
Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche
looking at the new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and
the first puffs of white spring clouds floating across the clear
blue sky. He was not thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to side.
They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre
the year before. They went through the muddy village, past
threshing floors and green fields of winter rye, downhill
where snow still lodged near the bridge, uphill where the
clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of stubble
land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into
a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with
their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored
flowers and the first blades of green grass were pushing up
and lifting last year’s leaves. The coarse evergreen color of
the small fir trees scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the
forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.


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Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman;
the latter assented. But apparently the coachman’s sympathy was not enough for Peter, and he turned on the box
toward his master.
‘How pleasant it is, your excellency!’ he said with a respectful smile.
‘What?’
‘It’s pleasant, your excellency!’
‘What is he talking about?’ thought Prince Andrew. ‘Oh,
the spring, I suppose,’ he thought as he turned round. ‘Yes,
really everything is green already.... How early! The birches
and cherry and alders too are coming out.... But the oaks
show no sign yet. Ah, here is one oak!’
At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times
the age of the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times
as thick and twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its
girth twice as great as a man could embrace, and evidently
long ago some of its branches had been broken off and its
bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an
aged, stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch
trees. Only the dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about
in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of
spring or notice either the spring or the sunshine.
‘Spring, love, happiness!’ this oak seemed to say. ‘Are
you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud? There
is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those cramped
dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my bro774

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ken and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether
from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I stand,
and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies.’
As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned
several times to look at that oak, as if expecting something
from it. Under the oak, too, were flowers and grass, but it
stood among them scowling, rigid, misshapen, and grim as
ever.
‘Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right,’ thought
Prince Andrew. ‘Let othersthe youngyield afresh to that
fraud, but we know life, our life is finished!’
A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree.
During this journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh
and arrived at his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness:
that it was not for him to begin anything anewbut that he
must live out his life, content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring anything.



775

Chapter II
Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for
the district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya
Rostov, and in the middle of May Prince Andrew went to
visit him.
It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was
already clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on
passing near water one longed to bathe.
Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the
business about which he had to speak to the Marshal, was
driving up the avenue in the grounds of the Rostovs’ house
at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish cries behind some
trees on the right and saw group of girls running to cross
the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him
ran a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow
chintz dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from
under which loose locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a stranger, ran back
laughing without looking at him.
Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day
was so beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so
gay, but that slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know,
of his existence and was contented and cheerful in her own
separateprobably foolishbut bright and happy life. ‘What is
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she so glad about? What is she thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement of the Ryazan serfs’
quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so happy?’
Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.
In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as
he had done in former years, that is, entertaining almost the
whole province with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music.
He was glad to see Prince Andrew, as he was to see any new
visitor, and insisted on his staying the night.
During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by his elderly hosts and by the more important of the
visitors (the old count’s house was crowded on account of an
approaching name day), Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced
at Natasha, gay and laughing among the younger members
of the company, and asked himself each time, ‘What is she
thinking about? Why is she so glad?’
That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but
relit it. It was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which
were closed. He was cross with the stupid old man (as he
called Rostov), who had made him stay by assuring him that
some necessary documents had not yet arrived from town,
and he was vexed with himself for having stayed.
He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as
he opened the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been
watching for this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was fresh, bright, and very still. Just before
the window was a row of pollard trees, looking black on one
side and with a silvery light on the other. Beneath the trees


777

grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy vegetation with silver-lit
leaves and stems here and there. Farther back beyond the
dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was a leafy
tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it
shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless,
spring sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window
ledge and his eyes rested on that sky.
His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above
were also awake. He heard female voices overhead.
‘Just once more,’ said a girlish voice above him which
Prince Andrew recognized at once.
‘But when are you coming to bed?’ replied another
voice.
‘I won’t, I can’t sleep, what’s the use? Come now for the
last time.’
Two girlish voices sang a musical passagethe end of some
song.
‘Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there’s an end of
it.’
‘You go to sleep, but I can’t,’ said the first voice, coming nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right
out, for the rustle of her dress and even her breathing could
be heard. Everything was stone-still, like the moon and its
light and the shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir,
for fear of betraying his unintentional presence.
‘Sonya! Sonya!’ he again heard the first speaker. ‘Oh, how
can you sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up, Sonya!’ she said almost with tears in her
voice. ‘There never, never was such a lovely night before!’
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Sonya made some reluctant reply.
‘Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely!
Come here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you
see? I feel like sitting down on my heels, putting my arms
round my knees like this, straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...’
‘Take care, you’ll fall out.’
He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya’s disapproving
voice: ‘It’s past one o’clock.’
‘Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!’
Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was
still sitting there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle
and at times a sigh.
‘O God, O God! What does it mean?’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘To bed then, if it must be!’ and she slammed the
casement.
‘For her I might as well not exist!’ thought Prince Andrew
while he listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet
fearing that she might say something about him. ‘There she
is again! As if it were on purpose,’ thought he.
In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole
tenor of his life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep at once.



779

Chapter III
Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the
count, and not waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.
It was already the beginning of June when on his return
journey he drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old
oak had made so strange and memorable an impression on
him. In the forest the harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for now all was
thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about
in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but, lending
themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with
fluffy young shoots.
The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was
gathering, but only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road and the sappy leaves. The
left side of the forest was dark in the shade, the right side
glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and scarcely swayed
by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the nightingales
trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now far
away.
‘Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed,’
thought Prince Andrew. ‘But where is it?’ he again wondered,
gazing at the left side of the road, and without recognizing
it he looked with admiration at the very oak he sought. The
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old oak, quite transfigured, spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly trembling in
the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor old
scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where
there were no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could
hardly believe the old veteran could have produced.
‘Yes, it is the same oak,’ thought Prince Andrew, and all
at once he was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling
of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz with the lofty heavens,
his wife’s dead reproachful face, Pierre at the ferry, that girl
thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night itself and
the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.
‘No, life is not over at thirty-one!’ Prince Andrew suddenly decided finally and decisively. ‘It is not enough for me
to know what I have in meeveryone must know it: Pierre,
and that young girl who wanted to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be lived for
myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that
it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in
harmony!’
On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this
decision. A whole serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be essential for him to go to Petersburg,
and even to re-enter the service, kept springing up in his
mind. He could not now understand how he could ever
even have doubted the necessity of taking an active share


781

in life, just as a month before he had not understood how
the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his
head. It now seemed clear to him that all his experience of
life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some
kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did
not even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar
wretched logical arguments, it had seemed obvious that he
would be degrading himself if he now, after the lessons he
had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the possibility
of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or love.
Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey
to Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no
longer interested him, and often when sitting alone in his
study he got up, went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at
his own face. Then he would turn away to the portrait of his
dead Lise, who with hair curled a la grecque looked tenderly
and gaily at him out of the gilt frame. She did not now say
those former terrible words to him, but looked simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing
his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning,
now smiling, as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a crime, which altered his whole life
and were connected with Pierre, with fame, with the girl at
the window, the oak, and woman’s beauty and love. And if
anyone came into his room at such moments he was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.
‘My dear,’ Princess Mary entering at such a moment
would say, ‘little Nicholas can’t go out today, it’s very cold.’
‘If it were hot,’ Prince Andrew would reply at such times
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very dryly to his sister, ‘he could go out in his smock, but as
it is cold he must wear warm clothes, which were designed
for that purpose. That is what follows from the fact that it is
cold; and not that a child who needs fresh air should remain
at home,’ he would add with extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical emotions that stirred
within him.
At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work dries men up.



783

Chapter IV
Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809.
It was the time when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his reforms were being pushed forward
with the greatest energy. That same August the Emperor
was thrown from his caleche, injured his leg, and remained
three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every day and
no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being
prepared that so agitated societyabolishing court ranks and
introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate Assessor and State Councilorand not merely these
but a whole state constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in Russia: legal, administrative,
and financial, from the Council of State down to the district
tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams with which the
Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he
had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates,
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonovwhom
he himself in jest had called his Comite de salut publicwere
taking shape and being realized.
Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the
civil side, and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his
arrival Prince Andrew, as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a levee. The Emperor, though
he met him twice, did not favor him with a single word. It
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had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his face
and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance
the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation
of this surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor’s neglect of him by His Majesty’s displeasure at Bolkonski’s not
having served since 1805.
‘I know myself that one cannot help one’s sympathies
and antipathies,’ thought Prince Andrew, ‘so it will not do
to present my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor personally, but the project will speak
for itself.’
He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend of his father’s. The field marshal made an
appointment to see him, received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few days later Prince Andrew
received notice that he was to go to see the Minister of War,
Count Arakcheev.
On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count
Arakcheev’s waiting room at nine in the morning.
He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen
him, and all he had heard of him inspired him with but little
respect for the man.
‘He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor,
and I need not concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned to consider my project, so
he alone can get it adopted,’ thought Prince Andrew as he
waited among a number of important and unimportant
people in Count Arakcheev’s waiting room.


785

During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the anterooms of many important men, and
the different types of such rooms were well known to him.
Count Arakcheev’s anteroom had quite a special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their turn
for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the
faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling
of awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and the person for whom
they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down,
others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the
nickname ‘Sila Andreevich’ and the words, ‘Uncle will give
it to us hot,’ in reference to Count Arakcheev. One general
(an important personage), evidently feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his legs and
smiling contemptuously to himself.
But the moment the door opened one feeling alone
appeared on all facesthat of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the adjutant on duty to take in his name, but
received an ironical look and was told that his turn would
come in due course. After some others had been shown in
and out of the minister’s room by the adjutant on duty, an
officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and
frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer’s audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating
sound of a harsh voice was heard from the other side of the
door, and the officerwith pale face and trembling lipscame
out and passed through the waiting room, clutching his
head.
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After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and
the officer on duty said in a whisper, ‘To the right, at the
window.’
Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the
table a man of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped
head, deep wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenishhazel eyes and an overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned
his head toward him without looking at him.
‘What is your petition?’ asked Arakcheev.
‘I am not petitioning, your excellency,’ returned Prince
Andrew quietly.
Arakcheev’s eyes turned toward him.
‘Sit down,’ said he. ‘Prince Bolkonski?’
‘I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the
Emperor has deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..’
‘You see, my dear sir, I have read your project,’ interrupted Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably
and thenagain without looking at Prince Andrewrelapsing gradually into a tone of grumbling contempt. ‘You are
proposing new military laws? There are many laws but no
one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody designs
laws, it is easier writing than doing.’
‘I came at His Majesty the Emperor’s wish to learn from
your excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have presented,’ said Prince Andrew politely.
‘I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum
and sent it to the committee. I do not approve of it,’ said
Arakcheev, rising and taking a paper from his writing table.


787

‘Here!’ and he handed it to Prince Andrew.
Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital
letters, misspelled, and without punctuation: ‘Unsoundly
constructed because resembles an imitation of the French
military code and from the Articles of War needlessly deviating.’
‘To what committee has the memorandum been referred?’ inquired Prince Andrew.
‘To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that your honor should be appointed a member,
but without a salary.’
Prince Andrew smiled.
‘I don’t want one.’
‘A member without salary,’ repeated Arakcheev. ‘I have
the honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?’ he
shouted, bowing to Prince Andrew.

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Chapter V
While waiting for the announcement of his appointment
to the committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he knew to be in power
and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle,
when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate
of millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated. the
reserve of the initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the innumerable committees and commissions
of whose existence he learned every day, he felt that now, in
1809, here in Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was a mysterious
person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a man
of geniusSperanski. And this movement of reconstruction
of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski
its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the
question of the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.
Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good
reception in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming party cordially welcomed
and courted him, the first place because he was reputed to


789

be clever and very well read, and secondly because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a
liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured
the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in
their disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the
son of his father. The feminine society world welcomed him
gladly, because he was rich, distinguished, a good match,
and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account
of his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him
previously was that he had greatly improved during these
last five years, having softened and grown more manly, lost
his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and
acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet
him.
The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince
Andrew spent the evening at Count Kochubey’s. He told
the count of his interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey
spoke of Arakcheev by that nickname with the same vague
irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the Minister of War’s
anteroom).
‘Mon cher, even in this case you can’t do without Michael
Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I’ll speak
to him. He has promised to come this evening.’
‘What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?’
asked Prince Andrew.
Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at
Bolkonski’s simplicity.
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‘We were talking to him about you a few days ago,’
Kochubey continued, ‘and about your freed plowmen.’
‘Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?’ said an
old man of Catherine’s day, turning contemptuously toward
Bolkonski.
‘It was a small estate that brought in no profit,’ replied
Prince Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to
irritate the old man uselessly.
‘Afraid of being late...’ said the old man, looking at
Kochubey.
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ he continued.
‘Who will plow the land if they are set free? It is easy to
write laws, but difficult to rule.... Just the same as nowI ask
you, Countwho will be heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?’
‘Those who pass the examinations, I suppose,’ replied
Kochubey, crossing his legs and glancing round.
‘Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a priceless man, but he’s sixty. Is he to go up for
examination?’
‘Yes, that’s a difficulty, as education is not at all general,
but..’
Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of
about forty with a large open forehead and a long face of
unusual and peculiar whiteness, who was just entering. The
newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It was
Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt


791

a throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life.
Whether it was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did
not know. Speranski’s whole figure was of a peculiar type
that made him easily recognizable. In the society in which
Prince Andrew lived he had never seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed such
calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute
yet gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather
humid eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor
had he heard such a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all
he had never seen such delicate whiteness of face or handshands which were broad, but very plump, soft, and white.
Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew had only seen
on the faces of soldiers who had been long in hospital. This
was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the Emperor
and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once
met and talked with Napoleon.
Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another
as people involuntarily do on entering a large company and
was in no hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance
that he would be listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was conversing.
Prince Andrew followed Speranski’s every word and
movement with particular attention. As happens to some
people, especially to men who judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone newespecially anyone
whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputationexpected to
discover in him the perfection of human qualities.
Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been un792

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able to come sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He
did not say that the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty. When Kochubey
introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly turned his
eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at
him in silence.
‘I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard
of you, as everyone has,’ he said after a pause.
Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev
had given Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.
‘The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations
is my good friend Monsieur Magnitski,’ he said, fully articulating every word and syllable, ‘and if you like I can put
you in touch with him.’ He paused at the full stop. ‘I hope
you will find him sympathetic and ready to co-operate in
promoting all that is reasonable.’
A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man
who had talked about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.
Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation
watched every movement of Speranski’s: this man, not long
since an insignificant divinity student, who now, Bolkonski
thought, held in his handsthose plump white handsthe fate
of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the extraordinarily
disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the
old man. He appeared to address condescending words to
him from an immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud, Speranski smiled and said he could
not judge of the advantage or disadvantage of what pleased


793

the sovereign.
Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along
to the other end of the room. It was clear that he thought it
necessary to interest himself in Bolkonski.
‘I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the
animated conversation in which that venerable gentleman
involved me,’ he said with a mildly contemptuous smile,
as if intimating by that smile that he and Prince Andrew
understood the insignificance of the people with whom he
had just been talking. This flattered Prince Andrew. ‘I have
known of you for a long time: first from your action with
regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly
because you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who
have not considered themselves offended by the new decree
concerning the ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing
so much gossip and tittle-tattle.’
‘No,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘my father did not wish me to
take advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the
lower grade.’
‘Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands
above our contemporaries who so condemn this measure
which merely reestablishes natural justice.’
‘I think, however, that these condemnations have some
ground,’ returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski’s influence, of which he began to be conscious. He did
not like to agree with him in everything and felt a wish to
contradict. Though he usually spoke easily and well, he felt
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a difficulty in expressing himself now while talking with
Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing the famous man’s personality.
‘Grounds of personal ambition maybe,’ Speranski put in
quietly.
‘And of state interest to some extent,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Speranski quietly, lowering
his eyes.
‘I am an admirer of Montesquieu,’ replied Prince Andrew,
‘and his idea that le principe des monarchies est l’honneur
me parait incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la
noblesse me paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment.’*
*”The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable. Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy
appear to me a means of maintaining that sentiment.’
The smile vanished from Speranski’s white face, which
was much improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew’s thought interested him.
‘Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,’* he
began, pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and
speaking even slower than in Russian but quite calmly.
*”If you regard the question from that point of view.’
Speranski went on to say that honor, l’honeur, cannot
be upheld by privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l’honneur, is either a negative concept of not doing what
is blameworthy or it is a source of emulation in pursuit of
commendation and rewards, which recognize it. His argu

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ments were concise, simple, and clear.
‘An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one similar to the Legion d’honneur of the great
Emperor Napoleon, not harmful but helpful to the success
of the service, but not a class or court privilege.’
‘I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court
privileges have attained the same end,’ returned Prince Andrew. ‘Every courtier considers himself bound to maintain
his position worthily.’
‘Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege,
Prince,’ said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished
to finish amiably an argument which was embarrassing
for his companion. ‘If you will do me the honor of calling
on me on Wednesday,’ he added, ‘I will, after talking with
Magnitski, let you know what may interest you, and shall
also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you.’
Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking
leave, and trying to attract as little attention as possible, he
left the room.

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Chapter VI
During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince
Andrew felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling
cares that engrossed him in that city.
On returning home in the evening he would jot down in
his notebook four or five necessary calls or appointments
for certain hours. The mechanism of life, the arrangement of
the day so as to be in time everywhere, absorbed the greater
part of his vital energy. He did nothing, did not even think
or find time to think, but only talked, and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.
He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the same remark on the same day in different circles.
But he was so busy for whole days together that he had no
time to notice that he was thinking of nothing.
As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey’s,
Speranski produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew
on the Wednesday, when he received him tete-a-tate at his
own house and talked to him long and confidentially.
To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and
insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone
the living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove,
that he readily believed that in Speranski he had found this
ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Sper

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anski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed
the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon
have discovered his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it
was, Speranski’s strange and logical turn of mind inspired
him with respect all the more because he did not quite
understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he
appreciated the other’s capacity or because he considered
it necessary to win him to his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before Prince Andrew and
flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes hand in
hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
that one’s companion is the only man besides oneself capable of understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and
the reasonableness and profundity of one’s own ideas.
During their long conversation on Wednesday evening,
Speranski more than once remarked: ‘We regard everything
that is above the common level of rooted custom...’ or, with
a smile: ‘But we want the wolves to be fed and the sheep to
be safe...’ or: ‘They cannot understand this...’ and all in a
way that seemed to say: ‘We, you and I, understand what
they are and who we are.’
This first long conversation with Speranski only
strengthened in Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first meeting. He saw in him a
remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast intellect who by his
energy and persistence had attained power, which he was
using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince Andrew’s
eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished
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sidered important only what was rational, and was capable
of applying the standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and clear in Speranski’s exposition
that Prince Andrew involuntarily agreed with him about
everything. If he replied and argued, it was only because
he wished to maintain his independence and not submit to
Speranski’s opinions entirely. Everything was right and everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted
Prince Andrew. This was Speranski’s cold, mirrorlike look,
which did not allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his
delicate white hands, which Prince Andrew involuntarily
watched as one does watch the hands of those who possess
power. This mirrorlike gaze and those delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was unpleasantly
struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he
observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he used to support his opinions. He made use of every
kind of mental device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince Andrew, from one to another. Now
he would take up the position of a practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and laugh ironically
at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or suddenly rise
to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one he
very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to
metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time,
and thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed,
would again descend to the level of the original discussion.
In general the trait of Speranski’s mentality which struck
Prince Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief


799

in the power and authority of reason. It was evident that the
thought could never occur to him which to Prince Andrew
seemed so natural, namely, that it is after all impossible to
express all one thinks; and that he had never felt the doubt,
‘Is not all I think and believe nonsense?’ And it was just this
peculiarity of Speranski’s mind that particularly attracted
Prince Andrew.
During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski
felt a passionate admiration for him similar to that which he
had once felt for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the
son of a village priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his humble origin (as in fact
many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish his sentiment
for him the more, and unconsciously to strengthen it.
On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having
mentioned the Commission for the Revision of the Code of
Laws, Speranski told him sarcastically that the Commission
had existed for a hundred and fifty years, had cost millions,
and had done nothing except that Rosenkampf had stuck
labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the different
codes.
‘And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,’
said he. ‘We want to give the Senate new juridical powers,
but we have no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you,
Prince, not to serve in these times!’
Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in
jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.
‘But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a
vicious circle from which we must break a way out.’
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A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army Regulations andwhat he had not at all
expectedwas chairman of a section of the committee for the
revision of the laws. At Speranski’s request he took the first
part of the Civil Code that was being drawn up and, with the
aid of the Code Napoleon and the Institutes of Justinian, he
worked at formulating the section on Personal Rights.



801

Chapter VII
Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily
found himself in a leading position among the Petersburg
Freemasons. He arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members, and busied himself uniting
various lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He gave
money for the erection of temples and supplemented as far
as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the
majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded
in Petersburg.
His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same
infatuations and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink
well, and though he considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations of the bachelor circles
in which he moved.
Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre at the end of a year began to feel that the more
firmly he tried to rest upon it, the more Masonic ground
on which he stood gave way under him. At the same time
he felt that the deeper the ground sank under him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he
had joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling
of one who confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a
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bog. When he put his foot down it sank in. To make quite
sure of the firmness the ground, he put his other foot down
and sank deeper still, became stuck in it, and involuntarily
waded knee-deep in the bog.
Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburghe had of late
stood aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and
lived almost entirely in Moscow. All the members of the
lodges were men Pierre knew in ordinary life, and it was
difficult for him to regard them merely as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D., whom
he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men.
Under the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms
and decorations at which they aimed in ordinary life. Often
after collecting alms, and reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in promises from a dozen
members, of whom half were as well able to pay as himself,
Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother
promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and
doubts on which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul.
He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In
the first he put those who did not take an active part in the
affairs of the lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the mystical science of the order: with
questions of the threefold designation of God, the three primordial elementssulphur, mercury, and saltor the meaning
of the square and all the various figures of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to which the
elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought, Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests.


803

His heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry.
In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found
in Freemasonry a straight and comprehensible path, but
hoped to do so.
In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority) who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external
forms and ceremonies, and prized the strict performance
of these forms without troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and even the Grand Master
of the principal lodge.
Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged, particularly those who had lately joined.
These according to Pierre’s observations were men who had
no belief in anything, nor desire for anything, but joined
the Freemasons merely to associate with the wealthy young
Brothers who were influential through their connections or
rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.
Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes
seemed to him based merely on externals. He did not think
of doubting Freemasonry itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path and deviated from
its original principles. And so toward the end of the year
he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the
order.
In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg.
Our Freemasons knew from correspondence with those
abroad that Bezukhov had obtained the confidence of many
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highly placed persons, had been initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, and was bringing
back with him much that might conduce to the advantage
of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons
all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him,
and it seemed to them all that he was preparing something
for them and concealing it.
A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was
convened, at which Pierre promised to communicate to the
Petersburg Brothers what he had to deliver to them from
the highest leaders of their order. The meeting was a full
one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre rose and began his
address.
‘Dear Brothers,’ he began, blushing and stammering,
with a written speech in his hand, ‘it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries in the seclusion of our lodgewe must
actact! We are drowsing, but we must act.’ Pierre raised his
notebook and began to read.
‘For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the
triumph of virtue,’ he read, ‘we must cleanse men from
prejudice, diffuse principles in harmony with the spirit of
the times, undertake the education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the wisest men, boldly yet
prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity, and folly, and
form of those devoted to us a body linked together by unity
of purpose and possessed of authority and power.
‘To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of
virtue over vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this world, receive a lasting reward


805

for his virtue. But in these great endeavors we are gravely
hampered by the political institutions of today. What is to
be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are very
far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it
quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are,
and also because wisdom needs no violence.
‘The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea
of preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by
unity of convictionaiming at the punishment of vice and
folly, and patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy
men from the dust and attaching them to our Brotherhood.
Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to
bind the hands of the protectors of disorder and to control
them without their being aware of it. In a word, we must
found a form of government holding universal sway, which
should be diffused over the whole world without destroying
the bonds of citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in their customary course and do
everything except what impedes the great aim of our order,
which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice. This aim
was that of Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and
good and for their own benefit to follow the example and
instruction of the best and wisest men.
‘At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching alone was of course sufficient. The novelty
of Truth endowed her with special strength, but now we
need much more powerful methods. It is now necessary
that man, governed by his senses, should find in virtue a
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charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate
the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble
aim, and it is therefore necessary that everyone should be
able to satisfy his passions within the limits of virtue. Our
order should provide means to that end.
‘As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in
every state, each of them again training two others and all
being closely united, everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret accomplished much for the
welfare of mankind.’
This speech not only made a strong impression, but created excitement in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers,
seeing in it dangerous designs of Illuminism,* met it with
a coldness that surprised Pierre. The Grand Master began
answering him, and Pierre began developing his views with
more and more warmth. It was long since there had been
so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some accusing
Pierre of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of
men’s minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting
itself identically to two persons. Even those members who
seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way
with limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as
what he always wanted most was to convey his thought to
others just as he himself understood it.
*The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical institutions.
At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony
and ill-will reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said


807

it was not love of virtue alone, but also a love of strife that
had moved him in the dispute. Pierre did not answer him
and asked briefly whether his proposal would be accepted.
He was told that it would not, and without waiting for the
usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.

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Chapter VIII
Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so
dreaded. For three days after the delivery of his speech at
the lodge he lay on a sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere.
It was just then that he received a letter from his wife,
who implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she
was about him and how she wished to devote her whole life
to him.
At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few
days she would return to Petersburg from abroad.
Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom
Pierre respected less than the others forced his way in to
see him and, turning the conversation upon Pierre’s matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal advice expressed the
opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong and that he
was neglecting one of the first rules of Freemasonry by not
forgiving the penitent.
At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili’s wife,
sent to him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes
to discuss a most important matter. Pierre saw that there
was a conspiracy against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he then was, this
was not even unpleasant to him. Nothing mattered to him.
Nothing in life seemed to him of much importance, and un

809

der the influence of the depression that possessed him he
valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his
wife.
‘No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not
to blame,’ he thought.
If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with
his wife, it was only because in his state of depression he did
not feel able to take any step. Had his wife come to him, he
would not have turned her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of indifference whether he
lived with his wife or not?
Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law,
Pierre late one night prepared for a journey and started for
Moscow to see Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in
his diary:
Moscow, 17th November
I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to
write down what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is
living poorly and has for three years been suffering from a
painful disease of the bladder. No one has ever heard him
utter a groan or a word of complaint. From morning till late
at night, except when he eats his very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously and made me sit
down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of the
Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in
the same manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had
learned and gained in the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I
told him everything as best I could, and told him what I had
proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had
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encountered, and of my rupture with the Brothers. Joseph
Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for a
good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit
up for me my whole past and the future path I should follow.
He surprised me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order: (1) The preservation and study of the
mystery. (2) The purification and reformation of oneself for
its reception, and (3) The improvement of the human race
by striving for such purification. Which is the principal aim
of these three? Certainly self-reformation and self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently of
circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands
the greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the
mystery which in our impurity we are unworthy to receive,
or seek the reformation of the human race while ourselves
setting an example of baseness and profligacy. Illuminism
is not a pure doctrine, just because it is attracted by social
activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground Joseph
Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity,
and in the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of
my family affairs he said to me, ‘the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you, lies in perfecting himself. We often
think that by removing all the difficulties of our life we shall
more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary, my dear
sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain
our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledgefor man can only
know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can
only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the


811

chief virtuelove of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can
show us its vanity and develop our innate love of death or of
rebirth to a new life.’ These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical sufferings, Joseph
Alexeevich is never weary of life though he loves death, for
whichin spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner manhe
does not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the meaning of the Great
Square of creation and pointed out to me that the numbers
three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me
not to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but
to take up only second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while
diverting the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the
true path self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he
advised me for myself personally above all to keep a watch
over myself, and to that end he gave me a notebook, the one
I am now writing in and in which I will in future note down
all my actions.
Petersburg, 23rd November
I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came
to me in tears and said that Helene was here and that she
implored me to hear her; that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew that if I once
let myself see her I should not have strength to go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know
whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here
he would have told me what to do. I went to my room and
reread Joseph Alexeevich’s letters and recalled my conversations with him, and deduced from it all that I ought not
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to refuse a suppliant, and ought to reach a helping hand to
everyoneespecially to one so closely bound to meand that I
must bear my cross. But if I forgive her for the sake of doing
right, then let union with her have only a spiritual aim. That
is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph Alexeevich.
I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had
nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need
not know how hard it was for me to see her again. I have
settled on the upper floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of regeneration.



813

Chapter IX
At that time, as always happens, the highest society that
met at court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each with its own particular tone. The largest
of these was the French circle of the Napoleonic alliance,
the circle of Count Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt. In this
group Helene, as soon as she had settled in Petersburg with
her husband, took a very prominent place. She was visited
by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished
manners.
Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting
of the Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success
had been brilliant. Napoleon himself had noticed her in
the theater and said of her: ‘C’est un superbe animal.’* Her
success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not surprise
Pierre, for she had become even handsomer than before.
What did surprise him was that during these last two years
his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation ‘d’ une
femme charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle.’*[2] The distinguished Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters.
Bilibin saved up his epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova’s presence. To be received in the Countess
Bezukhova’s salon was regarded as a diploma of intellect.
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Young men read books before attending Helene’s evenings,
to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the
embassy, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a way Helene was a power. Pierre,
who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with
a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and
dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were
discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of
a conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at
any moment. But whether because stupidity was just what
was needed to run such a salon, or because those who were
deceived found pleasure in the deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova’s reputation as a
lovely and clever woman became so firmly established that
she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody would go into raptures over every word of hers and
look for a profound meaning in it of which she herself had
no conception.
*”That’s a superb animal.’
*[2] ‘Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely.’
Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He was that absent-minded crank, a grand
seigneur husband who was in no one’s way, and far from
spoiling the high tone and general impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to her, as
an advantageous background to his elegant and tactful wife.
Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt
for all else, had acquired in his wife’s circle, which did not


815

interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and
therefore inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife’s
drawing room as one enters a theater, was acquainted with
everybody, equally pleased to see everyone, and equally
indifferent to them all. Sometimes he joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of whether any
‘gentlemen of the embassy’ were present or not, lispingly
expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general
opinion concerning the queer husband of ‘the most distinguished woman in Petersburg’ was so well established that
no one took his freaks seriously.
Among the many young men who frequented her house
every day, Boris Drubetskoy, who had already achieved
great success in the service, was the most intimate friend of
the Bezukhov household since Helene’s return from Erfurt.
Helene spoke of him as ‘mon page’ and treated him like a
child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but
sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward
him Boris behaved with a particularly dignified and sad
deference. This shade of deference also disturbed Pierre. He
had suffered so painfully three years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected him that he now
protected himself from the danger of its repetition, first by
not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing himself to suspect.
‘No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally renounced her former infatuations,’ he told himself.
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‘There has never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs of the heart’a statement which,
though gathered from an unknown source, he believed
implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris’ presence in his wife’s
drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed
the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.
‘What a strange antipathy,’ thought Pierre, ‘yet I used to
like him very much.’
In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the
rather blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a
clever crank who did nothing but harmed nobody and was
a first-rate, good-natured fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development was taking place all
this time in Pierre’s soul, revealing much to him and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys.



817

Chapter X
Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote
in it during that time:
24th November
Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By Joseph Alexeevich’s advice Pierre had entered the
service of the state and served on one of the committees.]
Returned home for dinner and dined alonethe countess had
many visitors I do not like. I ate and drank moderately and
after dinner copied out some passages for the Brothers. In
the evening I went down to the countess and told a funny
story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to
have done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.
I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great
God, help me to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by
calmness and deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw from worldliness, but
not avoid (a) the service of the state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the management of my affairs.
27th November
I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to
sloth. O God, help and strengthen me that I may walk in
Thy ways! Read the Scriptures, but without proper feeling.
Brother Urusov came and we talked about worldly vanities.
He told me of the Emperor’s new projects. I began to criti818

War and Peace

cize them, but remembered my rules and my benefactor’s
wordsthat a true Freemason should be a zealous worker for
the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when
not called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G.
V. and O. visited me and we had a preliminary talk about
the reception of a new Brother. They laid on me the duty
of Rhetor. I feel myself weak and unworthy. Then our talk
turned to the interpretation of the seven pillars and steps of
the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Brother O.
was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.
The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to
the magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy
who was admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A
strange feeling agitated me all the time I was alone with him
in the dark chamber. I caught myself harboring a feeling of
hatred toward him which I vainly tried to overcome. That is
why I should really like to save him from evil and lead him
into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of him did not leave
me. It seemed to me that his object in entering the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members
of our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times whether N. and S. were members of our lodge
(a question to which I could not reply) and that according
to my observation he is incapable of feeling respect for our
holy order and is too preoccupied and satisfied with the
outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I had no cause
to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all the
time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to


819

me that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I
wished really to stab his bare breast with the sword I held
to it. I could not be eloquent, nor could I frankly mention
my doubts to the Brothers and to the Grand Master. Great
Architect of Nature, help me to find the true path out of the
labyrinth of lies!
After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and
then the following was written:
I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother
V., who advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am
unworthy, much was revealed to me. Adonai is the name of
the creator of the world. Elohim is the name of the ruler of
all. The third name is the name unutterable which means
the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen, refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt has no
place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear
to me. Human sciences dissect everything to comprehend
it, and kill everything to examine it. In the holy science of
our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and life. The
Trinitythe three elements of matterare sulphur, mercury,
and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the
latter by means of which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds
it, and in combination produces other bodies. Mercury is
a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the Holy Spirit,
Him!...
3rd December
Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. After820

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wards went and paced up and down the large hall. I wished
to meditate, but instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago, when Dolokhov, meeting me in
Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was enjoying perfect
peace of mind in spite of my wife’s absence. At the time I gave
him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that meeting
and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter
replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought
only when I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not
sufficiently repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and
began relating various adventures. His coming vexed me
from the first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He
replied. I flared up and said much that was unpleasant and
even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with
him at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above
him and so become much worse than he, for he is lenient to
my rudeness while I on the contrary nourish contempt for
him. O God, grant that in his presence I may rather see my
own vileness, and behave so that he too may benefit. After
dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I clearly heard
a voice saying in my left ear, ‘Thy day!’
I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly
a smallish dog seized my left thigh with its teeth and would
not let go. I began to throttle it with my hands. Scarcely had
I torn it off before another, a bigger one, began biting me. I
lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the bigger and heavier it
grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking my arm,


821

led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a
narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and
I began to clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach
with my hands. After much effort I dragged myself up, so
that my leg hung down on one side and my body on the
other. I looked round and saw Brother A. standing on the
fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in
the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O
Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these dogsmy passions especially the last, which unites
in itself the strength of all the former ones, and aid me to
enter that temple of virtue to a vision of which I attained in
my dream.
7th December
I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my
house, and that I was very glad and wished to entertain him.
It seemed as if I chattered incessantly with other people and
suddenly remembered that this could not please him, and I
wished to come close to him and embrace him. But as soon
as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and grown
young, and he was quietly telling me something about the
teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear
it. Then it seemed that we all left the room and something
strange happened. We were sitting or lying on the floor. He
was telling me something, and I wished to show him my
sensibility, and not listening to what he was saying I began
picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and the
grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes,
and I was glad he noticed this. But be looked at me with vex822

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ation and jumped up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed
and asked whether what he had been saying did not concern
me; but he did not reply, gave me a kind look, and then we
suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where there is a
double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with
longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, ‘Tell
me frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it?
I think you know it already.’ Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was my chief temptation. He shook his head
incredulously; and even more abashed, I said that though
I was living with my wife as he advised, I was not living
with her as her husband. To this he replied that one should
not deprive a wife of one’s embraces and gave me to understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be
ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I
awoke and found in my mind the text from the Gospel: ‘The
life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness;
and the darkness comprehended it not.’ Joseph Alexeevich’s
face had looked young and bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he wrote about ‘conjugal
duties.’
9th December
I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing
heart. I saw that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big
sitting room, and Joseph Alexeevich came in from the
drawing room. I seemed to know at once that the process of
regeneration had already taken place in him, and I rushed
to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands, and he
said, ‘Hast thou noticed that my face is different?’ I looked


823

at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face
was young, but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite changed. And I said, ‘I should have known
you had I met you by chance,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Am I
telling the truth?’ And suddenly I saw him lying like a dead
body; then he gradually recovered and went with me into
my study carrying a large book of sheets of drawing paper;
I said, ‘I drew that,’ and he answered by bowing his head.
I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings
represented the love adventures of the soul with its beloved.
And on its pages I saw a beautiful representation of a maiden
in transparent garments and with a transparent body, flying
up to the clouds. And I seemed to know that this maiden
was nothing else than a representation of the Song of Songs.
And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was
doing wrong, but could not tear myself away from them.
Lord, help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing,
Thy will be done; but if I am myself the cause, teach me what
I should do! I shall perish of my debauchery if Thou utterly
desertest me!

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Chapter XI
The Rostovs’ monetary affairs had not improved during
the two years they had spent in the country.
Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was still serving modestly in an obscure regiment,
spending comparatively little, the way of life at OtradnoeMitenka’s management of affairs, in particularwas such
that the debts inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously presenting itself to the old count was to
apply for an official post, so he had come to Petersburg
to look for one and also, as he said, to let the lassies enjoy
themselves for the last time.
Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to
Vera and was accepted.
Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg
their circle of acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite
one. In Petersburg they were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow without inquiring to
what set they belonged, here looked down on them.
The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their
suppers. Country neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters, Peronskaya a maid of
honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their district post

825

master who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the
men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs’
house in Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had
met in the street and dragged home with him, and Berg who
spent whole days at the Rostovs’ and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young man pays when
he intends to propose.
Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand
wounded at Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary
sword in his left. He narrated that episode so persistently
and with so important an air that everyone believed in the
merit and usefulness of his deed, and he had obtained two
decorations for Austerlitz.
In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed
an aide-de-camp standing near the commander in chief
and had taken it to his commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at such length and
so insistently that everyone again believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two decorations for the
Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in the Guards,
wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in Petersburg.
Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg’s merits,
it could not be denied that he was a painstaking and brave
officer, on excellent terms with his superiors, and a moral
young man with a brilliant career before him and an assured position in society.
Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the
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stalls of a Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had said in German, ‘das soll mein Weib
werden,’* and from that moment had made up his mind to
marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered the Rostovs’ position and his own, he decided that the time had
come to propose.
*”That girl shall be my wife.’
Berg’s proposal was at first received with a perplexity that
was not flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the
son of an obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess Rostova; but Berg’s chief characteristic
was such a naive and good natured egotism that the Rostovs
involuntarily came to think it would be a good thing, since
he himself was so firmly convinced that it was good, indeed
excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs’ affairs were seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above all,
Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and
though she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one
up to now had proposed to her. So they gave their consent.
‘You see,’ said Berg to his comrade, whom he called
‘friend’ only because he knew that everyone has friends,
‘you see, I have considered it all, and should not marry if
I had not thought it all out or if it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and mamma are now
provided forI have arranged that rent for them in the Baltic
Provincesand I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with
her fortune and my good management we can get along
nicely. I am not marrying for moneyI consider that dishonorablebut a wife should bring her share and a husband his.


827

I have my position in the service, she has connections and
some means. In our times that is worth something, isn’t it?
But above all, she is a handsome, estimable girl, and she
loves me..’
Berg blushed and smiled.
‘And I love her, because her character is sensible and very
good. Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite differentan unpleasant character and has not the
same intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But
my fiancee!... Well, you will be coming,’ he was going to say,
‘to dine,’ but changed his mind and said ‘to take tea with us,’
and quickly doubling up his tongue he blew a small round
ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly embodying his dream of
happiness.
After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents
by Berg’s proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at
such times took possession of the family, but the rejoicing
was external and insincere. In the family’s feeling toward
this wedding a certain awkwardness and constraint was
evident, as if they were ashamed of not having loved Vera
sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off their hands.
The old count felt this most. He would probably have been
unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how
much he had, what his debts amounted to, or what dowry
he could give Vera. When his daughters were born he had
assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with three
hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already been
sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so much
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in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.
Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week
remained before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken
to his wife about it. At one time the count thought of giving
her the Ryazan estate or of selling a forest, at another time
of borrowing money on a note of hand. A few days before
the wedding Berg entered the count’s study early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his future
father-in-law to let him know what Vera’s dowry would be.
The count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry
that without consideration he gave the first reply that came
into his head. ‘I like your being businesslike about it.... I like
it. You shall be satisfied...’
And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing
to end the conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did not know for certain how much Vera
would have and did not receive at least part of the dowry in
advance, he would have to break matters off.
‘Because, consider, Countif I allowed myself to marry
now without having definite means to maintain my wife, I
should be acting badly...’
The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be
generous and to avoid further importunity, saying that he
would give a note of hand for eighty thousand rubles. Berg
smiled meekly, kissed the count on the shoulder, and said
that he was very grateful, but that it was impossible for him
to arrange his new life without receiving thirty thousand in


829

ready money. ‘Or at least twenty thousand, Count,’ he added, ‘and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand.’
‘Yes, yes, all right!’ said the count hurriedly. ‘Only excuse
me, my dear fellow, I’ll give you twenty thousand and a note
of hand for eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me.’

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Chapter XII
Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very
year to which she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four years ago. Since then she had not
seen him. Before Sonya and her mother, if Boris happened
to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of that episode as
of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not worth
mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question
whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important,
binding promise tormented her.
Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had
had not seen the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several
times, and had passed near Otradnoe, but had never been
to see them.
Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see
her, and this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in
which her elders spoke of him.
‘Nowadays old friends are not remembered,’ the countess would say when Boris was mentioned.
Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and
always spoke rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her
son and the brilliant career on which he had entered. When
the Rostovs came to Petersburg Boris called on them.
He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of


831

Natasha was his most poetic recollection. But he went with
the firm intention of letting her and her parents feel that the
childish relations between himself and Natasha could not be
binding either on her or on him. He had a brilliant position
in society thanks to his intimacy with Countess Bezukhova,
a brilliant position in the service thanks to the patronage
of an important personage whose complete confidence he
enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which
might very easily be realized. When he entered the Rostovs’
drawing room Natasha was in her own room. When she
heard of his arrival she almost ran into the drawing room,
flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.
Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark
eyes shining from under her curls and boisterous, childish
laughter, as he had known her four years before; and so he
was taken aback when quite a different Natasha entered, and
his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This expression
on his face pleased Natasha.
‘Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?’
asked the countess.
Boris kissed Natasha’s hand and said that he was astonished at the change in her.
‘How handsome you have grown!’
‘I should think so!’ replied Natasha’s laughing eyes.
‘And is Papa older?’ she asked.
Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris’ conversation with the countess, silently and minutely studied her
childhood’s suitor. He felt the weight of that resolute and af832

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fectionate scrutiny and glanced at her occasionally.
Boris’ uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was
brushed were all comme il faut and in the latest fashion.
This Natasha noticed at once. He sat rather sideways in the
armchair next to the countess, arranging with his right
hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand like a
skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression
of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg
society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and
Moscow acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt,
that he alluded, when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to
an ambassador’s ball he had attended, and to invitations he
had received from N.N. and S.S.
All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from
under her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris
more and more. He looked round more frequently toward
her, and broke off in what he was saying. He did not stay
more than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave. The
same inquisitive, challenging, and rather mocking eyes still
looked at him. After his first visit Boris said to himself that
Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that he must
not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost
without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their former relations without intending to marry her
would be dishonorable. Boris made up his mind to avoid
meeting Natasha, but despite that resolution he called again
a few days later and began calling often and spending whole
days at the Rostovs’. It seemed to him that he ought to have
an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old times


833

must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could
not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never
let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward
about entering on such an explanation. From day to day he
became more and more entangled. It seemed to her mother
and Sonya that Natasha was in love with Boris as of old. She
sang him his favorite songs, showed him her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to the past,
letting it be understood how was the present; and every day
he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant
to, and not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or
how it would all end. He left off visiting Helene and received
reproachful notes from her every day, and yet he continued
to spend whole days with the Rostovs.

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Chapter XIII
One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing
jacket, without her false curls, and with her poor little knob
of hair showing under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing
and groaning on a rug and bowing to the ground in prayer,
her door creaked and Natasha, also in a dressing jacket with
slippers on her bare feet and her hair in curlpapers, ran in.
The countessher prayerful mood dispelledlooked round
and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: ‘Can it be
that this couch will be my grave?’ Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush,
half sat down, and unconsciously put out her tongue as if
chiding herself. Seeing that her mother was still praying she
ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly slipping one little foot
against the other, pushed off her slippers and jumped onto
the bed the countess had feared might become her grave.
This couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows
each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it,
sank into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began
snuggling up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her
knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering herself up head and all, and now peeping
at her mother. The countess finished her prayers and came
to the bed with a stern face, but seeing, that Natasha’s head
was covered, she smiled in her kind, weak way.


835

‘Now then, now then!’ said she.
‘Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?’ said Natasha. ‘Now,
just one on your throat and another... that’ll do!’ And seizing her mother round the neck, she kissed her on the throat.
In her behavior to her mother Natasha seemed rough, but
she was so sensitive and tactful that however she clasped her
mother she always managed to do it without hurting her or
making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.
‘Well, what is it tonight?’ said the mother, having arranged her pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning
over a couple of times, had settled down beside her under
the quilt, spread out her arms, and assumed a serious expression.
These visits of Natasha’s at night before the count returned from his club were one of the greatest pleasures of
both mother, and daughter.
‘What is it tonight?But I have to tell you..’
Natasha put her hand on her mother’s mouth.
‘About Boris... I know,’ she said seriously; ‘that’s what I
have come about. Don’t say itI know. No, do tell me!’ and
she removed her hand. ‘Tell me, Mamma! He’s nice?’
‘Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You
say Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son.
But what then?... What are you thinking about? You have
quite turned his head, I can see that...’
As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at
one of the mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the
bedstead, so that the countess only saw her daughter’s face
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in profile. That face struck her by its peculiarly serious and
concentrated expression.
Natasha was listening and considering.
‘Well, what then?’ said she.
‘You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you
want of him? You know you can’t marry him.’
‘Why not?’ said Natasha, without changing her position.
‘Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a
relation... and because you yourself don’t love him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know. It is not right, darling!’
‘But if I want to...’ said Natasha.
‘Leave off talking nonsense,’ said the countess.
‘But if I want to..’
‘Natasha, I am in earnest..’
Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess’
large hand to her, kissed it on the back and then on the
palm, then again turned it over and began kissing first one
knuckle, then the space between the knuckles, then the
next knuckle, whispering, ‘January, February, March, April,
May. Speak, Mamma, why don’t you say anything? Speak!’
said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at
her daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she had wished to say.
‘It won’t do, my love! Not everyone will understand this
friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him
so intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other
young men who visit us, and above all it torments him for
nothing. He may already have found a suitable and wealthy


837

match, and now he’s half crazy.’
‘Crazy?’ repeated Natasha.
‘I’ll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..’
‘I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old.’
‘He was not always old. But this is what I’ll do, Natasha,
I’ll have a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...’
‘Why not, if he likes to?’
‘Because I know it will end in nothing...’
‘How can you know? No, Mamma, don’t speak to him!
What nonsense!’ said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. ‘Well, I won’t marry, but let him come
if he enjoys it and I enjoy it.’ Natasha smiled and looked at
her mother. ‘Not to marry, but just so,’ she added.
‘How so, my pet?’
‘Just so. There’s no need for me to marry him. But... just
so.’
‘Just so, just so,’ repeated the countess, and shaking all
over, she went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly
laugh.
‘Don’t laugh, stop!’ cried Natasha. ‘You’re shaking the
whole bed! You’re awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait...’ and she seized the countess’ hands and kissed
a knuckle of the little finger, saying, ‘June,’ and continued,
kissing, ‘July, August,’ on the other hand. ‘But, Mamma, is
he very much in love? What do you think? Was anybody
ever so much in love with you? And he’s very nice, very,
very nice. Only not quite my tastehe is so narrow, like the
dining-room clock.... Don’t you understand? Narrow, you
knowgray, light gray..’
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‘What rubbish you’re talking!’ said the countess.
Natasha continued: ‘Don’t you really understand? Nicholas would understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue
and red, and he is square.’
‘You flirt with him too,’ said the countess, laughing.
‘No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, darkblue and red.... How can I explain it to you?’
‘Little countess!’ the count’s voice called from behind the
door. ‘You’re not asleep?’ Natasha jumped up, snatched up
her slippers, and ran barefoot to her own room.
It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no one could understand all that she understood
and all there was in her.
‘Sonya?’ she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little kitten with her enormous plait of hair. ‘No, how
could she? She’s virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and
does not wish to know anything more. Even Mamma does
not understand. It is wonderful how clever I am and how...
charming she is,’ she went on, speaking of herself in the
third person, and imagining it was some very wise manthe
wisest and best of menwho was saying it of her. ‘There is
everything, everything in her,’ continued this man. ‘She is
unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty, uncommonly pretty, and agileshe swims and rides splendidly...
and her voice! One can really say it’s a wonderful voice!’
She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought
that she would immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the
maid to put out the candle, and before Dunyasha had left


839

the room had already passed into yet another happier world
of dreams, where everything was as light and beautiful as in
reality, and even more so because it was different.
Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk
with him, after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs’.

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Chapter XIV
On the thirty-first of December, New Year’s Eve, 1809
10 an old grandee of Catherine’s day was giving a ball and
midnight supper. The diplomatic corps and the Emperor
himself were to be present.
The grandee’s well-known mansion on the English Quay
glittered with innumerable lights. Police were stationed at
the brightly lit entrance which was carpeted with red baize,
and not only gendarmes but dozens of police officers and
even the police master himself stood at the porch. Carriages
kept driving away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried
footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the carriages
emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while
ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them with a clatter, and
then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize at the
entrance.
Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran
through the crowd and caps were doffed.
‘The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don’t you see the plumes?...’ was whispered among the
crowd.
One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know
everyone and mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of
the day.


841

A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who were to be present, were still hurrying to get
dressed.
There had been many discussions and preparations for
this ball in the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation
would not arrive, that the dresses would not be ready, or
that something would not be arranged as it should be.
Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid
of honor at the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a
friend and relation of the countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high society, was to accompany
them to the ball.
They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten o’clock, but it was already five minutes to ten,
and the girls were not yet dressed.
Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up
at eight that morning and had been in a fever of excitement
and activity all day. All her powers since morning had been
concentrated on ensuring that they allshe herself, Mamma,
and Sonyashould be as well dressed as possible. Sonya and
her mother put themselves entirely in her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and the two
girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their
bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque.
Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands,
necks, and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits
a ball; the openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes
with ribbons were already on; the hairdressing was almost
done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was the countess,
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but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was
behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with
a dressing jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya
stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and, pressing
the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was fixing on a
last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it.
‘That’s not the way, that’s not the way, Sonya!’ cried
Natasha turning her head and clutching with both hands at
her hair which the maid who was dressing it had not time to
release. ‘That bow is not right. Come here!’
Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.
‘Allow me, Miss! I can’t do it like that,’ said the maid who
was holding Natasha’s hair.
‘Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That’s right, Sonya.’
‘Aren’t you ready? It is nearly ten,’ came the countess’
voice.
‘Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?’
‘I have only my cap to pin on.’
‘Don’t do it without me!’ called Natasha. ‘You won’t do
it right.’
‘But it’s already ten.’
They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and
Natasha had still to get dressed and they had to call at the
Taurida Gardens.
When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat
from under which her dancing shoes showed, and in her
mother’s dressing jacket, ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her,
and then ran to her mother. Turning her mother’s head this


843

way and that, she fastened on the cap and, hurriedly kissing
her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were turning up
the hem of her skirt.
The cause of the delay was Natasha’s skirt, which was too
long. Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly
biting off the ends of thread. A third with pins in her mouth
was running about between the countess and Sonya, and a
fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment up high on
one uplifted hand.
‘Mavra, quicker, darling!’
‘Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..’
‘Whenever will you be ready?’ asked the count coming
to the door. ‘Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be
tired of waiting.’
‘It’s ready, Miss,’ said the maid, holding up the shortened
gauze dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking
something off it, as if by this to express a consciousness of
the airiness and purity of what she held.
Natasha began putting on the dress.
‘In a minute! In a minute! Don’t come in, Papa!’ she cried
to her father as he opened the doorspeaking from under the
filmy skirt which still covered her whole face.
Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the
count in. He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and
stockings, and was perfumed and his hair pomaded.
‘Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!’ cried Natasha,
as she stood in the middle of the room smoothing out the
folds of the gauze.
‘If you please, Miss! allow me,’ said the maid, who on her
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knees was pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins
from one side of her mouth to the other with her tongue.
‘Say what you like,’ exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing
voice as she looked at Natasha, ‘say what you like, it’s still
too long.’
Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass.
The dress was too long.
‘Really, madam, it is not at all too long,’ said Mavra,
crawling on her knees after her young lady.
‘Well, if it’s too long we’ll take it up... we’ll tack it up in
one minute,’ said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that
was stuck on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling
on the floor, set to work once more.
At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in
shyly, in her cap and velvet gown.
‘Oo-oo, my beauty!’ exclaimed the count, ‘she looks better than any of you!’
He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped
aside fearing to be rumpled.
‘Mamma, your cap, more to this side,’ said Natasha. ‘I’ll
arrange it,’ and she rushed forward so that the maids who
were tacking up her skirt could not move fast enough and a
piece of gauze was torn off.
‘Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my
fault!’
‘Never mind, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,’ said Dunyasha.
‘What a beautya very queen!’ said the nurse as she came
to the door. ‘And Sonya! They are lovely!’


845

At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages
and started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.
Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she had gone through the same process as the Rostovs,
but with less flurryfor to her it was a matter of routine. Her
ugly old body was washed, perfumed, and powdered in just
the same way. She had washed behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing room in her yellow
dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her old lady’s
maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs’
servants had been.
She praised the Rostovs’ toilets. They praised her taste
and toilet, and at eleven o’clock, careful of their coiffures
and dresses, they settled themselves in their carriages and
drove off.

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War and Peace

Chapter XV
Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning
and had not once had time to think of what lay before her.
In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying
carriage, she for the first time vividly imagined what was in
store for her there at the ball, in those brightly lighted roomswith music, flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant
young people of Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that
she hardly believed it would come true, so out of keeping was
it with the chill darkness and closeness of the carriage. She
understood all that awaited her only when, after stepping over
the red baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took off
her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in front of her mother,
mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between the flowers.
Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball,
and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her,
she felt her eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her
pulse beat a hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at
her heart. She could not assume that pose, which would have
made her ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from
excitement and trying with all her might to conceal it. And
this was the very attitude that became her best. Before and
behind them other visitors were entering, also talking in low
tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the landing


847

reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.
Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish
her reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum
of voices, footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the
light and glitter dazzled her still more. The host and hostess,
who had already been standing at the door for half an hour
repeating the same words to the various arrivals, ‘Charme de
vous voir,’* greeted the Rostovs and Peronskaya in the same
manner.
*”Delighted to see you.’
The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her
black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess’ eye
involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked
at her and gave her alone a special smile in addition to her
usual smile as hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled
the golden, irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her
own first ball. The host also followed Natasha with his eyes
and asked the count which was his daughter.
‘Charming!’ said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance
doors awaiting the Emperor. The countess took up a position
in one of the front rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt
that several people were asking about her and looking at her.
She realized that those noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.
‘There are some like ourselves and some worse,’ she
thought.
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Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people at the ball.
‘That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That grayhaired man,’ she said, indicating an old man with a profusion
of silver-gray curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.
‘Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova,’ said Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just
entered. ‘How lovely! She is quite equal to Marya Antonovna.
See how the men, young and old, pay court to her. Beautiful
and clever... they say Princeis quite mad about her. But see,
those two, though not good-looking, are even more run after.’
She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed
by a very plain daughter.
‘She is a splendid match, a millionairess,’ said Peronskaya.
‘And look, here come her suitors.’
‘That is Bezukhova’s brother, Anatole Kuragin,’ she said, indicating a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed
by them with head erect, looking at something over the heads
of the ladies. ‘He’s handsome, isn’t he? I hear they will marry
him to that rich girl. But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very
attentive to her. They say she has millions. Oh yes, that’s the
French ambassador himself!’ she replied to the countess’ inquiry about Caulaincourt. ‘Looks as if he were a king! All the
same, the French are charming, very charming. No one more
charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the most
beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply
she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the


849

universal Freemason,’ she went on, indicating Pierre. ‘Put him
beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!’
Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way
through the crowd and nodding to right and left as casually
and good-naturedly as if he were passing through a crowd at a
fair. He pushed through, evidently looking for someone.
Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, ‘the
buffoon,’ as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was
looking for them, and for her in particular. He had promised
to be at the ball and introduce partners to her.
But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very
handsome, dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window talking to a tall man wearing
stars and a ribbon. Natasha at once recognized the shorter
and younger man in the white uniform: it was Bolkonski, who
seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and better-looking.
‘There’s someone else we knowBolkonski, do you see,
Mamma?’ said Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. ‘You remember, he stayed a night with us at Otradnoe.’
‘Oh, you know him?’ said Peronskaya. ‘I can’t bear him.
Il fait a present la pluie et le beau temps.’* He’s too proud for
anything. Takes after his father. And he’s hand in glove with
Speranski, writing some project or other. Just look how he
treats the ladies! There’s one talking to him and he has turned
away,’ she said, pointing at him. ‘I’d give it to him if he treated
me as he does those ladies.’
*”He is all the rage just now.
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War and Peace

Chapter XVI
Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed
forward and then back, and between the two rows, which
separated, the Emperor entered to the sounds of music that
had immediately struck up. Behind him walked his host and
hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left as if
anxious to get the first moments of the reception over. The
band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on account
of the words that had been set to it, beginning: ‘Alexander,
Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite...’ The Emperor
passed on to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for
the doors, and several persons with excited faces hurried
there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from
the drawing-room door, at which the Emperor reappeared
talking to the hostess. A young man, looking distraught,
pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.
Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of
all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment
of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take
their places for the polonaise.
Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling
out of the drawing room leading his hostess by the hand
but not keeping time to the music. The host followed with
Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came ambassadors,
ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya diligent

851

ly named. More than half the ladies already had partners
and were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions
for the polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with
her mother and Sonya among a minority of women who
crowded near the wall, not having been invited to dance.
She stood with her slender arms hanging down, her scarcely
defined bosom rising and falling regularly, and with bated
breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight before
her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She
was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great
people whom Peronskaya was pointing outshe had but one
thought: ‘Is it possible no one will ask me, that I shall not
be among the first to dance? Is it possible that not one of
all these men will notice me? They do not even seem to see
me, or if they do they look as if they were saying, ‘Ah, she’s
not the one I’m after, so it’s not worth looking at her!’ No,
it’s impossible,’ she thought. ‘They must know how I long to
dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would enjoy
dancing with me.’
The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a
considerable time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha’s ears. She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had
left them. The count was at the other end of the room. She
and the countess and Sonya were standing by themselves as
in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of strangers, with
no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone. Prince
Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing
them. The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a
partner on his arm and looked at Natasha as one looks at a
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wall. Boris passed them twice and each time turned away.
Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.
This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natashaas
if there were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at
the ball. She did not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling
her something about her own green dress.
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he
had danced with three) and the music ceased. A worried
aide-de-camp ran up to the Rostovs requesting them to
stand farther back, though as it was they were already close
to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the distinct,
precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed
but no one had yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the
Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess Bezukhova and
asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and laid it
on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp,
an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her
waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding
first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the
room he caught Helene’s left hand and turned her, the only
sound audible, apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his rapid, agile feet,
while at every third beat his partner’s velvet dress spread out
and seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natasha gazed at
them and was ready to cry because it was not she who was
dancing that first turn of the waltz.
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking


853

animated and bright in the front row of the circle not far
from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was talking to him about
the first sitting of the Council of State to be held next day.
Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with Speranski
and participating in the work of the legislative commission,
could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which various rumors were current. But not listening to
what Firhoff was saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign
and now at the men intending to dance who had not yet
gathered courage to enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the
Emperor’s presence, and the women who were breathlessly
longing to be asked to dance.
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
‘You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova,
here. Ask her,’ he said.
‘Where is she?’ asked Bolkonski. ‘Excuse me!’ he added,
turning to the baron, ‘we will finish this conversation elsewhereat a ball one must dance.’ He stepped forward in the
direction Pierre indicated. The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha’s face caught his eye. He recognized her,
guessed her feelings, saw that it was her debut, remembered
her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.
‘Allow me to introduce you to my daughter,’ said the
countess, with heightened color.
‘I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the
countess remembers me,’ said Prince Andrew with a low
and courteous bow quite belying Peronskaya’s remarks
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about his rudeness, and approaching Natasha he held out
his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natasha’s face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
‘I have long been waiting for you,’ that frightened happy little girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the
threatened tears, as she raised her hand to Prince Andrew’s
shoulder. They were the second couple to enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of his day and
Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their white
satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic
happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautifulcompared to Helene’s her shoulders looked thin and her
bosom undeveloped. But Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had
scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl exposed
for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed
had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as
quickly as possible from the political and clever talk which
everyone addressed to him, wishing also to break up the
circle of restraint he disliked, caused by the Emperor’s presence, he danced, and had chosen Natasha because Pierre
pointed her out to him and because she was the first pretty
girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he embraced that
slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him


855

and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to
his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when
after leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching
the other dancers.

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Chapter XVII
After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for
dance, and then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball,
and several other young men, so that, flushed and happy,
and passing on her superfluous partners to Sonya, she did
not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and saw
nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did she
fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the
French ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was
to a certain lady, or that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so
did and said this and that, and that Helene had great success
and was honored was by the special attention of So-and-so,
but she did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that
he had gone because the ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince
Andrew was again her partner. He reminded her of their
first encounter in the Otradnoe avenue, and how she had
been unable to sleep that moonlight night, and told her how
he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha blushed at that
recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been
something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had
overheard.
Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting someone there not of the conventional
society stamp. And such was Natasha, with her surprise,


857

her delight, her shyness, and even her mistakes in speaking
French. With her he behaved with special care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most
unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the
middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures,
Natasha, still out of breath, was returning to her seat when
another dancer chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but immediately put her hand
gaily on the man’s shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.
‘I’d be glad to sit beside you and rest: I’m tired; but you
see how they keep asking me, and I’m glad of it, I’m happy
and I love everybody, and you and I understand it all,’ and
much, much more was said in her smile. When her partner
left her Natasha ran across the room to choose two ladies
for the figure.
‘If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady,
she will be my wife,’ said Prince Andrew to himself quite to
his own surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her
cousin.
‘What rubbish sometimes enters one’s head!’ thought
Prince Andrew, ‘but what is certain is that that girl is so
charming, so original, that she won’t be dancing here a
month before she will be married.... Such as she are rare
here,’ he thought, as Natasha, readjusting a rose that was
slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue
coat came up to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to
come and see them, and asked his daughter whether she was
enjoying herself. Natasha did not answer at once but only
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looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: ‘How can
you ask such a question?’
‘I have never enjoyed myself so much before!’ she said,
and Prince Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her father and instantly dropped again.
Natasha was happier than she had ever been in her life. She
was at that height of bliss when one becomes completely
kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of evil,
unhappiness, or sorrow.
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the
position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy
and absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead,
and standing by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.
On her way to supper Natasha passed him.
Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in
front of him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the
superabundance of her own happiness.
‘How delightful it is, Count!’ said she. ‘Isn’t it?’
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping
what she said.
‘Yes, I am very glad,’ he said.
‘How can people be dissatisfied with anything?’ thought
Natasha. ‘Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!’ In
Natasha’s eyes all the people at the ball alike were good,
kind, and splendid people, loving one another; none of
them capable of injuring anotherand so they ought all to
be happy.


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Chapter XVIII
Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind
did not dwell on it long. ‘Yes, it was a very brilliant ball,’
and then... ‘Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There’s
something fresh, original, un-Petersburg-like about her that
distinguishes her.’ That was all he thought about yesterday’s
ball, and after his morning tea he set to work.
But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was illdisposed for work and could get nothing done. He kept
criticizing his own work, as he often did, and was glad when
he heard someone coming.
The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees,
frequented all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate
devotee of the new ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent
Petersburg newsmongerone of those men who choose their
opinions like their clothes according to the fashion, but who
for that very reason appear to be the warmest partisans.
Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into Prince
Andrew’s room with a preoccupied air and at once began
talking. He had just heard particulars of that morning’s sitting of the Council of State opened by the Emperor, and he
spoke of it enthusiastically. The Emperor’s speech had been
extraordinary. It had been a speech such as only constitutional monarchs deliver. ‘The Sovereign plainly said that the
Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
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government must rest not on authority but on secure bases.
The Emperor said that the fiscal system must be reorganized
and the accounts published,’ recounted Bitski, emphasizing
certain words and opening his eyes significantly.
‘Ah, yes! Today’s events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our history,’ he concluded.
Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening
of the Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached such importance, and was
surprised that this event, now that it had taken place, did
not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski’s enthusiastic account of it.
A very simple thought occurred to him: ‘What does it matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at
the Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?’
And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He
was going to dine that evening at Speranski’s, ‘with only a
few friends,’ as the host had said when inviting him. The
prospect of that dinner in the intimate home circle of the
man he so admired had greatly interested Prince Andrew,
especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his domestic
surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.
At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the
parqueted dining room this small house, remarkable for
its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a monastery),
Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
gathering of Speranski’s intimate acquaintances already as

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sembled at five o’clock. There were no ladies present except
Speranski’s little daughter (long-faced like her father) and
her governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski,
and Stolypin. While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew
heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugha laugh such
as one hears on the stage. Someoneit sounded like Speranskiwas distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had
never before heard Speranski’s famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a strange
impression on him.
He entered the dining room. The whole company were
standing between two windows at a small table laid with
hors-d’oeuvres. Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat
with a star on the breast, and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of the
Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski, addressing
himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going
to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski’s
words were again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep
bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speranski in
a high-pitched staccato manner.
Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to
Prince Andrew.
‘Very pleased to see you, Prince,’ he said. ‘One moment...’
he went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story.
‘We have agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not
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a word about business!’ and turning again to the narrator he
began to laugh afresh.
Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with
astonishment, regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him
that this was not Speranski but someone else. Everything
that had formerly appeared mysterious and fascinating in
Speranski suddenly became plain and unattractive.
At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment
and seemed to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnitski had finished his story someone
else was anxious to relate something still funnier. Most of
the anecdotes, if not relating to the state service, related to
people in the service. It seemed that in this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted that
the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that
morning a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied
that he thought so too. Gervais gave a long account of an
official revision, remarkable for the stupidity of everybody
concerned. Stolypin, stuttering, broke into the conversation
and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed under
the former order of thingsthreatening to give a serious turn
to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing Stolypin
about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and
the talk reverted to its former lively tone.
Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find
amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves.
But their gaiety seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and


863

tiresome. Speranski’s high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated on him like a
false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and feared that he
would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no
one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the
general mood. They all seemed very gay.
He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his
remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out
of the water, and he could not jest with them.
There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said,
it was witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just
that something which is the salt of mirth, and they were not
even aware that such a thing existed.
After dinner Speranski’s daughter and her governess
rose. He patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed
her. And that gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.
The men remained at table over their portEnglish fashion. In the midst of a conversation that was started about
Napoleon’s Spanish affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to express a contrary opinion.
Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish to prevent the
conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a story
that had no connection with the previous conversation. For
a few moments all were silent.
Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine and, remarking, ‘Nowadays good wine rides
in a carriage and pair,’ passed it to the servant and got up.
All rose and continuing to talk loudly went into the draw864

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ing room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed to
Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as he had
left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests
began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.
‘Now for the recitation!’ said Speranski on returning from his study. ‘A wonderful talent!’ he said to Prince
Andrew, and Magnitski immediately assumed a pose and
began reciting some humorous verses in French which he
had composed about various well-known Petersburg people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When
the verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his leave.
‘Where are you off to so early?’ asked Speranski.
‘I promised to go to a reception.’
They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into
those mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been
ridiculous of him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own activities connected with him,
or ever to have attributed importance to what Speranski
was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang in Prince
Andrew’s ears long after he had left the house.
When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking
of his life in Petersburg during those last four months as if
it were something new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project of army reform,
which had been accepted for consideration and which they
were trying to pass over in silence simply because another,
a very poor one, had already been prepared and submitted
to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee


865

of which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully
and at what length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how sedulously
and promptly all that related to the gist of the business was
evaded. He recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how
painstakingly he had translated the articles of the Roman
and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his
occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and
mentally applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished that he could have
spent so much time on such useless work.

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Chapter XIX
Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had
not visited before, and among them at the Rostovs’ with
whom he had renewed acquaintance at the ball. Apart from
considerations of politeness which demanded the call, he
wanted to see that original, eager girl who had left such a
pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew
thought her even prettier than in her ball dress. She and
all the Rostov family welcomed him as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly
judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent,
simple, and kindly people. The old count’s hospitality and
good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a
pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not
refuse to stay to dinner. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘they are capital people, who of course have not the slightest idea what
a treasure they possess in Natasha; but they are kindly folk
and form the best possible setting for this strikingly poetic,
charming girl, overflowing with life!’
In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange
world completely alien to him and brimful of joys unknown
to him, a different world, that in the Otradnoe avenue and
at the window that moonlight night had already begun to


867

disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having
entered it found in it a new enjoyment.
After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew’s request, went
to the clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood
by a window talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the
midst of a phrase he ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears
choking him, a thing he had thought impossible for him.
He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new and
joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time
sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was
ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes
and no. The chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the
terrible contrast between something infinitely great and
illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on
and yet cheered him while she sang.
As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and
asked how he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that she ought not to have asked it.
He smiled, looking at her, and said he liked her singing as
he liked everything she did.
Prince Andrew left the Rostovs’ late in the evening. He
went to bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not
sleep. Having lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up,
then lay down again not at all troubled by his sleeplessness:
his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had stepped out of
a stuffy room into God’s own fresh air. It did not enter his
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head that he was in love with Natasha; he was not thinking
about her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. ‘Why do I strive, why
do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life
with all its joys, is open to me?’ said he to himself. And for
the first time for a very long while he began making happy
plans for the future. He decided that he must attend to his
son’s education by finding a tutor and putting the boy in
his charge, then he ought to retire from the service and go
abroad, and see England, Switzerland and Italy. ‘I must use
my freedom while I feel so much strength and youth in me,’
he said to himself. ‘Pierre was right when he said one must
believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy,
and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but
while one has life one must live and be happy!’ thought he.
CHAPTER XX
One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he
knew everybody in Moscow and Petersburg, came to see
him. Berg arrived in an immaculate brand-new uniform,
with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
‘I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I
shall be more fortunate with you,’ he said with a smile.
‘What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service.’
‘I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count’ (Berg
said this with perfect conviction that this information could
not but be agreeable), ‘and so I wish to arrange just a small
party for my own and my wife’s friends.’ (He smiled still


869

more pleasantly.) ‘I wished to ask the countess and you to do
me the honor of coming to tea and to supper.’
Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such
people as the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to
refuse such an invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he
wanted to collect at his house a small but select company,
and why this would give him pleasure, and why though he
grudged spending money on cards or anything harmful, he
was prepared to run into some expense for the sake of good
societythat Pierre could not refuse, and promised to come.
‘But don’t be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about
ten minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber.
Our general is coming. He is very good to me. We shall have
supper, Count. So you will do me the favor.’
Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the Bergs’ house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes
to eight.
Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the
Bergs were really for their guests’ arrival.
In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts
and pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg,
closely buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife
explaining to her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above one, because only then does one
get satisfaction from acquaintances.
‘You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I managed from my first promotion.’ (Berg
measured his life not by years but by promotions.) ‘My
comrades are still nobodies, while I am only waiting for a
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vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband.’ (He rose and kissed Vera’s hand, and on
the way to her straightened out a turned-up corner of the
carpet.) ‘And how have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my aquaintances. It goes without saying
that one must be conscientious and methodical.’
Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak
woman, and paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was
after all but a weak woman who could not understand all
that constitutes a man’s dignity, what it was ein Mann zu
sein.* Vera at the same time smiling with a sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men
did. Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and
foolish. Vera, judging only by her husband and generalizing
from that observation, supposed that all men, though they
understand nothing and are conceited and selfish, ascribe
common sense to themselves alone.
*To be a man.
Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to
crush her lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the lips.
‘The only thing is, we mustn’t have children too soon,’ he
continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
‘Yes,’ answered Vera, ‘I don’t at all want that. We must
live for society.’
‘Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this,’ said Berg,
pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and


871

wife glanced at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming the honor of this visit.
‘This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,’ thought Berg. ‘This is what comes of knowing
how to conduct oneself.’
‘But please don’t interrupt me when I am entertaining
the guests,’ said Vera, ‘because I know what interests each
of them and what to say to different people.’
Berg smiled again.
‘It can’t be helped: men must sometimes have masculine
conversation,’ said he.
They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room,
where it was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry, neatness, and order; so it was quite
comprehensible and not strange that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an armchair or of
the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently painfully
undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the
symmetry by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera
immediately began their evening party, interrupting each
other in their efforts to entertain their guest.
Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought
to be entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once began accordingly. Berg, having decided that
masculine conversation was required, interrupted his wife’s
remarks and touched on the question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the general subject to
personal considerations as to the proposals made him to
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take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he
had declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera was angry at the intrusion of the masculine
element, both husband and wife felt with satisfaction that,
even if only one guest was present, their evening had begun
very well and was as like as two peas to every other evening
party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
Before long Boris, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There
was a shade of condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After Boris came a lady with the
colonel, then the general himself, then the Rostovs, and the
party became unquestionably exactly like all other evening
parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing
room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of
dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just
as everybody always has it, especially so the general, who
admired the apartment, patted Berg on the shoulder, and
with parental authority superintended the setting out of the
table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The
old people sat with the old, the young with the young, and
the hostess at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same
kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as the Panins had at
their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere else.



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Chapter XXI
Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to
boston with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At
the card table he happened to be directly facing Natasha,
and was struck by a curious change that had come over her
since the ball, She was silent, and not only less pretty than
at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by her look of
gentle indifference to everything around.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ thought Pierre, glancing
at her. She was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without looking at him, made some reply to Boris
who sat down beside her. After playing out a whole suit
and to his partner’s delight taking five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had entered the
room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at
Natasha.
‘What has happened to her?’ he asked himself with still
greater surprise.
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a look of tender solicitude. She, having
raised her head, was looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And the bright
glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again
alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a
plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.
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Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a
new and youthful expression in his friend’s face.
Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but
during the whole of the six rubbers he watched her and his
friend.
‘Something very important is happening between them,’
thought Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and made him neglect the game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no
use playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on
one side was talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a
subtle smile was saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre
went up to his friend and, asking whether they were talking
secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince
Andrew’s attentions to Natasha, decided that at a party, a
real evening party, subtle allusions to the tender passion
were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when
Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him
about feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she
felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was
being carried away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince
Andrew seemed embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened
with him.
‘What do you think?’ Vera was saying with an arch
smile. ‘You are so discerning, Prince, and understand people’s characters so well at a glance. What do you think of


875

Natalie? Could she be constant in her attachments? Could
she, like other women’ (Vera meant herself), ‘love a man
once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what I
consider true love. What do you think, Prince?’
‘I know your sister too little,’ replied Prince Andrew,
with a sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his
embarrassment, ‘to be able to solve so delicate a question,
and then I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is
the more constant she is likely to be,’ he added, and looked
up Pierre who was just approaching them.
‘Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,’ continued Veramentioning ‘our days’ as people of limited intelligence are
fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and
appraised the peculiarities of ‘our days’ and that human
characteristics change with the times‘in our days a girl has
so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often
stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that Natalie is very susceptible.’ This return to the subject of Natalie
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort:
he was about to rise, but Vera continued with a still more
subtle smile:
‘I think no one has been more courted than she,’ she went
on, ‘but till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone.
Now you know, Count,’ she said to Pierre, ‘even our dear
cousin Boris, who, between ourselves, was very far gone in
the land of tenderness...’ (alluding to a map of love much in
vogue at that time).
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
‘You are friendly with Boris, aren’t you?’ asked Vera.
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‘Yes, I know him..’
‘I expect he has told you of his childish love for
Natasha?’
‘Oh, there was childish love?’ suddenly asked Prince Andrew, blushing unexpectedly.
‘Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to
love. Le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don’t you
think so?’
*”Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.’
‘Oh, undoubtedly!’ said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about
the need to be very careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow
cousins, and in the midst of these jesting remarks he rose,
taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
‘Well?’ asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange animation with surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on
Natasha as he rose.
‘I must... I must have a talk with you,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘You know that pair of women’s gloves?’ (He referred
to the Masonic gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to
present to the woman he loved.) ‘I... but no, I will talk to you
later on,’ and with a strange light in his eyes and restlessness
in his movements, Prince Andrew approached Natasha and
sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince Andrew asked
her something and how she flushed as she replied.
But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he should take part in an argument between the
general and the colonel on the affairs in Spain.
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never


877

left his face. The party was very successful and quite like
other parties he had seen. Everything was similar: the ladies’ subtle talk, the cards, the general raising his voice at
the card table, and the samovar and the tea cakes; only one
thing was lacking that he had always seen at the evening
parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet had a loud
conversation among the men and a dispute about something important and clever. Now the general had begun
such a discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.

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Chapter XXII
Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day
there.
Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince
Andrew came, and without concealing it he tried to be with
Natasha all day. Not only in the soul of the frightened yet
happy and enraptured Natasha, but in the whole house,
there was a feeling of awe at something important that was
bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and sternly
serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha
and timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave
Natasha and afraid of being in the way when she was with
them. Natasha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when
she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew
surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say
something to her but could not bring himself to do so.
In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to Natasha and whispered: ‘Well, what?’
‘Mamma! For heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything now!
One can’t talk about that,’ said Natasha.
But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and
now frightened, lay long time in her mother’s bed gazing
straight before her. She told her how he had complimented


879

her, how he told her he was going abroad, asked her where
they were going to spend the summer, and then how he had
asked her about Boris.
‘But such a... such a... never happened to me before!’ she
said. ‘Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid
when I’m with him. What does that mean? Does it mean
that it’s the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?’
‘No, my love; I am frightened myself,’ answered her
mother. ‘Now go!’
‘All the same I shan’t sleep. What silliness, to sleep!
Mummy! Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before,’ she said, surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was
aware of in herself. ‘And could we ever have thought!..’
It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw
Prince Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him.
It was as if she feared this strange, unexpected happiness of
meeting again the very man she had then chosen (she was
firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding him, as it
seemed, not indifferent to her.
‘And it had to happen that he should come specially to
Petersburg while we are here. And it had to happen that we
should meet at that ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this! Already then, directly I saw him I
felt something peculiar.’
‘What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read
them...’ said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some
verses Prince Andrew had written in Natasha’s album.
‘Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?’
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‘Don’t, Natasha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in
heaven,’’ said her mother.
‘Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!’
cried Natasha, shedding tears of joy and excitement and
embracing her mother.
At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre
and telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve
to make her his wife.
That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house.
The French ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of
the blood who had of late become a frequent visitor of hers,
and many brilliant ladies and gentlemen. Pierre, who had
come downstairs, walked through the rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.
Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous
depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it.
Since the intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre
had unexpectedly been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel oppressed and
ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity
of all things human came to him oftener than before. At
the same time the feeling he had noticed between his protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by
the contrast between his own position and his friend’s. He
tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife, and about
Natasha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed
to him insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the
question: for what? presented itself; and he forced himself to
work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to drive away


881

the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after
he had left the countess’ apartments, he was sitting upstairs
in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his
low room cloudy with tobacco smoke, when someone came
in. It was Prince Andrew.
‘Ah, it’s you!’ said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied
air. ‘And I, you see, am hard at it.’ He pointed to his manuscript book with that air of escaping from the ills of life with
which unhappy people look at their work.
Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of
renewed life on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not
noticing his sad look, smiled at him with the egotism of
joy.
‘Well, dear heart,’ said he, ‘I wanted to tell you about it
yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it before. I am in love, my friend!’
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his
heavy person down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
‘With Natasha Rostova, yes?’ said he.
‘Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have
believed it, but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and suffered, but I would not exchange even
that torment for anything in the world, I have not lived till
now. At last I live, but I can’t live without her! But can she
love me?... I am too old for her.... Why don’t you speak?’
‘I? I? What did I tell you?’ said Pierre suddenly, rising and
beginning to pace up and down the room. ‘I always thought
it.... That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear
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friend, I entreat you, don’t philosophize, don’t doubt, marry, marry, marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier
man than you.’
‘But what of her?’
‘She loves you.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish...’ said Prince Andrew, smiling and
looking into Pierre’s eyes.
‘She does, I know,’ Pierre cried fiercely.
‘But do listen,’ returned Prince Andrew, holding him by
the arm. ‘Do you know the condition I am in? I must talk
about it to someone.’
‘Well, go on, go on. I am very glad,’ said Pierre, and his
face really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed,
and really was, quite a different, quite a new man. Where
was his spleen, his contempt for life, his disillusionment?
Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul.
Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his
father’s caprice, and spoke of how he would either make his
father consent to this marriage and love her, or would do
without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that
had mastered him as at something strange, apart from and
independent of himself.
‘I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was
capable of such love,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘It is not at all the
same feeling that I knew in the past. The whole world is now
for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all


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is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything where she is
not, and there is all gloom and darkness...’
‘Darkness and gloom,’ reiterated Pierre: ‘yes, yes, I understand that.’
‘I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I
am very happy! You understand me? I know you are glad
for my sake.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a
touched and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince
Andrew’s lot appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his
own.

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Chapter XXIII
Prince Andrew needed his father’s consent to his marriage, and to obtain this he started for the country next
day.
His father received his son’s communication with
external composure, but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life or introduce
anything new into it, when his own life was already ending.
‘If only they would let me end my days as I want to,’ thought
the old man, ‘then they might do as they please.’ With his
son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for
important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed
the whole matter.
In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as
regards birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew
was no longer as young as he had been and his health was
poor (the old man laid special stress on this), while she was
very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would be a pity
to entrust to a chit of a girl. ‘Fourthly and finally,’ the father
said, looking ironically at his son, ‘I beg you to put it off for a
year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for a
German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or obstinacyas you pleaseis still as great, marry! And
that’s my last word on it. Mind, the last...’ concluded the
prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make


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him alter his decision.
Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that
his feelings, or his fiancee’s, would not stand a year’s test, or
that he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and
he decided to conform to his father’s wishto propose, and
postpone the wedding for a year.
Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the
Rostovs, Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski all day, but he did not come. On the second
and third day it was the same. Pierre did not come either
and Natasha, not knowing that Prince Andrew had gone to
see his father, could not explain his absence to herself.
Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to
go out anywhere and wandered from room to room like a
shadow, idle and listless; she wept secretly at night and did
not go to her mother in the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed to her that everybody knew
about her disappointment and was laughing at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound to her
vanity intensified her misery.
Once she came to her mother, tried to say something,
and suddenly began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not know why it is being punished.
The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to her mother’s words, suddenly interrupted her:
‘Leave off, Mamma! I don’t think, and don’t want to
think about it! He just came and then left off, left off..’
Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but re886

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covered and went on quietly:
‘And I don’t at all want to get married. And I am afraid of
him; I have now become quite calm, quite calm.’
The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old
dress which she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the mornings, and that day she
returned to the old way of life which she had abandoned
since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went
to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud
resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had
finished her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the
room and sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased
her. She listened joyfully (as though she had not expected
it) to the charm of the notes reverberating, filling the whole
empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at once she
felt cheerful. ‘What’s the good of making so much of it?
Things are nice as it is,’ she said to herself, and she began
walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the
resounding parquet but treading with each step from the
heel to the toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes)
and listening to the regular tap of the heel and creak of the
toe as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own voice.
Passing a mirror she glanced into it. ‘There, that’s me!’ the
expression of her face seemed to say as she caught sight of
herself. ‘Well, and very nice too! I need nobody.’
A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in
the room but she would not let him, and having closed the
door behind him continued her walk. That morning she had
returned to her favorite moodlove of, and delight in, herself.


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‘How charming that Natasha is!’ she said again, speaking as
some third, collective, male person. ‘Pretty, a good voice,
young, and in nobody’s way if only they leave her in peace.’
But however much they left her in peace she could not now
be at peace, and immediately felt this.
In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked,
‘At home?’ and then footsteps were heard. Natasha was
looking at the mirror, but did not see herself. She listened to
the sounds in the hall. When she saw herself, her face was
pale. It was he. She knew this for certain, though she hardly
heard his voice through the closed doors.
Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.
‘Mamma! Bolkonski has come!’ she said. ‘Mamma, it
is awful, it is unbearable! I don’t want... to be tormented?
What am I to do?..’
Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room with an agitated and serious face. As soon as
he saw Natasha his face brightened. He kissed the countess’
hand and Natasha’s, and sat down beside the sofa.
‘It is long since we had the pleasure...’ began the countess,
but Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question, obviously in haste to say what he had to.
‘I have not been to see all this time because I have been at
my father’s. I had to talk over a very important matter with
him. I only got back last night,’ he said glancing at Natasha;
‘I want to have a talk with you, Countess,’ he added after a
moment’s pause.
The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.
‘I am at your disposal,’ she murmured.
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Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable
to do so: something gripped her throat, and regardless of
manners she stared straight at Prince Andrew with wideopen eyes.
‘At once? This instant!... No, it can’t be!’ she thought.
Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her
that she was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant,
her fate would be decided.
‘Go, Natasha! I will call you,’ said the countess in a whisper.
Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince
Andrew and at her mother and went out.
‘I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter’s hand,’
said Prince Andrew.
The countess’ face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
‘Your offer...’ she began at last sedately. He remained silent, looking into her eyes. ‘Your offer...’ (she grew confused)
‘is agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And
my husband... I hope... but it will depend on her...’
‘I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you
give it to me?’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Yes,’ replied the countess. She held out her hand to him,
and with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness
pressed her lips to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her
hand. She wished to love him as a son, but felt that to her he
was a stranger and a terrifying man. ‘I am sure my husband
will consent,’ said the countess, ‘but your father..’
‘My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an
express condition of his consent that the wedding is not to


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take place for a year. And I wished to tell you of that,’ said
Prince Andrew.
‘It is true that Natasha is still young, butso long as
that?..’
‘It is unavoidable,’ said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
‘I will send her to you,’ said the countess, and left the
room.
‘Lord have mercy upon us!’ she repeated while seeking
her daughter.
Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha
was sitting on the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at
the icons and whispering something as she rapidly crossed
herself. Seeing her mother she jumped up and flew to her.
‘Well, Mamma?... Well?..’
‘Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand,’ said the
countess, coldly it seemed to Natasha. ‘Go... go,’ said the
mother, sadly and reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her
daughter ran away.
Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing
room. When she came in and saw him she paused. ‘Is it possible that this stranger has now become everything to me?’
she asked herself, and immediately answered, ‘Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than everything in the
world.’ Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast eyes.
‘I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you.
May I hope?’
He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression of her face. Her face said: ‘Why ask? Why
doubt what you cannot but know? Why speak, when words
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cannot express what one feels?’
She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand
and kissed it.
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then
she sighed loudly and, catching her breath more and more
quickly, began to sob.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, I am so happy!’ she replied, smiled through her
tears, bent over closer to him, paused for an instant as if
asking herself whether she might, and then kissed him.
Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and
did not find in his heart his former love for her. Something
in him had suddenly changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but there was pity
for her feminine and childish weakness, fear at her devotion
and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of the
duty that now bound him to her forever. The present feeling,
though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger
and more serious.
‘Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?’
asked Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.
‘Is it possible that Ithe ‘chit of a girl,’ as everybody called
me,’ thought Natasha‘is it possible that I am now to be the
wife and the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom
even my father looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true
that there can be no more playing with life, that now I am
grown up, that on me now lies a responsibility for my every
word and deed? Yes, but what did he ask me?’


891

‘No,’ she replied, but she had not understood his question.
‘Forgive me!’ he said. ‘But you are so young, and I have
already been through so much in life. I am afraid for you,
you do not yet know yourself.’
Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but
failing to take in the meaning of his words.
‘Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be,’
continued Prince Andrew, ‘it will give you time to be sure of
yourself. I ask you to make me happy in a year, but you are
free: our engagement shall remain a secret, and should you
find that you do not love me, or should you come to love...’
said Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.
‘Why do you say that?’ Natasha interrupted him. ‘You
know that from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I
have loved you,’ she cried, quite convinced that she spoke
the truth.
‘In a year you will learn to know yourself...’
‘A whole year!’ Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that the marriage was to be postponed for a year.
‘But why a year? Why a year?..’
Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for
this delay. Natasha did not hear him.
‘And can’t it be helped?’ she asked. Prince Andrew did
not reply, but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.
‘It’s awful! Oh, it’s awful! awful!’ Natasha suddenly cried,
and again burst into sobs. ‘I shall die, waiting a year: it’s impossible, it’s awful!’ She looked into her lover’s face and saw
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in it a look of commiseration and perplexity.
‘No, no! I’ll do anything!’ she said, suddenly checking
her tears. ‘I am so happy.’
The father and mother came into the room and gave the
betrothed couple their blessing.
From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs’ as Natasha’s affianced lover.



893

Chapter XXIV
No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha’s engagement to Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew
insisted on that. He said that as he was responsible for the
delay he ought to bear the whole burden of it; that he had
given his word and bound himself forever, but that he did
not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom. If
after six months she felt that she did not love him she would
have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor
her parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was
firm. He came every day to the Rostovs’, but did not behave
to Natasha as an affianced lover: he did not use the familiar
thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her hand. After
their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them. It was as if they had not
known each other till now. Both liked to recall how they
had regarded each other when as yet they were nothing to
one another; they felt themselves now quite different beings:
then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first
the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince
Andrew; he seemed a man from another world, and for a
long time Natasha trained the family to get used to him,
proudly assuring them all that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them, and that she was
not afraid of him and no one else ought to be. After a few
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days they grew accustomed to him, and without restraint
in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he
took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the
count, fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about
albums and fancywork with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his presence expressed
their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew’s coming
to Otradnoe and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and Prince Andrew which her nurse
had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew’s encounter with
Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening that
it had to be.
In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned
which always accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting together everyone kept silent.
Sometimes the others would get up and go away and the
couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely spoke of
their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings,
which she constantly divined. Once she began questioning
him about his son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did
nowNatasha particularly liked it in himand said that his
son would not live with them.
‘Why not?’ asked Natasha in a frightened tone.
‘I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..’
‘How I should have loved him!’ said Natasha, immediately guessing his thought; ‘but I know you wish to avoid


895

any pretext for finding fault with us.’
Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask his advice about Petya’s education or Nicholas’
service. The old countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting frightened lest she should be in the
way and tried to find excuses for leaving them alone, even
when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew spoke (he
could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him with
pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he
gazed attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself
in perplexity: ‘What does he look for in me? He is trying to
discover something by looking at me! What if what he seeks
in me is not there?’ Sometimes she fell into one of the mad,
merry moods characteristic of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed. He
seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always felt
nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy
if the thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing
near had not terrified her, just as the mere thought of it
made him turn pale and cold.
On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with him Pierre, who had not been to the
Rostovs’ once since the ball. Pierre seemed disconcerted and
embarrassed. He was talking to the countess, and Natasha
sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya, thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
‘You have known Bezukhov a long time?’ he asked. ‘Do
you like him?’
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‘Yes, he’s a dear, but very absurd.’
And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell
anecdotes of his absent-mindedness, some of which had
even been invented about him.
‘Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I
have known him from childhood. He has a heart of gold.
I beg you, Natalie,’ Prince Andrew said with sudden
seriousness‘I am going away and heaven knows what may
happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am not to say
that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when I
am not here..’
‘What can happen?’
‘Whatever trouble may come,’ Prince Andrew continued,
‘I beg you, Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to
turn to him alone for advice and help! He is a most absentminded and absurd fellow, but he has a heart of gold.’
Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince
Andrew himself could have foreseen how the separation
from her lover would act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated
she went about the house all that day, dry-eyed, occupied
with most trivial matters as if not understanding what
awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking leave,
he kissed her hand for the last time. ‘Don’t go!’ she said in
a tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not
to stay and which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did
she cry when he was gone; but for several days she sat in
her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and only
saying now and then, ‘Oh, why did he go away?’
But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of


897

those around her, she recovered from her mental sickness
just as suddenly and became her old self again, but with a
change in her moral physiognomy, as a child gets up after a
long illness with a changed expression of face.

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Chapter XXV
During that year after his son’s departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski’s health and temper became much worse.
He grew still more irritable, and it was Princess Mary who
generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits of unprovoked
anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots so
as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. Princess
Mary had two passions and consequently two joysher nephew, little Nicholas, and religionand these were the favorite
subjects of the prince’s attacks and ridicule. Whatever was
spoken of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of
old maids, or the petting and spoiling of children. ‘You want
to make him’little Nicholas‘into an old maid like yourself!
A pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid,’
he would say. Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he
would ask her in Princess Mary’s presence how she liked
our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
He continually hurt Princess Mary’s feelings and tormented her, but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he
be to blame toward her, or could her father, whom she knew
loved her in spite of it all, be unjust? And what is justice?
The princess never thought of that proud word ‘justice.’ All
the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and
simple lawthe law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him
who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was


899

God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.
During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald
Hills and had been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than
Princess Mary had known him for a long time past. She felt
that something had happened to him, but he said nothing to
her about his love. Before he left he had a long talk with his
father about something, and Princess Mary noticed that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.
Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary
wrote to her friend Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she
had dreamed (as all girls dream) of marrying to her brother,
and who was at that time in mourning for her own brother,
killed in Turkey.
Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender
friend Julie.
Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself
as a special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to
try you and your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion,
and religion alone, canI will not say comfort usbut save us
from despair. Religion alone can explain to us what without
its help man cannot comprehend: why, for what cause, kind
and noble beings able to find happiness in lifenot merely
harming no one but necessary to the happiness of othersare
called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or
such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forgetthat of
my dear sister-in-lawleft that impression on me. Just as you
ask destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked
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why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone,
but in whose soul there were never any unkind thoughts,
had to die. And what do you think, dear friend? Five years
have passed since then, and already I, with my petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in what
way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose every action, though generally
incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was
too angelically innocent to have the strength to perform all
a mother’s duties. As a young wife she was irreproachable;
perhaps she could not have been so as a mother. As it is, not
only has she left us, and particularly Prince Andrew, with
the purest regrets and memories, but probably she will there
receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak
of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the most
beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all
our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts
could not occur to me; I should then have dismissed them
with horror, but now they are very clear and certain. I write
all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a principle of life: not a
single hair of our heads will fall without His will. And His
will is governed only by infinite love for us, and so whatever
befalls us is for our good.
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow.
In spite of my wish to see you, I do not think so and do
not want to do so. You will be surprised to hear that the
reason for this is Buonaparte! The case is this: my father’s


901

health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot stand any
contradiction and is becoming irritable. This irritability
is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions. He
cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on
equal terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the Great Catherine! As
you know, I am quite indifferent to politics, but from my father’s remarks and his talks with Michael Ivanovich I know
all that goes on in the world and especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at Bald Hills in the
whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great man, still
less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this.
It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views
that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for
he foresees the encounters that would result from his way of
expressing his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit
he might derive from a course of treatment he would lose as
a result of the disputes about Buonaparte which would be
inevitable. In any case it will be decided very shortly.
Our family life goes on in the old way except for my
brother Andrew’s absence. He, as I wrote you before, has
changed very much of late. After his sorrow he only this
year quite recovered his spirits. He has again become as I
used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with that
heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has realized, it
seems to me, that life is not over for him. But together with
this mental change he has grown physically much weaker.
He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious
about him and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the
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doctors recommended long ago. I hope it will cure him. You
write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the most
active, cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive
my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it. The good
he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the
gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly
from Petersburg to Moscow, especially such false ones as
that you write aboutI mean the report of my brother’s betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think my brother will
ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is why:
first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he
has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart
for him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little
angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that
girl is not the kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew.
I do not think he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I
do not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the
end of my second sheet. Good-by, my dear friend. May God
keep you in His holy and mighty care. My dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
MARY



903

Chapter XXVI
In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an
unexpected letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in
which he gave her strange and surprising news. He informed
her of his engagement to Natasha Rostova. The whole letter
breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and tender and
confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that he had never
loved as he did now and that only now did he understand
and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive him
for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited
Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had
not done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to
give his consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt
of his displeasure without attaining her object. ‘Besides,’ he
wrote, ‘the matter was not then so definitely settled as it is
now. My father then insisted on a delay of a year and now
already six months, half of that period, have passed, and my
resolution is firmer than ever. If the doctors did not keep me
here at the spas I should be back in Russia, but as it is I have
to postpone my return for three months. You know me and
my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have
been and always shall be independent; but to go against his
will and arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain
with us such a short time, would destroy half my happiness.
I am now writing to him about the same question, and beg
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you to choose a good moment to hand him the letter and to
let me know how he looks at the whole matter and whether
there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four
months.’
After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess
Mary gave the letter to her father. The next day the old
prince said to her quietly:
‘Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It
won’t be longI shall soon set him free.’
The princess was about to reply, but her father would not
let her speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried:
‘Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich, eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will
have! Write and tell him that he may marry tomorrow if he
likes. She will be little Nicholas’ stepmother and I’ll marry
Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He mustn’t be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more women are wanted in
my houselet him marry and live by himself. Perhaps you
will go and live with him too?’ he added, turning to Princess Mary. ‘Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the
frost... the frost!
After this outburst the prince did not speak any more
about the matter. But repressed vexation at his son’s poorspirited behavior found expression in his treatment of his
daughter. To his former pretexts for irony a fresh one was
now addedallusions to stepmothers and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘Why shouldn’t I marry her?’ he asked his daughter.
‘She’ll make a splendid princess!’


905

And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess
Mary noticed that her father was really associating more
and more with the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his letter, but comforted him
with hopes of reconciling their father to the idea.
Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew,
and religion were Princess Mary’s joys and consolations;
but besides that, since everyone must have personal hopes,
Princess Mary in the profoundest depths of her heart had a
hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief consolation
of her life. This comforting dream and hope were given her
by God’s folkthe half-witted and other pilgrims who visited
her without the prince’s knowledge. The longer she lived, the
more experience and observation she had of life, the greater
was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek
enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering,
struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved
his wife, she died, but that was not enough: he wanted to
bind his happiness to another woman. Her father objected
to this because he wanted a more distinguished and wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered
and tormented one another and injured their souls, their
eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure
but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but
Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that
this life is but for a moment and is a probation; yet we cling
to it and think to find happiness in it. ‘How is it that no one
realizes this?’ thought Princess Mary. ‘No one except these
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despised God’s folk who, wallet on back, come to me by the
back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear of
ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave
family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags
from place to place under an assumed name, doing no one
any harm but praying for allfor those who drive one away as
well as for those who protect one: higher than that life and
truth there is no life or truth!’
There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman
of fifty called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone
about barefoot and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was
particularly fond of her. Once, when in a room with a lamp
dimly lit before the icon Theodosia was talking of her life,
the thought that Theodosia alone had found the true path
of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force that
she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia
had gone to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a
long time, and at last made up her mind that, strange as it
might seem, she must go on a pilgrimage. She disclosed this
thought to no one but to her confessor, Father Akinfi, the
monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise of a
present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim’s
complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes,
a rough coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the
chest of drawers containing this secret treasure, Princess
Mary paused, uncertain whether the time had not already
come to put her project into execution.
Often, listening to the pilgrims’ tales, she was so stimu

907

lated by their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her
so full of deep meaning, that several times she was on the
point of abandoning everything and running away from
home. In imagination she already pictured herself by Theodosia’s side, dressed in coarse rags, walking with a staff,
a wallet on her back, along the dusty road, directing her
wanderings from one saint’s shrine to another, free from
envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the place
where there is no more sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy
and bliss.
‘I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having
time to get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on till my legs fail, and I’ll lie down and die
somewhere, and shall at last reach that eternal, quiet haven,
where there is neither sorrow nor sighing...’ thought Princess Mary.
But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially
little Koko (Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that she was a sinner who loved her father and
little nephew more than God.

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BOOK SEVEN: 1810 11



909

Chapter I
The Bible legend tells us that the absence of laboridlenesswas a condition of the first man’s blessedness before
the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the
curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek
our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral
nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease. An
inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If
man could find a state in which he felt that though idle he
was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive blessedness. And such a state of
obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole
classthe military. The chief attraction of military service
has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition
to the full when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the
Pavlograd regiment, in which he already commanded the
squadron he had taken over from Denisov.
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom
his Moscow acquaintances would have considered rather
bad form, but who was liked and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well contented
with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home
more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs
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were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it
was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his
old parents.
Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their
wanting to take him away from surroundings in which,
protected from all the entanglements of life, he was living
so calmly and quietly. He felt that sooner or later he would
have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its accounts with
stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and with
Sonya’s love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully
difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in
cold, formal letters in French, beginning: ‘My dear Mamma,’ and ending: ‘Your obedient son,’ which said nothing of
when he would return. In 1810 he received letters from his
parents, in which they told him of Natasha’s engagement to
Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year’s time
because the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved
and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that
Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in
the family, should be lost to the home; and secondly, from
his hussar point of view, he regretted not to have been there
to show that fellow Bolkonski that connection with him was
no such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natasha he
might dispense with permission from his dotard father. For
a moment he hesitated whether he should not apply for leave
in order to see Natasha before she was married, but then
came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and
about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put


911

it off. But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from
his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that
letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not
come and take matters in hand, their whole property would
be sold by auction and they would all have to go begging.
The count was so weak, and trusted Mitenka so much, and
was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage of him
and things were going from bad to worse. ‘For God’s sake,
I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make me
and the whole family wretched,’ wrote the countess.
This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense
of a matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought
to do.
The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service,
at any rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did
not know; but after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to
saddle Mars, an extremely vicious gray stallion that had not
been ridden for a long time, and when he returned with the
horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka (Denisov’s servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and
was going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to
reflect that he would go away without having heard from
the staffand this interested him extremelywhether he was
promoted to a captaincy or would receive the Order of St.
Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think that
he would go away without having sold his three roans to
the Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for
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sand rubles; incomprehensible as it seemed that the ball the
hussars were giving in honor of the Polish Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given one
in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would
take place without himhe knew he must go away from this
good, bright world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he obtained his leave. His
hussar comradesnot only those of his own regiment, but the
whole brigadegave Rostov a dinner to which the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak
with Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and
dropped Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed
him too, and shouted ‘hurrah!’ and then they put him in his
sleigh and escorted him as far as the first post station.
During the first half of the journeyfrom Kremenchug to
Kievall Rostov’s thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the squadron; but when he had gone more
than halfway he began to forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously how
things would be at Otradnoe and what he would find there.
Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached
itfar stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the
law by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion
to the square of the distance. At the last post station before
Otradnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling
of unsatisfied expectationthe feeling that ‘everything is just


913

the same, so why did I hurry?’Nicholas began to settle down
in his old home world. His father and mother were much the
same, only a little older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used
not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due
to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly twenty; she
had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more
than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas returned, and the
faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha surprised Nicholas most.
Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and
mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for
Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed
whenever he looked at her.
‘You’re not the same at all,’ he said.
‘How? Am I uglier?’
‘On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!’ he whispered to her.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ cried Natasha, joyfully.
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew
and of his visit to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.
‘Well, are you glad?’ Natasha asked. ‘I am so tranquil and
happy now.’
‘Very glad,’ answered Nicholas. ‘He is an excellent fellow.... And are you very much in love?’
‘How shall I put it?’ replied Natasha. ‘I was in love with
Boris, with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite
different. I feel at peace and settled. I know that no better
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man than he exists, and I am calm and contented now. Not
at all as before.’
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement
of the marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother
with exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing to enter a family
against the father’s will, and that she herself wished it so.
‘You don’t at all understand,’ she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did
not seem at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was even-tempered and calm and quite
as cheerful as of old. This amazed Nicholas and even made
him regard Bolkonski’s courtship skeptically. He could not
believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had not seen
her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there
was something not quite right about this intended marriage.
‘Why this delay? Why no betrothal?’ he thought. Once,
when he had touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction,
that in the depth of her soul she too had doubts about this
marriage.
‘You see he writes,’ said she, showing her son a letter of
Prince Andrew’s, with that latent grudge a mother always
has in regard to a daughter’s future married happiness, ‘he
writes that he won’t come before December. What can be
keeping him? Illness, probably! His health is very delicate.
Don’t tell Natasha. And don’t attach importance to her be

915

ing so bright: that’s because she’s living through the last days
of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we
receive a letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!’ (She always ended with these words.)
‘He is an excellent man!’

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Chapter II
After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and
even dull. He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business matters for which his mother
had called him home. To throw off this burden as quickly
as possible, on the third day after his arrival he went, angry
and scowling and without answering questions as to where
he was going, to Mitenka’s lodge and demanded an account
of everything. But what an account of everything might be
Nicholas knew even less than the frightened and bewildered
Mitenka. The conversation and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long. The village elder, a
peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting
in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young
count’s voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and
louder, and then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated
one after the other.
‘Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I’ll hack the dog to pieces! I’m not my father!... Robbing us!...’ and so on.
Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the
young count, red in the face and with bloodshot eyes,
dragged Mitenka out by the scruff of the neck and applied
his foot and knee to him behind with great agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, ‘Be off! Never
let me see your face here again, you villain!’


917

Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away
into the shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself,
returning tipsy from the town, used to hide there, and many
of the residents at Otradnoe, hiding from Mitenka, knew of
its protective qualities.)
Mitenka’s wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and
frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright
samovar was boiling and where the steward’s high bedstead
stood with its patchwork quilt.
The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by with resolute strides and went into the
house.
The countess, who heard at once from the maids what
had happened at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that
now their affairs would certainly improve, but on the other
hand felt anxious as to the effect this excitement might have
on her son. She went several times to his door on tiptoe and
listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.
Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an
embarrassed smile, said to him:
‘But you know, my dear boy, it’s a pity you got excited!
Mitenka has told me all about it.’
‘I knew,’ thought Nicholas, ‘that I should never understand anything in this crazy world.’
‘You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles.
But they were carried forwardand you did not look at the
other page.’
‘Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And
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what I have done, I have done; but, if you like, I won’t speak
to him again.’
‘No, my dear boy’ (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He
knew he had mismanaged his wife’s property and was to
blame toward his children, but he did not know how to remedy it). ‘No, I beg you to attend to the business. I am old. I..’
‘No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I understand it all less than you do.’
‘Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and
carryings forward from page to page,’ he thought. ‘I used to
understand what a ‘corner’ and the stakes at cards meant,
but carrying forward to another page I don’t understand at
all,’ said he to himself, and after that he did not meddle in
business affairs. But once the countess called her son and
informed him that she had a promissory note from Anna
Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what
he thought of doing with it.
‘This,’ answered Nicholas. ‘You say it rests with me. Well,
I don’t like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don’t like Boris, but
they were our friends and poor. Well then, this!’ and he tore
up the note, and by so doing caused the old countess to weep
tears of joy. After that, young Rostov took no further part
in any business affairs, but devoted himself with passionate
enthusiasm to what was to him a new pursuitthe chasefor
which his father kept a large establishment.



919

Chapter III
The weather was already growing wintry and morning
frosts congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The
verdure had thickened and its bright green stood out sharply
against the brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the
cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end
of August had still been green islands amid black fields and
stubble, had become golden and bright-red islands amid the
green winter rye. The hares had already half changed their
summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to scatter, and
the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best time
of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it
was decided to give them a three days’ rest and then, on the
sixteenth of September, to go on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was an undisturbed litter
of wolf cubs.
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty
and the air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became
overcast and it began to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young
Rostov, in his dressing gown, looked out of the window, he
saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was as
if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any
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wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,
microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the
garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the
freshly fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked
wet and black and glistened like poppy seed and at a short
distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas
went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell
of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broadhaunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing
her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a hare, and
then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose
and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his
master from the garden path, arched his back and, rushing
headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing
himself against his legs.
‘O-hoy!’ came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman’s
call which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and
round the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head
kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old man with hair cut straight
over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long bent whip in his
hand, and that look of independence and scorn of everything
that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap
to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was
not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,
disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above
them, was all the same his serf and huntsman.
‘Daniel!’ Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of
the weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away by that irresistible passion for sport which


921

makes a man forget all his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his mistress.
‘What orders, your excellency?’ said the huntsman in his
deep bass, deep as a proto-deacon’s and hoarse with hallooingand two flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows
at his master, who was silent. ‘Can you resist it?’ those eyes
seemed to be asking.
‘It’s a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?’ asked
Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.
Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
‘I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen,’ his bass boomed out after
a minute’s pause. ‘He says she’s moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure. They were howling there.’ (This meant that the
she-wolf, about whom they both knew, had moved with her
cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place a mile and a half
from the house.)
‘We ought to go, don’t you think so?’ said Nicholas. ‘Come
to me with Uvarka.’
‘As you please.’
‘Then put off feeding them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in
Nicholas’ big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see
him in a room was like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor
among the furniture and surroundings of human life. Daniel
himself felt this, and as usual stood just inside the door, trying
to speak softly and not move, for fear of breaking something
in the master’s apartment, and he hastened to say all that was
necessary so as to get from under that ceiling, out into the
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open under the sky once more.
Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an
opinion that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go
hunting), Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just
as Daniel was about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps,
not having done up her hair or finished dressing and with
her old nurse’s big shawl wrapped round her. Petya ran in at
the same time.
‘You are going?’ asked Natasha. ‘I knew you would! Sonya
said you wouldn’t go, but I knew that today is the sort of day
when you couldn’t help going.’
‘Yes, we are going,’ replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take
Natasha and Petya. ‘We are going, but only wolf hunting: it
would be dull for you.’
‘You know it is my greatest pleasure,’ said Natasha. ‘It’s not
fair; you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled
and said nothing to us about it.’
‘‘No barrier bars a Russian’s path’we’ll go!’ shouted Petya.
‘But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,’ said Nicholas
to Natasha.
‘Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,’ said Natasha decisively.
‘Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come
with my dogs,’ she added to the huntsman.
It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room
at all, but to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to
him impossible. He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it
were none of his business, careful as he went not to inflict any
accidental injury on the young lady.


923

Chapter IV
The old count, who had always kept up an enormous
hunting establishment but had now handed it all completely
over to his son’s care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out with the others.
In an hour’s time the whole hunting party was at the
porch. Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed
that now was no time for attending to trifles, went past
Natasha and Petya who were trying to tell him something.
He had a look at all the details of the hunt, sent a pack of
hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the quarry, mounted
his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to
the Otradnoe wood. The old count’s horse, a sorrel gelding
called Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him,
while the count himself was to drive in a small trap straight
to a spot reserved for him.
They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight
borzoi kennelmen and more than forty borzois, so that, with
the borzois on the leash belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and thirty dogs and twenty
horsemen.
Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the
hunt knew his business. his place, what he had to do. As soon
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as they had passed the fence they all spread out evenly and
quietly, without noise or talk, along the road and field leading
to the Otradnoe covert.
The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet,
now and then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road.
The misty sky still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air was still, warm, and silent.
Occasionally the whistle of a huntsman, the snort of a horse,
the crack of a whip, or the whine of a straggling hound could
be heard.
When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more
riders with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the
Rostovs. In front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man
with a large gray mustache.
‘Good morning, Uncle!’ said Nicholas, when the old man
drew near.
‘That’s it. Come on!... I was sure of it,’ began ‘Uncle.’ (He
was a distant relative of the Rostovs’, a man of small means,
and their neighbor.) ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist it
and it’s a good thing you’re going. That’s it! Come on! (This
was ‘Uncle’s’ favorite expression.) ‘Take the covert at once, for
my Girchik says the Ilagins are at Korniki with their hounds.
That’s it. Come on!... They’ll take the cubs from under your
very nose.’
‘That’s where I’m going. Shall we join up our packs?’ asked
Nicholas.
The hounds were joined into one pack, and ‘Uncle’ and
Nicholas rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls
which did not hide her eager face and shining eyes, galloped


925

up to them. She was followed by Petya who always kept close
to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a groom appointed to
look after her. Petya, who was laughing, whipped and pulled
at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on her black
Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.
‘Uncle’ looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha.
He did not like to combine frivolity with the serious business
of hunting.
‘Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!’ shouted Petya.
‘Good morning, good morning! But don’t go overriding
the hounds,’ said ‘Uncle’ sternly.
‘Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me,’ said
Natasha, referring to her favorite hound.
‘In the first place, Trunila is not a ‘dog,’ but a harrier,’
thought Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to
make her feel the distance that ought to separate them at that
moment. Natasha understood it.
‘You mustn’t think we’ll be in anyone’s way, Uncle,’ she
said. ‘We’ll go to our places and won’t budge.’
‘A good thing too, little countess,’ said ‘Uncle,’ ‘only mind
you don’t fall off your horse,’ he added, ‘becausethat’s it, come
on!you’ve nothing to hold on to.’
The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov,
having finally settled with ‘Uncle’ where they should set on
the hounds, and having shown Natasha where she was to
standa spot where nothing could possibly run outwent round
above the ravine.
‘Well, nephew, you’re going for a big wolf,’ said ‘Uncle.’
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‘Mind and don’t let her slip!’
‘That’s as may happen,’ answered Rostov. ‘Karay, here!’ he
shouted, answering ‘Uncle’s’ remark by this call to his borzoi. Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous
for having tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their
places.
The old count, knowing his son’s ardor in the hunt, hurried so as not to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet reached
their places when Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and
with quivering cheeks, drove up with his black horses over
the winter rye to the place reserved for him, where a wolf
might come out. Having straightened his coat and fastened
on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,
well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray, like himself. His horses and trap were sent home.
Count Ilya Rostov, though not at heart a keen sportsman,
knew the rules of the hunt well, and rode to the bushy edge
of the road where he was to stand, arranged his reins, settled
himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked
about with a smile.
Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant,
an old horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar
held in leash three formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master and his horse. Two wise old
dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred paces farther along
the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count’s other groom, a
daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the hunt,
by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled
brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle


927

of his favorite Bordeaux.
He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His
eyes were rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as
he sat in his saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like
a child taken out for an outing.
The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready, kept glancing at his master with whom he had
lived on the best of terms for thirty years, and understanding
the mood he was in expected a pleasant chat. A third person
rode up circumspectly through the wood (it was plain that he
had had a lesson) and stopped behind the count. This person
was a gray-bearded old man in a woman’s cloak, with a tall
peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who went by a
woman’s name, Nastasya Ivanovna.
‘Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!’ whispered the count, winking
at him. ‘If you scare away the beast, Daniel’ll give it you!’
‘I know a thing or two myself!’ said Nastasya Ivanovna.
‘Hush!’ whispered the count and turned to Simon. ‘Have
you seen the young countess?’ he asked. ‘Where is she?’
‘With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass,’ answered Simon, smiling. ‘Though she’s a lady, she’s very fond
of hunting.’
‘And you’re surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?’ said
the count. ‘She’s as good as many a man!’
‘Of course! It’s marvelous. So bold, so easy!’
‘And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn’t
he?’
‘Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the
matter so well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded,’
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said Simon, well knowing what would please his master.
‘Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?’
‘A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank
grass by the Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight when they rushed from the covert... the
horse worth a thousand rubles and the rider beyond all price!
Yes, one would have to search far to find another as smart.’
‘To search far...’ repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon
had not said more. ‘To search far,’ he said, turning back the
skirt of his coat to get at his snuffbox.
‘The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael Sidorych...’ Simon did not finish, for on the
still air he had distinctly caught the music of the hunt with
only two or three hounds giving tongue. He bent down his
head and listened, shaking a warning finger at his master.
‘They are on the scent of the cubs... ‘ he whispered, ‘straight
to the Lyadov uplands.’
The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face,
looked into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, holding the snuffbox in his hand but not
taking any. After the cry of the hounds came the deep tones
of the wolf call from Daniel’s hunting horn; the pack joined
the first three hounds and they could be heard in full cry,
with that peculiar lift in the note that indicates that they are
after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on the hounds,
but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others rose
Daniel’s voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His
voice seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond
out into the open field.


929

After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his
attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly
giving tongue, began to die away in the distance, the other
pack rushed by the wood past the count, and it was with this
that Daniel’s voice was heard calling ulyulyu. The sounds of
both packs mingled and broke apart again, but both were becoming more distant.
Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young
borzoi had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing
the snuffbox in his hand, opened it and took a pinch. ‘Back!’
cried Simon to a borzoi that was pushing forward out of the
wood. The count started and dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up. The count and Simon
were looking at him.
Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the
hunt suddenly approached, as if the hounds in full cry and
Daniel ulyulyuing were just in front of them.
The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at
him with eyes starting out of his head, raising his cap and
pointing before him to the other side.
‘Look out!’ he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he
had long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois
slip he galloped toward the count.
The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw
on their left a wolf which, softly swaying from side to side,
was coming at a quiet lope farther to the left to the very place
where they were standing. The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the horses’ feet at the wolf.
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The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the
dogs awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and,
still slightly swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps
and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the
wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one
hound, then another, and then another, sprang helter-skelter
from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across the
field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared.
The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel’s
chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back
sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair
hanging over his flushed, perspiring face.
‘Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!...’ he cried. When he caught sight of
the count his eyes flashed lightning.
‘Blast you!’ he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly
at the count.
‘You’ve let the wolf go!... What sportsmen! and as if scorning to say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he
lashed the heaving flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding
with all the anger the count had aroused and flew off after the
hounds. The count, like a punished schoolboy, looked round,
trying by a smile to win Simon’s sympathy for his plight. But
Simon was no longer there. He was galloping round by the
bushes while the field was coming up on both sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before
they could do so.



931

Chapter V
Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post,
waiting for the wolf. By the way the hunt approached and
receded, by the cries of the dogs whose notes were familiar
to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen approached,
receded, and rose, he realized what was happening at the
copse. He knew that young and old wolves were there, that
the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere
a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone
wrong. He expected the wolf to come his way any moment.
He made thousands of different conjectures as to where and
from what side the beast would come and how he would
set upon it. Hope alternated with despair. Several times he
addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come his
way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with which men pray at moments of great excitement
arising from trivial causes. ‘What would it be to Thee to do
this for me?’ he said to God. ‘I know Thou art great, and that
it is a sin to ask this of Thee, but for God’s sake do let the
old wolf come my way and let Karay spring at itin sight of
‘Uncle’ who is watching from over thereand seize it by the
throat in a death grip!’ A thousand times during that halfhour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of
the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen
undergrowth and the gully with its water-worn side and
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‘Uncle’s’ cap just visible above the bush on his right.
‘No, I shan’t have such luck,’ thought Rostov, ‘yet what
wouldn’t it be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards
and in war, I am always unlucky.’ Memories of Austerlitz
and of Dolokhov flashed rapidly and clearly through his
mind. ‘Only once in my life to get an old wolf, I want only
that!’ thought he, straining eyes and ears and looking to the
left and then to the right and listening to the slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.
Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him across the deserted field. ‘No, it can’t be!’
thought Rostov, taking a deep breath, as a man does at the
coming of something long hoped for. The height of happiness was reachedand so simply, without warning, or noise,
or display, that Rostov could not believe his eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward
and jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was
an old animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She
ran without hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw
her. Rostov, holding his breath, looked round at the borzois.
They stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the
situation. Old Karay had turned his head and was angrily
searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and snapping at
his hind legs.
‘Ulyulyulyu!’ whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The
borzois jumped up, jerking the rings of the leashes and
pricking their ears. Karay finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up with quivering tail from
which tufts of matted hair hung down.


933

‘Shall I loose them or not?’ Nicholas asked himself as the
wolf approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the
wolf’s whole physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing
what she had probably never seen beforehuman eyes fixed
upon herand turning her head a little toward Rostov, she
paused.
‘Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward...’ the wolf
seemed to say to herself, and she moved forward without
again looking round and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.
‘Ulyulyu!’ cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of
its own accord his good horse darted headlong downhill,
leaping over gullies to head off the wolf, and the borzois
passed it, running faster still. Nicholas did not hear his
own cry nor feel that he was galloping, nor see the borzois,
nor the ground over which he went: he saw only the wolf,
who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka,
with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining
upon the wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it;
but the wolf turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she usually did Milka suddenly raised her
tail and stiffened her forelegs.
‘Ulyulyulyulyu!’ shouted Nicholas.
The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka,
sprang impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf
crouched, gnashed her teeth, and again rose and bounded
forward, followed at the distance of a couple of feet by all
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the borzois, who did not get any closer to her.
‘She’ll get away! No, it’s impossible!’ thought Nicholas,
still shouting with a hoarse voice.
‘Karay, ulyulyu!...’ he shouted, looking round for the
old borzoi who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the
strength age had left him, stretched himself to the utmost
and, watching the wolf, galloped heavily aside to intercept it.
But the quickness of the wolf’s lope and the borzoi’s slower
pace made it plain that Karay had miscalculated. Nicholas
could already see not far in front of him the wood where the
wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping
almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long,
yellowish young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from
another leash, rushed impetuously at the wolf from in front
and almost knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up more
quickly than anyone could have expected and, gnashing her
teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing
yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a gash
in its side.
‘Karay? Old fellow!...’ wailed Nicholas.
Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf’s
path, the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh
was within five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the
wolf turned her eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further
between her legs, and increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something happened to Karaythe borzoi
was suddenly on the wolf, and they rolled together down
into a gully just in front of them.


935

That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in
the gully with the dogs, while from under them could be
seen her gray hair and outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears laid back (Karay was
pinning her by the throat), was the happiest moment of his
life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head
up from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws
were on the edge of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay
no longer had her by the throat), leaped with a movement of
her hind legs out of the gully, and having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, went forward.
Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or wounded,
climbed with difficulty out of the gully.
‘Oh my God! Why?’ Nicholas cried in despair.
‘Uncle’s’ huntsman was galloping from the other side
across the wolf’s path and his borzois once more stopped
the animal’s advance. She was again hemmed in.
Nicholas and his attendant, with ‘Uncle’ and his huntsman, were all riding round the wolf, crying ‘ulyulyu!’
shouting and preparing to dismount each moment that the
wolf crouched back, and starting forward again every time
she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
would be safe.
Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw
Karay seize the wolf, and checked his horse, supposing the
affair to be over. But when he saw that the horsemen did
not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for
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safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but
straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the
animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf
just when she had been stopped a second time by ‘Uncle’s’
borzois.
Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in
his left hand and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if it were a flail.
Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut,
breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of
a body and saw Daniel lying on the wolf’s back among the
dogs, trying to seize her by the ears. It was evident to the
dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself that all was now
over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears and tried to
rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel rose a little, took a
step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell
on the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to
stab her, but Daniel whispered, ‘Don’t! We’ll gag her!’ and,
changing his position, set his foot on the wolf’s neck. A stick
was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a
leash, as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel
rolled her over once or twice from side to side.
With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive,
on a shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the
dogs yelping at her, took her to the place where they were all
to meet. The hounds had killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty and
their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with
her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick


937

between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd
of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched,
she jerked her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at
everybody. Old Count Rostov also rode up and touched the
wolf.
‘Oh, what a formidable one!’ said he. ‘A formidable one,
eh?’ he asked Daniel, who was standing near.
‘Yes, your excellency,’ answered Daniel, quickly doffing
his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his
encounter with Daniel.
‘Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!’ said the count.
For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and
amiable smile.

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Chapter VI
The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return very soon, but as it was still early the hunt
went farther. At midday they put the hounds into a ravine
thickly overgrown with young trees. Nicholas standing in a
fallow field could see all his whips.
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The
hounds had scarcely been loosed before Nicholas heard one
he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at intervals; other hounds
joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a
fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together,
rushed along the ravine toward the ryefield and away from
Nicholas.
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the
edge of the ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself at any moment on the ryefield
opposite.
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed
his borzois, and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox
with a fine brush going hard across the field. The borzois
bore down on it.... Now they drew close to the fox which
began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper
curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white


939

borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything
was in confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure,
scarcely swaying their bodies and with tails turned away
from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up to
the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green
coat.
‘What’s this?’ thought Nicholas. ‘Where’s that huntsman
from? He is not ‘Uncle’s’ man.’
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time
without strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and
with high saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs
were lying. The huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of a
horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.
‘That’s Ilagin’s huntsman having a row with our Ivan,’
said Nicholas’ groom.
Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him,
and rode at a footpace to the place where the whips were
getting the hounds together. Several of the field galloped to
the spot where the fight was going on.
Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who
had ridden up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how
the matter would end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman
who had been fighting and rode toward his young master,
with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a distance he
took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was
pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes
was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.
‘What has happened?’ asked Nicholas.
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‘A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And
it was my gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He
snatches at the fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on
my saddle! Do you want a taste of this?...’ said the huntsman,
pointing to his dagger and probably imagining himself still
speaking to his foe.
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the
enemy’s, Ilagin’s, hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and
there, surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted
his exploits.
The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a
quarrel and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by
custom to the Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his
men to the very woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his
man snatch a fox their dogs had chased.
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially
from reports of his arbitrariness and violence, and regarded
him as his bitterest foe. He rode in angry agitation toward
him, firmly grasping his whip and fully prepared to take the
most resolute and desperate steps to punish his enemy.
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout
gentleman in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a
handsome raven-black horse, accompanied by two hunt
servants.
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and
courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make


941

the young count’s acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised his beaver cap and said he much regretted
what had occurred and would have the man punished who
had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone else’s
borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the
count and invited him to draw his covert.
Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something
dreadful, had followed him in some excitement. Seeing the
enemies exchanging friendly greetings, she rode up to them.
Ilagin lifted his beaver cap still higher to Natasha and said,
with a pleasant smile, that the young countess resembled
Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her beauty,
of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman’s offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to come to an upland of his about a mile away which he
usually kept for himself and which, he said, swarmed with
hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now doubled, moved
on.
The way to Iligin’s upland was across the fields. The hunt
servants fell into line. The masters rode together. ‘Uncle,’
Rostov, and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another’s
dogs, trying not to be observed by their companions and
searching uneasily for rivals to their own borzois.
Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small,
pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin’s leash, slender but
with muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent
black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin’s borzois,
and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin
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about the year’s harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
‘A fine little bitch, that!’ said he in a careless tone. ‘Is she
swift?’
‘That one? Yes, she’s a good dog, gets what she’s after,’
answered Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza,
for which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three
families of house serfs. ‘So in your parts, too, the harvest
is nothing to boast of, Count?’ he went on, continuing the
conversation they had begun. And considering it polite to
return the young count’s compliment, Ilagin looked at his
borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention
by her breadth. ‘That black-spotted one of yours is finewell
shaped!’ said he.
‘Yes, she’s fast enough,’ replied Nicholas, and thought: ‘If
only a full-grown hare would cross the field now I’d show
you what sort of borzoi she is,’ and turning to his groom, he
said he would give a ruble to anyone who found a hare.
‘I don’t understand,’ continued Ilagin, ‘how some sportsmen can be so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I
can tell you, Count, I enjoy riding in company such as this...
what could be better?’ (he again raised his cap to Natasha)
‘but as for counting skins and what one takes, I don’t care
about that.’
‘Of course not!’
‘Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not
mine catches something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing
the chase, is it not so, Count? For I consider that..’
‘A-tu!’ came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi


943

whippers-in, who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the
stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his longdrawn cry, ‘A-tu!’ (This call and the uplifted whip meant
that he saw a sitting hare.)
‘Ah, he has found one, I think,’ said Ilagin carelessly. ‘Yes,
we must ride up.... Shall we both course it?’ answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza and ‘Uncle’s’ red Rugay two rivals he had
never yet had a chance of pitting against his own borzois.
‘And suppose they outdo my Milka at once!’ he thought as
he rode with ‘Uncle’ and Ilagin toward the hare.
‘A full-grown one?’ asked Ilagin as he approached the
whip who had sighted the hareand not without agitation he
looked round and whistled to Erza.
‘And you, Michael Nikanorovich?’ he said, addressing
‘Uncle.’
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his
face.
‘How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for each
of your borzois! That’s it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours against one another, you two, and I’ll look
on!’
‘Rugay, hey, hey!’ he shouted. ‘Rugayushka!’ he added,
involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection
and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi. Natasha saw and
felt the agitation the two elderly men and her brother were
trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his
whip and the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the
hounds that were far off on the horizon turned away from
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the hare, and the whips, but not the gentlefolk, also moved
away. All were moving slowly and sedately.
‘How is it pointing?’ asked Nicholas, riding a hundred
paces toward the whip who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the
frost coming next morning, was unable to rest and leaped
up. The pack on leash rushed downhill in full cry after the
hare, and from all sides the borzois that were not on leash
darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt, who had
been moving slowly, shouted, ‘Stop!’ calling in the hounds,
while the borzoi whips, with a cry of ‘A-tu!’galloped across
the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,
Nicholas, Natasha, and ‘Uncle’ flew, reckless of where and
how they went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and
fearing only to lose sight even for an instant of the chase.
The hare they had started was a strong and swift one. When
he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling that resounded from
all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not very quickly,
letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having chosen
his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and
rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in
front of him was the autumn sowing where the ground was
soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had sighted him,
having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue
him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin’s red-spotted
Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare with
terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had
seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back


945

and bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed
the broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.
‘Milashka, dear!’ rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It looked
as if Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she
overtook him and flew past. The hare had squatted. Again
the beautiful Erza reached him, but when close to the hare’s
scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as not to make
a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.
‘Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own.
Erza did not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment
when she would have seized her prey, the hare moved and
darted along the balk between the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like a pair
of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it
was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois
did not overtake him so quickly.
‘Rugay, Rugayushka! That’s it, come on!’ came a third
voice just then, and ‘Uncle’s’ red borzoi, straining and
curving its back, caught up with the two foremost borzois,
pushed ahead of them regardless of the terrible strain, put
on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk onto the
ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, sinking to
his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was how,
muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring
of borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had
drawn up round the crowd of dogs. Only the delighted ‘Uncle’ dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking the hare for the
blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with rest946

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less eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without
himself knowing whom to or what about. ‘That’s it, come
on! That’s a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That’s it, come
on!’ said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he
were abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and
had insulted him, and only now had he at last succeeded in
justifying himself. ‘There are your thousand-ruble ones....
That’s it, come on!..’
‘Rugay, here’s a pad for you!’ he said, throwing down the
hare’s muddy pad. ‘You’ve deserved it, that’s it, come on!’
‘She’d tired herself out, she’d run it down three times by
herself,’ said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of whether he were heard or not.
‘But what is there in running across it like that?’ said
Ilagin’s groom.
‘Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel
could take it,’ Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless
from his gallop and his excitement. At the same moment
Natasha, without drawing breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set everyone’s ear tingling. By
that shriek she expressed what the others expressed by all
talking at once, and it was so strange that she must herself
have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would
have been amazed at it at any other time. ‘Uncle’ himself
twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his
horse’s back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not wishing to speak to anyone,
mounted his bay and rode off. The others all followed,


947

dispirited and shamefaced, and only much later were they
able to regain their former affectation of indifference. For
a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who, his
arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of
his leash, walked along just behind ‘Uncle’s’ horse with the
serene air of a conqueror.
‘Well, I am like any other dog as long as it’s not a question
of coursing. But when it is, then look out!’ his appearance
seem to Nicholas to be saying.
When, much later, ‘Uncle’ rode up to Nicholas and began
talking to him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, ‘Uncle’ deigned to speak to him.

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Chapter VII
Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found
that they were so far from home that he accepted ‘Uncle’s’
offer that the hunting party should spend the night in his
little village of Mikhaylovna.
‘And if you put up at my house that will be better still.
That’s it, come on!’ said ‘Uncle.’ ‘You see it’s damp weather,
and you could rest, and the little countess could be driven
home in a trap.’
‘Uncle’s’ offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to
Otradnoe for a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and
Petya to ‘Uncle’s’ house.
Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out
to the front porch to meet their master. A score of women
serfs, old and young, as well as children, popped out from
the back entrance to have a look at the hunters who were
arriving. The presence of Natashaa woman, a lady, and on
horsebackraised the curiosity of the serfs to such a degree
that many of them came up to her, stared her in the face,
and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as
though she were some prodigy on show and not a human
being able to hear or understand what was said about her.
‘Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her
skirt dangles.... See, she’s got a little hunting horn!’
‘Goodness gracious! See her knife?..’


949

‘Isn’t she a Tartar!’
‘How is it you didn’t go head over heels?’ asked the boldest of all, addressing Natasha directly.
‘Uncle’ dismounted at the porch of his little wooden
house which stood in the midst of an overgrown garden
and, after a glance at his retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should take themselves off and
that all necessary preparations should be made to receive
the guests and the visitors.
The serfs all dispersed. ‘Uncle’ lifted Natasha off her
horse and taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden
steps of the porch. The house, with its bare, unplastered log
walls, was not overcleanit did not seem that those living in
it aimed at keeping it spotlessbut neither was it noticeably
neglected. In the entry there was a smell of fresh apples, and
wolf and fox skins hung about.
‘Uncle’ led the visitors through the anteroom into a small
hall with a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a round birchwood table and a sofa, and
finally into his private room where there was a tattered sofa,
a worn carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of the host’s father
and mother, and of himself in military uniform. The study
smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. ‘Uncle’ asked his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then
went out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into
the room and lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with
his tongue and teeth. Leading from the study was a passage
in which a partition with ragged curtains could be seen.
From behind this came women’s laughter and whispers.
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Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their wraps and sat
down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell asleep at
once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces glowed,
they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one
another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the
house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show
his manly superiority over his sister), Natasha gave him a
wink, and neither refrained long from bursting into a peal
of ringing laughter even before they had a pretext ready to
account for it.
After a while ‘Uncle’ came in, in a Cossack coat, blue
trousers, and small top boots. And Natasha felt that this
costume, the very one she had regarded with surprise and
amusement at Otradnoe, was just the right thing and not at
all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat. ‘Uncle’ too was
in high spirits and far from being offended by the brother’s
and sister’s laughter (it could never enter his head that they
might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
merriment.
‘That’s right, young countess, that’s it, come on! I never
saw anyone like her!’ said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with
a long stem and, with a practiced motion of three fingers,
taking down another that had been cut short. ‘She’s ridden
all day like a man, and is as fresh as ever!
Soon after ‘Uncle’s’ reappearance the door was opened,
evidently from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout,
rosy, good-looking woman of about forty, with a double chin
and full red lips, entered carrying a large loaded tray. With
hospitable dignity and cordiality in her glance and in every


951

motion, she looked at the visitors and, with a pleasant smile,
bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional stoutness,
which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and
throw back her head, this woman (who was ‘Uncle’s’ housekeeper) trod very lightly. She went to the table, set down the
tray, and with her plump white hands deftly took from it the
bottles and various hors d’oeuvres and dishes and arranged
them on the table. When she had finished, she stepped aside
and stopped at the door with a smile on her face. ‘Here I
am. I am she! Now do you understand ‘Uncle’?’ her expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding?
Not only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered brow and the happy complacent smile
that slightly puckered his lips when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb wine, different kinds
of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead,
apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets.
Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves made with sugar.
All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna’s housekeeping, gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it
all had a smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.
‘Take this, little Lady-Countess!’ she kept saying, as she
offered Natasha first one thing and then another.
Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never
seen or eaten such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam,
such honey-and-nut sweets, or such a chicken anywhere.
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Anisya Fedorovna left the room.
After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and ‘Uncle’ talked of past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin’s
dogs, while Natasha sat upright on the sofa and listened
with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to wake Petya
that he might eat something, but he only muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so lighthearted
and happy in these novel surroundings that she only feared
the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause,
such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time
in one’s own house, ‘Uncle,’ answering a thought that was in
his visitors’ mind, said:
‘This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will
come. That’s it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why
harm anyone?’
‘Uncle’s’ face was very significant and even handsome
as he said this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good
he had heard about him from his father and the neighbors.
Throughout the whole province ‘Uncle’ had the reputation
of being the most honorable and disinterested of cranks.
They called him in to decide family disputes, chose him as
executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a justice
and to other posts; but he always persistently refused public
appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields
on his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in
his overgrown garden in summer.
‘Why don’t you enter the service, Uncle?’
‘I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That’s it,
come on! I can’t make head or tail of it. That’s for youI


953

haven’t brains enough. Now, hunting is another matterthat’s it, come on! Open the door, there!’ he shouted. ‘Why
have you shut it?’
The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen’s
room, as they called the room for the hunt servants.
There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand
opened the door into the huntsmen’s room, from which
came the clear sounds of a balalayka on which someone,
who was evidently a master of the art, was playing. Natasha
had been listening to those strains for some time and now
went out into the passage to hear better.
‘That’s Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good
balalayka. I’m fond of it,’ said ‘Uncle.’
It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the
huntsmen’s room when ‘Uncle’ returned from the chase.
‘Uncle’ was fond of such music.
‘How good! Really very good!’ said Nicholas with some
unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess
that the sounds pleased him very much.
‘Very good?’ said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her
brother’s tone. ‘Not ‘very good’ it’s simply delicious!’
Just as ‘Uncle’s’ pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry
brandy had seemed to her the best in the world, so also that
song, at that moment, seemed to her the acme of musical
delight.
‘More, please, more!’ cried Natasha at the door as soon
as the balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balalayka to the air of My
Lady, with trills and variations. ‘Uncle’ sat listening, slight954

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ly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was repeated
a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several times
and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and
again. Anisya Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly
person against the doorpost.
‘You like listening?’ she said to Natasha, with a smile
extremely like ‘Uncle’s.’ ‘That’s a good player of ours,’ she
added.
‘He doesn’t play that part right!’ said ‘Uncle’ suddenly,
with an energetic gesture. ‘Here he ought to burst outthat’s
it, come on!ought to burst out.’
‘Do you play then?’ asked Natasha.
‘Uncle’ did not answer, but smiled.
‘Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all
right. I haven’t touched it for a long time. That’s itcome on!
I’ve given it up.’
Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to
fulfill her errand and brought back the guitar.
Without looking at anyone, ‘Uncle’ blew the dust off it
and, tapping the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his armchair. He took the guitar
a little above the fingerboard, arching his left elbow with
a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous,
and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing
in very slow time, not My Lady, but the well-known song:
Came a maiden down the street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the hearts of


955

Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same kind of
sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna’s whole being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief
over her face went laughing out of the room. ‘Uncle’ continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness,
looking with a changed and inspired expression at the spot
where Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something seemed
to be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray
mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the time
quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers over
the strings, something seemed to snap.
‘Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!’ shouted Natasha as
soon as he had finished. She jumped up and hugged and
kissed him. ‘Nicholas, Nicholas!’ she said, turning to her
brother, as if asking him: ‘What is it moves me so?’
Nicholas too was greatly pleased by ‘Uncle’s’ playing,
and ‘Uncle’ played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna’s
smiling face reappeared in the doorway and behind hers
other faces...
Fetching
water
clear
and
sweet,
Stop, dear maiden, I entreatplayed ‘Uncle’ once more, running his fingers skillfully
over the strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his
shoulders.
‘Go on, Uncle dear,’ Natasha wailed in an imploring tone
as if her life depended on it.
‘Uncle’ rose, and it was as if there were two men in him:
one of them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the
merry fellow struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory
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to a folk dance.
‘Now then, niece!’ he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the
hand that had just struck a chord.
Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face ‘Uncle,’ and setting her arms akimbo also made
a motion with her shoulders and struck an attitude.
Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated
by an emigree French governess, imbibed from the Russian
air she breathed that spirit and obtained that manner which
the pas de chale* would, one would have supposed, long ago
have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were those
inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that ‘Uncle’ had
expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and
smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the
fear that had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she
might not do the right thing was at an end, and they were
already admiring her.
*The French shawl dance.
She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once
handed her the handkerchief she needed for the dance, had
tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched this
slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so
different from herself, who yet was able to understand all
that was in Anisya and in Anisya’s father and mother and
aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.
‘Well, little countess; that’s itcome on!’ cried ‘Uncle,’ with
a joyous laugh, having finished the dance. ‘Well done, niece!
Now a fine young fellow must be found as husband for you.


957

That’s itcome on!’
‘He’s chosen already,’ said Nicholas smiling.
‘Oh?’ said ‘Uncle’ in surprise, looking inquiringly at
Natasha, who nodded her head with a happy smile.
‘And such a one!’ she said. But as soon as she had said it
a new train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. ‘What did
Nicholas’ smile mean when he said ‘chosen already’? Is he
glad of it or not? It is as if he thought my Bolkonski would
not approve of or understand our gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?’ she thought, and her face
suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second.
‘Don’t dare to think about it,’ she said to herself, and sat
down again smilingly beside ‘Uncle,’ begging him to play
something more.
‘Uncle’ played another song and a valse; then after a pause
he cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
As
‘twas
growing
dark
last
night
Fell the snow so soft and light...
‘Uncle’ sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that the whole meaning of a song lies in the words
and that the tune comes of itself, and that apart from the
words there is no tune, which exists only to give measure
to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered tune, like
the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good. Natasha was
in ecstasies over ‘Uncle’s’ singing. She resolved to give up
learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked ‘Uncle’ for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.
After nine o’clock two traps and three mounted men,
who had been sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha
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and Petya. The count and countess did not know where they
were and were very anxious, said one of the men.
Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of
the two traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. ‘Uncle’ wrapped Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with
quite a new tenderness. He accompanied them on foot as far
as the bridge that could not be crossed, so that they had to
go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to ride in front
with lanterns.
‘Good-by, dear niece,’ his voice called out of the darknessnot the voice Natasha had known previously, but the
one that had sung As ‘twas growing dark last night.
In the village through which they passed there were red
lights and a cheerful smell of smoke.
‘What a darling Uncle is!’ said Natasha, when they had
come out onto the highroad.
‘Yes,’ returned Nicholas. ‘You’re not cold?’
‘No. I’m quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!’ answered Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They
remained silent a long while. The night was dark and damp.
They could not see the horses, but only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.
What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that
so eagerly caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all find place in her? But she was
very happy. As they were nearing home she suddenly struck
up the air of As ‘twas growing dark last nightthe tune of
which she had all the way been trying to get and had at last
caught.


959

‘Got it?’ said Nicholas.
‘What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?’ inquired Natasha.
They were fond of asking one another that question.
‘I?’ said Nicholas, trying to remember. ‘Well, you see,
first I thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle,
and that if he were a man he would always keep Uncle near
him, if not for his riding, then for his manner. What a good
fellow Uncle is! Don’t you think so?... Well, and you?’
‘I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along and imagining that we are going home, but that
heaven knows where we are really going in the darkness,
and that we shall arrive and suddenly find that we are not
in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No,
nothing else.’
‘I know, I expect you thought of him,’ said Nicholas,
smiling as Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.
‘No,’ said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and
of how he would have liked ‘Uncle.’ ‘And then I was saying
to myself all the way, ‘How well Anisya carried herself, how
well!’’ And Nicholas heard her spontaneous, happy, ringing
laughter. ‘And do you know,’ she suddenly said, ‘I know that
I shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now.’
‘Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!’ exclaimed Nicholas, and
he thought: ‘How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have
no other friend like her and never shall have. Why should
she marry? We might always drive about together!
‘What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!’ thought
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Natasha.
‘Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!’ she said,
pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety darkness of the night.



961

Chapter VIII
Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility because it involved him in too much
expense, but still his affairs did not improve. Natasha and
Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring together
anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the
fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near Moscow. It was
not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had
been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were
full of people and more than twenty sat down to table every
day. These were all their own people who had settled down
in the house almost as members of the family, or persons
who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house.
Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the
dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,
an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya’s
tutors, the girls’ former governess, and other people who
simply found it preferable and more advantageous to live
in the count’s house than at home. They had not as many
visitors as before, but the old habits of life without which
the count and countess could not conceive of existence
remained unchanged. There was still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty
horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
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presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name
days; there were still the count’s games of whist and boston,
at whichspreading out his cards so that everybody could
see themhe let himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles
every day by his neighbors, who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a most profitable
source of income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying
not to believe that he was entangled but becoming more and
more so at every step, and feeling too feeble to break the
meshes or to set to work carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt that her
children were being ruined, that it was not the count’s fault
for he could not help being what he wasthat (though he tried
to hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his
own and his children’s ruin, and she tried to find means of
remedying the position. From her feminine point of view
she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to
marry a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and
that if Nicholas refused the match she had found for him,
she would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters
right. This match was with Julie Karagina, the daughter of
excellent and virtuous parents, a girl the Rostovs had known
from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.
The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in Moscow suggesting a marriage between their children and had
received a favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied
that for her part she was agreeable, and everything depend


963

on her daughter’s inclination. She invited Nicholas to come
to Moscow.
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told
her son that now both her daughters were settled, her only
wish was to see him married. She said she could lie down
in her grave peacefully if that were accomplished. Then she
told him that she knew of a splendid girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him
to go to Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself.
Nicholas guessed what his mother’s remarks were leading
to and during one of these conversations induced her to
speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karagina.
‘But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune,
would you expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor
for the sake of money?’ he asked his mother, not realizing
the cruelty of his question and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
‘No, you have not understood me,’ said his mother, not
knowing how to justify herself. ‘You have not understood
me, Nikolenka. It is your happiness I wish for,’ she added,
feeling that she was telling an untruth and was becoming
entangled. She began to cry.
‘Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and
you know I will give my life, anything, to put you at ease,’
said Nicholas. ‘I would sacrifice anything for youeven my
feelings.’
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But the countess did not want the question put like that:
she did not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished
to make a sacrifice for him.
‘No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk about
it,’ she replied, wiping away her tears.
‘Maybe I do love a poor girl,’ said Nicholas to himself.
‘Am I to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I
wonder how Mamma could speak so to me. Because Sonya
is poor I must not love her,’ he thought, ‘must not respond to
her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly be happier
with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s welfare,’ he said to himself,
‘but I can’t coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is
for me stronger and higher than all else.’
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not
renew the conversation with him about marriage. She saw
with sorrow, and sometimes with exasperation, symptoms
of a growing attachment between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could not
refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya, often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as ‘my dear,’
and using the formal ‘you’ instead of the intimate ‘thou’ in
speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more
vexed with Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers
was so meek, so kind, so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and unselfishly in love
with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for finding fault
with her.
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A


965

fourth letter had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in
which he wrote that he would have been on his way back to
Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly reopened
in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return
till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still as much
in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that
love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of
their separation she began to have fits of depression which
she could not master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she
was being wasted all this time and of no use to anyonewhile
she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.
Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs’ home.

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Chapter IX
Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the
solemn and wearisome Christmas congratulations from
neighbors and servants, and the new dresses everyone put
on, there were no special festivities, though the calm frost of
twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day, and
the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some
special celebration of the season.
On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday
dinner, all the inmates of the house dispersed to various
rooms. It was the dullest time of the day. Nicholas, who
had been visiting some neighbors that morning, was asleep
on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his
study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round table,
copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing
patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face
at the window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the
room, went up to Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and
then went up to her mother and stood without speaking.
‘Why are you wandering about like an outcast?’ asked
her mother. ‘What do you want?’
‘Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!’ said
Natasha, with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her
daughter.


967

‘Don’t look at me, Mamma! Don’t look; I shall cry directly.’
‘Sit down with me a little,’ said the countess.
‘Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this,
Mamma?’
Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she
turned quickly to hide them and left the room.
She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then went into the maids’ room. There an
old maidservant was grumbling at a young girl who stood
panting, having just run in through the cold from the serfs’
quarters.
‘Stop playingthere’s a time for everything,’ said the old
woman.
‘Let her alone, Kondratevna,’ said Natasha. ‘Go, Mavrushka, go.’
Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went to the vestibule. There an old footman and
two young ones were playing cards. They broke off and rose
as she entered.
‘What can I do with them?’ thought Natasha.
‘Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go
to the yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha,
bring me some oats.’
‘Just a few oats?’ said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
‘Go, go quickly,’ the old man urged him.
‘And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.’
On her way past the butler’s pantry she told them to set a
samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.
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Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the
house. Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and asked whether the samovar was really
wanted.
‘Oh dear, what a young lady!’ said Foka, pretending to
frown at Natasha.
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as
much trouble as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send them on some errand. She
seemed to be trying whether any of them would get angry
or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders so
readily as they did hers. ‘What can I do, where can I go?’
thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.
‘Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?’
she asked the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a
woman’s jacket.
‘Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,’ answered the buffoon.
‘O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I
to go? What am I to do with myself?’ And tapping with her
heels, she ran quickly upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who
lived on the upper story.
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table,
on which were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The
governesses were discussing whether it was cheaper to live
in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down, listened to their
talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got up
again.
‘The island of Madagascar,’ she said, ‘Ma-da-gas-car,’


969

she repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not
replying to Madame Schoss who asked her what she was
saying, she went out of the room.
Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he was preparing fireworks to let off that
night.
‘Petya! Petya!’ she called to him. ‘Carry me downstairs.’
Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on
it, putting her arms round his neck, and he pranced along
with her.
‘No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!’ she said, and
jumping off his back she went downstairs.
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her
power, and made sure that everyone was submissive, but
that all the same it was dull, Natasha betook herself to the
ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark corner
behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the
strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from
an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.
What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning
for other listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of
reminiscences arose from those sounds. She sat behind the
bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light escaping
from the pantry door and listened to herself and pondered.
She was in a mood for brooding on the past.
Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand.
Natasha glanced at her and at the crack in the pantry door,
and it seemed to her that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before and Sonya passing with
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a glass in her hand. ‘Yes it was exactly the same,’ thought
Natasha.
‘Sonya, what is this?’ she cried, twanging a thick string.
‘Oh, you are there!’ said Sonya with a start, and came
near and listened. ‘I don’t know. A storm?’ she ventured
timidly, afraid of being wrong.
‘There! That’s just how she started and just how she came
up smiling timidly when all this happened before,’ thought
Natasha, ‘and in just the same way I thought there was
something lacking in her.’
‘No, it’s the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! ‘ and
Natasha sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should
catch it. ‘Where were you going?’ she asked.
‘To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the
design.’
‘You always find something to do, but I can’t,’ said
Natasha. ‘And where’s Nicholas?’
‘Asleep, I think.’
‘Sonya, go and wake him,’ said Natasha. ‘Tell him I want
him to come and sing.’
She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all
having happened before could be, and without solving this
problem, or at all regretting not having done so, she again
passed in fancy to the time when she was with him and he
was looking at her with a lover’s eyes.
‘Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it
will never be! And, worst of all, I am growing oldthat’s the
thing! There won’t then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he’ll come today, will come immediately. Perhaps he


971

has come and is sitting in the drawing room. Perhaps he
came yesterday and I have forgotten it.’ She rose, put down
the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests,
were already at the tea table. The servants stood round the
tablebut Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on
as before.
‘Ah, here she is!’ said the old count, when he saw Natasha
enter. ‘Well, sit down by me.’ But Natasha stayed by her
mother and glanced round as if looking for something.
‘Mamma!’ she muttered, ‘give him to me, give him,
Mamma, quickly, quickly!’ and she again had difficulty in
repressing her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the elders and Nicholas, who had also come
to the table. ‘My God, my God! The same faces, the same
talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!’
thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion
rising up in her for the whole household, because they were
always the same.
After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to their favorite corner where their most intimate
talks always began.

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Chapter X
Does it ever happen to you,’ said Natasha to her brother,
when they settled down in the sitting room, ‘does it ever
happen to you to feel as if there were nothing more to comenothing; that everything good is past? And to feel not
exactly dull, but sad?’
‘I should think so!’ he replied. ‘I have felt like that when
everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The
thought has come into my mind that I was already tired of it
all, and that we must all die. Once in the regiment I had not
gone to some merrymaking where there was music... and
suddenly I felt so depressed..’
‘Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!’ Natasha interrupted
him. ‘When I was quite little that used to be so with me. Do
you remember when I was punished once about some plums?
You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing in the schoolroom?
I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for everyone, for
myself, and for everyone. And I was innocentthat was the
chief thing,’ said Natasha. ‘Do you remember?’
‘I remember,’ answered Nicholas. ‘I remember that I
came to you afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do
you know, I felt ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had
a funny doll then and wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?’
‘And do you remember,’ Natasha asked with a pensive


973

smile, ‘how once, long, long ago, when we were quite little,
Uncle called us into the studythat was in the old houseand
it was darkwe went in and suddenly there stood..’
‘A Negro,’ chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. ‘Of
course I remember. Even now I don’t know whether there
really was a Negro, or if we only dreamed it or were told
about him.’
‘He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and
stood and looked at us..’
‘Sonya, do you remember?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Yes, yes, I do remember something too,’ Sonya answered
timidly.
‘You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that
Negro,’ said Natasha, ‘and they say there was no Negro at
all. But you see, you remember!’
‘Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen
them.’
‘How strange it is! It’s as if it were a dream! I like that.’
‘And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs
in the ballroom, and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real or not? Do you
remember what fun it was?’
‘Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat
fired a gun in the porch?’
So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful
onesthose impressions of one’s most distant past in which
dreams and realities blendand they laughed with quiet enjoyment.
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Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them,
though they shared the same reminiscences.
Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind,
and what she recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling
as they experienced. She simply enjoyed their pleasure and
tried to fit in with it.
She only really took part when they recalled Sonya’s first
arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas
because he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told
her that she, too, would be sewn up with cords.
‘And I remember their telling me that you had been born
under a cabbage,’ said Natasha, and I remember that I dared
not disbelieve it then, but knew that it was not true, and I
felt so uncomfortable.’
While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the
other door of the sitting room.
‘They have brought the cock, Miss,’ she said in a whisper.
‘It isn’t wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away,’ replied
Natasha.
In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler
came in and went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth covering, and the harp gave out a
jarring sound.
‘Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field,’
came the old countess’ voice from the drawing room.
Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya, remarked: ‘How quiet you young people
are!’


975

‘Yes, we’re philosophizing,’ said Natasha, glancing round
for a moment and then continuing the conversation. They
were now discussing dreams.
Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned,
seating herself quietly in her former place. It was dark in
the room especially where they were sitting on the sofa, but
through the big windows the silvery light of the full moon
fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished the piece but still sat
softly running his fingers over the strings, evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.
‘Do you know,’ said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and Sonya, ‘that when one goes on and on
recalling memories, one at last begins to remember what
happened before one was in the world..’
‘That is metempsychosis,’ said Sonya, who had always
learned well, and remembered everything. ‘The Egyptians
believed that our souls have lived in animals, and will go
back into animals again.’
‘No, I don’t believe we ever were in animals,’ said Natasha,
still in a whisper though the music had ceased. ‘But I am
certain that we were angels somewhere there, and have been
here, and that is why we remember...’
‘May I join you?’ said Dimmler who had come up quietly,
and he sat down by them.
‘If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?’ said
Nicholas. ‘No, that can’t be!’
‘Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know
what I was before?’ Natasha rejoined with conviction. ‘The
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soul is immortalwell then, if I shall always live I must have
lived before, lived for a whole eternity.’
‘Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity,’ remarked
Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as
they.
‘Why is it hard to imagine eternity?’ said Natasha. ‘It is
now today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there
was yesterday, and the day before..’
‘Natasha! Now it’s your turn. Sing me something,’ they
heard the countess say. ‘Why are you sitting there like conspirators?’
‘Mamma, I don’t at all want to,’ replied Natasha, but all
the same she rose.
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off their conversation and quit that corner in
the sitting room, but Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down
at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the middle of the
hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best,
Natasha began to sing her mother’s favorite song.
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since
she had sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that
evening. The count, from his study where he was talking to
Mitenka, heard her and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run
out to play, blundered in his talk while giving orders to the
steward, and at last stopped, while Mitenka stood in front
of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take his
eyes off his sister and drew breath in time with her. Sonya,
as she listened, thought of the immense difference there was


977

between herself and her friend, and how impossible it was
for her to be anything like as bewitching as her cousin. The
old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with tears
in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of
Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage
of Natasha and Prince Andrew.
Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess,
listened with closed eyes.
‘Ah, Countess,’ he said at last, ‘that’s a European talent, she has nothing to learnwhat softness, tenderness, and
strength...’
‘Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!’ said the
countess, not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her
maternal instinct told her that Natasha had too much of
something, and that because of this she would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old
Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers had
arrived.
Natasha stopped abruptly.
‘Idiot!’ she screamed at her brother and, running to a
chair, threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could
not stop for a long time.
‘It’s nothing, Mamma, really it’s nothing; only Petya startled me,’ she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed
and sobs still choked her.
The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as
bears, Turks, innkeepers, and ladiesfrightening and funnybringing in with them the cold from outside and a feeling
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of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly, into the anteroom, then
hiding behind one another they pushed into the ballroom
where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily and
heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas games. The countess, when she had identified them and
laughed at their costumes, went into the drawing room. The
count sat in the ballroom, smiling radiantly and applauding
the players. The young people had disappeared.
Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirtthis was
Nicholas. A Turkish girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler.
An hussar was Natasha, and a Circassian was Sonya with
burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and
praise, from those who were not themselves dressed up, the
young people decided that their costumes were so good that
they ought to be shown elsewhere.
Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition,
wanted to take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed
to take with them about a dozen of the serf mummers and
drive to ‘Uncle’s.’
‘No, why disturb the old fellow?’ said the countess. ‘Besides, you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you
must go, go to the Melyukovs’’
Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their
tutors and governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.
‘That’s right, my dear,’ chimed in the old count, thoroughly aroused. ‘I’ll dress up at once and go with them. I’ll
make Pashette open her eyes.’


979

But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had
a bad leg all these last days. It was decided that the count
must not go, but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss)
would go with them, the young ladies might go to the Melyukovs’, Sonya, generally so timid and shy, more urgently
than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
Sonya’s costume was the best of all. Her mustache and
eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told
her she looked very handsome, and she was in a spirited
and energetic mood unusual with her. Some inner voice
told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and in
her male attire she seemed quite a different person. Louisa
Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka
sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking
and whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.
Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone,
which, passing from one to another, grew stronger and
stronger and reached its climax when they all came out into
the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.
Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the
third was the old count’s with a trotter from the Orlov stud
as shaft horse, the fourth was Nicholas’ own with a short
shaggy black shaft horse. Nicholas, in his old lady’s dress
over which he had belted his hussar overcoat, stood in the
middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.
It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected
from the metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm at the noisy party under the
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shadow of the porch roof.
Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into
Nicholas’ sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old
count’s, and the rest of the mummers seated themselves in
the other two sleighs.
‘You go ahead, Zakhar!’ shouted Nicholas to his father’s
coachman, wishing for a chance to race past him.
The old count’s troyka, with Dimmler and his party,
started forward, squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses,
pressing against the shafts of the middle horse, sank in the
snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar, and threw it
up.
Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the
others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they
drove at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they
drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees often
fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as
soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in
moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. Bang,
bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of
the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same
way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road, one after the other.
‘A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!’ rang out Natasha’s voice
through the frost-bound air.
‘How light it is, Nicholas!’ came Sonya’s voice.
Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see


981

her face closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows
and mustaches peeped up at him from her sable fursso close
and yet so distantin the moonlight.
‘That used to be Sonya,’ thought he, and looked at her
closer and smiled.
‘What is it, Nicholas?’
‘Nothing,’ said he and turned again to the horses.
When they came out onto the beaten highroadpolished
by sleigh runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the
marks of which were visible in the moonlightthe horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord and increased
their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse
swayed from side to side, moving his ears as if asking: ‘Isn’t
it time to begin now?’ In front, already far ahead the deep
bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black
horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the
white snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts,
laughter, and voices of the mummers.
‘Gee up, my darlings!’ shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins
to one side and flourishing the whip.
It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks
given by the side horses who pulled harderever increasing
their gallopthat one noticed how fast the troyka was flying.
Nicholas looked back. With screams squeals, and waving of
whips that caused even the shaft horses to gallopthe other
sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung steadily beneath the
bow over its head, with no thought of slackening pace and
ready to put on speed when required.
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Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving
downhill and coming out upon a broad trodden track across
a meadow, near a river.
‘Where are we?’ thought he. ‘It’s the Kosoy meadow, I
suppose. But nothis is something new I’ve never seen before. This isn’t the Kosoy meadow nor the Demkin hill, and
heaven only knows what it is! It is something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be...’ And shouting to his
horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.
Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which
was already covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching
out his arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go.
‘Now, look out, master!’ he cried.
Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster
moved the feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began
to draw ahead. Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with the reins.
‘No you won’t, master!’ he shouted.
Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar.
The horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those
in the sleighbeside them sounded quick ringing bells and
they caught confused glimpses of swiftly moving legs and
the shadows of the troyka they were passing. The whistling
sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls
shrieking were heard from different sides.
Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him.
They were still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in
moonlight and spangled with stars.


983

‘Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why
to the left?’ thought Nicholas. ‘Are we getting to the Melyukovs’? Is this Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we
are going, and heaven knows what is happening to usbut it
is very strange and pleasant whatever it is.’ And he looked
round in the sleigh.
‘Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!’ said one
of the strange, pretty, unfamiliar peoplethe one with fine
eyebrows and mustache.
‘I think this used to be Natasha,’ thought Nicholas, ‘and
that was Madame Schoss, but perhaps it’s not, and this Circassian with the mustache I don’t know, but I love her.’
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked.
They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from
the sleigh behind shouted somethingprobably something
funnybut they could not make out what he said.
‘Yes, yes!’ some voices answered, laughing.
‘But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows,
and a glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and
the silver roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some
animals. And if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger
that we drove heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka,’ thought Nicholas.
It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with
merry faces came running, out to the porch carrying candles.
‘Who is it?’ asked someone in the porch.
‘The mummers from the count’s. I know by the horses,’
replied some voices.
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Chapter XI
Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in
a loose dress, surrounded by her daughters whom she was
trying to keep from feeling dull. They were quietly dropping
melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows the wax
figures would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps
and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces
in the vestibule, came into the ballroom where candles were
hurriedly lighted. The clownDimmlerand the ladyNicholasstarted a dance. Surrounded by the screaming children the
mummers, covering their faces and disguising their voices,
bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves about the
room.
‘Dear me! there’s no recognizing them! And Natasha! See
whom she looks like! She really reminds me of somebody.
But Herr Dimmlerisn’t he good! I didn’t know him! And
how he dances. Dear me, there’s a Circassian. Really, how
becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that? Well, you
have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanyaclear away the tables!
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the
hussar! Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can’t look at him...’
different voices were saying.


985

Natasha, the young Melyukovs’ favorite, disappeared
with them into the back rooms where a cork and various
dressing gowns and male garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from behind
the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukovs joined
the mummers.
Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the
rooms for the visitors and arranged about refreshments for
the gentry and the serfs, went about among the mummers
without removing her spectacles, peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of
them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she failed
to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters,
or her late husband’s, dressing gowns and uniforms, which
they had put on.
‘And who is is this?’ she asked her governess, peering into
the face of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. ‘I
suppose it is one of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what
regiment do you serve in?’ she asked Natasha. ‘Here, hand
some fruit jelly to the Turk!’ she ordered the butler who was
handing things round. ‘That’s not forbidden by his law.’
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing
capers cut by the dancers, whohaving decided once for all
that being disguised, no one would recognize themwere not
at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with irrepressible,
kindly, elderly laughter.
‘My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!’ she said.
After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pel986

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ageya Danilovna made the serfs and gentry join in one large
circle: a ring, a string, and a silver ruble were fetched and
they all played games together.
In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared
over the perspiring, flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired their
cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for having
entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper
in the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to
them in the ballroom.
‘Now to tell one’s fortune in the empty bathhouse is
frightening!’ said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.
‘Why?’ said the eldest Melyukov girl.
‘You wouldn’t go, it takes courage..’
‘I’ll go,’ said Sonya.
‘Tell what happened to the young lady!’ said the second
Melyukov girl.
‘Well,’ began the old maid, ‘a young lady once went out,
took a cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down.
After sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming...
a sleigh drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming!
He comes in, just in the shape of a man, like an officercomes
in and sits down to table with her.’
‘Ah! ah!’ screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.
‘Yes? And how... did he speak?’


987

‘Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading her; and she should have kept him talking
till cockcrow, but she got frightened, just got frightened and
hid her face in her hands. Then he caught her up. It was
lucky the maids ran in just then..’
‘Now, why frighten them?’ said Pelageya Danilovna.
‘Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself...’ said her
daughter.
‘And how does one do it in a barn?’ inquired Sonya.
‘Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what you hear; hammering and knockingthat’s
bad; but a sound of shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too.’
‘Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn.’
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
‘Oh, I’ve forgotten...’ she replied. ‘But none of you would
go?’
‘Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I’ll go,’ said Sonya.
‘Well, why not, if you’re not afraid?’
‘Louisa Ivanovna, may I?’ asked Sonya.
Whether they were playing the ring and string game or
the ruble game or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya’s side, and gazed at her with quite new eyes. It seemed to
him that it was only today, thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And really, that
evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated, and prettier
than Nicholas had ever seen her before.
‘So that’s what she is like; what a fool I have been!’ he
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thought gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile
he had never seen before.
‘I’m not afraid of anything,’ said Sonya. ‘May I go at
once?’ She got up.
They told her where the barn was and how she should
stand and listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw
this over her head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.
‘What a darling that girl is!’ thought he. ‘And what have
I been thinking of till now?’
Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The
crowd of people really had made the house stuffy.
Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same
moon, but even brighter than before. The light was so strong
and the snow sparkled with so many stars that one did not
wish to look up at the sky and the real stars were unnoticed.
The sky was black and dreary, while the earth was gay.
‘I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?’ thought
Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went round
the corner of the house and along the path that led to the
back porch. He knew Sonya would pass that way. Halfway
lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and across and
along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime
trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the
barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof,
that looked as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled
in the moonlight. A tree in the garden snapped with the
frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His bosom


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seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth
and gladness.
From the back porch came the sound of feet descending
the steps, the bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave
a ringing creak and he heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, ‘Straight, straight, along the path, Miss. Only,
don’t look back.’
‘I am not afraid,’ answered Sonya’s voice, and along the
path toward Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound
of Sonya’s feet in her thin shoes.
Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only
a couple of paces away when she saw him, and to her too
he was not the Nicholas she had known and always slightly
feared. He was in a woman’s dress, with tousled hair and a
happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly toward him.
‘Quite different and yet the same,’ thought Nicholas,
looking at her face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped
his arms under the cloak that covered her head, embraced
her, pressed her to him, and kissed her on the lips that wore
a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sonya kissed him
full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed
them to his cheeks.
‘Sonya!... Nicholas!’... was all they said. They ran to the
barn and then back again, re-entering, he by the front and
she by the back porch.

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Chapter XII
When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna’s,
Natasha, who always saw and noticed everything, arranged
that she and Madame Schoss should go back in the sleigh
with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and the maids.
On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead
of racing and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming
light into Sonya’s face and searching beneath the eyebrows
and mustache for his former and his present Sonya from
whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He looked
and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sonya, and
being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and,
looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in fairyland.
‘Sonya, is it well with thee?’ he asked from time to time.
‘Yes!’ she replied. ‘And with thee?’
When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the
coachman and ran for a moment to Natasha’s sleigh and
stood on its wing.
‘Natasha!’ he whispered in French, ‘do you know I have
made up my mind about Sonya?’
‘Have you told her?’ asked Natasha, suddenly beaming
all over with joy.
‘Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those


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eyebrows!... Natashaare you glad?’
‘I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with
you. I did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly.
What a heart she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but
I was ashamed to be happy while Sonya was not,’ continued
Natasha. ‘Now I am so glad! Well, run back to her.’
‘No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!’ cried Nicholas,
peering into her face and finding in his sister too something
new, unusual, and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen
in her before. ‘Natasha, it’s magical, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘You have done splendidly.’
‘Had I seen her before as she is now,’ thought Nicholas,
‘I should long ago have asked her what to do and have done
whatever she told me, and all would have been well.’
‘So you are glad and I have done right?’
‘Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time
ago about it. Mamma said she was angling for you. How
could she say such a thing! I nearly stormed at Mamma. I
will never let anyone say anything bad of Sonya, for there is
nothing but good in her.’
‘Then it’s all right?’ said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the
expression of his sister’s face to see if she was in earnest.
Then he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow,
ran back to his sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian,
with mustache and beaming eyes looking up from under a
sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian was
Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his future happy and
loving wife.
When they reached home and had told their mother how
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they had spent the evening at the Melyukovs’, the girls went
to their bedroom. When they had undressed, but without
washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a long time talking
of their happiness. They talked of how they would live when
they were married, how their husbands would be friends,
and how happy they would be. On Natasha’s table stood two
looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared beforehand.
‘Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would
be too good!’ said Natasha, rising and going to the looking
glasses.
‘Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you’ll see him,’ said Sonya.
Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the
looking glasses, and sat down.
‘I see someone with a mustache,’ said Natasha, seeing her
own face.
‘You mustn’t laugh, Miss,’ said Dunyasha.
With Sonya’s help and the maid’s, Natasha got the glass
she held into the right position opposite the other; her face
assumed a serious expression and she sat silent. She sat a
long time looking at the receding line of candles reflected in
the glasses and expecting (from tales she had heard) to see a
coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that last dim, indistinctly
outlined square. But ready as she was to take the smallest
speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the
looking glasses.
‘Why is it others see things and I don’t?’ she said. ‘You sit
down now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for
me.... Today I feel so frightened!’


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Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position,
and began looking.
‘Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something,’ whispered
Dunyasha; ‘while you do nothing but laugh.’
Sonya heard this and Natasha’s whisper:
‘I know she will. She saw something last year.’
For about three minutes all were silent.
‘Of course she will!’ whispered Natasha, but did not finish... suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding
and covered her eyes with her hand.
‘Oh, Natasha!’ she cried.
‘Did you see? Did you? What was it?’ exclaimed Natasha,
holding up the looking glass.
Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to
blink and to get up when she heard Natasha say, ‘Of course
she will!’ She did not wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or
Natasha, but it was hard to sit still. She did not herself know
how or why the exclamation escaped her when she covered
her eyes.
‘You saw him?’ urged Natasha, seizing her hand.
‘Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him,’ Sonya could not help saying, not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas
or Prince Andrew.
‘But why shouldn’t I say I saw something? Others do see!
Besides who can tell whether I saw anything or not?’ flashed
through Sonya’s mind.
‘Yes, I saw him,’ she said.
‘How? Standing or lying?’
‘No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him
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lying down.’
‘Andrew lying? Is he ill?’ asked Natasha, her frightened
eyes fixed on her friend.
‘No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he turned to me.’ And when saying this she herself
fancied she had really seen what she described.
‘Well, and then, Sonya?..’
‘After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and red..’
‘Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him!
O, God, how afraid I am for him and for myself and about
everything!...’ Natasha began, and without replying to Sonya’s words of comfort she got into bed, and long after her
candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless, gazing at the
moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.



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Chapter XIII
Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his
mother of his love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who had long noticed what was going
on between them and was expecting this declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that he might
marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father
would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for
the first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him
and that, despite her love for him, she would not give way.
Coldly, without looking at her son, she sent for her husband
and, when he came, tried briefly and coldly to inform him
of the facts, in her son’s presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of vexation and left the room. The
old count began irresolutely to admonish Nicholas and beg
him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied that he could
not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to
the countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count
was always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family fortune, and so he could not be angry
with him for refusing to marry an heiress and choosing
the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he was only more
vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had not been
in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could
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have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his
Mitenka and his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the
condition of the family finances.
The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their
son again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya
and, with a cruelty neither of them expected, reproached
her niece for trying to catch Nicholas and for ingratitude.
Sonya listened silently with downcast eyes to the countess’
cruel words, without understanding what was required of
her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this
case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for
whom. She could not help loving the countess and the whole
Rostov family, but neither could she help loving Nicholas
and knowing that his happiness depended on that love. She
was silent and sad and did not reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to have an explanation with
his mother. He first implored her to forgive him and Sonya
and consent to their marriage, then he threatened that if she
molested Sonya he would at once marry her secretly.
The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in
her before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew
was marrying without his father’s consent, and he could do
the same, but that she would never receive that intriguer as
her daughter.
Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his
voice, told his mother he had never expected her to try to
force him to sell his feelings, but if that were so, he would
say for the last time.... But he had no time to utter the deci

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sive word which the expression of his face caused his mother
to await with terror, and which would perhaps have forever
remained a cruel memory to them both. He had not time
to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the
room from the door at which she had been listening.
‘Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet,
be quiet, I tell you!...’ she almost screamed, so as to drown
his voice.
‘Mamma darling, it’s not at all so... my poor, sweet darling,’ she said to her mother, who conscious that they had
been on the brink of a rupture gazed at her son with terror,
but in the obstinacy and excitement of the conflict could not
and would not give way.
‘Nicholas, I’ll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma
darling,’ said Natasha.
Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which she was aiming.
The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter’s breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left
the room.
Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far
succeeded that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not be troubled, while he on his side
promised not to undertake anything without his parents’
knowledge.
Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the
regiment, to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious, sorrowful, and at variance with his
parents, but, as it seemed to him, passionately in love, left at
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the beginning of January to rejoin his regiment.
After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household
were more depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill
from mental agitation.
Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and
still more so on account of the hostile tone the countess
could not help adopting toward her. The count was more
perturbed than ever by the condition of his affairs, which
called for some decisive action. Their town house and estate
near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they had
to go to Moscow. But the countess’ health obliged them to
delay their departure from day to day.
Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation
from her betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew
more agitated and impatient every day. The thought that her
best days, which she would have employed in loving him,
were being vainly wasted, with no advantage to anyone,
tormented her incessantly. His letters for the most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived only in the
thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new places
and new people that interested him. The more interesting
his letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him,
far from giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome
and artificial obligation. She could not write, because she
could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely
in a letter even a thousandth part of what she expressed by
voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no importance
herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess cor

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rected her mistakes in spelling.
There was still no improvement in the countess’ health,
but it was impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any
longer. Natasha’s trousseau had to be ordered and the house
sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew was expected in Moscow,
where old Prince Bolkonski was spending the winter, and
Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.
So the countess remained in the country, and the count,
taking Sonya and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the
end of January.

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BOOK EIGHT: 1811 12



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Chapter I
After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre
without any apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go
on living as before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths
revealed to him by his benefactor, and happy as he had been
in perfecting his inner man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardorall the zest of such a life vanished after
the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and the death of
Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost
at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his
house, a brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very
important personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and
his court service with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased
keeping a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal, and came
once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a
life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak
severely to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to
avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.
In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which
the faded and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as, driving through the town, he saw
the Iberian shrine with innumerable tapers burning before
the golden covers of the icons, the Kremlin Square with its
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snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and hovels
of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who desired
nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow
balls, and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and
dirty as in an old dressing gown.
Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place
was always ready awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre
was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual, merriest, and
most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless, genial nobleman
of the old Russian type. His purse was always empty because it was open to everyone.
Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners,
sprees, Freemasons, churches, and booksno one and nothing met with a refusal from him, and had it not been for two
friends who had borrowed large sums from him and taken
him under their protection, he would have given everything
away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the Club without
him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa after two
bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly
smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The
Masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he was not
there.
When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable
and kindly smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive


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company to drive off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the young men. At balls he
danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married and
unmarried, liked him because without making love to any
of them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. ‘Il est charmant; il n’a pas de sexe,’* they said of him.
*”He is charming; he has no sex.’
Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of
whom there were hundreds good-humoredly ending their
days in Moscow.
How horrified he would have been seven years before,
when he first arrived from abroad, had he been told that
there was no need for him to seek or plan anything, that
his rut had long been shaped, eternally predetermined, and
that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher;
and then a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had
he not seen the possibility of, and passionately desired, the
regeneration of the sinful human race, and his own progress
to the highest degree of perfection? Had he not established
schools and hospitals and liberated his serfs?
But instead of all thathere he was, the wealthy husband
of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond
of eating and drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat,
of abusing the government a bit, a member of the Moscow
English Club, and a universal favorite in Moscow society.
For a long time he could not reconcile himself to the idea
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that he was one of those same retired Moscow gentlemenin-waiting he had so despised seven years before.
Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that
he was only living this life temporarily; but then he was
shocked by the thought of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club temporarily, with all their teeth
and hair, and had only left it when not a single tooth or hair
remained.
In moments of pride, when he thought of his position
it seemed to him that he was quite different and distinct
from those other retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were empty, stupid, contented fellows,
satisfied with their position, ‘while I am still discontented
and want to do something for mankind. But perhaps all
these comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought
something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were
brought by force of circumstances, society, and raceby that
elemental force against which man is powerlessto the condition I am in,’ said he to himself in moments of humility; and
after living some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but
began to grow fond of, to respect, and to pity his comrades
in destiny, as he pitied himself.
Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust with life, but the malady that had formerly
found expression in such acute attacks was driven inwards
and never left him for a moment. ‘What for? Why? What is
going on in the world?’ he would ask himself in perplexity
several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew
on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by


1005

experience that there were no answers to these questions he
made haste to turn away from them, and took up a book, or
hurried of to the Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich’s, to exchange the gossip of the town.
‘Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own
body and is one of the stupidest women in the world,’
thought Pierre, ‘is regarded by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay homage to her.
Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he was
great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the
Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy,
offer praise to God for their victory over the French on the
fourteenth of June, and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because on that same fourteenth of
June they defeated the Spaniards. My brother Masons swear
by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice everything for
their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge
against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic
Scotch carpet and a charter that nobody needs, and the
meaning of which the very man who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law of forgiveness of
injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor of which
we have built in Moscow forty times forty churchesbut yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of
that same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross to kiss before his execution.’ So thought Pierre,
and the whole of this general deception which everyone
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accepts, accustomed as he was to it, astonished him each
time as if it were something new. ‘I understand the deception and confusion,’ he thought, ‘but how am I to tell them
all that I see? I have tried, and have always found that they
too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do, and
only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But
Iwhat is to become of me?’ thought he. He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing
and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but
of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able
to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he
tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood
of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity. Yet he
had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be
under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He
frequented every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in building, and above allread.
He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, while his valets were still taking off his things, he
picked up a book and began to read. From reading he passed
to sleeping, from sleeping to gossip in drawing rooms of the
Club, from gossip to carousals and women; from carousals
back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking became more
and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though
the doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was
dangerous for him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite
at ease when having poured several glasses of wine me

1007

chanically into his large mouth he felt a pleasant warmth in
his body, an amiability toward all his fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea without probing
it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did he feel
dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously
had terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He
was always conscious of some aspect of that skein, as with
a buzzing in his head after dinner or supper he chatted or
listened to conversation or read. But under the influence of
wine he said to himself: ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no time nowI’ll think
it all out later on!’ But the later on never came.
In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre
hastily picked up a book, and if anyone came to see him he
was glad.
Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when entrenched under the enemy’s fire, if they
have nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the
more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men seemed
like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women,
some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport,
some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. ‘Nothing
is trivial, and nothing is important, it’s all the sameonly to
save oneself from it as best one can,’ thought Pierre. ‘Only
not to see it, that dreadful it!’

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Chapter II
At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski
and his daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander’s regime had weakened and
a patriotic and anti-French tendency prevailed there, and
this, together with his past and his intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas Bolkonski an object of
particular respect to the Moscovites and the center of the
Moscow opposition to the government.
The prince had aged very much that year. He showed
marked signs of senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent events, remembrance of remote ones,
and the childish vanity with which he accepted the role of
head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of this the old man
inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of respectful venerationespecially of an evening when he came in to tea in his
old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more
abrupt and scathing criticisms of the present. For them all,
that old-fashioned house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and the stern shrewd
old man (himself a relic of the past century) with his gentle
daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently
devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple


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of hours during which they saw their host, there were also
twenty-two hours in the day during which the private and
intimate life of the house continued.
Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary. There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest
pleasurestalks with the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hillsand she had none of the advantages
and pleasures of city life. She did not go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her go anywhere
without him, and his failing health prevented his going out
himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening
parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She saw the coldness and malevolence with which the
old prince received and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes appeared at their house. She
had no friends: during this visit to Moscow she had been
disappointed in the two who had been nearest to her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able
to be quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and
for various reasons Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with
whom she had corresponded for the last five years, was in
Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to her when they met.
Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers had become
one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full whirl
of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who,
she fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth.
Julie was at that stage in the life of a society woman when
she feels that her last chance of marrying has come and that
her fate must be decided now or never. On Thursdays Prin1010

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cess Mary remembered with a mournful smile that she now
had no one to write to, since Juliewhose presence gave her
no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old
emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had
spent his evenings for years, she regretted Julie’s presence
and having no one to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary
had no one to talk to, no one to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just then. The time for
Prince Andrew’s return and marriage was approaching, but
his request to her to prepare his father for it had not been
carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova
the old prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad
temper) lost control of himself. Another lately added sorrow
arose from the lessons she gave her six year-old nephew. To
her consternation she detected in herself in relation to little
Nicholas some symptoms of her father’s irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get irritable
when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet,
she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the childwho was already afraid that Auntie might
at any moment get angrythat at his slightest inattention she
trembled, became flustered and heated, raised her voice,
and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in the
corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas,
following her example, would sob, and without permission
would leave his corner, come to her, pull her wet hands from


1011

her face, and comfort her. But what distressed the princess
most of all was her father’s irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late amounted to cruelty. Had
he forced her to prostrate herself to the ground all night,
had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water, it would
never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but
this loving despotthe more cruel because he loved her and
for that reason tormented himself and herknew how not
merely to hurt and humiliate her deliberately, but to show
her that she was always to blame for everything. Of late he
had exhibited a new trait that tormented Princess Mary
more than anything else; this was his ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at the
first moment of receiving the news of his son’s intentions
had occurred to him in jestthat if Andrew got married he
himself would marry Bouriennehad evidently pleased him,
and latterly he had persistently, and as it seemed to Princess
Mary merely to offend her, shown special endearments to
the companion and expressed his dissatisfaction with his
daughter by demonstrations of love of Bourienne.
One day in Moscow in Princess Mary’s presence (she
thought her father did it purposely when she was there)
the old prince kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand and,
drawing her to him, embraced her affectionately. Princess
Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary’s
room smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went
resolutely up to Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently un1012

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conscious of what she was doing began shouting in angry
haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice breaking: ‘It’s horrible,
vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the weakness...’ She did
not finish. ‘Leave my room,’ she exclaimed, and burst into
sobs.
Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter,
but she noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne should be served first. After dinner, when
the footman handed coffee and from habit began with the
princess, the prince suddenly grew furious, threw his stick
at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to have him conscripted for the army.
‘He doesn’t obey... I said it twice... and he doesn’t obey!
She is the first person in this house; she’s my best friend,’
cried the prince. ‘And if you allow yourself,’ he screamed in
a fury, addressing Princess Mary for the first time, ‘to forget
yourself again before her as you dared to do yesterday, I will
show you who is master in this house. Go! Don’t let me set
eyes on you; beg her pardon!’
Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne’s pardon,
and also her father’s pardon for herself and for Philip the
footman, who had begged for her intervention.
At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice
gathered in her soul. And suddenly that father whom she
had judged would look for his spectacles in her presence,
fumbling near them and not seeing them, or would forget
something that had just occurred, or take a false step with
his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had noticed his
feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no


1013

visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his
napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate. ‘He is
old and feeble, and I dare to condemn him!’ she thought at
such moments, with a feeling of revulsion against herself.

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Chapter III
In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctorMetivierwho had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously
tall, handsome, amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all
Moscow said, an extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses not merely as a doctor, but as an
equal.
Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on Mademoiselle Bourienne’s advice had allowed this
doctor to visit him and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about twice a week.
On December 6St. Nicholas’ Day and the prince’s name
dayall Moscow came to the prince’s front door but he gave
orders to admit no one and to invite to dinner only a small
number, a list of whom he gave to Princess Mary.
Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer
la consigne,* as he told Princess Mary, and went in to see
the prince. It happened that on that morning of his name
day the prince was in one of his worst moods. He had been
going about the house all the morning finding fault with everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to
him and not to be understood himself. Princess Mary well
knew this mood of quiet absorbed querulousness, which
generally culminated in a burst of rage, and she went about


1015

all that morning as though facing a cocked and loaded gun
and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor’s arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the
doctor, Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing
room near the door through which she could hear all that
passed in the study.
*To force the guard.
At first she heard only Metivier’s voice, then her father’s,
then both voices began speaking at the same time, the door
was flung open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the terrified Metivier with his shock of black
hair, and the prince in his dressing gown and fez, his face
distorted with fury and the pupils of his eyes rolled downwards.
‘You don’t understand?’ shouted the prince, ‘but I do!
French spy, slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be
off, I tell you..’
Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne who at the sound of shouting had run in
from an adjoining room.
‘The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the
head. Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow,’ said Metivier;
and putting his fingers to his lips he hastened away.
Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet
and the cry: ‘Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment’s peace in my own house!’
After Metivier’s departure the old prince called his daughter in, and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was
to blame that a spy had been admitted. Had he not told her,
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yes, told her to make a list, and not to admit anyone who was
not on that list? Then why was that scoundrel admitted? She
was the cause of it all. With her, he said, he could not have a
moment’s peace and could not die quietly.
‘No, ma’am! We must part, we must part! Understand
that, understand it! I cannot endure any more,’ he said, and
left the room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means
of consolation, he returned and trying to appear calm added: ‘And don’t imagine I have said this in a moment of anger.
I am calm. I have thought it over, and it will be carried outwe
must part; so find some place for yourself....’ But he could not
restrain himself and with the virulence of which only one
who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself, he shook
his fists at her and screamed:
‘If only some fool would marry her!’ Then he slammed
the door, sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided
into his study.
At two o’clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.
These gueststhe famous Count Rostopchin, Prince
Lopukhin with his nephew, General Chatrov an old war
comrade of the prince’s, and of the younger generation
Pierre and Boris Drubetskoyawaited the prince in the drawing room.
Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski, and had contrived to ingratiate himself so well
that the old prince in his case made an exception to the rule
of not receiving bachelors in his house.


1017

The prince’s house did not belong to what is known as
fashionable society, but his little circlethough not much talked about in townwas one it was more flattering to be received
in than any other. Boris had realized this the week before
when the commander in chief in his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas’ Day, and Rostopchin had
replied that he could not come:
‘On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics
of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski.’
‘Oh, yes, yes!’ replied the commander in chief. ‘How is
he?..’
The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty
old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled
the solemn gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or
talked in low tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even quieter and more diffident
than usual. The guests were reluctant to address her, feeling
that she was in no mood for their conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going, now relating the
latest town news, and now the latest political gossip.
Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in
the conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding
judge receives a report, only now and then, silently or by
a brief word, showing that he took heed of what was being
reported to him. The tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of what was being done in the
political world. Incidents were related evidently confirming
the opinion that everything was going from bad to worse,
but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker
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always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which
his criticism might touch the sovereign himself.
At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon’s seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg’s territory, and
the Russian Note, hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent
to all the European courts.
‘Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured
vessel,’ said Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had
uttered several times before. ‘One only wonders at the longsuffering or blindness of the crowned heads. Now the Pope’s
turn has come and Bonaparte doesn’t scruple to depose the
head of the Catholic Churchyet all keep silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the Duke of
Oldenburg’s territory, and even...’ Count Rostopchin paused,
feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure
was impossible.
‘Other territories have been offered in exchange for the
Duchy of Oldenburg,’ said Prince Bolkonski. ‘He shifts the
Dukes about as I might move my serfs from Bald Hills to
Bogucharovo or my Ryazan estates.’
‘The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength of character and resignation,’ remarked
Boris, joining in respectfully.
He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he
had had the honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince
Bolkonski glanced at the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his mind, evidently considering
him too young.
‘I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and


1019

was surprised how badly the Note was worded,’ remarked
Count Rostopchin in the casual tone of a man dealing with
a subject quite familiar to him.
Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not
understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the Note.
‘Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded,’ he asked,
‘so long as its substance is forcible?’
‘My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops
it should be easy to have a good style,’ returned Count Rostopchin.
Pierre now understood the count’s dissatisfaction with
the wording of the Note.
‘One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung
up,’ remarked the old prince. ‘There in Petersburg they are
always writingnot notes only but even new laws. My Andrew
there has written a whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!’ and he laughed unnaturally.
There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the
old general cleared his throat to draw attention.
‘Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg?
The figure cut by the new French ambassador.’
‘Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward
in His Majesty’s presence.’
‘His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division
and to the march past,’ continued the general, ‘and it seems
the ambassador took no notice and allowed himself to reply
that: ‘We in France pay no attention to such trifles!’ The Emperor did not condescend to reply. At the next review, they
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say, the Emperor did not once deign to address him.’
All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it was impossible to pass any judgment.
‘Impudent fellows!’ said the prince. ‘You know Metivier? I
turned him out of my house this morning. He was here; they
admitted him spite of my request that they should let no one
in,’ he went on, glancing angrily at his daughter.
And he narrated his whole conversation with the French
doctor and the reasons that convinced him that Metivier
was a spy. Though these reasons were very insufficient and
obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to
congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round
to him.
He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his
face told her that he had not forgotten the morning’s talk,
that his decision remained in force, and only the presence of
visitors hindered his speaking of it to her now.
When they went into the drawing room where coffee was
served, the old men sat together.
Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his
views on the impending war.
He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we sought alliances with the Germans and
thrust ourselves into European affairs, into which we had
been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. ‘We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political interests are all in
the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only thing is to have


1021

an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will never dare
to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!’
‘How can we fight the French, Prince?’ said Count Rostopchin. ‘Can we arm ourselves against our teachers and
divinities? Look at our youths, look at our ladies! The French
are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.’
He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.
‘French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now,
you turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he
is a Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after
him on their knees. I went to a party last night, and there
out of five ladies three were Roman Catholics and had the
Pope’s indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays. And they
themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our
Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when one looks at our young
people, Prince, one would like to take Peter the Great’s old
cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the Russian
way till all the nonsense jumps out of them.’
All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with
a smile and wagged his head approvingly.
‘Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!’ said Rostopchin, getting up with characteristic briskness and holding
out his hand to the prince.
‘Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never
tire of hearing him!’ said the old prince, keeping hold of the
hand and offering his cheek to be kissed.
Following Rostopchin’s example the others also rose.
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Chapter IV
Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men’s talk
and faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard;
she only wondered whether the guests had all observed her
father’s hostile attitude toward her. She did not even notice
the special attentions and amiabilities shown her during
dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who was visiting them for the
third time already.
Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning
look to Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face
was the last of the guests to approach her after the old prince
had gone out and they were left alone in the drawing room.
‘May I stay a little longer?’ he said, letting his stout body
sink into an armchair beside her.
‘Oh yes,’ she answered. ‘You noticed nothing?’ her look
asked.
Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked
straight before him and smiled quietly.
‘Have you known that young man long, Princess?’ he
asked.
‘Who?’
‘Drubetskoy.’
‘No, not long..’
‘Do you like him?’
‘Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me


1023

that?’ said Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning’s
conversation with her father.
‘Because I have noticed that when a young man comes
on leave from Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the
object of marrying an heiress.’
‘You have observed that?’ said Princess Mary.
‘Yes,’ returned Pierre with a smile, ‘and this young man
now manages matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I can read him like a book. At present he
is hesitating whom to lay siege toyou or Mademoiselle Julie
Karagina. He is very attentive to her.’
‘He visits them?’
‘Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?’ said Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that
cheerful mood of good humored raillery for which he so
often reproached himself in his diary.
‘No,’ replied Princess Mary.
‘To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina,’
said Pierre.
‘Really?’ asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre’s kindly face and still thinking of her own sorrow. ‘It would be a
relief,’ thought she, ‘if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like to tell everything to Pierre.
He is kind and generous. It would be a relief. He would give
me advice.’
‘Would you marry him?’
‘Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would
marry anybody!’ she cried suddenly to her own surprise
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War and Peace

and with tears in her voice. ‘Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that...’ she went on in a trembling
voice, ‘that you can do nothing for him but grieve him, and
to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only one
thing leftto go away, but where could I go?’
‘What is wrong? What is it, Princess?’
But without finishing what she was saying, Princess
Mary burst into tears.
‘I don’t know what is the matter with me today. Don’t
take any noticeforget what I have said!’
Pierre’s gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide
her grief to him; but she only repeated that she begged him
to forget what she had said, that she did not remember what
she had said, and that she had no trouble except the one he
knew ofthat Prince Andrew’s marriage threatened to cause
a rupture between father and son.
‘Have you any news of the Rostovs?’ she asked, to change
the subject. ‘I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here.’
‘And how does he now regard the matter?’ asked Pierre,
referring to the old prince.
Princess Mary shook her head.
‘What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up.
The thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope
to be friends with her. You have known them a long time,’
said Princess Mary. ‘Tell me honestly the whole truth: what
sort of girl is she, and what do you think of her?The real


1025

truth, because you know Andrew is risking so much doing
this against his father’s will that I should like to know..’
An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated requests to be told the whole truth,
expressed ill-will on the princess’ part toward her future
sister-in-law and a wish that he should disapprove of Andrew’s choice; but in reply he said what he felt rather than
what he thought.
‘I don’t know how to answer your question,’ he said,
blushing without knowing why. ‘I really don’t know what
sort of girl she is; I can’t analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I don’t know. That is all one can
say about her.’
Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face
said: ‘Yes, that’s what I expected and feared.’
‘Is she clever?’ she asked.
Pierre considered.
‘I think not,’ he said, ‘and yetyes. She does not deign to be
clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all.’
Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
‘Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before
I do.’
‘I hear they are expected very soon,’ said Pierre.
Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate
with her future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived
and to try to accustom the old prince to her.

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Chapter V
Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in
Petersburg, so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered between the two richest heiresses,
Julie and Princess Mary. Though Princess Mary despite
her plainness seemed to him more attractive than Julie, he,
without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to
her. When they had last met on the old prince’s name day,
she had answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not listening to what he was saying.
Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily,
though in a manner peculiar to herself.
She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she
had become very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain,
but thought herself not merely as good-looking as before but
even far more attractive. She was confirmed in this delusion
by the fact that she had become a very wealthy heiress and
also by the fact that the older she grew the less dangerous
she became to men, and the more freely they could associate
with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and
the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation. A man who would have been
afraid ten years before of going every day to the house when
there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every


1027

day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless
acquaintance.
That winter the Karagins’ house was the most agreeable
and hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner parties, a large company, chiefly of men,
gathered there every day, supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never missed a ball, a
promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of the latest
fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be disillusioned
about everything and told everyone that she did not believe
either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life, and
expected peace only ‘yonder.’ She adopted the tone of one
who has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has
either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by
him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she
was regarded in that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life. This melancholy,
which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder
the young people who came to her house from passing the
time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid
his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then
amused himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual
games, and bouts rimes, which were in vogue at the Karagins’. Only a few of these young men, among them Boris,
entered more deeply into Julie’s melancholy, and with these
she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of
all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled
with mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.
To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted
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his early disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as she who had herself suffered so much
could render, and showed him her album. Boris sketched
two trees in the album and wrote: ‘Rustic trees, your dark
branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me.’
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n’y a pas d’autre asile.*
*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
Julia said this was charming
‘There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy,’ she said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage
she had copied from a book. ‘It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the
possibility of consolation.’
In reply Boris wrote these lines:
Aliment de poison d’une ame trop sensible,
Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
Tendre
melancholie,
ah,
viens
me
consoler,
Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
Et
mele
une
douceur
secrete
A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*
*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
And mingle a secret sweetness


1029

With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her
harp. Boris read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once
interrupted the reading because of the emotions that choked
him. Meeting at large gatherings Julie and Boris looked on
one another as the only souls who understood one another
in a world of indifferent people.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins,
while playing cards with the mother made careful inquiries
as to Julie’s dowry (she was to have two estates in Penza and
the Nizhegorod forests). Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the
refined sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie with
emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.
‘You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie,’ she said to the daughter. ‘Boris says his soul finds repose
at your house. He has suffered so many disappointments
and is so sensitive,’ said she to the mother. ‘Ah, my dear,
I can’t tell you how fond I have grown of Julie latterly,’ she
said to her son. ‘But who could help loving her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!’she paused. ‘And how I pity her
mother,’ she went on; ‘today she showed me her accounts
and letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there),
and she, poor thing, has no one to help her, and they do
cheat her so!’
Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his
mother. He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had to say, and sometimes questioned her
carefully about the Penza and Nizhegorod estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her mel1030

War and Peace

ancholy adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret
feeling of repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get
married, for her artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still restrained Boris.
His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole days
at the Karagins’, and every day on thinking the matter over
told himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie’s
presence, looking at her red face and chin (nearly always
powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of continual
readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural
rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive
words, though in imagination he had long regarded himself
as the possessor of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and
had apportioned the use of the income from them. Julie saw
Boris’ indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to
her that she was repulsive to him, but her feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and she
told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,
however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before
Boris’ departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as
Boris’ leave of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made
his appearance in Moscow, and of course in the Karagins’
drawing room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive to Kuragin.
‘My dear,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, ‘I know
from a reliable source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to
Moscow to get him married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie
that I should be sorry for her. What do you think of it, my
dear?’


1031

The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown
away that whole month of arduous melancholy service
to Julie, and of seeing all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally apportioned and put
to proper use fall into the hands of another, and especially
into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris. He drove
to the Karagins’ with the firm intention of proposing. Julie
met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how
she had enjoyed yesterday’s ball, and asked when he was
leaving. Though Boris had come intentionally to speak of
his love and therefore meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how easily women
can turn from sadness to joy, and how their moods depend
solely on who happens to be paying court to them. Julie was
offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs
variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone.
‘Then I should advise you...’ Boris began, wishing to sting
her; but at that instant the galling thought occurred to him
that he might have to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly wasted his effortswhich
was a thing he never allowed to happen.
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and
irresolute face, and said:
‘I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the
contrary..’
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her
irritability had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious,
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imploring eyes were fixed on him with greedy expectation.
‘I can always arrange so as not to see her often,’ thought
Boris. ‘The affair has been begun and must be finished!’ He
blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:
‘You know my feelings for you!’
There was no need to say more: Julie’s face shone with
triumph and self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all
that is said on such occasionsthat he loved her and had never loved any other woman more than her. She knew that for
the Penza estates and Nizhegorod forests she could demand
this, and she received what she demanded.
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that
shed gloom and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in Petersburg, paid calls,
and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.



1033

Chapter VI
At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow
with Natasha and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and
unable to travel but it was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in Moscow any day, the
trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near Moscow
had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting
his future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while
he was in Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs’ Moscow house had not been heated that winter and, as they had
come only for a short time and the countess was not with
them, the count decided to stay with Marya Dmitrievna
Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality
on them.
Late one evening the Rostovs’ four sleighs drove into
Marya Dmitrievna’s courtyard in the old Konyusheny
street. Marya Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter, and her sons were all in the service.
She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as
candidly, loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing
seemed a reproach to others for any weakness, passion, or
temptationthe possibility of which she did not admit. From
early in the morning, wearing a dressing jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out: on holy
days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
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affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary
days, after dressing, she received petitioners of various
classes, of whom there were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing meal at which there were
always three or four guests; after dinner she played a game
of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new
book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most
important persons in the town.
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived
and the pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as
it let in the Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna,
with her spectacles hanging down on her nose and her head
flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with a stern,
grim face at the new arrivals. One might have thought she
was angry with the travelers and would immediately turn
them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful
instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the
visitors and their belongings.
‘The count’s things? Bring them here,’ she said, pointing to the portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. ‘The
young ladies’? There to the left. Now what are you dawdling for?’ she cried to the maids. ‘Get the samovar ready!...
You’ve grown plumper and prettier,’ she remarked, drawing
Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her
by the hood. ‘Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things,
quick!’ she shouted to the count who was going to kiss her
hand. ‘You’re half frozen, I’m sure! Bring some rum for tea!...
Bonjour, Sonya dear!’ she added, turning to Sonya and in

1035

dicating by this French greeting her slightly contemptuous
though affectionate attitude toward her.
When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor
things and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya
Dmitrievna kissed them all in due order.
‘I’m heartily glad you have come and are staying with me.
It was high time,’ she said, giving Natasha a significant look.
‘The old man is here and his son’s expected any day. You’ll
have to make his aquaintance. But we’ll speak of that later
on,’ she added, glancing at Sonya with a look that showed
she did not want to speak of it in her presence. ‘Now listen,’
she said to the count. ‘What do you want tomorrow? Whom
will you send for? Shinshin?’ she crooked one of her fingers.
‘The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That’s two. She’s here
with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov,
eh? He is here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and
she came galloping after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them’and she pointed to the girls‘tomorrow I’ll
take them first to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God,
and then we’ll drive to the Super-Rogue’s. I suppose you’ll
have everything new. Don’t judge by me: sleeves nowadays
are this size! The other day young Princess Irina Vasilevna
came to see me; she was an awful sightlooked as if she had
put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now
without some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?’ she asked the count sternly.
‘One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy,
and now a purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate
and for the house. If you will be so kind, I’ll fix a time and
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War and Peace

go down to the estate just for a day, and leave my lassies
with you.’
‘All right. All right. They’ll be safe with me, as safe as in
Chancery! I’ll take them where they must go, scold them a
bit, and pet them a bit,’ said Marya Dmitrievna, touching
her goddaughter and favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with
her large hand.
Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies
to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame
Suppert-Roguet, who was so afraid of Marya Dmitrievna
that she always let her have costumes at a loss merely to
get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the whole
trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out
of the room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her
armchair.
‘Well, now we’ll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed. You’ve hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake
and I’ve known him since he was so high.’ She held her hand
a couple of feet from the ground. Natasha blushed happily.
‘I like him and all his family. Now listen! You know that old
Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son’s marrying. The old
fellow’s crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a child
and can shift without him, but it’s not nice to enter a family
against a father’s will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You’re a clever girl and you’ll know how to manage.
Be kind, and use your wits. Then all will be well.’
Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but really because she disliked anyone
interfering in what touched her love of Prince Andrew,


1037

which seemed to her so apart from all human affairs that
no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days
and take her. She wanted nothing more.
‘You see I have known him a long time and am also fond
of Mary, your future sister-in-law. ‘Husbands’ sisters bring
up blisters,’ but this one wouldn’t hurt a fly. She has asked
me to bring you two together. Tomorrow you’ll go with your
father to see her. Be very nice and affectionate to her: you’re
younger than she. When he comes, he’ll find you already
know his sister and father and are liked by them. Am I right
or not? Won’t that be best?’
‘Yes, it will,’ Natasha answered reluctantly.

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War and Peace

Chapter VII
Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna’s advice, Count Rostov
took Natasha to call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The
count did not set out cheerfully on this visit, at heart he
felt afraid. He well remembered the last interview he had
had with the old prince at the time of the enrollment, when
in reply to an invitation to dinner he had had to listen to
an angry reprimand for not having provided his full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her
best gown, was in the highest spirits. ‘They can’t help liking me,’ she thought. ‘Everybody always has liked me, and I
am so willing to do anything they wish, so ready to be fond
of himfor being his fatherand of herfor being his sisterthat
there is no reason for them not to like me..’
They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and entered the vestibule.
‘Well, the Lord have mercy on us!’ said the count, half in
jest, half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was
flurried on entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and
softly whether the prince and princess were at home.
When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the servants. The footman who had gone to
announce them was stopped by another in the large hall
and they whispered to one another. Then a maidservant ran
into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning the


1039

princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and
announced to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the princess begged them to walk up. The first
person who came to meet the visitors was Mademoiselle
Bourienne. She greeted the father and daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess’ room. The
princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in
patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and
vainly trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first
glance Princess Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her
too fashionably dressed, frivolously gay and vain. She did
not at all realize that before having seen her future sister-inlaw she was prejudiced against her by involuntary envy of
her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by jealousy of
her brother’s love for her. Apart from this insuperable antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on
the Rostovs’ being announced, the old prince had shouted
that he did not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might
do so if she chose, but they were not to be admitted to him.
She had decided to receive them, but feared lest the prince
might at any moment indulge in some freak, as he seemed
much upset by the Rostovs’ visit.
‘There, my dear princess, I’ve brought you my songstress,’ said the count, bowing and looking round uneasily
as if afraid the old prince might appear. ‘I am so glad you
should get to know one another... very sorry the prince is
still ailing,’ and after a few more commonplace remarks he
rose. ‘If you’ll allow me to leave my Natasha in your hands
for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I’ll drive round to see
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Anna Semenovna, it’s quite near in the Dogs’ Square, and
then I’ll come back for her.’
The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an
opportunity to talk to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of encountering the old prince,
of whom he was afraid. He did not mention this to his
daughter, but Natasha noticed her father’s nervousness and
anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew
still angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess
with a bold and defiant expression which said that she was
not afraid of anybody. The princess told the count that she
would be delighted, and only begged him to stay longer at
Anna Semenovna’s, and he departed.
Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess
Marywho wished to have a tete-a-tete with NatashaMademoiselle Bourienne remained in the room and persistently
talked about Moscow amusements and theaters. Natasha felt
offended by the hesitation she had noticed in the anteroom,
by her father’s nervousness, and by the unnatural manner
of the princess whoshe thoughtwas making a favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did not
like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected,
and dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an offhand air which alienated Princess
Mary still more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained
conversation, they heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly
approaching. Princess Mary looked frightened.
The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown


1041

and a white nightcap, came in.
‘Ah, madam!’ he began. ‘Madam, Countess... Countess
Rostova, if I am not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to
excuse me... I did not know, madam. God is my witness, I
did not know you had honored us with a visit, and I came in
such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg you to excuse
me... God is my witness, I didn’t know-’ he repeated, stressing the word ‘God’ so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look
either at her father or at Natasha.
Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what
to do. Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.
‘I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness,
I did not know,’ muttered the old man, and after looking
Natasha over from head to foot he went out.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself
after this apparition and began speaking about the prince’s
indisposition. Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the longer they did so without saying
what they wanted to say, the greater grew their antipathy to
one another.
When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely
pleased and hastened to get away: at that moment she hated
the stiff, elderly princess, who could place her in such an
embarrassing position and had spent half an hour with her
without once mentioning Prince Andrew. ‘I couldn’t begin
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman,’
thought Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She knew what she ought to have
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War and Peace

said to Natasha, but she had been unable to say it because
Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of the
marriage. When the count was already leaving the room,
Princess Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by
the hand, and said with a deep sigh:
‘Wait, I must..’
Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.
‘Dear Natalie,’ said Princess Mary, ‘I want you to know
that I am glad my brother has found happiness...’
She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth.
Natasha noticed this and guessed its reason.
‘I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that
now,’ she said with external dignity and coldness, though
she felt the tears choking her.
‘What have I said and what have I done?’ thought she, as
soon as she was out of the room.
They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner
that day. She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her
nose and sobbing. Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair.
‘Natasha, what is it about?’ she asked. ‘What do they matter to you? It will all pass, Natasha.’
‘But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..’
‘Don’t talk about it, Natasha. It wasn’t your fault so why
should you mind? Kiss me,’ said Sonya.
Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the
lips, pressed her wet face against her.
‘I can’t tell you, I don’t know. No one’s to blame,’ said
Natasha‘It’s my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why


1043

doesn’t he come?..’
She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew how the prince had received the Rostovs,
pretended not to notice how upset Natasha was and jested
resolutely and loudly at table with the count and the other
guests.

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War and Peace

Chapter VIII
That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which
Marya Dmitrievna had taken a box.
Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
Dmitrievna’s kind offer which was intended expressly for
her. When she came ready dressed into the ballroom to
await her father, and looking in the large mirror there saw
that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more sad, but it
was a sweet, tender sadness.
‘O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did
then, but differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things,
I would simply embrace him, cling to him, and make him
look at me with those searching inquiring eyes with which
he has so often looked at me, and then I would make him
laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyeshow I see those eyes!’
thought Natasha. ‘And what do his father and sister matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and
those eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No,
I had better not think of him; not think of him but forget
him, quite forget him for the present. I can’t bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!’ and she turned away from
the glass, making an effort not to cry. ‘And how can Sonya
love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so
patiently?’ thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came in
quite ready, with a fan in her hand. ‘No, she’s altogether dif

1045

ferent. I can’t!’
Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that
it was not enough for her to love and know she was beloved,
she wanted now, at once, to embrace the man she loved, to
speak and hear from him words of love such as filled her
heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and
forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen
into the line of carriages, the Rostovs’ carriage drove up to
the theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and
Sonya, holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The
count got out helped by the footmen, and, passing among
men and women who were entering and the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the first row
of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already
audible.
‘Natasha, your hair!...’ whispered Sonya.
An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the
ladies and opened the door of their box. The music sounded
louder and through the door rows of brightly lit boxes in
which ladies sat with bare arms and shoulders, and noisy
stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before their eyes. A
lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy at
Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was
being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with
Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes
opposite. A sensation she had not experienced for a long
timethat of hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and
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War and Peace

necksuddenly affected her both agreeably and disagreeably
and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya,
with Count Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a
long time, attracted general attention. Moreover, everybody
knew vaguely of Natasha’s engagement to Prince Andrew,
and knew that the Rostovs had lived in the country ever
since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who was
making one of the best matches in Russia.
Natasha’s looks, as everyone told her, had improved in
the country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she
was particularly pretty. She struck those who saw her by her
fullness of life and beauty, combined with her indifference
to everything about her. Her black eyes looked at the crowd
without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare to above
the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently
unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to
the music, crumpling her program. ‘Look, there’s Alenina,’
said Sonya, ‘with her mother, isn’t it?’
‘Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!’ remarked the count.
‘Look at our Anna Mikhaylovnawhat a headdress she has
on!’
‘The Karagins, Julieand Boris with them. One can see at
once that they’re engaged...’
‘Drubetskoy has proposed?’
‘Oh yes, I heard it today,’ said Shinshin, coming into the
Rostovs’ box.


1047

Natasha looked in the direction in which her father’s eyes
were turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a
happy look on her face and a string of pearls round her thick
red neckwhich Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over with an ear
to Julie’s mouth, was Boris’ handsome smoothly brushed
head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows and said
something, smiling, to his betrothed.
‘They are talking about us, about me and him!’ thought
Natasha. ‘And he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me.
They needn’t trouble themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of them.’
Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green
headdress and with a happy look of resignation to the will
of God on her face. Their box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natasha knew so well
and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning’s
visit.
‘What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh, better not think of itnot till he comes back!’ she told
herself, and began looking at the faces, some strange and
some familiar, in the stalls. In the front, in the very center,
leaning back against the orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a
Persian dress, his curly hair brushed up into a huge shock.
He stood in full view of the audience, well aware that he
was attracting everyone’s attention, yet as much at ease as
though he were in his own room. Around him thronged
Moscow’s most brilliant young men, whom he evidently
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dominated.
The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and
pointed to her former adorer.
‘Do you recognize him?’ said he. ‘And where has he
sprung from?’ he asked, turning to Shinshin. ‘Didn’t he
vanish somewhere?’
‘He did,’ replied Shinshin. ‘He was in the Caucasus and
ran away from there. They say he has been acting as minister
to some ruling prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah’s
brother. Now all the Moscow ladies are mad about him! It’s
‘Dolokhov the Persian’ that does it! We never hear a word
but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him, they offer
him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov
and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies’ heads.’
A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and
much exposed plump white shoulders and neck, round
which she wore a double string of large pearls, entered the
adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress and took a long
time settling into her place.
Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the
shoulders and the pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze
on her for the second time the lady looked round and, meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled. She was
the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre’s wife, and the count, who
knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.
‘Have you been here long, Countess?’ he inquired. ‘I’ll
call, I’ll call to kiss your hand. I’m here on business and have
brought my girls with me. They say Semenova acts marvel

1049

ously. Count Pierre never used to forget us. Is he here?’
‘Yes, he meant to look in,’ answered Helene, and glanced
attentively at Natasha.
Count Rostov resumed his seat.
‘Handsome, isn’t she?’ he whispered to Natasha.
‘Wonderful!’ answered Natasha. ‘She’s a woman one
could easily fall in love with.’
Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and
the conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took
their seats in the stalls, and the curtain rose.
As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and all the men, old and young, in uniform and
evening dress, and all the women with gems on their bare
flesh, turned their whole attention with eager curiosity to
the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.

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Chapter IX
The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the
sides was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at
the back was a cloth stretched over boards. In the center of
the stage sat some girls in red bodices and white skirts. One
very fat girl in a white silk dress sat apart on a low bench,
to the back of which a piece of green cardboard was glued.
They all sang something. When they had finished their song
the girl in white went up to the prompter’s box and a man
with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a
plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.
First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she
sang, then they both paused while the orchestra played and
the man fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously
awaiting the beat to start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping and
shouting, while the man and woman on the stagewho represented loversbegan smiling, spreading out their arms, and
bowing.
After her life in the country, and in her present serious
mood, all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha.
She could not follow the opera nor even listen to the music;
she saw only the painted cardboard and the queerly dressed
men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strange

1051

ly in that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to
represent, but it was so pretentiously false and unnatural
that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused
at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking
in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was
happening on the stage, and expressed delight which to
Natasha seemed feigned. ‘I suppose it has to be like this!’ she
thought. She kept looking round in turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women
in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, whoapparently quite unclothedsat with a quiet tranquil smile, not
taking her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light
that flooded the whole place and the warm air heated by the
crowd, Natasha little by little began to pass into a state of
intoxication she had not experienced for a long while. She
did not realize who and where she was, nor what was going
on before her. As she looked and thought, the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her
mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of
the box and singing the air the actress was singing, then she
wished to touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not
far from her, then to lean over to Helene and tickle her.
At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door leading to the stalls on the side
nearest the Rostovs’ box creaked, and the steps of a belated
arrival were heard. ‘There’s Kuragin!’ whispered Shinshin.
Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the newcomer,
and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an
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exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box
with a self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she had seen and noticed long ago at
the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an adjutant’s uniform
with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous had he
not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not
worn such an expression of good-humored complacency
and gaiety. Though the performance was proceeding, he
walked deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword
and spurs slightly jingling and his handsome perfumed
head held high. Having looked at Natasha he approached
his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her box,
nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a
motion toward Natasha.
‘Mais charmante!’ said he, evidently referring to Natasha,
who did not exactly hear his words but understood them
from the movement of his lips. Then he took his place in
the first row of the stalls and sat down beside Dolokhov,
nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way that
Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He winked at
him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra
screen.
‘How like the brother is to the sister,’ remarked the count.
‘And how handsome they both are!’
Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of
some intrigue of Kuragin’s in Moscow, and Natasha tried to
overhear it just because he had said she was ‘charmante.’
The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began mov

1053

ing about, going out and coming in.
Boris came to the Rostovs’ box, received their congratulations very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an
absent-minded smile conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee’s invitation to her wedding, and went away. Natasha
with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom
she had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication
she was in, everything seemed simple and natural.
The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same
way, and Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.
Helene’s box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by
the most distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed
to vie with one another in their wish to let everyone see that
they knew her.
During the whole of that entr’acte Kuragin stood with
Dolokhov in front of the orchestra partition, looking at
the Rostovs’ box. Natasha knew he was talking about her
and this afforded her pleasure. She even turned so that he
should see her profile in what she thought was its most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act
Pierre appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him
since their arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown
still stouter since Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the
front rows, not noticing anyone. Anatole went up to him
and began speaking to him, looking at and indicating the
Rostovs’ box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew animated and,
hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box.
When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling,
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talked to her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre,
Natasha heard a man’s voice in Countess Bezukhova’s box
and something told her it was Kuragin. She turned and
their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed straight into her
eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that it seemed
strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be so
sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him.
In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was a round hole in the canvas to represent
the moon, shades were raised over the footlights, and from
horns and contrabass came deep notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and
holding things like daggers in their hands. They began waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began
dragging away the maiden who had been in white and was
now in light blue. They did not drag her away at once, but
sang with her for a long time and then at last dragged her
off, and behind the scenes something metallic was struck
three times and everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All
these things were repeatedly interrupted by the enthusiastic
shouts of the audience.
During this act every time Natasha looked toward the
stalls she saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across
the back of his chair, staring at her. She was pleased to see
that he was captivated by her and it did not occur to her that
there was anything wrong in it.
When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova
rose, turned to the Rostovs’ boxher whole bosom completely exposedbeckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and


1055

paying no attention to those who had entered her box began
talking to him with an amiable smile.
‘Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters,’ said she. ‘The whole town is singing their praises and I
don’t even know then!’
Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She
was so pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she
blushed with pleasure.
‘I want to become a Moscovite too, now,’ said Helene.
‘How is it you’re not ashamed to bury such pearls in the
country?’
Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of
being a fascinating woman. She could say what she did not
thinkespecially what was flatteringquite simply and naturally.
‘Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters!
Though I am not staying here long this timenor are youI
will try to amuse them. I have already heard much of you
in Petersburg and wanted to get to know you,’ said she to
Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. ‘I had heard
about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard he
is getting married? And also from my husband’s friend
Bolkonski, Prince Andrew Bolkonski,’ she went on with
special emphasis, implying that she knew of his relation to
Natasha. To get better acquainted she asked that one of the
young ladies should come into her box for the rest of the
performance, and Natasha moved over to it.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which
many candles were burning and pictures of knights with
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short beards hung on the walls. In the middle stood what
were probably a king and a queen. The king waved his right
arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly and sat
down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first
in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock,
and stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang
something mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king
waved his arm severely, and men and women with bare legs
came in from both sides and began dancing all together.
Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of
the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating
from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping
and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls
everyone clapped and shouted ‘bravo!’ Then one of the men
went into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and horns in
the orchestra struck up more loudly, and this man with bare
legs jumped very high and waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles
a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might, and
the man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides.
Then other men and women danced with bare legs. Then
the king again shouted to the sound of music, and they all
began singing. But suddenly a storm came on, chromatic
scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the orchestra,
everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number away,
and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible
noise and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous


1057

faces everyone began shouting: ‘Duport! Duport! Duport!’
Natasha no longer thought this strange. She look about with
pleasure, smiling joyfully.
‘Isn’t Duport delightful?’ Helene asked her.
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Natasha.

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Chapter X
During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene’s box, the door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping
and trying not to brush against anyone.
‘Let me introduce my brother to you,’ said Helene, her
eyes shifting uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.
Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant
young officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder.
Anatole, who was as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he had long wished
to have this happinessever since the Naryshkins’ ball in fact,
at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with
women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally,
and Natasha was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact
that there was nothing formidable in this man about whom
there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his smile
was most naive, cheerful, and good-natured.
Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told
her how at a previous performance Semenova had fallen
down on the stage.
‘And do you know, Countess,’ he said, suddenly addressing her as an old, familiar acquaintance, ‘we are getting up a
costume tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be
great fun. We shall all meet at the Karagins’! Please come!


1059

No! Really, eh?’ said he.
While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes
from her face, her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew
for certain that he was enraptured by her. This pleased her,
yet his presence made her feel constrained and oppressed.
When she was not looking at him she felt that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye so
that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking
into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not
that barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself
and other men. She did not know how it was that within
five minutes she had come to feel herself terribly near to
this man. When she turned away she feared he might seize
her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck.
They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that they
were closer to one another than she had ever been to any
man. Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if
asking what it all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and did not answer her look, and her
father’s eyes said nothing but what they always said: ‘Having a good time? Well, I’m glad of it!’
During one of these moments of awkward silence when
Anatole’s prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at
her, Natasha, to break the silence, asked him how he liked
Moscow. She asked the question and blushed. She felt all the
time that by talking to him she was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.
‘At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town
pleasant ce sont les jolies femmes,* isn’t that so? But now I
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like it very much indeed,’ he said, looking at her significantly. ‘You’ll come to the costume tournament, Countess? Do
come!’ and putting out his hand to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, ‘You will be the prettiest there. Do
come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a pledge!’
*Are the pretty women.
Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more
than he did himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible
words had an improper intention. She did not know what to
say and turned away as if she had not heard his remark. But
as soon as she had turned away she felt that he was there,
behind, so close behind her.
‘How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it
right?’ she asked herself, and she could not refrain from
turning round. She looked straight into his eyes, and his
nearness, self-assurance, and the good-natured tenderness
of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just as he was doing,
gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with horror
that no barrier lay between him and her.
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and
gay. Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now
quite submissive to the world she found herself in. All that
was going on before her now seemed quite natural, but on
the other hand all her previous thoughts of her betrothed,
of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once recur
to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang
waving his arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from
under him and he disappeared down below. That was the


1061

only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw. She felt agitated
and tormented, and the cause of this was Kuragin whom she
could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater
Anatole came up to them, called their carriage, and helped
them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm
above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He
was looking at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.
Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think over what had happened to her, and suddenly
remembering Prince Andrew she was horrified, and at tea
to which all had sat down after the opera, she gave a loud
exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.
‘O God! I am lost!’ she said to herself. ‘How could I let
him?’ She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her
hands trying to realize what had happened to her, but was
unable either to understand what had happened or what she
felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure, and terrible. There in
that enormous, illuminated theater where the bare-legged
Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the
music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the
nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried ‘bravo!’there in the presence of that Helene it
had all seemed clear and simple; but now, alone by herself,
it was incomprehensible. ‘What is it? What was that terror I
felt of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling
now?’ she thought.
Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha
have told all she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her
severe and simple views would either not understand it at
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all or would be horrified at such a confession. So Natasha
tried to solve what was torturing her by herself.
‘Am I spoiled for Andrew’s love or not?’ she asked herself, and with soothing irony replied: ‘What a fool I am to
ask that! What did happen to me? Nothing! I have done
nothing, I didn’t lead him on at all. Nobody will know and
I shall never see him again,’ she told herself. ‘So it is plain
that nothing has happened and there is nothing to repent
of, and Andrew can love me still. But why ‘still?’ O God,
why isn’t he here?’ Natasha quieted herself for a moment,
but again some instinct told her that though all this was
true, and though nothing had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew had perished. And again
in imagination she went over her whole conversation with
Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and tender smile
of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.



1063

Chapter XI
Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him away from Petersburg, where he had been
spending twenty thousand rubles a year in cash, besides
running up debts for as much more, which his creditors demanded from his father.
His father announced to him that he would now pay half
his debts for the last time, but only on condition that he
went to Moscow as adjutant to the commander in chiefa
post his father had procured for himand would at last try
to make a good match there. He indicated to him Princess
Mary and Julie Karagina.
Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up
at Pierre’s house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first,
but got used to him after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and gave him money under the
guise of loans.
As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival
Anatole had turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that he slighted them and plainly preferred
the gypsy girls and French actresseswith the chief of whom,
Mademoiselle George, he was said to be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at Danilov’s or other
Moscow revelers’, drank whole nights through, outvying
everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best
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society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he
did not run after the unmarried girls, especially the rich
heiresses who were most of them plain. There was a special
reason for this, as he had got married two years beforea fact
known only to his most intimate friends. At that time while
with his regiment in Poland, a Polish landowner of small
means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole had
very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he
agreed to send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free
to pass himself off as a bachelor.
Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with others. He was instinctively and thoroughly
convinced that was impossible for him to live otherwise
than as he did and that he had never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering how his actions
might affect others or what the consequences of this or that
action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is
so made that it must live in water, so God had made him
such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year and
always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed
this so firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded
of it too and did not refuse him either a leading place in
society or money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay.
He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about
winning. He was not vain. He did not mind what people
thought of him. Still less could he be accused of ambition.
More than once he had vexed his father by spoiling his own


1065

career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He was
not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of him. All
he cared about was gaiety and women, and as according to
his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and
he was incapable of considering what the gratification of his
tastes entailed for others, he honestly considered himself
irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad people,
and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of
innocence similar to that which female Magdalenes have,
based on the same hope of forgiveness. ‘All will be forgiven
her, for she loved much; and all will be forgiven him, for he
enjoyed much.’
Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and his Persian adventures, and was leading a
life of luxury, gambling, and dissipation, associated with his
old Petersburg comrade Kuragin and made use of him for
his own ends.
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin’s
name, position, and connections as a bait to draw rich young
men into his gambling set, made use of him and amused
himself at his expense without letting the other feel it. Apart
from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very process of dominating another’s will was in itself a pleasure, a
habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.
Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At
supper after the opera he described to Dolokhov with the
air of a connoisseur the attractions of her arms, shoulders,
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feet, and hair and expressed his intention of making love to
her. Anatole had no notion and was incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he never had
any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
‘She’s first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us,’ replied
Dolokhov.
‘I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner,’ said Anatole.
‘Eh?’
‘You’d better wait till she’s married...’
‘You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at
once,’ pursued Anatole.
‘You have been caught once already by a ‘little girl,’’ said
Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin’s marriage. ‘Take care!’
‘Well, that can’t happen twice! Eh?’ said Anatole, with a
good-humored laugh.



1067

Chapter XII
The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and
nobody came to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to
the count about something which they concealed from
Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking about the old
prince and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment
and twice that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had not arrived.
She suffered more now than during her first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now added
the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess
Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which
she did not understand the cause. She continually fancied
that either he would never come or that something would
happen to her before he came. She could no longer think
of him by herself calmly and continuously as she had done
before. As soon as she began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater, and
of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again
presented itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had
not already broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she
found herself recalling to the minutest detail every word,
every gesture, and every shade in the play of expression on
the face of the man who had been able to arouse in her such
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an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less
tranquil and happy than before.
On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her
visitors to Mass at her parish churchthe Church of the Assumption built over the graves of victims of the plague.
‘I don’t like those fashionable churches,’ she said, evidently priding herself on her independence of thought.
‘God is the same every where. We have an excellent priest,
he conducts the service decently and with dignity, and the
deacon is the same. What holiness is there in giving concerts in the choir? I don’t like it, it’s just self-indulgence!’
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep
them. Her whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the servants worked, and they all
wore holiday dress and went to church. At her table there
were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka and
roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was
the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna’s broad,
stern face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.
After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the
dining room where the loose covers had been removed from
the furniture, a servant announced that the carriage was
ready, and Marya Dmitrievna rose with a stern air. She wore
her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and announced
that she was going to see Prince Nicholas Bolkonski to have
an explanation with him about Natasha.
After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Sup

1069

pert-Roguet waited on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad
of this diversion, having shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying on the new
dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and
only tacked together, and was turning her head to see in the
glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room
the animated sounds of her father’s voice and another’sa
woman’sthat made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had
not time to take off the bodice before the door opened and
Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a purple velvet gown with
a high collar, came into the room beaming with good-humored amiable smiles.
‘Oh, my enchantress!’ she cried to the blushing Natasha.
‘Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear
count,’ said she to Count Rostov who had followed her in.
‘How can you live in Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won’t
let you off! Mademoiselle George will recite at my house tonight and there’ll be some people, and if you don’t bring
your lovely girlswho are prettier than Mademoiselle GeorgeI won’t know you! My husband is away in Tver or I would
send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must!
Between eight and nine.’
She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and
who had curtsied respectfully to her, and seated herself in
an armchair beside the looking glass, draping the folds of
her velvet dress picturesquely. She did not cease chattering
good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising Natasha’s
beauty. She looked at Natasha’s dresses and praised them,
as well as a new dress of her own made of ‘metallic gauze,’
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which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to
have one like it.
‘But anything suits you, my charmer!’ she remarked.
A smile of pleasure never left Natasha’s face. She felt happy and as if she were blossoming under the praise of this
dear Countess Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her
so unapproachable and important and was now so kind to
her. Natasha brightened up and felt almost in love with this
woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Helene for her
part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to
give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him
and Natasha together, and she was calling on the Rostovs
for that purpose. The idea of throwing her brother and
Natasha together amused her.
Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed
with Natasha for drawing Boris away, she did not think
of that now, and in her own way heartily wished Natasha
well. As she was leaving the Rostovs she called her protegee aside.
‘My brother dined with me yesterdaywe nearly died of
laughterhe ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite madly, in love with you, my dear.’
Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
‘How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!’ said Helene. ‘You must certainly come. If you love somebody, my
charmer, that is not a reason to shut yourself up. Even if you
are engaged, I am sure your fiance would wish you to go
into society rather than be bored to death.’
‘So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband


1071

Pierrethat good Pierrehave talked and laughed about this.
So it’s all right.’ And again, under Helene’s influence, what
had seemed terrible now seemed simple and natural. ‘And
she is such a grande dame, so kind, and evidently likes me
so much. And why not enjoy myself?’ thought Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.
Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince’s.
She was still too agitated by the encounter to be able to talk
of the affair calmly. In answer to the count’s inquiries she
replied that things were all right and that she would tell
about it next day. On hearing of Countess Bezukhova’s visit
and the invitation for that evening, Marya Dmitrievna remarked:
‘I don’t care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and
don’t advise you to; however, if you’ve promisedgo. It will
divert your thoughts,’ she added, addressing Natasha.

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Chapter XIII
Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova’s.
There were a good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count Rostov was displeased to see that
the company consisted almost entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle
George was standing in a corner of the drawing room surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen
present, among them Metivier who from the time Helene
reached Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The
count decided not to sit down to cards or let his girls out of
his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle George’s
performance was over.
Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the
Rostovs. Immediately after greeting the count he went up to
Natasha and followed her. As soon as she saw him she was
seized by the same feeling she had had at the operagratified
vanity at his admiration of her and fear at the absence of a
moral barrier between them.
Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in
admiration of her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went out of the room to change
her costume. In the drawing room people began arranging
the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for
Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count,


1073

who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat
down behind her.
Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms,
and a red shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the
space left vacant for her, and assumed an unnatural pose.
Enthusiastic whispering was audible.
Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the
audience and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her son. In some places she raised
her voice, in others she whispered, lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse sounds,
rolling her eyes.
‘Adorable! divine! delicious!’ was heard from every side.
Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor
heard nor understood anything of what went on before her.
She only felt herself again completely borne away into this
strange senseless worldso remote from her old worlda world
in which it was impossible to know what was good or bad,
reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened sense
of expectancy.
After the first monologue the whole company rose and
surrounded Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
‘How beautiful she is!’ Natasha remarked to her father
who had also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
‘I don’t think so when I look at you!’ said Anatole, following Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could
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hear him. ‘You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you
I have never ceased..’
‘Come, come, Natasha!’ said the count, as he turned back
for his daughter. ‘How beautiful she is!’ Natasha without
saying anything stepped up to her father and looked at him
with surprised inquiring eyes.
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George
left, and Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the
ballroom.
The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him
not to spoil her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on.
Anatole asked Natasha for a valse and as they danced he
pressed her waist and hand and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the ecossaise, which she
also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha
lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she
could not, whilst looking at him, say what she had to say.
She lowered her eyes.
‘Don’t say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,’ she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
‘Don’t speak to me of that! What can I do?’ said he. ‘I tell
you I am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that
you are enchanting?... It’s our turn to begin.’
Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with
wide-open frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual.
She understood hardly anything that went on that evening.


1075

They danced the ecossaise and the Grossvater. Her father
asked her to come home, but she begged to remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt
his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked
her father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange
her dress, that Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother’s love, and that she again met Anatole
in the little sitting room. Helene had disappeared leaving
them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a
tender voice:
‘I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall
never see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?’ and, blocking her path, he brought his face close to hers.
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers
that she saw nothing but them.
‘Natalie?’ he whispered inquiringly while she felt her
hands being painfully pressed. ‘Natalie?’
‘I don’t understand. I have nothing to say,’ her eyes replied.
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt herself released, and Helene’s footsteps and
the rustle of her dress were heard in the room. Natasha
looked round at her, and then, red and trembling, threw a
frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved toward the
door.
‘One word, just one, for God’s sake!’ cried Anatole.
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would
explain to her what had happened and to which she could
find no answer.
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‘Natalie, just a word, only one!’ he kept repeating, evidently not knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene
came up to them.
Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The
Rostovs went away without staying for supper.
After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She
was tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved
Anatole or Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrewshe remembered distinctly how deeply she loved him. But she also
loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. ‘Else how could
all this have happened?’ thought she. ‘If, after that, I could
return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let
it come to that, it means that I loved him from the first. It
means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not
help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other
one too?’ she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these
terrible questions.



1077

Chapter XIV
Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got
up and began to move about and talk, dressmakers came
again. Marya Dmitrievna appeared, and they were called to
breakfast. Natasha kept looking uneasily at everybody with
wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat down in her armchair and called Natasha and the
count to her.
‘Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over
and this is my advice,’ she began. ‘Yesterday, as you know, I
went to see Prince Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him....
He took it into his head to begin shouting, but I am not one
to be shouted down. I said what I had to say!’
‘Well, and he?’ asked the count.
‘He? He’s crazy... he did not want to listen. But what’s the
use of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out,’ said
Marya Dmitrievna. ‘My advice to you is finish your business and go back home to Otradnoe... and wait there.’
‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Natasha.
‘Yes, go back,’ said Marya Dmitrievna, ‘and wait there. If
your betrothed comes here nowthere will be no avoiding a
quarrel; but alone with the old man he will talk things over
and then come on to you.’
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Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating
its reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be
all the better to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later
on; and if not, the wedding, against his wishes, could only
be arranged at Otradnoe.
‘That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him
and took her,’ said the old count.
‘No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your
respects. But if he won’tthat’s his affair,’ said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for something in her reticule. ‘Besides, the
trousseau is ready, so there is nothing to wait for; and what
is not ready I’ll send after you. Though I don’t like letting
you go, it is the best way. So go, with God’s blessing!’
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she
handed it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
‘She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor
thing! She’s afraid you might think that she does not like
you.’
‘But she doesn’t like me,’ said Natasha.
‘Don’t talk nonsense!’ cried Marya Dmitrievna.
‘I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me,’
replied Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face
expressed a cold and angry resolution that caused Marya
Dmitrievna to look at her more intently and to frown.
‘Don’t answer like that, my good girl!’ she said. ‘What
I say is true! Write an answer!’ Natasha did not reply and
went to her own room to read Princess Mary’s letter.
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever


1079

her father’s feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe
that she could not help loving her as the one chosen by her
brother, for whose happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.
‘Do not think, however,’ she wrote, ‘that my father is illdisposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who
must be forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will
love her who makes his son happy.’ Princess Mary went on
to ask Natasha to fix a time when she could see her again.
After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing
table to answer it. ‘Dear Princess,’ she wrote in French quickly and mechanically, and then paused. What more could she
write after all that had happened the evening before? ‘Yes,
yes! All that has happened, and now all is changed,’ she
thought as she sat with the letter she had begun before her.
‘Must I break off with him? Must I really? That’s awful... and
to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to Sonya
and began sorting patterns with her.
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took
up Princess Mary’s letter. ‘Can it be that it is all over?’ she
thought. ‘Can it be that all this has happened so quickly and
has destroyed all that went before?’ She recalled her love for
Prince Andrew in all its former strength, and at the same
time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly pictured herself
as Prince Andrew’s wife, and the scenes of happiness with
him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and at the
same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
yesterday’s interview with Anatole.
‘Why could that not be as well?’ she sometimes asked
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herself in complete bewilderment. ‘Only so could I be completely happy; but now I have to choose, and I can’t be happy
without either of them. Only,’ she thought, ‘to tell Prince
Andrew what has happened or to hide it from him are both
equally impossible. But with that one nothing is spoiled.
But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew’s love, in which I have lived so long?’
‘Please, Miss!’ whispered a maid entering the room with
a mysterious air. ‘A man told me to give you this-’ and she
handed Natasha a letter.
‘Only, for Christ’s sake...’ the girl went on, as Natasha,
without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a
love letter from Anatole, of which, without taking in a word,
she understood only that it was a letter from himfrom the
man she loved. Yes, she loved him, or else how could that
have happened which had happened? And how could she
have a love letter from him in her hand?
With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love
letter which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as
she read it she found in it an echo of all that she herself
imagined she was feeling.
‘Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be
loved by you or to die. There is no other way for me,’ the letter began. Then he went on to say that he knew her parents
would not give her to himfor this there were secret reasons
he could reveal only to herbut that if she loved him she need
only say the word yes, and no human power could hinder
their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away
and carry her off to the ends of the earth.


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‘Yes, yes! I love him!’ thought Natasha, reading the letter for the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep
meaning in each word of it.
That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the
Akharovs’ and proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha,
pleading a headache, remained at home.

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Chapter XV
On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha’s
room, and to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep
on the sofa. Open on the table, beside her lay Anatole’s letter. Sonya picked it up and read it.
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying
to find in her face an explanation of what she was reading,
but did not find it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy.
Clutching her breast to keep herself from choking, Sonya,
pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat down in an
armchair and burst into tears.
‘How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far?
Can she have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could
she let Kuragin go to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a
villain, that’s plain! What will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is the meaning of her
excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before yesterday,
yesterday, and today,’ thought Sonya. ‘But it can’t be that she
loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing
who it was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could
not do such a thing!’
Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha,
again scanning her face.
‘Natasha!’ she said, just audibly.
Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.


1083

‘Ah, you’re back?’
And with the decision and tenderness that often come
at the moment of awakening, she embraced her friend, but
noticing Sonya’s look of embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
‘Sonya, you’ve read that letter?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ answered Sonya softly.
Natasha smiled rapturously.
‘No, Sonya, I can’t any longer!’ she said. ‘I can’t hide it
from you any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya,
darling, he writes... Sonya..’
Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her
ears.
‘And Bolkonski?’ she asked.
‘Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!’ cried
Natasha. ‘You don’t know what love is...’
‘But, Natasha, can that be all over?’
Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she
could not grasp the question.
‘Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?’ said Sonya.
‘Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk nonsense, just listen!’ said Natasha, with momentary vexation.
‘But I can’t believe it,’ insisted Sonya. ‘I don’t understand.
How is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you have only seen him three times! Natasha,
I don’t believe you, you’re joking! In three days to forget everything and so..’
‘Three days?’ said Natasha. ‘It seems to me I’ve loved him
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a hundred years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can’t understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit
here,’ and Natasha embraced and kissed her.
‘I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have
heard it too, but it’s only now that I feel such love. It’s not the
same as before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master
and I his slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his
slave! Whatever he orders I shall do. You don’t understand
that. What can I do? What can I do, Sonya?’ cried Natasha
with a happy yet frightened expression.
‘But think what you are doing,’ cried Sonya. ‘I can’t leave
it like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let
him go so far?’ she went on, with a horror and disgust she
could hardly conceal.
‘I told you that I have no will,’ Natasha replied. ‘Why
can’t you understand? I love him!’
‘Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!’ cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.
‘What do you mean? For God’s sake... If you tell, you are
my enemy!’ declared Natasha. ‘You want me to be miserable, you want us to be separated...’
When she saw Natasha’s fright, Sonya shed tears of
shame and pity for her friend.
‘But what has happened between you?’ she asked. ‘What
has he said to you? Why doesn’t he come to the house?’
Natasha did not answer her questions.
‘For God’s sake, Sonya, don’t tell anyone, don’t torture
me,’ Natasha entreated. ‘Remember no one ought to interfere in such matters! I have confided in you...’


1085

‘But why this secrecy? Why doesn’t he come to the house?’
asked Sonya. ‘Why doesn’t he openly ask for your hand? You
know Prince Andrew gave you complete freedomif it is really so; but I don’t believe it! Natasha, have you considered
what these secret reasons can be?’
Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently
this question presented itself to her mind for the first time
and she did not know how to answer it.
‘I don’t know what the reasons are. But there must be
reasons!’
Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
‘If there were reasons...’ she began.
But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in
alarm.
‘Sonya, one can’t doubt him! One can’t, one can’t! Don’t
you understand?’ she cried.
‘Does he love you?’
‘Does he love me?’ Natasha repeated with a smile of pity
at her friend’s lack of comprehension. ‘Why, you have read
his letter and you have seen him.’
‘But if he is dishonorable?’
‘He! dishonorable? If you only knew!’ exclaimed
Natasha.
‘If he is an honorable man he should either declare his
intentions or cease seeing you; and if you won’t do this, I
will. I will write to him, and I will tell Papa!’ said Sonya
resolutely.
‘But I can’t live without him!’ cried Natasha.
‘Natasha, I don’t understand you. And what are you say1086

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ing! Think of your father and of Nicholas.’
‘I don’t want anyone, I don’t love anyone but him. How
dare you say he is dishonorable? Don’t you know that I love
him?’ screamed Natasha. ‘Go away, Sonya! I don’t want to
quarrel with you, but go, for God’s sake go! You see how I
am suffering!’ Natasha cried angrily, in a voice of despair
and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into sobs and ran from
the room.
Natasha went to the table and without a moment’s reflection wrote that answer to Princess Mary which she had
been unable to write all the morning. In this letter she said
briefly that all their misunderstandings were at an end; that
availing herself of the magnanimity of Prince Andrew who
when he went abroad had given her her she begged Princess
Mary to forget everything and forgive her if she had been
to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife. At
that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to
Natasha.
On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but
on Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow.
On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big dinner party at the Karagins’, and Marya
Dmitrievna took them there. At that party Natasha again
met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through dinner she was
more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was
the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected.
‘There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense


1087

about him,’ Natasha began in a mild voice such as children
use when they wish to be praised. ‘We have had an explanation today.’
‘Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how
glad I am you’re not angry with me! Tell me everythingthe
whole truth. What did he say?’
Natasha became thoughtful.
‘Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked
me what I had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free
to refuse him.’
Sonya sighed sorrowfully.
‘But you haven’t refused Bolkonski?’ said she.
‘Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and
Bolkonski. Why do you think so badly of me?’
‘I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this..’
‘Wait a bit, Sonya, you’ll understand everything. You’ll
see what a man he is! Now don’t think badly of me or of
him. I don’t think badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?’
Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used
toward her. The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha’s face became, the more serious and
stern grew Sonya’s.
‘Natasha,’ said she, ‘you asked me not to speak to you,
and I haven’t spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I
don’t trust him, Natasha. Why this secrecy?’
‘Again, again!’ interrupted Natasha.
‘Natasha, I am afraid for you!’
‘Afraid of what?’
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‘I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,’ said Sonya resolutely, and was herself horrified at what she had said.
Anger again showed in Natasha’s face.
‘And I’ll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It’s not
your business! It won’t be you, but I, who’ll suffer. Leave me
alone, leave me alone! I hate you!’
Natasha!’ moaned Sonya, aghast.
‘I hate you, I hate you! You’re my enemy forever!’ And
Natasha ran out of the room.
Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her.
With the same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she
went about the house, taking up now one occupation, now
another, and at once abandoning them.
Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did
not let her out of her sight.
The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed
that Natasha sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting something and that she made a sign to an
officer who drove past, whom Sonya took to be Anatole.
Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively
and noticed that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was
in a strange and unnatural state. She answered questions at
random, began sentences she did not finish, and laughed at
everything.
After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha’s door
timidly waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and
then listening at the door learned that another letter had
been delivered.
Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had


1089

some dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her
door. Natasha did not let her in.
‘She will run away with him!’ thought Sonya. ‘She is capable of anything. There was something particularly pathetic
and resolute in her face today. She cried as she said good-by
to Uncle,’ Sonya remembered. ‘Yes, that’s it, she means to
elope with him, but what am I to do?’ thought she, recalling
all the signs that clearly indicated that Natasha had some
terrible intention. ‘The count is away. What am I to do?
Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation? But what is
there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps
she really has already refused Bolkonskishe sent a letter to
Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away....’ To tell Marya
Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya
terrible. ‘Well, anyway,’ thought Sonya as she stood in the
dark passage, ‘now or never I must prove that I remember
the family’s goodness to me and that I love Nicholas. Yes! If
I don’t sleep for three nights I’ll not leave this passage and
will hold her back by force and will and not let the family be
disgraced,’ thought she.

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Chapter XVI
Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov’s. The plan for
Natalie Rostova’s abduction had been arranged and the
preparations made by Dolokhov a few days before, and
on the day that Sonya, after listening at Natasha’s door,
resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the
back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into
a troyka he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to
the village of Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in
readiness to perform a marriage ceremony over them. At
Kamenka a relay of horses was to wait which would take
them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would
hasten abroad with post horses.
Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten
thousand rubles he had taken from his sister and another
ten thousand borrowed with Dolokhov’s help.
Two witnesses for the mock marriageKhvostikov, a retired petty official whom Dolokhov made use of in his
gambling transactions, and Makarin, a retired hussar, a
kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded affection for
Kuraginwere sitting at tea in Dolokhov’s front room.
In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the
ceiling with Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling cloak and high boots, at an open desk


1091

on which lay abacus and some bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from the
room where the witnesses were sitting, through the study
to the room behind, where his French valet and others were
packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the
money and noting something down.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Khvostikov must have two thousand.’
‘Give it to him, then,’ said Anatole.
‘Makarka’ (their name for Makarin) ‘will go through fire
and water for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all
settled,’ said Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. ‘Is
that right?’
‘Yes, of course,’ returned Anatole, evidently not listening
to Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile
that did not leave his face.
Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an ironic smile:
‘Do you know? You’d really better drop it all. There’s still
time!’
‘Fool,’ retorted Anatole. ‘Don’t talk nonsense! If you only
knew... it’s the devil knows what!’
‘No, really, give it up!’ said Dolokhov. ‘I am speaking seriously. It’s no joke, this plot you’ve hatched.’
‘What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?’ said Anatole,
making a grimace. ‘Really it’s no time for your stupid jokes,’
and he left the room.
Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly
when Anatole had gone out.
‘You wait a bit,’ he called after him. ‘I’m not joking, I’m
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talking sense. Come here, come here!’
Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give
him his attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.
‘Now listen to me. I’m telling you this for the last time.
Why should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything for you? Who found the priest and got
the passport? Who raised the money? I did it all.’
‘Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?’
And Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
‘I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth;
it is a dangerous business, and if you think about ita stupid
business. Well, you’ll carry her offall right! Will they let it
stop at that? It will come out that you’re already married.
Why, they’ll have you in the criminal court...’
‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense!’ Anatole ejaculated and again
made a grimace. ‘Didn’t I explain to you? What?’ And Anatole, with the partiality dull-witted people have for any
conclusion they have reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to Dolokhov a
hundred times. ‘Didn’t I explain to you that I have come
to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid,’ he went on,
crooking one finger, ‘then I have nothing to answer for; but
if it is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything
about it. Isn’t that so? And don’t talk to me, don’t, don’t.’
‘Seriously, you’d better drop it! You’ll only get yourself
into a mess!’
‘Go to the devil!’ cried Anatole and, clutching his hair,
left the room, but returned at once and dropped into an


1093

armchair in front of Dolokhov with his feet turned under
him. ‘It’s the very devil! What? Feel how it beats!’ He took
Dolokhov’s hand and put it on his heart. ‘What a foot, my
dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!’ he added in French.
‘What?’
Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome
insolent eyes looked at himevidently wishing to get some
more amusement out of him.
‘Well and when the money’s gone, what then?’
‘What then? Eh?’ repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed
by a thought of the future. ‘What then?... Then, I don’t
know.... But why talk nonsense!’ He glanced at his watch.
‘It’s time!’
Anatole went into the back room.
‘Now then! Nearly ready? You’re dawdling!’ he shouted
to the servants.
Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom
he ordered to bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went into the room where Khvostikov
and Makarin were sitting.
Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow
and smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered
tenderly to himself.
‘Come and eat something. Have a drink!’ Dolokhov
shouted to him from the other room.
‘I don’t want to,’ answered Anatole continuing to smile.
‘Come! Balaga is here.’
Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was
a famous troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Ana1094

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tole some six years and had given them good service with
his troykas. More than once when Anatole’s regiment was
stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him
back again the next night. More than once he had enabled
Dolokhov to escape when pursued. More than once he had
driven them through the town with gypsies and ‘ladykins’
as he called the cocottes. More than once in their service he
had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles in the streets
of Moscow and had always been protected from the consequences by ‘my gentlemen’ as he called them. He had ruined
more than one horse in their service. More than once they
had beaten him, and more than once they had made him
drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved; and
he knew more than one thing about each of them which
would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They
often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink
and dance at the gypsies’, and more than one thousand rubles of their money had passed through his hands. In their
service he risked his skin and his life twenty times a year,
and in their service had lost more horses than the money
he had from them would buy. But he liked them; liked that
mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop
through the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild,
tipsy shouts behind him: ‘Get on! Get on!’ when it was impossible to go any faster. He liked giving a painful lash on
the neck to some peasant who, more dead than alive, was
already hurrying out of his way. ‘Real gentlemen!’ he con

1095

sidered them.
Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly
driving and because he liked the things they liked. With
others Balaga bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a
two hours’ drive, and rarely drove himself, generally letting
his young men do so. But with ‘his gentlemen’ he always
drove himself and never demanded anything for his work.
Only a couple of times a yearwhen he knew from their valets
that they had money in handhe would turn up of a morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help
him. The gentlemen always made him sit down.
‘Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir,’ or ‘your excellency,’ he would say. ‘I am quite out of horses. Let me have
what you can to go to the fair.’
And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money,
would give him a thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.
Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant
of about twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red
thick neck, glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore
a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.
On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning
toward the front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a small, black hand.
‘Theodore Ivanych!’ he said, bowing.
‘How d’you do, friend? Well, here he is!’
‘Good day, your excellency!’ he said, again holding out
his hand to Anatole who had just come in.
‘I say, Balaga,’ said Anatole, putting his hands on the
man’s shoulders, ‘do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do
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me a service.... What horses have you come with? Eh?’
‘As your messenger ordered, your special beasts,’ replied
Balaga.
‘Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me
there in three hours. Eh?’
‘When they are dead, what shall I drive?’ said Balaga
with a wink.
‘Mind, I’ll smash your face in! Don’t make jokes!’ cried
Anatole, suddenly rolling his eyes.
‘Why joke?’ said the driver, laughing. ‘As if I’d grudge
my gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast we’ll go!’
‘Ah!’ said Anatole. ‘Well, sit down.’
‘Yes, sit down!’ said Dolokhov.
‘I’ll stand, Theodore Ivanych.’
‘Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!’ said Anatole, and
filled a large glass of Madeira for him.
The driver’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After refusing it for manners’ sake, he drank it and wiped his
mouth with a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap.
‘And when are we to start, your excellency?’
‘Well...’ Anatole looked at his watch. ‘We’ll start at once.
Mind, Balaga! You’ll get there in time? Eh?’
‘That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn’t
we be there in time?’ replied Balaga. ‘Didn’t we get you to
Tver in seven hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?’
‘Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver,’ said
Anatole, smilingly at the recollection and turning to Ma

1097

karin who gazed rapturously at him with wide-open eyes.
‘Will you believe it, Makarka, it took one’s breath away, the
rate we flew. We came across a train of loaded sleighs and
drove right over two of them. Eh?’
‘Those were horses!’ Balaga continued the tale. ‘That
time I’d harnessed two young side horses with the bay in
the shafts,’ he went on, turning to Dolokhov. ‘Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those animals flew forty miles?
I couldn’t hold them in, my hands grew numb in the sharp
frost so that I threw down the reins‘Catch hold yourself,
your excellency!’ says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom
of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn’t a case of urging
them on, there was no holding them in till we reached the
place. The devils took us there in three hours! Only the near
one died of it.’

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Chapter XVII
Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a
sable cap jauntily set on one side and very becoming to his
handsome face. Having looked in a mirror, and standing
before Dolokhov in the same pose he had assumed before it,
he lifted a glass of wine.
‘Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and
farewell!’ said Anatole. ‘Well, comrades and friends...’ he
considered for a moment ‘...of my youth, farewell!’ he said,
turning to Makarin and the others.
Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently
wished to make something touching and solemn out of this
address to his comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice
and throwing out his chest slightly swayed one leg.
‘All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and
friends of my youth, we’ve had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when shall we meet again? I am going
abroad. We have had a good timenow farewell, lads! To our
health! Hurrah!...’ he cried, and emptying his glass flung it
on the floor.
‘To your health!’ said Balaga who also emptied his glass,
and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
‘Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!


1099

‘Let’s go. Let’s go!’ cried Anatole.
Balaga was about to leave the room.
‘No, stop!’ said Anatole. ‘Shut the door; we have first to
sit down. That’s the way.’
They shut the door and all sat down.
‘Now, quick march, lads!’ said Anatole, rising.
Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber,
and they all went out into the vestibule.
‘And where’s the fur cloak?’ asked Dolokhov. ‘Hey, Ignatka! Go to Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak.
I have heard what elopements are like,’ continued Dolokhov
with a wink. ‘Why, she’ll rush out more dead than alive just
in the things she is wearing; if you delay at all there’ll be
tears and ‘Papa’ and ‘Mamma,’ and she’s frozen in a minute
and must go backbut you wrap the fur cloak round her first
thing and carry her to the sleigh.’
The valet brought a woman’s fox-lined cloak.
‘Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!’
he shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms.
A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red
shawl, ran out with a sable mantle on her arm.
‘Here, I don’t grudge ittake it!’ she said, evidently afraid
of her master and yet regretful of her cloak.
Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it
over Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.
‘That’s the way,’ said Dolokhov, ‘and then so!’ and he
turned the collar up round her head, leaving only a little
of the face uncovered. ‘And then so, do you see?’ and he
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pushed Anatole’s head forward to meet the gap left by the
collar, through which Matrena’s brilliant smile was seen.
‘Well, good-by, Matrena,’ said Anatole, kissing her. ‘Ah,
my revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There,
good-by! Good-by, Matrena, wish me luck!’
‘Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!’ said Matrena in her gypsy accent.
Two troykas were standing before the porch and two
young drivers were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat
in the front one and holding his elbows high arranged the
reins deliberately. Anatole and Dolokhov got in with him.
Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated themselves in the
other sleigh.
‘Well, are you ready?’ asked Balaga.
‘Go!’ he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and
the troyka tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.
‘Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!...’ The shouting
of Balaga and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box
was all that could be heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka
caught against a carriage; something cracked, shouts were
heard, and the troyka flew along the Arbat Street.
After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard,
Balaga began to rein in, and turning back drew up at the
crossing of the old Konyusheny Street.
The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the
horses and Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate Dolokhov whistled. The
whistle was answered, and a maidservant ran out.
‘Come into the courtyard or you’ll be seen; she’ll come


1101

out directly,’ said she.
Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid
into the courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the
porch.
He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna’s gigantic
footman.
‘Come to the mistress, please,’ said the footman in his
deep bass, intercepting any retreat.
‘To what Mistress? Who are you?’ asked Anatole in a
breathless whisper.
‘Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in.’
‘Kuragin! Come back!’ shouted Dolokhov. ‘Betrayed!
Back!’
Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the
wicket gate and was struggling with the yard porter who
was trying to lock it. With a last desperate effort Dolokhov
pushed the porter aside, and when Anatole ran back seized
him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket, and ran
back with him to the troyka.

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Chapter XVIII
Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the
corridor, made her confess everything, and intercepting the
note to Natasha she read it and went into Natasha’s room
with it in her hand.
‘You shameless good-for-nothing!’ said she. ‘I won’t hear
a word.’
Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished
but tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders
to the yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but not to let them out again, and having
told the footman to bring them up to her, she seated herself
in the drawing room to await the abductors.
When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had
come had run away again, she rose frowning, and clasping
her hands behind her paced through the rooms a long time
considering what she should do. Toward midnight she went
to Natasha’s room fingering the key in her pocket. Sonya
was sitting sobbing in the corridor. ‘Marya Dmitrievna, for
God’s sake let me in to her!’ she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna unlocked the door and went in without giving her an
answer.... ‘Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid
girl, hussy! I’m only sorry for her father!’ thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. ‘Hard as it may be, I’ll tell them
all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the count.’ She


1103

entered the room with resolute steps. Natasha lying on the
sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and she did not stir. She
was in just the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna
had left her.
‘A nice girl! Very nice!’ said Marya Dmitrievna. ‘Arranging meetings with lovers in my house! It’s no use
pretending: you listen when I speak to you!’ And Marya
Dmitrievna touched her arm. ‘Listen when when I speak!
You’ve disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I’d treat
you differently, but I’m sorry for your father, so I will conceal it.’
Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body
heaved with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her.
Marya Dmitrievna glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.
‘It’s lucky for him that he escaped me; but I’ll find him!’
she said in her rough voice. ‘Do you hear what I am saying
or not?’ she added.
She put her large hand under Natasha’s face and turned it
toward her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed
when they saw how Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and
glistening, her lips compressed, her cheeks sunken.
‘Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!’ she muttered, wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna’s hands
with a vicious effort and sinking down again into her former position.
‘Natalie!’ said Marya Dmitrievna. ‘I wish for your good.
Lie still, stay like that then, I won’t touch you. But listen. I
won’t tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself.
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But when your father comes back tomorrow what am I to
tell him? Eh?’
Again Natasha’s body shook with sobs.
‘Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?’
‘I have no betrothed: I have refused him!’ cried Natasha.
‘That’s all the same,’ continued Dmitrievna. ‘If they hear
of this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if
he challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?’
‘Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why?
Why? Who asked you to?’ shouted Natasha, raising herself
on the sofa and looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.
‘But what did you want?’ cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry again. ‘Were you kept under lock and key? Who
hindered his coming to the house? Why carry you off as if
you were some gypsy singing girl?... Well, if he had carried
you off... do you think they wouldn’t have found him? Your
father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he’s a scoundrel,
a wretchthat’s a fact!’
‘He is better than any of you!’ exclaimed Natasha getting
up. ‘If you hadn’t interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all?
What is it? Sonya, why?... Go away!’
And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence
with which people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again
but Natasha cried out:
‘Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!’ and she
threw herself back on the sofa.
Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some


1105

time, enjoining on her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that nobody would know anything
about it if only Natasha herself would undertake to forget
it all and not let anyone see that something had happened.
Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she
grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put
a pillow under her head, covered her with two quilts, and
herself brought her some lime-flower water, but Natasha did
not respond to her.
‘Well, let her sleep,’ said Marya Dmitrievna as she went
of the room supposing Natasha to be asleep.
But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed
wide-open eyes she looked straight before her. All that night
she did not sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who
got up and went to her several times.
Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near
Moscow in time for lunch as he had promised. He was in
very good spirits; the affair with the purchaser was going on
satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed.
Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had
been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for
the doctor, but that she was better now. Natasha had not left
her room that morning. With compressed and parched lips
and dry fixed eyes, she sat at the window, uneasily watching
the people who drove past and hurriedly glancing round at
anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting
news of him and that he would come or would write to her.
When the count came to see her she turned anxiously
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War and Peace

round at the sound of a man’s footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent expression. She did not even
get up to greet him. ‘What is the matter with you, my angel?
Are you ill?’ asked the count.
After a moment’s silence Natasha answered: ‘Yes, ill.’
In reply to the count’s anxious inquiries as to why she
was so dejected and whether anything had happened to
her betrothed, she assured him that nothing had happened
and asked him not to worry. Marya Dmitrievna confirmed
Natasha’s assurances that nothing had happened. From
the pretense of illness, from his daughter’s distress, and by
the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya Dmitrievna,
the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that
anything disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity, that he
avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing
particularly had happened; and he was only dissatisfied that
her indisposition delayed their return to the country.



1107

Chapter XIX
From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been
intending to go away somewhere, so as not to be near her.
Soon after the Rostovs came to Moscow the effect Natasha
had on him made him hasten to carry out his intention. He
went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich’s widow, who had
long since promised to hand over to him some papers of her
deceased husband’s.
When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter
from Marya Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on
a matter of great importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski
and his betrothed. Pierre had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her was stronger
than a married man’s should be for his friend’s fiancee. Yet
some fate constantly threw them together.
‘What can have happened? And what can they want with
me?’ thought he as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna’s.
‘If only Prince Andrew would hurry up and come and marry her!’ thought he on his way to the house.
On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to
him.
‘Pierre! Been back long?’ someone shouted. Pierre raised
his head. In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that
were bespattering the dashboard with snow, Anatole and
his constant companion Makarin dashed past. Anatole was
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War and Peace

sitting upright in the classic pose of military dandies, the
lower part of his face hidden by his beaver collar and his
head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his whiteplumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and
pomaded hair besprinkled with powdery snow.
‘Yes, indeed, that’s a true sage,’ thought Pierre. ‘He sees
nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene.
What wouldn’t I give to be like him!’ he thought enviously.
In Marya Dmitrievna’s anteroom the footman who
helped him off with his fur coat said that the mistress asked
him to come to her bedroom.
When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha
sitting at the window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face.
She glanced round at him, frowned, and left the room with
an expression of cold dignity.
‘What has happened?’ asked Pierre, entering Marya
Dmitrievna’s room.
‘Fine doings!’ answered Dmitrievna. ‘For fifty-eight
years have I lived in this world and never known anything
so disgraceful!’
And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him, Marya Dmitrievna informed him that
Natasha had refused Prince Andrew without her parents’
knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole Kuragin
into whose society Pierre’s wife had thrown her and with
whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father’s absence, in order to be married secretly.
Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed


1109

to what was told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears.
That Prince Andrew’s deeply loved affianced wifethe same
Natasha Rostova who used to be so charmingshould give
up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in love with
him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre
could not conceive and could not imagine.
He could not reconcile the charming impression he had
of Natasha, whom he had known from a child, with this new
conception of her baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought
of his wife. ‘They are all alike!’ he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate enough to be
tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to
the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded pride,
and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with
contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had
just passed him in the ballroom with such a look of cold
dignity. He did not know that Natasha’s soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was
not her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm dignity and severity.
‘But how get married?’ said Pierre, in answer to Marya
Dmitrievna. ‘He could not marryhe is married!’
‘Things get worse from hour to hour!’ ejaculated Marya
Dmitrievna. ‘A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she’s
expecting himexpecting him since yesterday. She must be
told! Then at least she won’t go on expecting him.’
After hearing the details of Anatole’s marriage from
Pierre, and giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words
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of abuse, Marya Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for
him. She was afraid that the count or Bolkonski, who might
arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair (which she
hoped to hide from them) might challenge Anatole to a duel,
and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his brother-in-law in
her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes on
him again. Pierreonly now realizing the danger to the old
count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrewpromised to do as she
wished. Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to
him, she let him go to the drawing room.
‘Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know
nothing either,’ she said. ‘And I will go and tell her it is no
use expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!’ she
called after Pierre.
Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset.
That morning Natasha had told him that she had rejected
Bolkonski.
‘Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!’ he said to Pierre.
‘What troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret having come here.... I will be frank with
you. Have you heard she has broken off her engagement
without consulting anybody? It’s true this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an excellent man,
but still, with his father’s disapproval they wouldn’t have
been happy, and Natasha won’t lack suitors. Still, it has been
going on so long, and to take such a step without father’s or
mother’s consent! And now she’s ill, and God knows what!
It’s hard, Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother’s absence...’


1111

Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to
change the subject, but the count returned to his troubles.
Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.
‘Natasha is not quite well; she’s in her room and would
like to see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too
asks you to come.’
‘Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski’s, no doubt she
wants to send him a message,’ said the count. ‘Oh dear! Oh
dear! How happy it all was!’
And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the
count left the room.
When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was
married, Natasha did not wish to believe it and insisted on
having it confirmed by Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this
as she led him along the corridor to Natasha’s room.
Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a
questioning look the moment he entered. She did not smile
or nod, but only gazed fixedly at him, and her look asked
only one thing: was he a friend, or like the others an enemy
in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he evidently did not exist for her.
‘He knows all about it,’ said Marya Dmitrievna pointing
to Pierre and addressing Natasha. ‘Let him tell you whether
I have told the truth.’
Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and
wounded animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
‘Natalya Ilynichna,’ Pierre began, dropping his eyes with
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War and Peace

a feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to
do, ‘whether it is true or not should make no difference to
you, because..’
‘Then it is not true that he’s married!’
‘Yes, it is true.’
‘Has he been married long?’ she asked. ‘On your honor?..’
Pierre gave his word of honor.
‘Is he still here?’ she asked, quickly.
‘Yes, I have just seen him.’
She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with
her hands that they should leave her alone.
CHAPTER XX
Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went
away at once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole
Kuragin, at the thought of whom now the blood rushed to
his heart and he felt a difficulty in breathing. He was not at
the ice hills, nor at the gypsies’, nor at Komoneno’s. Pierre
drove to the Club. In the Club all was going on as usual.
The members who were assembling for dinner were sitting
about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town
news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his acquaintances, told him there was a place left
for him in the small dining room and that Prince Michael
Zakharych was in the library, but Paul Timofeevich had not
yet arrived. One of Pierre’s acquaintances, while they were
talking about the weather, asked if he had heard of Kuragin’s
abduction of Rostova which was talked of in the town, and
was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was nonsense for he


1113

had just come from the Rostovs’. He asked everyone about
Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see
this calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was
going on in his soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come, and as Anatole had not turned up
did not stay for dinner but drove home.
Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day
with Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha.
In the evening he drove to his sister’s to discuss with her
how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his valet informed him
that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The countess’
drawing room was full of guests.
Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen
since his returnat that moment she was more repulsive to
him than everentered the drawing room and seeing Anatole
went up to him.
‘Ah, Pierre,’ said the countess going up to her husband.
‘You don’t know what a plight our Anatole..’
She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband’s head, in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the
terrible indications of that rage and strength which she
knew and had herself experienced after his duel with Dolokhov.
‘Where you are, there is vice and evil!’ said Pierre to his
wife. ‘Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you,’ he added
in French.
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Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively,
ready to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled
him toward himself and was leading him from the room.
‘If you allow yourself in my drawing room...’ whispered
Helene, but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.
Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his
face betrayed anxiety.
Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed Anatole without looking at him.
‘You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were
about to elope with her, is that so?’
‘Mon cher,’ answered Anatole (their whole conversation
was in French), ‘I don’t consider myself bound to answer
questions put to me in that tone.’
Pierre’s face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He
seized Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand
and shook him from side to side till Anatole’s face showed a
sufficient degree of terror.
‘When I tell you that I must talk to you!...’ repeated
Pierre.
‘Come now, this is stupid. What?’ said Anatole, fingering
a button of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a
bit of the cloth.
‘You’re a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don’t know
what deprives me from the pleasure of smashing your head
with this!’ said Pierre, expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.
He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly,
but at once put it back in its place.


1115

‘Did you promise to marry her?’
‘I... I didn’t think of it. I never promised, because..’
Pierre interrupted him.
‘Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?’ he said, moving toward Anatole.
Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand
into his pocket and drew out his pocketbook.
Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table that stood in his way, threw himself on the
sofa.
‘I shan’t be violent, don’t be afraid!’ said Pierre in answer
to a frightened gesture of Anatole’s. ‘First, the letters,’ said
he, as if repeating a lesson to himself. ‘Secondly,’ he continued after a short pause, again rising and again pacing the
room, ‘tomorrow you must get out of Moscow.’
‘But how can I?..’
‘Thirdly,’ Pierre continued without listening to him, ‘you
must never breathe a word of what has passed between you
and Countess Rostova. I know I can’t prevent your doing
so, but if you have a spark of conscience...’ Pierre paced the
room several times in silence.
Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
‘After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is such a thing as other people’s happiness and
peace, and that you are ruining a whole life for the sake of
amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women like my
wifewith them you are within your rights, for they know
what you want of them. They are armed against you by the
same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to
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marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don’t you understand
that it is as mean as beating an old man or a child?..’
Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an
angry but with a questioning look.
‘I don’t know about that, eh?’ said Anatole, growing more
confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. ‘I don’t know that
and don’t want to,’ he said, not looking at Pierre and with
a slight tremor of his lower jaw, ‘but you have used such
words to me‘mean’ and so onwhich as a man of honor I can’t
allow anyone to use.’
Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he wanted.
‘Though it was tete-a-tete,’ Anatole continued, ‘still I
can’t..’
‘Is it satisfaction you want?’ said Pierre ironically.
‘You could at least take back your words. What? If you
want me to do as you wish, eh?’
‘I take them back, I take them back!’ said Pierre, ‘and I
ask you to forgive me.’ Pierre involuntarily glanced at the
loose button. ‘And if you require money for your journey..’
Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing
smile, which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
‘Oh, vile and heartless brood!’ he exclaimed, and left the
room.
Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.



1117

Chapter XXI
Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna’s to tell her of the fulfillment of her wish that Kuragin should be banished from
Moscow. The whole house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill, having, as Marya Dmitrievna
told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had
been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she
had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had
been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what
she had done. The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was now out of danger, though still so
weak that it was out of the question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the
distracted count, and Sonya, who had a tear-stained face,
but he could not see Natasha.
Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides
gossip about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these rumors, assuring everyone that nothing
had happened except that his brother-in-law had proposed
to her and been refused. It seemed to Pierre that it was his
duty to conceal the whole affair and re-establish Natasha’s
reputation.
He was awaiting Prince Andrew’s return with dread and
went every day to the old prince’s for news of him.
Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in
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the town from Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the
note to Princess Mary in which Natasha had broken off her
engagement. He seemed in better spirits than usual and
awaited his son with great impatience.
Some days after Anatole’s departure Pierre received a
note from Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and
asking him to come to see him.
As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his father Natasha’s note to Princess Mary
breaking off her engagement (Mademoiselle Bourienne
had purloined it from Princess Mary and given it to the old
prince), and he heard from him the story of Natasha’s elopement, with additions.
Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre
came to see him next morning. Pierre expected to find
Prince Andrew in almost the same state as Natasha and was
therefore surprised on entering the drawing room to hear
him in the study talking in a loud animated voice about
some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince’s voice
and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary
came out to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the
door of the room where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy with his sorrow, but Pierre
saw by her face that she was glad both at what had happened
and at the way her brother had taken the news of Natasha’s
faithlessness.
‘He says he expected it,’ she remarked. ‘I know his pride
will not let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it
better, far better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...’


1119

‘But is it possible that all is really ended?’ asked Pierre.
Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did
not understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre
went into the study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and
plainly in better health, but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle
between his brows, stood in civilian dress facing his father
and Prince Meshcherski, warmly disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about Speranskithe
news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had just
reached Moscow.
‘Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him a month ago,’ Prince Andrew was saying,
‘and by those who were unable to understand his aims. To
judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on him all the
blame of other men’s mistakes is very easy, but I maintain
that if anything good has been accomplished in this reign it
was done by him, by him alone.’
He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and
immediately assumed a vindictive expression.
‘Posterity will do him justice,’ he concluded, and at once
turned to Pierre.
‘Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?’ he said with
animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened.
‘Yes, I am well,’ he said in answer to Pierre’s question, and
smiled.
To Pierre that smile said plainly: ‘I am well, but my health
is now of no use to anyone.’
After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from
the Polish frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland
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who knew Pierre, and about M. Dessalles, whom he had
brought from abroad to be his son’s tutor, Prince Andrew
again joined warmly in the conversation about Speranski
which was still going on between the two old men.
‘If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with
Napoleon, they would have been made public,’ he said with
warmth and haste. ‘I do not, and never did, like Speranski
personally, but I like justice!’
Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which
he was only too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters in order to stifle thoughts
that were too oppressive and too intimate. When Prince
Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre’s arm and
asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A bed
had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and
trunks stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took
out a small casket, from which he drew a packet wrapped
in paper. He did it all silently and very quickly. He stood
up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his lips compressed.
‘Forgive me for troubling you..’
Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of
Natasha, and his broad face expressed pity and sympathy.
This expression irritated Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:
‘I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and
have heard reports of your brother-in-law having sought
her hand, or something of that kind. Is that true?’
‘Both true and untrue,’ Pierre began; but Prince Andrew


1121

interrupted him.
‘Here are her letters and her portrait,’ said he.
He took the packet from the table and handed it to
Pierre.
‘Give this to the countess... if you see her.’
‘She is very ill,’ said Pierre.
‘Then she is here still?’ said Prince Andrew. ‘And Prince
Kuragin?’ he added quickly.
‘He left long ago. She has been at death’s door.’
‘I much regret her illness,’ said Prince Andrew; and he
smiled like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
‘So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his hand?’ said Prince Andrew, and he snorted
several times.
‘He could not marry, for he was married already,’ said
Pierre.
Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding
one of his father.
‘And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?’ he
said.
‘He has gone to Peters... But I don’t know,’ said Pierre.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Tell Countess Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish
her all that is good.’
Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether he had something more to say, or waiting
to see if Pierre would say anything, looked fixedly at him.
‘I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?’
asked Pierre, ‘about..’
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War and Peace

‘Yes,’ returned Prince Andrew hastily. ‘I said that a fallen
woman should be forgiven, but I didn’t say I could forgive
her. I can’t.’
‘But can this be compared...?’ said Pierre.
Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: ‘Yes,
ask her hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that
would be very noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman’s footsteps. If you wish to be my friend never speak
to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So you’ll give her
the packet?’
Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary
was the same as always, but beneath her sympathy for her
brother, Pierre noticed her satisfaction that the engagement
had been broken off. Looking at them Pierre realized what
contempt and animosity they all felt for the Rostovs, and
that it was impossible in their presence even to mention the
name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone
else.
At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of
which was becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with his father, now with the Swiss
tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural animation, the
cause of which Pierre so well understood.



1123

Chapter XXII
That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs’ to fulfill
the commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the
count at the Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna who was interested to know
how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes later
Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.
‘Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich,’ said
she.
‘But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there
has not been tidied up.’
‘No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room,’
said Sonya.
Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
‘When will her mother come? She has worried me to
death! Now mind, don’t tell her everything!’ said she to
Pierre. ‘One hasn’t the heart to scold her, she is so much to
be pitied, so much to be pitied.’
Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing
room, emaciated, with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected to find her. When he appeared at
the door she grew flurried, evidently undecided whether to
go to meet him or to wait till he came up.
Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him
her hand as usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped,
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breathing heavily, her arms hanging lifelessly just in the
pose she used to stand in when she went to the middle of
the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different expression
of face.
‘Peter Kirilovich,’ she began rapidly, ‘Prince Bolkonski was your friendis your friend,’ she corrected herself. (It
seemed to her that everything that had once been must now
be different.) ‘He told me once to apply to you..’
Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till
then he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise
her, but he now felt so sorry for her that there was no room
in his soul for reproach.
‘He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!’ She stopped
and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.
‘Yes... I will tell him,’ answered Pierre; ‘but..’
He did not know what to say.
Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what
he might think she had meant.
‘No, I know all is over,’ she said hurriedly. ‘No, that can
never be. I’m only tormented by the wrong I have done him.
Tell him only that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me
for everything...’
She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed
Pierre’s heart.
‘I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more,’ said
Pierre. ‘But... I should like to know one thing...’
‘Know what?’ Natasha’s eyes asked.
‘I should like to know, did you love...’ Pierre did not


1125

know how to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of
him‘did you love that bad man?’
‘Don’t call him bad!’ said Natasha. ‘But I don’t know,
don’t know at all...’
She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle
under his spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.
‘We won’t speak of it any more, my dear,’ said Pierre,
and his gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange
to Natasha.
‘We won’t speak of it, my dearI’ll tell him everything; but
one thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you
want help, advice, or simply to open your heart to someonenot now, but when your mind is clearer think of me!’
He took her hand and kissed it. ‘I shall be happy if it’s in
my power..’
Pierre grew confused.
‘Don’t speak to me like that. I am not worth it!’ exclaimed
Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her
hand.
He knew he had something more to say to her. But when
he said it he was amazed at his own words.
‘Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you,’ said he
to her.
‘Before me? No! All is over for me,’ she replied with
shame and self-abasement.
‘All over?’ he repeated. ‘If I were not myself, but the
handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were
free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand
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and your love!’
For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of
gratitude and tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went
out of the room.
Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked
him, and without finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw
it on and got into his sleigh.
‘Where to now, your excellency?’ asked the coachman.
‘Where to?’ Pierre asked himself. ‘Where can I go now?
Surely not to the Club or to pay calls?’ All men seemed
so pitiful, so poor, in comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison with that
softened, grateful, last look she had given him through her
tears.
‘Home!’ said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of
frost Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his
broad chest and inhaled the air with joy.
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets,
above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only
looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid
and humiliating were all mundane things compared with
the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the
entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark
starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded
and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from
them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its
long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant com

1127

et of 18l2the comet which was said to portend all kinds of
woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On
the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at
this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed
suddenlylike an arrow piercing the earthto remain fixed in
a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and
displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating
stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to
what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now
blossoming into a new life.

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BOOK NINE: 1812



1129

Chapter I
From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and
concentrating of the forces of Western Europe began,
and in 1812 these forcesmillions of men, reckoning those
transporting and feeding the armymoved from the west
eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811
Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of
June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place
opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions
of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable
crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false
money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole
centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts
of the world, but which those who committed them did not
at the time regard as being crimes.
What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What
were its causes? The historians tell us with naive assurance
that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of
Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System,
the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the
mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.
Consequently, it would only have been necessary for
Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee
and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and writ1130

War and Peace

ten a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to
Alexander: ‘My respected Brother, I consent to restore the
duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg’and there would have been
no war.
We can understand that the matter seemed like that to
contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the
war was caused by England’s intrigues (as in fact he said
on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was
Napoleon’s ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the
cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System
which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers
that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it
was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to
the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the
fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809
had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon,
and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.
It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity
of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men
of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that
happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and
terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is
incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and
tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious
or Alexander was firm, or because England’s policy was as

1131

tute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp
what connection such circumstances have with the actual
fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was
wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe
killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and
were killed by them.
To us, their descendants, who are not historians and
are not carried away by the process of research and can
therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense,
an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The
deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them
we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes
appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its
insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events,
and by its impotenceapart from the cooperation of all the
other coincident causesto occasion the event. To us, the
wish or objection of this or that French corporal to serve a
second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal
to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore
the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and
had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have been so many less men
in Napoleon’s army and the war could not have occurred.
Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he
should withdraw beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his
troops to advance, there would have been no war; but had
all his sergeants objected to serving a second term then also
there could have been no war. Nor could there have been
a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of
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War and Peace

Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had
there not been an autocratic government in Russia, or a
Revolution in France and a subsequent dictatorship and
Empire, or all the things that produced the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing could
have happened. So all these causesmyriads of causescoincided to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for
that occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason,
had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some
centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
to the west, slaying their fellows.
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words
the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot
or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the
event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without
any one of which the event could not have taken place. It
was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the
real powerthe soldiers who fired, or transported provisions
and gunsshould consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an
infinite number of diverse and complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation
of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness
of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain
such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable


1133

and incomprehensible do they become to us.
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain
his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he
can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but
as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain
moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests,
and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws
laid down for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious
instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal,
aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result
coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men
assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands
on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with
and the more power he has over others, the more evident is
the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
‘The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.’
A king is history’s slave.
History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of
mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool
for its own purposes.
Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas
verser) le sang de ses peuples*as Alexander expressed it in
the last letter he wrote himhe had never been so much in the
grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while think1134

War and Peace

ing that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for
the hive lifethat is to say, for historywhatever had to be performed.
*”To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples.’
The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their
fellow men, and by the law of coincidence thousands of
minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to produce that
movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of
the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg’s wrongs,
the movement of troops into Prussiaundertaken (as it
seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an
armed peace, the French Emperor’s love and habit of war
coinciding with his people’s inclinations, allurement by
the grandeur of the preparations, and the expenditure on
those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages to
compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors
he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which,
in the opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a
sincere desire to attain peace, but which only wounded the
self-love of both sides, and millions and millions of other
causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening or coincided with it.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall?
Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier,
because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of
conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events


1135

occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth is equally right
with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple
fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally
right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander
desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because the last
navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to
events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection
with the event itself.
Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their
own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related
to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.

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War and Peace

Chapter II
On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden,
where he had spent three weeks surrounded by a court that
included princes, dukes, kings, and even an emperor. Before
leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the emperor, kings, and
princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings and
princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and
diamonds of his ownthat is, which he had taken from other
kingsto the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian
tells us, tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louisewho
regarded him as her husband, though he had left another
wife in Parisleft her grieved by the parting which she seemed
hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and worked zealously to
that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote
a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere, and
sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would
always love and honor himyet he set off to join his army, and
at every station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops from west to east. He went in a traveling
coach with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp,
and an escort, along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and
Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands of people met
him with excitement and enthusiasm.
The army was moving from west to east, and relays of


1137

six horses carried him in the same direction. On the tenth
of June,* coming up with the army, he spent the night in
apartments prepared for him on the estate of a Polish count
in the Vilkavisski forest.
*Old style.
Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to
the Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove
to the riverbank in order to select a place for the crossing.
Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques)
and the wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay
the holy city of Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia into which Alexander the
Great had marchedNapoleon unexpectedly, and contrary
alike to strategic and diplomatic considerations, ordered an
advance, and the next day his army began to cross the Niemen.
Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out
of his tent, which was pitched that day on the steep left
bank of the Niemen, and looked through a spyglass at the
streams of his troops pouring out of the Vilkavisski forest
and flowing over the three bridges thrown across the river.
The troops, knowing of the Emperor’s presence, were on the
lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in
an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite
in front of his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and
shouted: ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and one after another poured in
a ceaseless stream out of the vast forest that had concealed
them and, separating, flowed on and on by the three bridges
to the other side.
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War and Peace

‘Now we’ll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand
himself, things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive
l’Empereur! So these are the steppes of Asia! It’s a nasty
country all the same. Au revoir, Beauche; I’ll keep the best
palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good luck!... Did you
see the Emperor? Vive l’Empereur!... preur!If they make
me Governor of India, Gerard, I’ll make you Minister of
Kashmirthat’s settled. Vive l’Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah! The Cossacksthose rascalssee how they run! Vive
l’Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I’ve seen him
twice, as I see you now. The little corporal... I saw him give
the cross to one of the veterans.... Vive l’Empereur!’ came
the voices of men, old and young, of most diverse characters
and social positions. On the faces of all was one common
expression of joy at the commencement of the long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the
gray coat who was standing on the hill.
On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred
Arab horse was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and
rode at a gallop to one of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and rapturous acclamations
which he evidently endured only because it was impossible
to forbid the soldiers to express their love of him by such
shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military
cares that had occupied him from the time he joined the
army. He rode across one of the swaying pontoon bridges to
the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and galloped in
the direction of Kovno, preceded by enraptured, mounted


1139

chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On
reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment
of Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.
‘Vivat!’ shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their
ranks and pressing against one another to see him.
Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted,
and sat down on a log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign
from him, a telescope was handed him which he rested on
the back of a happy page who had run up to him, and he
gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a
map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said
something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the
Polish Uhlans.
‘What? What did he say?’ was heard in the ranks of the
Polish Uhlans when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to
them.
The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The
colonel of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed
and, fumbling in his speech from excitement, asked the
aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted to swim the
river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident
fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on
a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river
before the Emperor’s eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that
probably the Emperor would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.
As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised
1140

War and Peace

his saber, shouted ‘Vivat!’ and, commanding the Uhlans
to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown
restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for
the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of
Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the
rapid current in the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans
caught hold of one another as they fell off their horses. Some
of the horses were drowned and some of the men; the others
tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to
their horses’ manes. They tried to make their way forward
to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third
of a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and
drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who sat on
the log and was not even looking at what they were doing.
When the aide-de-camp, having returned and choosing an
opportune moment, ventured to draw the Emperor’s attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the little man
in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving
him instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly
at the drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
For him it was no new conviction that his presence in
any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people and impel them
to insane self-oblivion. He called for his horse and rode to
his quarters.
Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though
boats were sent to their assistance. The majority struggled


1141

back to the bank from which they had started. The colonel
and some of his men got across and with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they had got
out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted
‘Vivat!’ and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon
had been but where he no longer was and at that moment
considered themselves happy.
That evening, between issuing one order that the forged
Russian paper money prepared for use in Russia should be
delivered as quickly as possible and another that a Saxon
should be shot, on whom a letter containing information
about the orders to the French army had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish colonel who
had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled in
the Legion d’honneur of which Napoleon was himself the
head.
Quos vult perdere dementat.*
*Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.

1142

War and Peace

Chapter III
The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for
more than a month. reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for the war that everyone expected
and to prepare for which the Emperor had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The vacillation
between the various plans that were proposed had even increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a
month. Each of the three armies had its own commander
in chief, but there was no supreme commander of all the
forces, and the Emperor did not assume that responsibility himself.
The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less
did everybodytired of waitingprepare for the war. All the
efforts of those who surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend his time pleasantly and
forget that war was impending.
In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish
magnates, by the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it
occurred to one of the Polish aides-de-camp in attendance
that a dinner and ball should be given for the Emperor by
his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected money
by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count


1143

Bennigsen, being a landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the fete, and the thirteenth of
June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta, and fireworks at
Zakret, Count Bennigsen’s country seat.
The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross
the Niemen, and his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks,
crossed the Russian frontier, Alexander spent the evening
at the entertainment given by his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen’s country house.
It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been
assembled in one place. Countess Bezukhova was present
among other Russian ladies who had followed the sovereign
from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of beauty. The
Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.
Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also
there and, though not an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a
large sum toward the expenses. Boris was now a rich man
who had risen to high honors and no longer sought patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those
of his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not
having seen her for a long time and did not recall the past,
but as Helene was enjoying the favors of a very important
personage and Boris had only recently married, they met as
good friends of long standing.
At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka
1144

War and Peace

with Boris. They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking
at Helene’s dazzling bare shoulders which emerged from a
dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown, talked to her of old
acquaintances and at the same time, unaware of it himself
and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor
was not dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now
one pair and now another with gracious words which he
alone knew how to utter.
As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General
Balashev, one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him and contrary to court etiquette stood
near him while he was talking to a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked inquiringly at
Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only acted
thus because there were important reasons for so doing,
nodded slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had
Balashev begun to speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor’s face. He took Balashev by the arm
and crossed the room with him, unconsciously clearing a
path seven yards wide as the people on both sides made
way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev’s excited face when
the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at
the Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red
nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if expecting the
Emperor to address him. (Boris understood that Arakcheev
envied Balashev and was displeased that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than through
himself.)


1145

But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding
his sword and glancing wrathfully around, followed some
twenty paces behind them.
All the time Boris was going through the figures of the
mazurka, he was worried by the question of what news
Balashev had brought and how he could find it out before
others. In the figure in which he had to choose two ladies,
he whispered to Helene that he meant to choose Countess
Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the veranda,
and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the
garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward
the door. Boris, fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost with bowed
head.
The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been
personally affronted, was finishing with these words:
‘To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make
peace as long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!’ It seemed to Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to
utter these words. He was satisfied with the form in which
he had expressed his thoughts, but displeased that Boris had
overheard it.
‘Let no one know of it! ‘ the Emperor added with a
frown.
Boris understood that this was meant for him and,
closing his eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor reentered the ballroom and remained there about another
1146

War and Peace

half-hour.
Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French
army had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able
to show certain important personages that much that was
concealed from others was usually known to him, and by
this means he rose higher in their estimation.
The unexpected news of the French having crossed the
Niemen was particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and at a ball. On first receiving the news,
under the influence of indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased him, fully expressed
his feelings, and has since become famous. On returning
home at two o’clock that night he sent for his secretary,
Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and
a rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the words being inserted that he would not make
peace so long as a single armed Frenchman remained on
Russian soil.
Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
Monsieur mon frere,
Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have
kept my engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have
crossed the Russian frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in which Count Lauriston
informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with me
from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The
reasons on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to
deliver them to him would never have led me to suppose


1147

that that could serve as a pretext for aggression. In fact, the
ambassador, as he himself has declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I was informed
of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not
intend to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to withdraw your troops from
Russian territory, I will regard what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us will be
possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see
myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part
has provoked. It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve
humanity from the calamity of another war. I am, etc.,
(signed) Alexander

1148

War and Peace

Chapter IV
At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having sent for Balashev and read him his letter to
Napoleon, ordered him to take it and hand it personally to
the French Emperor. When dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he would not make
peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon.
Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon,
because with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use them at a moment when a last attempt at
reconciliation was being made, but he definitely instructed
Balashev to repeat them personally to Napoleon.
Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached
the French outposts at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There he was stopped by
French cavalry sentinels.
A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching
Balashev to halt. Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the road at a walking pace.
The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering
words of abuse, advanced his horse’s chest against Balashev,
put his hand to his saber, and shouted rudely at the Rus

1149

sian general, asking: was he deaf that he did not do as he
was told? Balashev mentioned who he was. The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about
regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.
After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after conversing with the Emperor less than three hours
before, and in general being accustomed to the respect due
to his rank in the service, Balashev found it very strange
here on Russian soil to encounter this hostile, and still more
this disrespectful, application of brute force to himself.
The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds,
the air was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road from the village, and over the fields the
larks rose trilling, one after another, like bubbles rising in
water.
Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an
officer from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler
and the French hussars looked silently at one another from
time to time.
A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left
his bed, came riding from the village on a handsome sleek
gray horse, accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the
soldiers, and their horses all looked smart and well kept.
It was that first period of a campaign when troops are
still in full trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers,
but with a shade of martial swagger in their clothes, and a
touch of the gaiety and spirit of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.
The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn,
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War and Peace

but was polite and evidently understood Balashev’s importance. He led him past his soldiers and behind the outposts
and told him that his wish to be presented to the Emperor
would most likely be satisfied immediately, as the Emperor’s
quarters were, he believed, not far off.
They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered
French hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted
their colonel and stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform,
and came out at the other end of the village. The colonel said
that the commander of the division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev and conduct him to
his destination.
The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright
verdure.
They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before
they saw a group of horsemen coming toward them. In front
of the group, on a black horse with trappings that glittered
in the sun, rode a tall man with plumes in his hat and black
hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore a red mantle,
and stretched his long legs forward in French fashion. This
man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his plumes flowing
and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright June sunshine.
Balashev was only two horses’ length from the equestrian
with the bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery,
who was galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn
countenance, when Julner, the French colonel, whispered
respectfully: ‘The King of Naples!’ It was, in fact, Murat,
now called ‘King of Naples.’ Though it was quite incompre

1151

hensible why he should be King of Naples, he was called so,
and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He
was so sure that he really was the King of Naples that when,
on the eve of his departure from that city, while walking
through the streets with his wife, some Italians called out to
him: ‘Viva il re!’* he turned to his wife with a pensive smile
and said: ‘Poor fellows, they don’t know that I am leaving
them tomorrow!’
*”Long live the king.’
But though he firmly believed himself to be King of
Naples and pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he had been ordered to return to
military serviceand especially since his last interview with
Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law had
told him: ‘I made you King that you should reign in my way,
but not in yours!’he had cheerfully taken up his familiar
business, andlike a well-fed but not overfat horse that feels
himself in harness and grows skittish between the shaftshe
dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of
Poland, without himself knowing why or whither.
On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head,
with its long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically
royal manner, and looked inquiringly at the French colonel.
The colonel respectfully informed His Majesty of Balashev’s
mission, whose name he could not pronounce.
‘De Bal-macheve!’ said the King (overcoming by his
assurance the difficulty that had presented itself to the col1152

War and Peace

onel). ‘Charmed to make your acquaintance, General!’ he
added, with a gesture of kingly condescension.
As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he
passed into his natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He
laid his hand on the withers of Balashev’s horse and said:
‘Well, General, it all looks like war,’ as if regretting a circumstance of which he was unable to judge.
‘Your Majesty,’ replied Balashev, ‘my master, the Emperor, does not desire war and as Your Majesty sees...’ said
Balashev, using the words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in frequently addressing
one to whom the title was still a novelty.
Murat’s face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to ‘Monsieur de Bal-macheve.’ But royaute oblige!*
and he felt it incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs with Alexander’s envoy. He dismounted,
took Balashev’s arm, and moving a few steps away from his
suite, which waited respectfully, began to pace up and down
with him, trying to speak significantly. He referred to the
fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand
that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially
when that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was thereby offended.
*”Royalty has its obligations.’
Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in the
demand, because...’ but Murat interrupted him.
‘Then you don’t consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?’ he asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish


1153

smile.
Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the
originator of the war.
‘Oh, my dear general!’ Murat again interrupted him,
‘with all my heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and that the war begun by no wish of
mine may finish as quickly as possible!’ said he, in the tone
of a servant who wants to remain good friends with another
despite a quarrel between their masters.
And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and
the state of his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and
amusing times he had spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity, Murat solemnly
drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he had stood at
his coronation. and, waving his right arm, said:
‘I won’t detain you longer, General. I wish success to your
mission,’ and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing
feathers, and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite
who were respectfully awaiting him.
Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat’s words that he
would very soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But
instead of that, at the next village the sentinels of Davout’s
infantry corps detained him as the pickets of the vanguard
had done, and an adjutant of the corps commander, who
was fetched, conducted him into the village to Marshal Davout.

1154

War and Peace

Chapter V
Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexanderthough not a coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise,
as cruel, and as unable to express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.
In the organism of states such men are necessary, as
wolves are necessary in the organism of nature, and they
always exist, always appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their proximity to the head
of the government may be. This inevitability alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore out a grenadier’s
mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves rendered
him unable to face danger, and who was neither an educated man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful
position with Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.
Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a
peasant’s hut, writinghe was auditing accounts. Better quarters could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was
one of those men who purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for being gloomy.
For the same reason they are always hard at work and in
a hurry. ‘How can I think of the bright side of life when,
as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty
shed?’ the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief


1155

pleasure and necessity of such men, when they encounter
anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure
when Balashev was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian general entered, and
after glancing over his spectacles at Balashev’s face, which
was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk
with Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still
more and sneered malevolently.
When he noticed in Balashev’s face the disagreeable impression this reception produced, Davout raised his head
and coldly asked what he wanted.
Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because Davout did not know that he was adjutant
general to the Emperor Alexander and even his envoy to
Napoleon, Balashev hastened to inform him of his rank and
mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout, after hearing
him, became still surlier and ruder.
‘Where is your dispatch?’ he inquired. ‘Give it to me. I
will send it to the Emperor.’
Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to the Emperor.
‘Your Emperor’s orders are obeyed in your army, but
here,’ said Davout, ‘you must do as you’re told.’
And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his dependence on brute force, Davout sent an
adjutant to call the officer on duty.
Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor’s
letter and laid it on the table (made of a door with its hinges
1156

War and Peace

still hanging on it, laid across two barrels). Davout took the
packet and read the inscription.
‘You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or
not,’ protested Balashev, ‘but permit me to observe that I
have the honor to be adjutant general to His Majesty...’
Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived
pleasure from the signs of agitation and confusion which
appeared on Balashev’s face.
‘You will be treated as is fitting,’ said he and, putting the
packet in his pocket, left the shed.
A minute later the marshal’s adjutant, de Castres, came
in and conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.
That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board
on the barrels.
Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking
Balashev to come to him, peremptorily requested him to
remain there, to move on with the baggage train should
orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one except
Monsieur de Castres.
After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness
of his impotence and insignificanceparticularly acute
by contrast with the sphere of power in which he had so
lately movedand after several marches with the marshal’s
baggage and the French army, which occupied the whole
district, Balashev was brought to Vilnanow occupied by
the Frenchthrough the very gate by which he had left it four
days previously.
Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte
de Turenne, came to Balashev and informed him of the Em

1157

peror Napoleon’s wish to honor him with an audience.
Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had stood in front of the house to which Balashev was
conducted, and now two French grenadiers stood there in
blue uniforms unfastened in front and with shaggy caps
on their heads, and an escort of hussars and Uhlans and a
brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals, who
were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the
porch, round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan.
Napoleon received Balashev in the very house in Vilna from
which Alexander had dispatched him on his mission.

1158

War and Peace

Chapter VI
Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was
amazed at the luxury and magnificence of Napoleon’s
court.
The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception
room where many generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnatesseveral of whom Balashev had seen at the court
of the Emperor of Russiawere waiting. Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going for
his ride.
After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was
on duty came into the great reception room and, bowing
politely, asked Balashev to follow him.
Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of
which led into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him on his mission. He stood
a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all was
silent and then from the study the sound was heard of other steps, firm and resolutethey were those of Napoleon. He
had just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it
covered his rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly
fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots.
His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one lock


1159

hung down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump
white neck stood out sharply above the black collar of his
uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne. His full face,
rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression of imperial welcome.
He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head
slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with
broad thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily
protruding, had that imposing and stately appearance one
sees in men of forty who live in comfort. It was evident, too,
that he was in the best of spirits that day.
He nodded in answer to Balashav’s low and respectful
bow, and coming up to him at once began speaking like a
man who values every moment of his time and does not
condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure he will
always say the right thing and say it well.
‘Good day, General!’ said he. ‘I have received the letter
you brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad
to see you.’ He glanced with his large eyes into Balashav’s
face and immediately looked past him.
It was plain that Balashev’s personality did not interest
him at all. Evidently only what took place within his own
mind interested him. Nothing outside himself had any
significance for him, because everything in the world, it
seemed to him, depended entirely on his will.
‘I do not, and did not, desire war,’ he continued, ‘but it
has been forced on me. Even now’ (he emphasized the word)
‘I am ready to receive any explanations you can give me.’
And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons
1160

War and Peace

for dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by
the calmly moderate and amicable tone in which the French
Emperor spoke, Balashev was firmly persuaded that he
wished for peace and intended to enter into negotiations.
When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he
had prepared long before: ‘Sire! The Emperor, my master...’
but the sight of the Emperor’s eyes bent on him confused
him. ‘You are flurriedcompose yourself!’ Napoleon seemed
to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked at
Balashev’s uniform and sword.
Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said
that the Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin’s
demand for his passports a sufficient cause for war; that
Kurakin had acted on his own initiative and without his
sovereign’s assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with England.
‘Not yet!’ interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give
vent to his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a
sign that Balashev might proceed.
After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev
added that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but
would not enter into negotiations except on condition
that... Here Balashev hesitated: he remembered the words
the Emperor Alexander had not written in his letter, but
had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had
told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered
these words, ‘So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil,’ but some complex feeling restrained him. He


1161

could not utter them, though he wished to do so. He grew
confused and said: ‘On condition that the French army retires beyond the Niemen.’
Napoleon noticed Balashev’s embarrassment when uttering these last words; his face twitched and the calf of
his left leg began to quiver rhythmically. Without moving
from where he stood he began speaking in a louder tone
and more hurriedly than before. During the speech that
followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes,
involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon’s left leg
which increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.
‘I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander,’
he began. ‘Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? I have waited eighteen months for
explanations. But in order to begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?’ he said, frowning and making an energetic
gesture of inquiry with his small white plump hand.
‘The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire,’
replied Balashev.
‘The Niemen?’ repeated Napoleon. ‘So now you want me
to retire beyond the Niemenonly the Niemen?’ repeated Napoleon, looking straight at Balashev.
The latter bowed his head respectfully.
Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the
Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned quickly and
began to pace the room.
‘You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen before commencing negotiations, but in
1162

War and Peace

just the same way two months ago the demand was that I
should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder, and yet
you are willing to negotiate.’
He went in silence from one corner of the room to the
other and again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg was quivering faster than before and
his face seemed petrified in its stern expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing Napoleon was conscious of.
‘The vibration of my left calf is a great sign with me,’ he remarked at a later date.
‘Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder
may be made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!’ Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his own surprise. ‘If you gave
me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who first joined
his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me
negotiations when I have expended millions, when you are
in alliance with England, and when your position is a bad
one. You offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your
alliance with England? What has she given you?’ he continued hurriedly, evidently no longer trying to show the
advantages of peace and discuss its possibility, but only to
prove his own rectitude and power and Alexander’s errors
and duplicity.
The commencement of his speech had obviously been
made with the intention of demonstrating the advantages
of his position and showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking, and the more he
talked the less could he control his words.


1163

The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to
exalt himself and insult Alexanderjust what he had least desired at the commencement of the interview.
‘I hear you have made peace with Turkey?’
Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.
‘Peace has been concluded...’ he began.
But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all the talking himself, and continued to talk with
the sort of eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which
spoiled people are so prone.
‘Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given
your sovereign those provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes,’
he went on, ‘I promised and would have given the Emperor
Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now he won’t have
those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united them
to his empire and in a single reign would have extended
Russia from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the Great could not have done more,’ said
Napoleon, growing more and more excited as he paced up
and down the room, repeating to Balashev almost the very
words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. ‘All that,
he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid
reign!’ he repeated several times, then paused, drew from
his pocket a gold snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily
sniffed at it.
‘What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander’s might
have been!’
He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as
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the latter tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted
him.
‘What could he wish or look for that he would not have
obtained through my friendship?’ demanded Napoleon,
shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. ‘But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my enemies, and with
whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than
the others, but all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who should awaken terrible
memories in the Emperor Alexander’s mind.... Granted that
were they competent they might be made use of,’ continued Napoleonhardly able to keep pace in words with the
rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how
right and strong he was (in his perception the two were one
and the same)‘but they are not even that! They are neither
fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be the most capable
of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel
proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and
time passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military
man. He’s stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and
resolution.... And what role is your young monarch playing
in that monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw
on him the responsibility for all that happens. A sovereign
should not be with the army unless he is a general!’ said Na

1165

poleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct challenge
to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a
military commander.
‘The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven’t
even been able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have
been driven out of the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling.’
‘On the contrary, Your Majesty,’ said Balashev, hardly
able to remember what had been said to him and following
these verbal fireworks with difficulty, ‘the troops are burning with eagerness..’
‘I know everything!’ Napoleon interrupted him. ‘I know
everything. I know the number of your battalions as exactly
as I know my own. You have not two hundred thousand
men, and I have three times that number. I give you my
word of honor,’ said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of
honor could carry no weight‘I give you my word of honor that I have five hundred and thirty thousand men this
side of the Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they
are worth nothing and have shown it by making peace with
you. As for the Swedesit is their fate to be governed by mad
kings. Their king was insane and they changed him for anotherBernadotte, who promptly went madfor no Swede
would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad.’
Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his
snuffbox to his nose.
Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon’s remarks, and would have done so; he continually made the
gesture of a man wishing to say something, but Napo1166

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leon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity of the
Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when Russia is on her
side Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon gave an
angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that
state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk,
merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashev
began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean
his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man,
he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had
evidently seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words
now uttered by Napoleon had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them when he came to
his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking at
the movements of Napoleon’s stout legs and trying to avoid
meeting his eyes.
‘But what do I care about your allies?’ said Napoleon. ‘I
have alliesthe Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and
they fight like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them.’
And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he
had uttered this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still
stood silently before him in the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned round, drew close to
Balashev’s face, and, gesticulating rapidly and energetically
with his white hands, almost shouted:
‘Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I’ll wipe it off
the map of Europe!’ he declared, his face pale and distorted
by anger, and he struck one of his small hands energetically
with the other. ‘Yes, I will throw you back beyond the Dvina


1167

and beyond the Dnieper, and will re-erect against you that
barrier which it was criminal and blind of Europe to allow
to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to you. That
is what you have gained by alienating me!’ And he walked
silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.
He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it
out again, lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in
front of Balashev. He paused, looked ironically straight into
Balashev’s eyes, and said in a quiet voice:
‘And yet what a splendid reign your master might have
had!’
Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that
from the Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy
a light. Napoleon was silent, still looking derisively at him
and evidently not listening to him. Balashev said that in
Russia the best results were expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to say, ‘I know it’s your
duty to say that, but you don’t believe it yourself. I have convinced you.’
When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his
snuffbox, sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the
floor as a signal. The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor his hat and
gloves; another brought hima pocket handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to Balashev:
‘Assure the Emperor Alexander from me,’ said he, taking
his hat, ‘that I am as devoted to him as before: I know him
thoroughly and very highly esteem his lofty qualities. I will
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detain you no longer, General; you shall receive my letter to
the Emperor.’
And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the
reception room rushed forward and descended the staircase.



1169

Chapter VII
After all that Napoleon had said to himthose bursts of
anger and the last dryly spoken words: ‘I will detain you
no longer, General; you shall receive my letter,’ Balashev felt
convinced that Napoleon would not wish to see him, and
would even avoid another meeting with himan insulted envoyespecially as he had witnessed his unseemly anger. But,
to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an invitation to dine with the Emperor that day.
Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at
that dinner.
Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not
only showed no sign of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that morning, but, on the contrary,
tried to reassure Balashev. It was evident that he had long
been convinced that it was impossible for him to make a
mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was
right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right and
wrong, but because he did it.
The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride
through Vilna, where crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him. From all the windows of the
streets through which he rode, rugs, flags, and his monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies, welcoming him,
waved their handkerchiefs to him.
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At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon
not only treated him amiably but behaved as if Balashev
were one of his own courtiers, one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to rejoice at his success. In
the course of conversation he mentioned Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely as an
interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit,
but as if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered by his curiosity.
‘How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many
houses? Is it true that Moscow is called ‘Holy Moscow’? How
many churches are there in Moscow?’ he asked.
And receiving the reply that there were more than two
hundred churches, he remarked:
‘Why such a quantity of churches?’
‘The Russians are very devout,’ replied Balashev.
‘But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the backwardness of a people,’ said Napoleon,
turning to Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.
Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the
French Emperor.
‘Every country has its own character,’ said he.
‘But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that,’ said
Napoleon.
‘I beg your Majesty’s pardon,’ returned Balashev, ‘besides
Russia there is Spain, where there are also many churches
and monasteries.’
This reply of Balashev’s, which hinted at the recent defeats of the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he


1171

related it at Alexander’s court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon’s dinner, where it passed unnoticed.
The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals
showed that they were puzzled as to what Balashev’s tone
suggested. ‘If there is a point we don’t see it, or it is not at
all witty,’ their expressions seemed to say. So little was his
rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not notice it at all
and naively asked Balashev through what towns the direct
road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on
the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as ‘all roads
lead to Rome,’ so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many
roads, and ‘among them the road through Poltava, which
Charles XII chose.’ Balashev involuntarily flushed with
pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before Caulaincourt began speaking
of the badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and
of his Petersburg reminiscences.
After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon’s
study, which four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres
coffee cup, and motioned Balashev to a chair beside him.
Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood
which, more than any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to consider everyone his
friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded by men
who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his dinner,
Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned
to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.
‘They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander
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War and Peace

occupied? Strange, isn’t it, General?’ he said, evidently not
doubting that this remark would be agreeable to his hearer
since it went to prove his, Napoleon’s, superiority to Alexander.
Balashev made no reply and bowed and bowed his head
in silence.
‘Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and
Stein were deliberating,’ continued Napoleon with the same
derisive and self-confident smile. ‘What I can’t understand,’
he went on, ‘is that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded
himself with my personal enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may the same?’ and he
turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this thought
turned him back on to the track of his morning’s anger,
which was still fresh in him.
‘And let him know that I will do so!’ said Napoleon, rising and pushing his cup away with his hand. ‘I’ll drive all
his Wurttemberg, Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I’ll drive them out. Let him prepare an asylum
for them in Russia!’
Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he
would like to make his bow and leave, and only listened
because he could not help hearing what was said to him.
Napoleon did not notice this expression; he treated Balashev
not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master’s
humiliation.
‘And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of
the armies? What is the good of that? War is my profession,


1173

but his business is to reign and not to command armies!
Why has he taken on himself such a responsibility?’
Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several
times up and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to Balashev and with a slight
smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply as if he were doing
something not merely important but pleasing to Balashev,
he raised his hand to the forty-year-old Russian general’s
face and, taking him by the ear, pulled it gently, smiling
with his lips only.
To have one’s ear pulled by the Emperor was considered
the greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court.
‘Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander,
why don’t you say anything?’ said he, as if it was ridiculous,
in his presence, to be the adorer and courtier of anyone but
himself, Napoleon. ‘Are the horses ready for the general?’
he added, with a slight inclination of his head in reply to
Balashev’s bow. ‘Let him have mine, he has a long way to
go!’
The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent
to Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the Russian monarch, and the war began...

1174

War and Peace

Chapter VIII
After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to Petersburg, on business as he told his family,
but really to meet Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching Petersburg he inquired for
Kuragin but the latter had already left the city. Pierre had
warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on his
track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment
from the Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his
former commander who was always well disposed toward
him, and Kutuzov suggested that he should accompany him
to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had been
appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having
received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for
Turkey.
Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without
some fresh cause it might compromise the young Countess
Rostova and so he wanted to meet Kuragin personally in
order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again failed to
meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, amid
new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear.
After his betrothed had broken faith with himwhich he felt


1175

the more acutely the more he tried to conceal its effectsthe
surroundings in which he had been happy became trying
to him, and the freedom and independence he had once
prized so highly were still more so. Not only could he no
longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he
lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later
enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude
at Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he
even dreaded to recall them and them and the bright and
boundless horizons they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters unrelated to
his past interests, and he seized on these the more eagerly
the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered
above him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that
weighed him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.
Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army
service was the simplest and most familiar. As a general on
duty on Kutuzov’s staff, he applied himself to business with
zeal and perseverance and surprised Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found Kuragin
in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it necessary to rush
back to Russia after him, but all the same he knew that however long it might be before he met Kuragin, despite his
contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to
convince himself that it was not worth stooping to a conflict with himhe knew that when he did meet him he would
not be able to resist calling him out, any more than a raven1176

War and Peace

ous man can help snatching at food. And the consciousness
that the insult was not yet avenged, that his rancor was
still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned the artificial tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by
means of restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and
ambitious activity.
In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon
reached Bucharestwhere Kutuzov had been living for two
months, passing his days and nights with a Wallachian
womanPrince Andrew asked Kutuzov to transfer him to the
Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of Bolkonski’s activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness,
very readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay
de Tolly.
Before joining the Western Army which was then, in
May, encamped at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills
which was directly on his way, being only two miles off
the Smolensk highroad. During the last three years there
had been so many changes in his life, he had thought, felt,
and seen so much (having traveled both in the east and the
west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange
and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and
still the same in every detail. He entered through the gates
with their stone pillars and drove up the avenue leading
to the house as if he were entering an enchanted, sleeping
castle. The same old stateliness, the same cleanliness, the
same stillness reigned there, and inside there was the same
furniture, the same walls, sounds, and smell, and the same
timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still


1177

the same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly
and joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and
constant suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same
coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her
existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She had
merely become more self-confident, Prince Andrew thought.
Dessalles, the tutor he had brought from Switzerland, was
wearing a coat of Russian cut and talking broken Russian
to the servants, but was still the same narrowly intelligent,
conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old prince had
changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which
left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character
he was the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to what was happening in the world.
Little Nicholas alone had changed. He had grown, become
rosier, had curly dark hair, and, when merry and laughing,
quite unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little
mouth just as the little princess used to do. He alone did
not obey the law of immutability in the enchanted, sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the
inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince
Andrew had seen them last. The household was divided
into two alien and hostile camps, who changed their habits
for his sake and only met because he was there. To the one
camp belonged the old prince, Madmoiselle Bourienne, and
the architect; to the other Princess Mary, Dessalles, little
Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids.
During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he
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War and Peace

was a visitor for whose sake an exception was being made
and that his presence made them all feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first day, he was taciturn,
and the old prince noticing this also became morosely
dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner. In
the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying
to rouse him, began to tell him of the young Count Kamensky’s campaign, the old prince began unexpectedly to talk
about Princess Mary, blaming her for her superstitions and
her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he said, was
the only person really attached to him.
The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because
of Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated
him, and that by indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling
little Prince Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that
he tormented his daughter and that her life was very hard,
but he also knew that he could not help tormenting her and
that she deserved it. ‘Why does Prince Andrew, who sees
this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me a
scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his
own daughter at a distance and attaches this Frenchwoman
to himself? He doesn’t understand, so I must explain it, and
he must hear me out,’ thought the old prince. And he began
explaining why he could not put up with his daughter’s unreasonable character.
‘If you ask me,’ said Prince Andrew, without looking up
(he was censuring his father for the first time in his life), ‘I
did not wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I will give
you my frank opinion. If there is any misunderstanding and


1179

discord between you and Mary, I can’t blame her for it at all.
I know how she loves and respects you. Since you ask me,’
continued Prince Andrew, becoming irritableas he was always liable to do of late‘I can only say that if there are any
misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless woman, who is not fit to be my sister’s companion.’
The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to
which Prince Andrew could not get accustomed.
‘What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You’ve already been
talking it over! Eh?’
‘Father, I did not want to judge,’ said Prince Andrew, in
a hard and bitter tone, ‘but you challenged me, and I have
said, and always shall say, that Mary is not to blame, but
those to blamethe one to blameis that Frenchwoman.’
‘Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!’ said
the old man in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some embarrassment, but then he suddenly
jumped up and cried: ‘Be off, be off! Let not a trace of you
remain here!..’
Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess
Mary persuaded him to stay another day. That day he did
not see his father, who did not leave his room and admitted
no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and Tikhon, but asked
several times whether his son had gone. Next day, before
leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son’s rooms. The boy,
curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat
on his knee, and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell into a reverie without finishing the
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War and Peace

story. He thought not of this pretty child, his son whom he
held on his knee, but of himself. He sought in himself either
remorse for having angered his father or regret at leaving
home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him,
and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to
him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken
by caressing the boy and taking him on his knee.
‘Well, go on!’ said his son.
Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from
his knee and went out of the room.
As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and especially on returning to the old conditions
of life amid which he had been happy, weariness of life
overcame him with its former intensity, and he hastened to
escape from these memories and to find some work as soon
as possible.
‘So you’ve decided to go, Andrew?’ asked his sister.
‘Thank God that I can,’ replied Prince Andrew. ‘I am
very sorry you can’t.’
‘Why do you say that?’ replied Princess Mary. ‘Why do
you say that, when you are going to this terrible war, and he
is so old? Mademoiselle Bourienne says he has been asking
about you...’
As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled
and her tears began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and
began pacing the room.
‘Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and whatwhat trashcan cause people misery!’ he said with a malignity


1181

that alarmed Princess Mary.
She understood that when speaking of ‘trash’ he referred not only to Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her
misery, but also to the man who had ruined his own happiness.
‘Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!’ she said,
touching his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone
through her tears. ‘I understand you’ (she looked down).
‘Don’t imagine that sorrow is the work of men. Men are
His tools.’ She looked a little above Prince Andrew’s head
with the confident, accustomed look with which one looks
at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. ‘Sorrow is sent
by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not
to blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it
and forgive! We have no right to punish. And then you will
know the happiness of forgiving.’
‘If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman’s virtue. But a man should not and cannot forgive and
forget,’ he replied, and though till that moment he had not
been thinking of Kuragin, all his unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.
‘If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that
I ought long ago to have punished him,’ he thought. And
giving her no further reply, he began thinking of the glad
vindictive moment when he would meet Kuragin who he
knew was now in the army.
Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying
that she knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrew
left without being reconciled to him, but Prince Andrew re1182

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plied that he would probably soon be back again from the
army and would certainly write to his father, but that the
longer he stayed now the more embittered their differences
would become.
‘Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come
from God, and men are never to blame,’ were the last words
he heard from his sister when he took leave of her.
‘Then it must be so!’ thought Prince Andrew as he drove
out of the avenue from the house at Bald Hills. ‘She, poor
innocent creature, is left to be victimized by an old man
who has outlived his wits. The old man feels he is guilty, but
cannot change himself. My boy is growing up and rejoices
in life, in which like everybody else he will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself don’t know.
I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give him a
chance to kill and laugh at me!
These conditions of life had been the same before, but
then they were all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only senseless things, lacking coherence,
presented themselves one after another to Prince Andrew’s
mind.



1183

Chapter IX
Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the
army at the end of June. The first army, with which was the
Emperor, occupied the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying to effect a junction with
the first one from which it was said to be cut off by large
French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the general
course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one anticipated
any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no one
thought the war would extend farther than the western, the
Polish, provinces.
Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had
been assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a
single town or large village in the vicinity of the camp, the
immense number of generals and courtiers accompanying
the army were living in the best houses of the villages on
both sides of the river, over a radius of six miles. Barclay de
Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from the Emperor.
He received Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him in his
foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor
for a decision as to his employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince
Andrew had hoped to find with the army, was not there. He
had gone to Petersburg, but Prince Andrew was glad to hear
this. His mind was occupied by the interests of the center
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that was conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to be
free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought
of Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were
required of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by the aid of his own knowledge and by
talks with experts, tried to form a definite opinion about
it. But the question whether the camp was advantageous
or disadvantageous remained for him undecided. Already
from his military experience and what he had seen in the
Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in
war the most deeply considered plans have no significance
and that all depends on the way unexpected movements of
the enemythat cannot be foreseenare met, and on how and
by whom the whole matter is handled. To clear up this last
point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his position and
acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the control
of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he
deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs.
While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces
had been divided into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the army under Bagration,
and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormasov. The Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander in
chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor would take command, but only that he would be
with the army. The Emperor, moreover, had with him not
a commander in chief’s staff but the imperial headquarters
staff. In attendance on him was the head of the imperial
staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well as


1185

generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and
a large number of foreigners, but not the army staff. Besides
these, there were in attendance on the Emperor without any
definite appointments: Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of War;
Count Bennigsen, the senior general in rank; the Grand
Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister;
Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the
plan of campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian emigre; Wolzogenand many others. Though these men
had no military appointment in the army, their position
gave them influence, and often a corps commander, or even
the commander in chief, did not know in what capacity he
was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke, Arakcheev,
or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and
did not know whether a certain order received in the form
of advice emanated from the man who gave it or from the
Emperor and whether it had to be executed or not. But this
was only the external condition; the essential significance
of the presence of the Emperor and of all these people, from
a courtier’s point of view (and in an Emperor’s vicinity all
became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this: the
Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief,
but disposed of all the armies; the men around him were his
assistants. Arakcheev was a faithful custodian to enforce
order and acted as the sovereign’s bodyguard. Bennigsen
was a landlord in the Vilna province who appeared to be
doing the honors of the district, but was in reality a good
general, useful as an adviser and ready at hand to replace
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Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited him to
be. The ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was
useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem
personally. Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a
general full of self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander. Paulucci was there because he was bold
and decided in speech. The adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the Emperor, and lastly and
chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn up the plan
of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander to believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing
the whole business of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen,
who expressed Pfuel’s thoughts in a more comprehensible
way than Pfuel himself (who was a harsh, bookish theorist,
self-confident to the point of despising everyone else) was
able to do.
Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded
new and unexpected ideas every dayespecially the foreigners, who did so with a boldness characteristic of people
employed in a country not their ownthere were many secondary personages accompanying the army because their
principals were there.
Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the
following sharply defined subdivisions of and parties:
The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherentsmilitary theorists who believed in a science of war with
immutable lawslaws of oblique movements, outflankings,
and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents demanded a retire

1187

ment into the depths of the country in accordance with
precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and they
saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every
deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly
Germans.
The second party was directly opposed to the first; one
extreme, as always happens, was met by representatives of
the other. The members of this party were those who had
demanded an advance from Vilna into Poland and freedom
from all prearranged plans. Besides being advocates of bold
action, this section also represented nationalism, which
made them still more one-sided in the dispute. They were
Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who was beginning to come
to the front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermolov’s was being circulated, that as a great favor he had
petitioned the Emperor to make him a German. The men of
that party, remembering Suvorov, said that what one had to
do was not to reason, or stick pins into maps, but to fight,
beat the enemy, keep him out of Russia, and not let the army
get discouraged.
To the third partyin which the Emperor had most
confidencebelonged the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the other two. The members of this party,
chiefly civilians and to whom Arakcheev belonged, thought
and said what men who have no convictions but wish to
seem to have some generally say. They said that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as Bonaparte
(they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply de1188

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vised plans and profound scientific knowledge and in that
respect Pfuel was a genius, but at the same time it had to
be acknowledged that the theorists are often one sided, and
therefore one should not trust them absolutely, but should
also listen to what Pfuel’s opponents and practical men of
experience in warfare had to say, and then choose a middle
course. They insisted on the retention of the camp at Drissa,
according to Pfuel’s plan, but on changing the movements
of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim
nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents of this third party.
Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative
was the Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment
at Austerlitz, where he had ridden out at the head of the
Guards, in his casque and cavalry uniform as to a review,
expecting to crush the French gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had narrowly escaped
amid the general confusion. The men of this party had both
the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions.
They feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their
own weakness, and frankly said so. They said: ‘Nothing
but sorrow, shame, and ruin will come of all this! We have
abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall abandon Drissa.
The only reasonable thing left to do is to conclude peace as
soon as possible, before we are turned out of Petersburg.’
This view was very general in the upper army circles and
found support also in Petersburg and from the chancellor,
Rumyantsev, who, for other reasons of state, was in favor of
peace.


1189

The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of
Barclay de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of
war and commander in chief. ‘Be he what he may’ (they always began like that), ‘he is an honest, practical man and
we have nobody better. Give him real power, for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of command,
and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If
our army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn
to Drissa without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely
to Barclay. If Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen
all will be lost, for Bennigsen showed his incapacity already
in 1807.’
The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary,
that at any rate there was no one more active and experienced than Bennigsen: ‘and twist about as you may, you
will have to come to Bennigsen eventually. Let the others
make mistakes now!’ said they, arguing that our retirement
to Drissa was a most shameful reverse and an unbroken
series of blunders. ‘The more mistakes that are made the
better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that
things cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some
Barclay or other, but a man like Bennigsen, who made his
mark in 1807, and to whom Napoleon himself did justicea
man whose authority would be willingly recognized, and
Bennigsen is the only such man.’
The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who
are always to be found, especially around young sovereigns,
and of whom there were particularly many round Alexandergenerals and imperial aides-de-camp passionately
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devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a monarch but as a
man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as Rostov
had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues but all human capabilities as well. These men, though
enchanted with the sovereign for refusing the command of
the army, yet blamed him for such excessive modesty, and
only desired and insisted that their adored sovereign should
abandon his diffidence and openly announce that he would
place himself at the head of the army, gather round him a
commander in chief’s staff, and, consulting experienced
theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would
himself lead the troops, whose spirits would thereby be
raised to the highest pitch.
The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous
numbers was to the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted
of men who desired neither peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa or anywhere else,
neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thingas much advantage
and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied
about the Emperor’s headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at other times. A man who
simply wished to retain his lucrative post would today agree
with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor,
would declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter.
Another who wished to gain some advantage would attract
the Emperor’s attention by loudly advocating the very thing


1191

the Emperor had hinted at the day before, and would dispute
and shout at the council, beating his breast and challenging
those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby proving
that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common
good. A third, in the absence of opponents, between two
councils would simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well knowing that at that moment people would
be too busy to refuse him. A fourth while seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come accidentally under
the Emperor’s eye. A fifth, to achieve his long-cherished aim
of dining with the Emperor, would stubbornly insist on the
correctness or falsity of some newly emerging opinion and
for this object would produce arguments more or less forcible and correct.
All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations, and promotions, and in this pursuit watched
only the weathercock of imperial favor, and directly they
noticed it turning in any direction, this whole drone population of the army began blowing hard that way, so that
it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere.
Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace
of serious danger giving a peculiarly threatening character
to everything, amid this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity of race among
these peoplethis eighth and largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and
obscurity to the common task. Whatever question arose, a
swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by
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their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who
were disputing honestly.
From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached the army, another, a ninth party, was being
formed and was beginning to raise its voice. This was the
party of the elders, reasonable men experienced and capable
in state affairs, who, without sharing any of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of what was
going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means
of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.
The men of this party said and thought that what was
wrong resulted chiefly from the Emperor’s presence in the
army with his military court and from the consequent
presence there of an indefinite, conditional, and unsteady
fluctuation of relations, which is in place at court but
harmful in an army; that a sovereign should reign but not
command the army, and that the only way out of the position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the
army; that the mere presence of the Emperor paralyzed the
action of fifty thousand men required to secure his personal
safety, and that the worst commander in chief if independent would be better than the very best one trammeled by
the presence and authority of the monarch.
Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at
Drissa, Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief
representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor
which Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign. In this letter,
availing himself of permission given him by the Emperor


1193

to discuss the general course of affairs, he respectfully suggestedon the plea that it was necessary for the sovereign to
arouse a warlike spirit in the people of the capitalthat the
Emperor should leave the army.
That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his
call to them to defend their countrythe very incitement
which was the chief cause of Russia’s triumph in so far as it
was produced by the Tsar’s personal presence in Moscowwas suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as a
pretext for quitting the army.

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Chapter X
This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor
when Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that
the sovereign wished to see him personally, to question him
about Turkey, and that Prince Andrew was to present himself at Bennigsen’s quarters at six that evening.
News was received at the Emperor’s quarters that very
day of a fresh movement by Napoleon which might endanger the armynews subsequently found to be false. And that
morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the Drissa
fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him
that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then
considered a chef-d’oeuvre of tactical science which would
ensure Napoleon’s destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction of the Russian army.
Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen’s quartersa country gentleman’s house of moderate size, situated on the
very banks of the river. Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the Emperor’s aide-de-camp,
received Bolkonski and informed him that the Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci,
had gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious
doubts were beginning to be felt.
Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with


1195

a French novel in his hand. This room had probably been a
music room; there was still an organ in it on which some
rugs were piled, and in one corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen’s adjutant. This adjutant was also there
and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the room, one
straight on into what had been the drawing room, and another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came
the sound of voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In that drawing room were gathered, by the
Emperor’s wish, not a military council (the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons whose opinions
he wished to know in view of the impending difficulties. It
was not a council of war, but, as it were, a council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally. To this
semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt, Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom
Napoleon had referred to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was not a military man at all,
and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew had heard, was
the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had an
opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived
soon after himself and, in passing through to the drawing
room, stopped a minute to speak to Chernyshev.
At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general, which fitted him badly like a fancy costume,
seemed familiar to Prince Andrew, though he saw him
now for the first time. There was about him something of
Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German
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theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805,
but he was more typical than any of them. Prince Andrew
had never yet seen a German theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united to such an extent.
Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse,
robust build, broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder
blades. His face was much wrinkled and his eyes deep set.
His hair had evidently been hastily brushed smooth in front
of the temples, but stuck up behind in quaint little tufts. He
entered the room, looking restlessly and angrily around, as
if afraid of everything in that large apartment. Awkwardly
holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked
in German where the Emperor was. One could see that he
wished to pass through the rooms as quickly as possible,
finish with the bows and greetings, and sit down to business
in front of a map, where he would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and smiled ironically
on hearing that the sovereign was inspecting the fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord with his theory.
He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass
voice, as self-assured Germans doit might have been ‘stupid
fellow”... or ‘the whole affair will be ruined,’ or ‘something
absurd will come of it.’... Prince Andrew did not catch what
he said and would have passed on, but Chernyshev introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince Andrew was just
back from Turkey where the war had terminated so fortunately. Pfuel barely glancednot so much at Prince Andrew
as past himand said, with a laugh: ‘That must have been a
fine tactical war”; and, laughing contemptuously, went on


1197

into the room from which the sound of voices was heard.
Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had
dared to inspect and criticize his camp in his absence. From
this short interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to
his Austerlitz experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was one of those hopelessly and
immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point
of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans
are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notionscience,
that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally,
both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and
women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen
of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an
Englishman always knows what he should do and knows
that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct.
An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily
forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured
just because he knows nothing does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.
The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and
more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he
knows the truthsciencewhich he himself has invented but
which is for him the absolute truth.
Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a sciencethe theory of oblique movements deduced by him from the history
of Frederick the Great’s wars, and all he came across in the
history of more recent warfare seemed to him absurd and
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barbarousmonstrous collisions in which so many blunders
were committed by both sides that these wars could not be
called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and therefore could not serve as material for science.
In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the
plan of campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he
did not see the least proof of the fallibility of his theory in
the disasters of that war. On the contrary, the deviations
made from his theory were, in his opinion, the sole cause of
the whole disaster, and with characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, ‘There, I said the whole affair would
go to the devil!’ Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who
so love their theory that they lose sight of the theory’s objectits practical application. His love of theory made him
hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He
was even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him the
accuracy of his theory.
He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev
about the present war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go wrong, and who is not displeased
that it should be so. The unbrushed tufts of hair sticking
up behind and the hastily brushed hair on his temples expressed this most eloquently.
He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous
sounds of his voice were at once heard from there.



1199

Chapter XI
Prince Andrew’s eyes were still following Pfuel out of the
room when Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not pausing, went into the study,
giving instructions to his adjutant as he went. The Emperor
was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened on to make
some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.
Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch,
where the Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was talking to him with particular
warmth and the Emperor, with his head bent to the left,
was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor moved
forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the
flushed and excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed
him and continued to speak.
‘And as for the man who advised forming this campthe
Drissa camp,’ said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the
steps and noticing Prince Andrew scanned his unfamiliar
face, ‘as to that person, sire...’ continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain himself, ‘the man who
advised the Drissa campI see no alternative but the lunatic
asylum or the gallows!’
Without heeding the end of the Italian’s remarks, and
as though not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing
Bolkonski, addressed him graciously.
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War and Peace

‘I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are
meeting, and wait for me.’
The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by
Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein,
and the door closed behind them. Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor’s permission, accompanied
Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing
room where the council was assembled.
Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it were, of chief of the Emperor’s staff. He came
out of the study into the drawing room with some maps
which he spread on a table, and put questions on which he
wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen present. What
had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to be
false) had been received during the night of a movement by
the French to outflank the Drissa camp.
The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet
the difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a
perfectly new position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for this was inexplicable (unless he
wished to show that he, too, could have an opinion), but
he urged that at this point the army should unite and there
await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had thought out
that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to
answer the questions putwhich, in fact, his plan did not answeras to avail himself of the opportunity to air it. It was
one of the millions of proposals, one as good as another,
that could be made as long as it was quite unknown what
character the war would take. Some disputed his argu

1201

ments, others defended them. Young Count Toll objected
to the Swedish general’s views more warmly than anyone
else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side
pocket a well-filled notebook, which he asked permission
to read to them. In these voluminous notes Toll suggested
another scheme, totally different from Armfeldt’s or Pfuel’s
plan of campaign. In answer to Toll, Paulucci suggested an
advance and an attack, which, he urged, could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the trap (as
he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.
During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter,
Wolzogen (his ‘bridge’ in court relations), were silent. Pfuel
only snorted contemptuously and turned away, to show that
he would never demean himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when Prince Volkonski,
who was in the chair, called on him to give his opinion, he
merely said:
‘Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position with an exposed rear, or why not this Italian
gentleman’s attackvery fine, or a retreat, also good! Why ask
me?’ said he. ‘Why, you yourselves know everything better
than I do.’
But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the
Emperor’s name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and,
suddenly growing animated, began to speak:
‘Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody thought they knew better than I did, and now you
come to me! How mend matters? There is nothing to mend!
The principles laid down by me must be strictly adhered
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War and Peace

to,’ said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers.
‘What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!’
He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began
proving that no eventuality could alter the efficiency of the
Drissa camp, that everything had been foreseen, and that if
the enemy were really going to outflank it, the enemy would
inevitably be destroyed.
Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in French. Wolzogen came to the assistance of his
chief, who spoke French badly, and began translating for
him, hardly able to keep pace with Pfuel, who was rapidly
demonstrating that not only all that had happened, but all
that could happen, had been foreseen in his scheme, and
that if there were now any difficulties the whole fault lay
in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed.
He kept laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last
contemptuously ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in various ways the accuracy of
a problem that has already been proved. Wolzogen took
his place and continued to explain his views in French, every now and then turning to Pfuel and saying, ‘Is it not so,
your excellency?’ But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who
strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own
supporter, Wolzogen:
‘Well, of course, what more is there to explain?’
Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German.
Toll explained to Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.


1203

Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with
Pfuel, angry, determined, and absurdly self-confident as he
was. Of all those present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, nursed no hatred against anyone,
and only desired that the plan, formed on a theory arrived
at by years of toil, should be carried out. He was ridiculous,
and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired involuntary
respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides this,
the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that
had not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there
was now a panic fear of Napoleon’s genius, which, though
concealed, was noticeable in every rejoinder. Everything
was assumed to be possible for Napoleon, they expected
him from every side, and invoked his terrible name to shatter each other’s proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to consider
Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed his
theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity
in Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to
speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain
desperation in Pfuel’s own expressions, it was clear that the
others knew, and Pfuel himself felt, that his fall was at hand.
And despite his self-confidence and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly brushed on
the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he
was evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of
verifying his theory by a huge experiment and proving its
soundness to the whole world was slipping away from him.
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War and Peace

The discussions continued a long time, and the longer
they lasted the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and personalities, and the less was it possible
to arrive at any general conclusion from all that had been
said. Prince Andrew, listening to this polyglot talk and to
these surmises, plans, refutations, and shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought
that had long since and often occurred to him during his
military activitiesthe idea that there is not and cannot be
any science of war, and that therefore there can be no such
thing as a military geniusnow appeared to him an obvious
truth. ‘What theory and science is possible about a matter
the conditions and circumstances of which are unknown
and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the
acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one was or is able
to foresee in what condition our or the enemy’s armies will
be in a day’s time, and no one can gauge the force of this or
that detachment. Sometimeswhen there is not a coward at
the front to shout, ‘We are cut off!’ and start running, but
a brave and jolly lad who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’a detachment of
five thousand is worth thirty thousand, as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight thousand,
as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in
which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined
and everything depends on innumerable conditions, the
significance of which is determined at a particular moment
which arrives no one knows when? Armfeldt says our army
is cut in half, and Paulucci says we have got the French army
between two fires; Michaud says that the worthlessness of


1205

the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it, and Pfuel
says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes one
plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad,
and the advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at
the moment of trial. And why do they all speak of a ‘military genius’? Is a man a genius who can order bread to be
brought up at the right time and say who is to go to the right
and who to the left? It is only because military men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants
flatter power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not
possess. The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded men. Bagration was the best,
Napoleon himself admitted that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied face on the field
of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander not
need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributeslove, poetry,
tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be
limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and
only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should
be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and
unjust. It is understandable that a theory of their ‘genius’
was invented for them long ago because they have power!
The success of a military action depends not on them, but
on the man in the ranks who shouts, ‘We are lost!’ or who
shouts, ‘Hurrah!’ And only in the ranks can one serve with
assurance of being useful.’
So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking,
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and he roused himself only when Paulucci called him and
everyone was leaving.
At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he would like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost
his standing in court circles forever by not asking to remain
attached to the sovereign’s person, but for permission to
serve in the army.



1207

Chapter XII
Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter from his parents in which they told him briefly
of Natasha’s illness and the breaking off of her engagement
to Prince Andrew (which they explained by Natasha’s having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas to retire from the
army and return home. On receiving this letter, Nicholas did
not even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry
Natasha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he
would do all he could to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote
separately.
‘Adored friend of my soul!’ he wrote. ‘Nothing but honor
could keep me from returning to the country. But now, at the
commencement of the campaign, I should feel dishonored,
not only in my comrades’ eyes but in my own, if I preferred
my own happiness to my love and duty to the Fatherland. But
this shall be our last separation. Believe me, directly the war
is over, if I am still alive and still loved by you, I will throw
up everything and fly to you, to press you forever to my ardent breast.’
It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign
that prevented Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying Sonya. The autumn in Otradnoe with the
hunting, and the winter with the Christmas holidays and So1208

War and Peace

nya’s love, had opened out to him a vista of tranquil rural
joys and peace such as he had never known before, and which
now allured him. ‘A splendid wife, children, a good pack of
hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors, service by election...’ thought he. But now the campaign
was beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And
since it had to be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to him,
felt contented with the life he led in the regiment and was able
to find pleasure in that life.
On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been
joyfully welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back from the Ukraine excellent horses
which pleased him and earned him commendation from his
commanders. During his absence he had been promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war footing with an
increase in numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.
The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland
on double pay, new officers arrived, new men and horses, and
above all everybody was infected with the merrily excited
mood that goes with the commencement of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous position in the regiment,
devoted himself entirely to the pleasures and interests of military service, though he knew that sooner or later he would
have to relinquish them.
The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of state, political and strategic. Each step of the retreat
was accompanied by a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and passions at headquarters. For the Pavlograd
hussars, however, the whole of this retreat during the fin

1209

est period of summer and with sufficient supplies was a very
simple and agreeable business.
It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness, and intriguing; in the body of the army they did not
ask themselves where they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat, it was only because they had to leave
billets they had grown accustomed to, or some pretty young
Polish lady. If the thought that things looked bad chanced to
enter anyone’s head, he tried to be as cheerful as befits a good
soldier and not to think of the general trend of affairs, but
only of the task nearest to hand. First they camped gaily before Vilna, making acquaintance with the Polish landowners,
preparing for reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor
and other high commanders. Then came an order to retreat
to Sventsyani and destroy any provisions they could not carry
away with them. Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars
only as the drunken camp, a name the whole army gave to
their encampment there, and because many complaints were
made against the troops, who, taking advantage of the order
to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and carpets
from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered Sventsyani,
because on the first day of their arrival at that small town he
changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the
drunken men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had
appropriated five barrels of old beer. From Sventsyani they
retired farther and farther to Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier of Russia proper.
On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious action for the first time.
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War and Peace

On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was
a heavy storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 18l2
was remarkable for its storms.
The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field
of rye, which was already in ear but had been completely
trodden down by cattle and horses. The rain was descending
in torrents, and Rostov, with a young officer named Ilyin, his
protege, was sitting in a hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long mustaches extending onto
his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had been overtaken
by the rain, entered Rostov’s shelter.
‘I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of
Raevski’s exploit?’
And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle,
which he had heard at the staff.
Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as
the water trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with
an occasional glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him.
This officer, a lad of sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same relation to Nicholas that Nicholas
had been to Denisov seven years before. Ilyin tried to imitate
Rostov in everything and adored him as a girl might have
done.
Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke
grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being ‘a Russian Thermopylae,’ and of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been
performed by General Raevski. He recounted how Raevski
had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had
charged with them beside him. Rostov heard the story and


1211

not only said nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski’s enthusiasm
but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what he
was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it.
Since the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew
by experience that men always lie when describing military
exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to know that nothing
happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate it. And so
he did not like Zdrzhinski’s tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski
himself who, with his mustaches extending over his cheeks,
bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and
crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him
in silence. ‘In the first place, there must have been such a confusion and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that
if Raevski did lead his sons there, it could have had no effect
except perhaps on some dozen men nearest to him,’ thought
he, ‘the rest could not have seen how or with whom Raevski
came onto the dam. And even those who did see it would
not have been much stimulated by it, for what had they to do
with Raevski’s tender paternal feelings when their own skins
were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did
not depend on whether they took the Saltanov dam or not,
as we are told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should
he have made such a sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would not have taken my brother Petya
there, or even Ilyin, who’s a stranger to me but a nice lad, but
would have tried to put them somewhere under cover,’ Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But he
did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had
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War and Peace

gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the
glory of our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it.
And he acted accordingly.
‘I can’t stand this any more,’ said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov did not relish Zdrzhinski’s conversation. ‘My stockings
and shirt... and the water is running on my seat! I’ll go and
look for shelter. The rain seems less heavy.’
Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.
Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came
running back to the shanty.
‘Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I’ve found it! About two
hundred yards away there’s a tavern where ours have already
gathered. We can at least get dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna’s there.’
Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young German woman he had married in Poland.
The doctor, whether from lack of means or because he did not
like to part from his young wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him wherever the hussar regiment
went and his jealousy had become a standing joke among the
hussar officers.
Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to
Lavrushka to follow with the things, andnow slipping in the
mud, now splashing right through itset off with Ilyin in the
lessening rain and the darkness that was occasionally rent by
distant lightning.
‘Rostov, where are you?’
‘Here. What lightning!’ they called to one another.


1213

Chapter XIII
In the tavern, before which stood the doctor’s covered
cart, there were already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little blonde German, in a dressing jacket
and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her. Rostov
and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry
shouts and laughter.
‘Dear me, how jolly we are!’ said Rostov laughing.
‘And why do you stand there gaping?’
‘What swells they are! Why, the water streams from
them! Don’t make our drawing room so wet.’
‘Don’t mess Mary Hendrikhovna’s dress!’ cried other
voices.
Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they
could change into dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna’s modesty. They were going into a tiny recess
behind a partition to change, but found it completely filled
by three officers who sat playing cards by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these officers would on no
account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna obliged
them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and
behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka
who had brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry
ones.
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War and Peace

A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board
was found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was produced and a cellaret and half
a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to
preside, they all crowded round her. One offered her a clean
handkerchief to wipe her charming hands, another spread a
jacket under her little feet to keep them from the damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft,
and yet another waved the flies off her husband’s face, lest
he should wake up.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling
timidly and happily. ‘He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night.’
‘Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna,’ replied the officer, ‘one
must look after the doctor. Perhaps he’ll take pity on me
someday, when it comes to cutting off a leg or an arm for
me.’
There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy
that one could not make out whether the tea was strong or
weak, and the samovar held only six tumblers of water, but
this made it all the pleasanter to take turns in order of seniority to receive one’s tumbler from Mary Hendrikhovna’s
plump little hands with their short and not overclean nails.
All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love with
her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition soon left their game and came over to the samovar,
yielding to the general mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself surrounded by such brilliant
and polite young men, beamed with satisfaction, try as she


1215

might to hide it, and perturbed as she evidently was each
time her husband moved in his sleep behind her.
There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than
anything else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for
everyone in turn. Rostov received his tumbler, and adding
some rum to it asked Mary Hendrikhovna to stir it.
‘But you take it without sugar?’ she said, smiling all the
time, as if everything she said and everything the others
said was very amusing and had a double meaning.
‘It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand
should stir my tea.’
Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the
spoon which someone meanwhile had pounced on.
‘Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer,’ said Rostov.
‘Too hot!’ she replied, blushing with pleasure.
Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and
brought it to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with
her finger.
‘This is my cup,’ said he. ‘Only dip your finger in it and
I’ll drink it all up.’
When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack
of cards and proposed that they should play ‘Kings’ with
Mary Hendrikhovna. They drew lots to settle who should
make up her set. At Rostov’s suggestion it was agreed that
whoever became ‘King’ should have the right to kiss Mary
Hendrikhovna’s hand, and that the ‘Booby’ should go to refill and reheat the samovar for the doctor when the latter
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War and Peace

awoke.
‘Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is ‘King’?’
asked Ilyin.
‘As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!’
They had hardly begun to play before the doctor’s disheveled head suddenly appeared from behind Mary
Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for some time, listening
to what was being said, and evidently found nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad
and depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched
himself and asked to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon as he had left the room all the officers
burst into loud laughter and Mary Hendrikhovna blushed
till her eyes filled with tears and thereby became still more
attractive to them. Returning from the yard, the doctor told
his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and looked
at him in alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had
ceased and they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or
everything in it would be stolen.
‘But I’ll send an orderly.... Two of them!’ said Rostov.
‘What an idea, doctor!’
‘I’ll stand guard on it myself!’ said Ilyin.
‘No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not
slept for two nights,’ replied the doctor, and he sat down
morosely beside his wife, waiting for the game to end.
Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain
from laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible
pretexts. When he had gone, taking his wife with him, and


1217

had settled down with her in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering themselves with their
wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long time; now they
exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor’s uneasiness and
his wife’s delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported what was taking place in the covered trap. Several
times Rostov, covering his head, tried to go to sleep, but
some remark would arouse him and conversation would
be resumed, to the accompaniment of unreasoning, merry,
childlike laughter.

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War and Peace

Chapter XIV
It was nearly three o’clock but no one was yet asleep, when
the quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the
little town of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began hurriedly getting ready and again boiled again
boiled some muddy water in the samovar. But Rostov went
off to his squadron without waiting for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were dispersing.
It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were still
moist. As they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn,
Rostov and Ilyin both glanced under the wet and glistening
leather hood of the doctor’s cart, from under the apron of
which his feet were sticking out, and in the middle of which
his wife’s nightcap was visible and her sleepy breathing audible.
‘She really is a dear little thing,’ said Rostov to Ilyin, who
was following him.
‘A charming woman!’ said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a
boy of sixteen.
Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road.
The command was heard to ‘mount’ and the soldiers crossed
themselves and mounted. Rostov riding in front gave the
order ‘Forward!’ and the hussars, with clanking sabers and
subdued talk, their horses’ hoofs splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad road planted with


1219

birch trees on each side, following the infantry and a battery
that had gone on in front.
Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were
scudding before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter.
That curly grass which always grows by country roadsides
became clearly visible, still wet with the night’s rain; the
drooping branches of the birches, also wet, swayed in the
wind and flung down bright drops of water to one side. The
soldiers’ faces were more and more clearly visible. Rostov,
always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side of the
road between two rows of birch trees.
When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding not a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge
of horses and a sportsman, he had lately procured himself
a large, fine, mettlesome, Donets horse, dun-colored, with
light mane and tail, and when he rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a pleasure to him, and he
thought of the horse, of the morning, of the doctor’s wife,
but not once of the impending danger.
Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid;
now he had not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not
because he had grown used to being under fire (one cannot
grow used to danger), but because he had learned how to
manage his thoughts when in danger. He had grown accustomed when going into action to think about anything but
what would seem most likely to interest himthe impending
danger. During the first period of his service, hard as he
tried and much as he reproached himself with cowardice,
he had not been able to do this, but with time it had come
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War and Peace

of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand,
sometimes touching his horse’s side with his foot, or, without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to an
hussar riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air
as though he were merely out for a ride. He glanced with
pity at the excited face of Ilyin, who talked much and in
great agitation. He knew from experience the tormenting
expectation of terror and death the cornet was suffering and
knew that only time could help him.
As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the
beauty of the summer morning after the storm; drops still
continued to fall, but vertically now, and all was still. The
whole sun appeared on the horizon and disappeared behind
a long narrow cloud that hung above it. A few minutes later
it reappeared brighter still from behind the top of the cloud,
tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and glittered. And
with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the sound of
guns ahead of them.
Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine
the distance of that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy’s adjutant came galloping from Vitebsk with orders to advance
at a trot along the road.
The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and
the batterywhich had also quickened their pacerode down
a hill, and passing through an empty and deserted village
again ascended. The horses began to lather and the men to
flush.


1221

‘Halt! Dress your ranks!’ the order of the regimental
commander was heard ahead. ‘Forward by the left. Walk,
march!’ came the order from in front.
And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the
left flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who
were in the front line. To the right stood our infantry in a
dense column: they were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on
the very horizon, our guns were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated by slanting morning
sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be seen the
enemy’s columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in
action, could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the
enemy in the dale.
At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov’s spirits rose, as
at the strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked
the shots, now together, now several quickly one after another. Again all was silent and then again it sounded as if
someone were walking on detonators and exploding them.
The hussars remained in the same place for about an
hour. A cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite
rode up behind the squadron, halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode up the hill to the guns.
After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the
Uhlans.
‘Form column! Prepare to charge!’
The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers
on their spears fluttering, and trotted downhill toward the
French cavalry which was seen below to the left.
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War and Peace

As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars
were ordered up the hill to support the battery. As they took
the places vacated by the Uhlans, bullets came from the
front, whining and whistling, but fell spent without taking
effect.
The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an
even more pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov
than the previous sounds of firing. Drawing himself up, he
viewed the field of battle opening out before him from the
hill, and with his whole soul followed the movement of the
Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French dragoons,
something confused happened there amid the smoke, and
five minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to
the place they had occupied but more to the left, and among
the orange-colored Uhlans on chestnut horses and behind
them, in a large group, blue French dragoons on gray horses
could be seen.



1223

Chapter XV
Rostov, with his keen sportsman’s eye, was one of the first
to catch sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our
Uhlans. Nearer and nearer in disorderly crowds came the
Uhlans and the French dragoons pursuing them. He could
already see how these men, who looked so small at the foot
of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving their
arms and their sabers in the air.
Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a
hunt. He felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the
French dragoons now, the latter could not withstand them,
but if a charge was to be made it must be done now, at that
very moment, or it would be too late. He looked around. A
captain, standing beside him, was gazing like himself with
eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.
‘Andrew Sevastyanych!’ said Rostov. ‘You know, we could
crush them...’
‘A fine thing too!’ replied the captain, ‘and really..’
Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his
horse, galloped to the front of his squadron, and before he
had time to finish giving the word of command, the whole
squadron, sharing his feeling, was following him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it. He acted
as he did when hunting, without reflecting or considering.
He saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in
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War and Peace

disorder; he knew they could not withstand an attackknew
there was only that moment and that if he let it slip it would
not return. The bullets were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse was so eager to go that
he could not restrain himself. He touched his horse, gave
the word of command, and immediately, hearing behind
him the tramp of the horses of his deployed squadron, rode
at full trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly had they
reached the bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a gallop, which grew faster and faster as they
drew nearer to our Uhlans and the French dragoons who
galloped after them. The dragoons were now close at hand.
On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn, while
those behind began to halt. With the same feeling with
which he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave
rein to his Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path
of the dragoons’ disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot flung himself to the ground to avoid
being knocked over, and a riderless horse fell in among the
hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were galloping
back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse
cleared it, and almost before he had righted himself in his
saddle he saw that he would immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That Frenchman, by his uniform an
officer, was going at a gallop, crouching on his gray horse
and urging it on with his saber. In another moment Rostov’s
horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the officer’s horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant


1225

Rostov, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck
the Frenchman with it.
The instant he had done this, all Rostov’s animation vanished. The officer fell, not so much from the blowwhich had
but slightly cut his arm above the elbowas from the shock
to his horse and from fright. Rostov reined in his horse,
and his eyes sought his foe to see whom he had vanquished.
The French dragoon officer was hopping with one foot on
the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His eyes,
screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another blow, gazed up at Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale
and mud-stained facefair and young, with a dimple in the
chin and light-blue eyeswas not an enemy’s face at all suited
to a battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face. Before
Rostov had decided what to do with him, the officer cried, ‘I
surrender!’ He hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out
of the stirrup and did not remove his frightened blue eyes
from Rostov’s face. Some hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the saddle. On all sides,
the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up
his horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with
his arms round him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In front, the French infantry were
firing as they ran. The hussars galloped hastily back with
their prisoners. Rostov galloped back with the rest, aware of
an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart. Something
vague and confused, which he could not at all account for,
had come over him with the capture of that officer and the
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War and Peace

blow he had dealt him.
Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars,
sent for Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his
gallant deed to the Emperor and would recommend him for
a St. George’s Cross. When sent for by Count Ostermann,
Rostov, remembering that he had charged without orders,
felt sure his commander was sending for him to punish
him for breach of discipline. Ostermann’s flattering words
and promise of a reward should therefore have struck him
all the more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely
disagreeable feeling of moral nausea. ‘But what on earth is
worrying me?’ he asked himself as he rode back from the
general. ‘Ilyin? No, he’s safe. Have I disgraced myself in any
way? No, that’s not it.’ Something else, resembling remorse,
tormented him. ‘Yes, oh yes, that French officer with the
dimple. And I remember how my arm paused when I raised
it.’
Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on
his chin. He was sitting in his foreign uniform on an hussar
packhorse and looked anxiously about him; The sword cut
on his arm could scarcely be called a wound. He glanced at
Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting.
Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as of shame.
All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent,
thoughtful, and preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried
to remain alone, and kept turning something over in his
mind.


1227

Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit
of his, which to his amazement had gained him the St.
George’s Cross and even given him a reputation for bravery,
and there was something he could not at all understand.
‘So others are even more afraid than I am!’ he thought. ‘So
that’s all there is in what is called heroism! And heroism!
And did I do it for my country’s sake? And how was he to
blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened
he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should I
kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St.
George’s Cross.... I can’t make it out at all.’
But while Nicholas was considering these questions and
still could reach no clear solution of what puzzled him so,
the wheel of fortune in the service, as often happens, turned
in his favor. After the affair at Ostrovna he was brought into
notice, received command of an hussar battalion, and when
a brave officer was needed he was chosen.

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Chapter XVI
On receiving news of Natasha’s illness, the countess,
though not quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow
with Petya and the rest of the household, and the whole
family moved from Marya Dmitrievna’s house to their own
and settled down in town.
Natasha’s illness was so serious that, fortunately for her
and for her parents, the consideration of all that had caused
the illness, her conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the background. She was so ill that it was
impossible for them to consider in how far she was to blame
for what had happened. She could not eat or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them feel,
was in danger. They could not think of anything but how
to help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed
one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for
all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the
disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered
by a live man can be known, for every living person has
his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicinenot
a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on
mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one


1229

of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those
organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors
(as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his
charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, and
they received money for it and had spent the best years of
their lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was
kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were
really useful, as in fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient
swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm
was scarcely perceptible, as they were given in small doses),
but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because
they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those who
loved herand that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They
satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done, which is felt by
those who are suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its
most elementary form in a child, when it wants to have a
place rubbed that has been hurt. A child knocks itself and
runs at once to the arms of its mother or nurse to have the
aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better when this is
done. The child cannot believe that the strongest and wisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope
of relief and the expression of its mother’s sympathy while
she rubs the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to
Natasha because they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon pass if only the coachman went to
the chemist’s in the Arbat and got a powder and some pills
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in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks, and if she took
those powders in boiled water at intervals of precisely two
hours, neither more nor less.
What would Sonya and the count and countess have
done, how would they have looked, if nothing had been
done, if there had not been those pills to give by the clock,
the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of which
supplied an occupation and consolation to the family circle?
How would the count have borne his dearly loved daughter’s
illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand
rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to
benefit her, or had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet other thousands and would
take her abroad for consultations there, and had he not been
able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller had
not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov
had diagnosed them even better? What would the countess
have done had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly obeying the doctor’s orders?
‘You’ll never get well like that,’ she would say, forgetting
her grief in her vexation, ‘if you won’t obey the doctor and
take your medicine at the right time! You mustn’t trifle with
it, you know, or it may turn to pneumonia,’ she would go on,
deriving much comfort from the utterance of that foreign
word, incomprehensible to others as well as to herself.
What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she had not undressed during the first three
nights, in order to be ready to carry out all the doctor’s in

1231

junctions with precision, and that she still kept awake at
night so as not to miss the proper time when the slightly
harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be administered?
Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so many
sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that
she had to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure her and that it was all
nonsense. And it was even pleasant to be able to show, by
disregarding the orders, that she did not believe in medical
treatment and did not value her life.
The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her
tongue, and regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with
her. But when he had gone into another room, to which the
countess hurriedly followed him, he assumed a grave air and
thoughtfully shaking his head said that though there was
danger, he had hopes of the effect of this last medicine and
one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly mental,
but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from
herself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and
always returned to the patient with a more tranquil mind.
The symptoms of Natasha’s illness were that she ate little, slept little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The
doctors said that she could not get on without medical
treatment, so they kept her in the stifling atmosphere of
the town, and the Rostovs did not move to the country that
summer of 1812.
In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops
and powders out of the little bottles and boxes of which
Madame Schoss who was fond of such things made a large
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collection, and in spite of being deprived of the country life
to which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natasha’s
grief began to be overlaid by the impressions of daily life, it
ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it gradually faded
into the past, and she began to recover physically.



1233

Chapter XVII
Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely
avoided all external forms of pleasureballs, promenades,
concerts, and theatersbut she never laughed without a sound
of tears in her laughter. She could not sing. As soon as she
began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears choked her:
tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure times
which could never return, tears of vexation that she should
so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have
been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed
to her like a blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any
need of self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her
head. She said and felt at that time that no man was more to
her than Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood
sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she
had lost all the old interests of her carefree girlish life that
had been so full of hope. The previous autumn, the hunting,
‘Uncle,’ and the Christmas holidays spent with Nicholas at
Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even
a single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at the time had not deceived herthat that state of
freedom and readiness for any enjoyment would not return
again. Yet it was necessary to live on.
It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she
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had formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But this was not enough. She knew
that, and asked herself, ‘What next?’ But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was passing.
Natasha apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance
to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She kept away
from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with her
brother Petya. She liked to be with him better than with the
others, and when alone with him she sometimes laughed.
She hardly ever left the house and of those who came to see
them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would have
been impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care,
and at the same time more seriously than did Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously felt this delicacy and so found
great pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful
to him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part seemed to her to
be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes
Natasha noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his
part in her presence, especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that something they spoke of
would awaken memories distressing to her. She noticed
this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness,
which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as
it was to her. After those involuntary wordsthat if he were
free he would have asked on his knees for her hand and her
loveuttered at a moment when she was so strongly agitated,
Pierre never spoke to Natasha of his feelings; and it seemed
plain to her that those words, which had then so comforted


1235

her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was
a married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with
him that moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kuragin that it never entered her head that the
relations between him and herself could lead to love on her
part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a man and a woman of
which she had known several instances.
Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna
Belova, a country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow
to pay her devotions at the shrines of the Moscow saints.
She suggested that Natasha should fast and prepare for Holy
Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the idea. Despite the doctor’s orders that she should not go out early
in the morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing
for the sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in
the Rostov family by attending three services in their own
house, but as Agrafena Ivanovna did, by going to church
every day for a week and not once missing Vespers, Matins,
or Mass.
The countess was pleased with Natasha’s zeal; after the
poor results of the medical treatment, in the depths of her
heart she hoped that prayer might help her daughter more
than medicines and, though not without fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natasha’s wish and
entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used to come to
wake Natasha at three in the morning, but generally found
her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Mat1236

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ins. Hastily washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest
dress and an old mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh
air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light
of dawn. By Agrafena Ivanovna’s advice Natasha prepared
herself not in their own parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena Ivanovna, the priest was a
man of very severe and lofty life. There were never many
people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova
in the customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin,
let into the screen before the choir on the left side, and a
feeling, new to her, of humility before something great and
incomprehensible, seized her when at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin illuminated
by the candles burning before it and by the morning light
falling from the window, she listened to the words of the
service which she tried to follow with understanding. When
she understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its own. When she did
not understand, it was sweeter still to think that the wish
to understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to
understand all, that it is only necessary to believe and to
commit oneself to God, whom she felt guiding her soul at
those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and when
she did not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her everything, everything, to have
mercy upon her. The prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home
at an early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going
to work or men sweeping the street, and everybody within


1237

the houses was still asleep, Natasha experienced a feeling
new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her faults,
the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.
During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling
grew every day. And the happiness of taking communion,
or ‘communing’ as Agrafena Ivanovna, joyously playing
with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha so great that she
felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.
But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in white muslin, she returned home
after communion, for the first time for many months she
felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life that
lay before her.
The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to
continue the powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.
‘She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening,’ said he, evidently sincerely satisfied with his success.
‘Only, please be particular about it.
‘Be quite easy,’ he continued playfully, as he adroitly took
the gold coin in his palm. ‘She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The last medicine has done her a very great
deal of good. She has freshened up very much.’
The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face,
looked down at her nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.

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War and Peace

Chapter XVIII
At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the war began to spread in Moscow; people
spoke of an appeal by the Emperor to the people, and of
his coming himself from the army to Moscow. And as up
to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had been received, exaggerated reports became current about them and
about the position of Russia. It was said that the Emperor
was leaving the army because it was in danger, it was said
that Smolensk had surrendered, that Napoleon had an army
of a million and only a miracle could save Russia.
On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was received but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was
at the Rostovs’, promised to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he
would obtain from Count Rostopchin.
That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis’ private chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at
ten o’clock, when the Rostovs got out of their carriage at
the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of hawkers, the light
and gay summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves of
the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of the band and the
white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot
sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content


1239

and discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt
on a bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all
the Rostovs’ acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis’ chapel, for, as if expecting something to happen, many wealthy
families who usually left town for their country estates had
not gone away that summer. As Natasha, at her mother’s
side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried footman
who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man
speaking about her in too loud a whisper.
‘That’s Rostova, the one who..’
‘She’s much thinner, but all the same she’s pretty!’
She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin
and Bolkonski. But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that everyone who looked at her was
thinking only of what had happened to her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she found
herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed
with black lace walkedas women can walkwith the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her
soul. She knew for certain that she was pretty, but this no
longer gave her satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it
tormented her more than anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot summer day in town. ‘It’s Sunday
againanother week past,’ she thought, recalling that she had
been here the Sunday before, ‘and always the same life that
is no life, and the same surroundings in which it used to be
so easy to live. I’m pretty, I’m young, and I know that now
I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good,’
she thought, ‘but yet my best years are slipping by and are
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War and Peace

no good to anyone.’ She stood by her mother’s side and exchanged nods with acquaintances near her. From habit she
scrutinized the ladies’ dresses, condemned the bearing of a
lady standing close by who was not crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought with
vexation that she was herself being judged and was judging
others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt
horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her soul was again lost to her.
A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the
service with that mild solemnity which has so elevating
and soothing an effect on the souls of the worshipers. The
gates of the sanctuary screen were closed, the curtain was
slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft mysterious voice
pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which she herself did not understand, made Natasha’s breast heave, and a
joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.
‘Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I
may grow good forever, forever!’ she pleaded.
The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen and, holding his thumb extended, drew his long
hair from under his dalmatic and, making the sign of the
cross on his breast, began in a loud and solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...
‘In peace let us pray unto the Lord.’
‘As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united by brotherly lovelet us pray!’ thought
Natasha.
‘For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation


1241

of our souls.’
‘For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell
above us,’ prayed Natasha.
When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her
brother and Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling
by land and sea, she remembered Prince Andrew, prayed
for him, and asked God to forgive her all the wrongs she
had done him. When they prayed for those who love us, she
prayed for the members of her own family, her father and
mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly
she had acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of
her love for them. When they prayed for those who hate us,
she tried to think of her enemies and people who hated her,
in order to pray for them. She included among her enemies
the creditors and all who had business dealings with her father, and always at the thought of enemies and those who
hated her she remembered Anatole who had done her so
much harmand though he did not hate her she gladly prayed
for him as for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to
think clearly and calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as
men for whom her feelings were as nothing compared with
her awe and devotion to God. When they prayed for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and made
the sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did
not understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate
loved the governing Synod and prayed for it.
When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the
stole over his breast and said, ‘Let us commit ourselves and
our whole lives to Christ the Lord!’
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War and Peace

‘Commit ourselves to God,’ Natasha inwardly repeated.
‘Lord God, I submit myself to Thy will!’ she thought. ‘I want
nothing, wish for nothing; teach me what to do and how to
use my will! Take me, take me!’ prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing herself but letting
her slender arms hang down as if expecting some invisible
power at any moment to take her and deliver her from herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.
The countess looked round several times at her daughter’s softened face and shining eyes and prayed God to help
her.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in
the usual order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought
out a small stool, the one he knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it before the doors of the sanctuary
screen. The priest came out with his purple velvet biretta on
his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down with an effort.
Everybody followed his example and they looked at one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from
the Synoda prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile
invasion.
‘Lord God of might, God of our salvation!’ began the
priest in that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in
which only the Slav clergy read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.
‘Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day
in mercy and blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously
hear us, spare us, and have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay waste the whole world,


1243

rises against us; these lawless men are gathered together to
overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear Jerusalem,
Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow
Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long,
O Lord, how long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall
they wield unlawful power?
‘Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen
with Thy might our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich; be mindful of his uprightness
and meekness, reward him according to his righteousness,
and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless his counsels,
his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom by
Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy,
even as Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon
over Midian, and David over Goliath. Preserve his army,
put a bow of brass in the hands of those who have armed
themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins with strength
for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to help
us; confound and put to shame those who have devised evil
against us, may they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust before the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel
confound them and put them to flight; may they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the plots they have
laid in secret be turned against them; let them fall before
Thy servants’ feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou
art able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and
man cannot prevail against Thee!
‘God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy
and loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy
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War and Peace

face from us, but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in
Thy great goodness and Thy many mercies regard not our
transgressions and iniquities! Create in us a clean heart and
renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all in Thy faith,
fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for another,
arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the
heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the
scepter of the wicked be exalted against the destiny of those
Thou hast sanctified.
‘O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we
put our trust, let us not be confounded in our hope of Thy
mercy, and give us a token of Thy blessing, that those who
hate us and our Orthodox faith may see it and be put to
shame and perish, and may all the nations know that Thou
art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon
us this day, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation; make the
hearts of Thy servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down
our enemies and destroy them swiftly beneath the feet of
Thy faithful servants! For Thou art the defense, the succor,
and the victory of them that put their trust in Thee, and to
Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, now and
forever, world without end. Amen.’
In Natasha’s receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her strongly. She listened to every word about the
victory of Moses over Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and
of David over Goliath, and about the destruction of ‘Thy
Jerusalem,’ and she prayed to God with the tenderness and
emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but without fully understanding what she was asking of God in that


1245

prayer. She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the
spirit of righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by
faith and hope, and its animation by love. But she could not
pray that her enemies might be trampled under foot when
but a few minutes before she had been wishing she had more
of them that she might pray for them. But neither could she
doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being read on
bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous
awe at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men
for their sins, and especially of her own sins, and she prayed
to God to forgive them all, and her too, and to give them all,
and her too, peace and happiness. And it seemed to her that
God heard her prayer.

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War and Peace

Chapter XIX
From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs’ with
Natasha’s grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the
comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizonfrom that day
the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly
things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question ‘Why?’ ‘Wherefore?’
which had come to him amid every occupation, was now
replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former
question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself
took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of
human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly,
and did not ask himself why men struggled so about these
things when all is so transient and incomprehensiblebut he
remembered her as he had last seen her, and all his doubts
vanishednot because she had answered the questions that
had haunted him, but because his conception of her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of spiritual
activity in which no one could be justified or guiltya realm
of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever
worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:
‘Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the
Tsar, and the country and the Tsar confer honors upon
him, what does that matter? She smiled at me yesterday and


1247

asked me to come again, and I love her, and no one will ever
know it.’ And his soul felt calm and peaceful.
Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the
same idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he
spent at the Rostovs’ there were other hours he had to spend
somehow, and the habits and acquaintances he had made
in Moscow formed a current that bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more disquieting reports
came from the seat of war and Natasha’s health began to
improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he
could not explain, took possession of him. He felt that the
condition he was in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which would change his whole life, and he
impatiently sought everywhere for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons had revealed to
Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon, drawn
from the Revelation of St. John.
In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count
the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and
his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great
things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to
continue forty and two months.
The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as the Hebrew, in which the first nine letters
denote units and the others tens, will have the following
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significance:
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
k
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
t
u
v
w
x
y
100 110 120 130 140 150
z
160
Writing the words L’Empereur Napoleon in numbers,
it appears that the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon
therefore the beast foretold in the Apocalypse. Moreover,
by applying the same system to the words quarante-deux,*
which was the term allowed to the beast that ‘spoke
great things and blasphemies,’ the same number 666 was
obtained; from which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon’s power had come in the year 1812 when the French
emperor was forty-two. This prophecy pleased Pierre very
much and he often asked himself what would put an end
to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, and tried
by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding
them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed
him. He wrote the words L’Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up their numbers, but the sums were
either more or less than 666. Once when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French, Comte
Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of the numbers did not come
right. Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z for the
s and adding de and the article le, still without obtaining


1249

the desired result. Then it occurred to him: if the answer
to the question were contained in his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he wrote Le russe
Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was only
five too much, and five was represented by e, the very letter elided from the article le before the word Empereur. By
omitting the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he
sought. L’russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited
him. How, or by what means, he was connected with the
great event foretold in the Apocalypse he did not know, but
he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His love
for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet,
666, L’Empereur Napoleon, and L’russe Besuhofall this had
to mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound,
petty sphere of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held
captive and lead him to a great achievement and great happiness.
*Forty-two.
On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was
read, Pierre had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from
Count Rostopchin whom he knew well, both the appeal to
the people and the news from the army. In the morning,
when he went to call at Rostopchin’s he met there a courier
fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who often
danced at Moscow balls.
‘Do, please, for heaven’s sake, relieve me of something!’
said the courier. ‘I have a sackful of letters to parents.’
Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his
father. Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him
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the Emperor’s appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders, and his own most recent bulletin.
Glancing through the army orders, Pierre found in one of
them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and rewarded, the
name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George’s Cross of
the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostrovna affair,
and in the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the command of a regiment of Chasseurs.
Though he did not want to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from making them happy by
the news of their son’s having received a decoration, so he
sent that printed army order and Nicholas’ letter to the Rostovs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders
to take with him when he went to dinner.
His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter’s
tone of anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier who
talked casually of how badly things were going in the army,
the rumors of the discovery of spies in Moscow and of a
leaflet in circulation stating that Napoleon promised to be
in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, and the talk of
the Emperor’s being expected to arrive next dayall aroused
with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation in
Pierre which he had been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and especially since the beginning
of the war.
He had long been thinking of entering the army and
would have done so had he not been hindered, first, by his
membership of the Society of Freemasons to which he was
bound by oath and which preached perpetual peace and the


1251

abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that when he saw
the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform and
were talking patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take
the step. But the chief reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the army lay in the vague idea that he was
L’russe Besuhof who had the number of the beast, 666; that
his part in the great affair of setting a limit to the power
of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous things had
been predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought
not to undertake anything, but wait for what was bound to
come to pass.
CHAPTER XX
A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that
day, as usual on Sundays.
Pierre came early so as to find them alone.
He had grown so stout this year that he would have been
abnormal had he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so
strong that he carried his bulk with evident ease.
He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something.
His coachman did not even ask whether he was to wait. He
knew that when his master was at the Rostovs’ he stayed
till midnight. The Rostovs’ footman rushed eagerly forward
to help him off with his cloak and take his hat and stick.
Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and stick in the
anteroom.
The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even
before he saw her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her.
She was practicing solfa exercises in the music room. He
knew that she had not sung since her illness, and so the
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sound of her voice surprised and delighted him. He opened
the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had worn at
church, walking about the room singing. She had her back
to him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his broad, surprised face, she blushed and came
rapidly up to him.
‘I want to try to sing again,’ she said, adding as if by way
of excuse, ‘it is, at least, something to do.’
‘That’s capital!’
‘How glad I am you’ve come! I am so happy today,’ she
said, with the old animation Pierre had not seen in her for
along time. ‘You know Nicholas has received a St. George’s
Cross? I am so proud of him.’
‘Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don’t want to
interrupt you,’ he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.
Natasha stopped him.
‘Count, is it wrong of me to sing?’ she said blushing, and
fixing her eyes inquiringly on him.
‘No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do
you ask me?’
‘I don’t know myself,’ Natasha answered quickly, ‘but I
should not like to do anything you disapproved of. I believe
in you completely. You don’t know how important you are
to me, how much you’ve done for me....’ She spoke rapidly
and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her words. ‘I saw in
that same army order that he, Bolkonski’ (she whispered the
name hastily), ‘is in Russia, and in the army again. What do
you think?’she was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid her


1253

strength might fail her‘Will he ever forgive me? Will he not
always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think?
What do you think?’
‘I think...’ Pierre replied, ‘that he has nothing to forgive....
If I were in his place..’
By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back
to the day when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he
were not himself but the best man in the world and free, he
would ask on his knees for her hand; and the same feeling
of pity, tenderness, and love took possession of him and the
same words rose to his lips. But she did not give him time
to say them.
‘Yes, you... you...’ she said, uttering the word you
rapturously‘that’s a different thing. I know no one kinder,
more generous, or better than you; nobody could be! Had
you not been there then, and now too, I don’t know what
would have become of me, because..’
Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted
her music before her eyes, began singing again, and again
began walking up and down the room.
Just then Petya came running in from the drawing
room.
Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full
red lips and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter
the university, but he and his friend Obolenski had lately, in
secret, agreed to join the hussars.
Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake
about this affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether he
would be accepted in the hussars.
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War and Peace

Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what Petya was saying.
Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.
‘Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven’s
sake! You are my only hope ‘ said Petya.
‘Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I’ll mention it,
I’ll bring it all up today.’
‘Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?’ asked the
old count. ‘The countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis’ and heard the new prayer. She says it’s very fine.’
‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ said Pierre. ‘The Emperor is to be here
tomorrow... there’s to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the
nobility, and they are talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate you!’
‘Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the
army?’
‘We are again retreating. They say we’re already near
Smolensk,’ replied Pierre.
‘O Lord, O Lord!’ exclaimed the count. ‘Where is the
manifesto?’
‘The Emperor’s appeal? Oh yes!’
Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but
could not find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the
hand of the countess who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting Natasha, who had left off
singing but had not yet come into the drawing room.
‘On my word, I don’t know what I’ve done with it,’ he
said.
‘There he is, always losing everything!’ remarked the


1255

countess.
Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression
of face and sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as
she entered, Pierre’s features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still searching for the papers he
glanced at her several times.
‘No, really! I’ll drive home, I must have left them there.
I’ll certainly..’
‘But you’ll be late for dinner.’
‘Oh! And my coachman has gone.’
But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the
anteroom, had found them in Pierre’s hat, where he had
carefully tucked them under the lining. Pierre was about to
begin reading.
‘No, after dinner,’ said the old count, evidently expecting
much enjoyment from that reading.
At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health
of the new chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the
town news, of the illness of the old Georgian princess, of
Metivier’s disappearance from Moscow, and of how some
German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin and accused of being a French ‘spyer’ (so Count Rostopchin had
told the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured
the people that he was ‘not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin.’
‘People are being arrested...’ said the count. ‘I’ve told the
countess she should not speak French so much. It’s not the
time for it now.’
‘And have you heard?’ Shinshin asked. ‘Prince Golitsyn
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has engaged a master to teach him Russian. It is becoming
dangerous to speak French in the streets.’
‘And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up
the militia, you too will have to mount a horse,’ remarked
the old count, addressing Pierre.
Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming not to grasp what was said. He looked at the
count.
‘Oh yes, the war,’ he said. ‘No! What sort of warrior
should I make? And yet everything is so strange, so strange!
I can’t make it out. I don’t know, I am very far from having
military tastes, but in these times no one can answer for
himself.’
After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an
easy chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was
considered an excellent reader, to read the appeal.
‘To Moscow, our ancient Capital!
‘The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He comes to despoil our beloved country,’
Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The
count listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at
her father and now at Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round.
The countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at
every solemn expression in the manifesto. In all these words
she saw only that the danger threatening her son would not
soon be over. Shinshin, with a sarcastic smile on his lips,


1257

was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that gave
him the opportunity: Sonya’s reading, any remark of the
count’s, or even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.
After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia,
the hopes the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on
its illustrious nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due
chiefly to the attention that was being paid to her, read the
last words:
‘We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people
in that Capital and in others parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction of all our levies, both those
now barring the enemy’s path and those freshly formed to
defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he hopes
to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe
delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!’
‘Yes, that’s it!’ cried the count, opening his moist eyes
and sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been
held to his nose; and he added, ‘Let the Emperor but say the
word and we’ll sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing.’
Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready
to make on the count’s patriotism, Natasha jumped up from
her place and ran to her father.
‘What a darling our Papa is!’ she cried, kissing him, and
she again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry
that had returned to her with her better spirits.
‘There! Here’s a patriot for you!’ said Shinshin.
‘Not a patriot at all, but simply...’ Natasha replied in an
injured tone. ‘Everything seems funny to you, but this isn’t
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at all a joke...’
‘A joke indeed!’ put in the count. ‘Let him but say the
word and we’ll all go.... We’re not Germans!’
‘But did you notice, it says, ‘for consultation’?’ said
Pierre.
‘Never mind what it’s for...’
At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any
attention, came up to his father with a very flushed face
and said in his breaking voice that was now deep and now
shrill:
‘Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it’s as
you please, but I say definitely that you must let me enter the
army, because I can’t... that’s all...’
The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped
her hands, and turned angrily to her husband.
‘That comes of your talking!’ said she.
But the count had already recovered from his excitement.
‘Come, come!’ said he. ‘Here’s a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You must study.’
‘It’s not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than
I, and he’s going too. Besides, all the same I can’t study now
when...’ Petya stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but
still got out the words, ‘when our Fatherland is in danger.’
‘That’ll do, that’ll dononsense...’
‘But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything.’
‘Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!’ cried the count, with a glance
at his wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at


1259

her son.
‘And I tell youPeter Kirilych here will also tell you..’
‘Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother’s milk has hardly
dried on your lips and you want to go into the army! There,
there, I tell you,’ and the count moved to go out of the room,
taking the papers, probably to reread them in his study before having a nap.
‘Well, Peter Kirilych, let’s go and have a smoke,’ he said.
Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha’s unwontedly brilliant eyes, continually glancing at him with a more
than cordial look, had reduced him to this condition.
‘No, I think I’ll go home.’
‘Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us....
You don’t often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of
mine,’ said the count good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha,
‘only brightens up when you’re here.’
‘Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business...’
said Pierre hurriedly.
‘Well, then, au revoir!’ said the count, and went out of
the room.
‘Why are you going? Why are you upset?’ asked Natasha,
and she looked challengingly into Pierre’s eyes.
‘Because I love you!’ was what he wanted to say, but he
did not say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.
‘Because it is better for me to come less often... because...
No, simply I have business...’
‘Why? No, tell me!’ Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.
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They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He tried to smile but could not: his smile
expressed suffering, and he silently kissed her hand and
went out.
Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs’ any
more.



1261

Chapter XXI
After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to
his room and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When
he came in to tea, silent, morose, and with tear-stained face,
everybody pretended not to notice anything.
Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several
of the Rostovs’ domestic serfs begged permission to go to
have a look at him. That morning Petya was a long time
dressing and arranging his hair and collar to look like a
grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass, gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without saying a
word to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back
door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight
to where the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some
gentleman-in-waiting (he imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count
Rostov, in spite of his youth wished to serve his country;
that youth could be no hindrance to loyalty, and that he was
ready to... While dressing, Petya had prepared many fine
things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-waiting.
It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for success in reaching the Emperorhe even thought how
surprised everyone would be at his youthfulnessand yet in
the arrangement of his collar and hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to appear a grown-up man. But the
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farther he went and the more his attention was diverted by
the ever-increasing crowds moving toward the Kremlin, the
less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he approached the Kremlin he even
began to avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck out his
elbows in a menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway
he was so pressed to the wall by people who probably were
unaware of the patriotic intentions with which he had come
that in spite of all his determination he had to give in, and
stop while carriages passed in, rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a footman, two
tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some
time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of
the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and
he began resolutely working his way with his elbows, but the
woman just in front of him, who was the first against whom
he directed his efforts, angrily shouted at him:
‘What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don’t you see
we’re all standing still? Then why push?’
‘Anybody can shove,’ said the footman, and also began
working his elbows to such effect that he pushed Petya into
a very filthy corner of the gateway.
Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and
pulled up the damp collar which he had arranged so well at
home to seem like a man’s.
He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared
that if he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting
in that plight he would not be admitted to the Emperor. But
it was impossible to smarten oneself up or move to another


1263

place, because of the crowd. One of the generals who drove
past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs’, and Petya thought
of asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that
would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had
all passed in, the crowd, carrying Petya with it, streamed
forward into the Kremlin Square which was already full of
people. There were people not only in the square, but everywhereon the slopes and on the roofs. As soon as Petya
found himself in the square he clearly heard the sound of
bells and the joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole
Kremlin.
For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all
heads were bared, and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being pressed so that he could scarcely
breathe, and everybody shouted, ‘Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!’
Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and pinched, but could
see nothing except the people about him.
All the faces bore the same expression of excitement
and enthusiasm. A tradesman’s wife standing beside Petya
sobbed, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Father! Angel! Dear one!’ she kept repeating, wiping
away her tears with her fingers.
‘Hurrah!’ was heard on all sides.
For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush forward.
Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way
and shouting ‘hurrah!’ as if he were prepared that instant
to kill himself and everyone else, but on both sides of him
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other people with similarly ferocious faces pushed forward
and everybody shouted ‘hurrah!’
‘So this is what the Emperor is!’ thought Petya. ‘No, I
can’t petition him myselfthat would be too bold.’ But in
spite of this he continued to struggle desperately forward,
and from between the backs of those in front he caught
glimpses of an open space with a strip of red cloth spread
out on it; but just then the crowd swayed backthe police in
front were pushing back those who had pressed too close to
the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace
to the Cathedral of the Assumptionand Petya unexpectedly
received such a blow on his side and ribs and was squeezed
so hard that suddenly everything grew dim before his eyes
and he lost consciousness. When he came to himself, a man
of clerical appearance with a tuft of gray hair at the back
of his head and wearing a shabby blue cassockprobably a
church clerk and chanterwas holding him under the arm
with one hand while warding off the pressure of the crowd
with the other.
‘You’ve crushed the young gentleman!’ said the clerk.
‘What are you up to? Gently!... They’ve crushed him,
crushed him!’
The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption.
The crowd spread out again more evenly, and the clerk led
Petyapale and breathlessto the Tsar-cannon. Several people
were sorry for Petya, and suddenly a crowd turned toward
him and pressed round him. Those who stood nearest him
attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him on the
raised platform of the cannon, and reproached those others


1265

(whoever they might be) who had crushed him.
‘One might easily get killed that way! What do they
mean by it? Killing people! Poor dear, he’s as white as a
sheet!’various voices were heard saying.
Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his
face, the pain had passed, and at the cost of that temporary
unpleasantness he had obtained a place by the cannon from
where he hoped to see the Emperor who would be returning
that way. Petya no longer thought of presenting his petition.
If he could only see the Emperor he would be happy!
While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the
Assumptionit was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor’s arrival and of thanksgiving for the
conclusion of peace with the Turksthe crowd outside spread
out and hawkers appeared, selling kvas, gingerbread, and
poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was particularly fond),
and ordinary conversation could again be heard. A tradesman’s wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how
much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk
goods had now got dear. The clerk who had rescued Petya
was talking to a functionary about the priests who were officiating that day with the bishop. The clerk several times
used the word ‘plenary’ (of the service), a word Petya did
not understand. Two young citizens were joking with some
serf girls who were cracking nuts. All these conversations,
especially the joking with the girls, were such as might have
had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did not
interest him now. He sat on his elevationthe pedestal of the
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or and by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he
had experienced when he was being crushed, together with
that of rapture, still further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.
Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from
the embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace with the
Turks, and the crowd rushed impetuously toward the embankment to watch the firing. Petya too would have run
there, but the clerk who had taken the young gentleman
under his protection stopped him. The firing was still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting
came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in
a more leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those
who had run to look at the cannon ran back again. At last
four men in uniforms and sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. ‘Hurrah! hurrah!’ shouted the crowd again.
‘Which is he? Which?’ asked Petya in a tearful voice, of
those around him, but no one answered him, everybody
was too excited; and Petya, fixing on one of those four men,
whom he could not clearly see for the tears of joy that filled
his eyes, concentrated all his enthusiasm on himthough it
happened not to be the Emperorfrantically shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and resolved that tomorrow, come what might, he
would join the army.
The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the
palace, and began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya
had not eaten anything and was drenched with perspiration,
yet he did not go home but stood with that diminishing, but
still considerable, crowd before the palace while the Em

1267

peror dinedlooking in at the palace windows, expecting he
knew not what, and envying alike the notables he saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court
footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be
seen through the windows.
While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of
the window, said:
‘The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again.’
The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching
a biscuit, rose and went out onto the balcony. The people,
with Petya among them, rushed toward the balcony.
‘Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!...’ cried the crowd,
and Petya with it, and again the women and men of weaker
mold, Petya among them, wept with joy.
A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding
in his hand broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then
to the ground. A coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several people in the
crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the Emperor had
a plateful of biscuits brought him and began throwing them
down from the balcony. Petya’s eyes grew bloodshot, and
still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed
at the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a
biscuit from the Tsar’s hand and he felt that he must not
give way. He sprang forward and upset an old woman who
was catching at a biscuit; the old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on the groundshe
grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach them.
Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit,
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and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted ‘Hurrah!’ with
a voice already hoarse.
The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of
the crowd began to disperse.
‘There! I said if only we waitedand so it was!’ was being
joyfully said by various people.
Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home
knowing that all the enjoyment of that day was over. He did
not go straight home from the Kremlin, but called on his
friend Obolenski, who was fifteen and was also entering the
regiment. On returning home Petya announced resolutely
and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter the service he
would run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostovthough he
had not yet quite yieldedwent to inquire how he could arrange for Petya to serve where there would be least danger.



1269

Chapter XXII
Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of carriages were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.
The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and
gentry in their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants
in full-skirted coats of blue cloth and wearing medals. in the
noblemen’s hall there was an incessant movement and buzz
of voices. The chief magnates sat on high-backed chairs at
a large table under the portrait of the Emperor, but most of
the gentry were strolling about the room.
All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the
Club or in their own houses, were in uniformsome in that
of Catherine’s day, others in that of Emperor Paul, others
again in the new uniforms of Alexander’s time or the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the general characteristic
of being in uniform imparted something strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar personalities, both old
and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow,
and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For the most part they sat quietly in their places and
were silent, or, if they walked about and talked, attached
themselves to someone younger. On all these faces, as on
the faces of the crowd Petya had seen in the Square, there
was a striking contradiction: the general expectation of a
solemn event, and at the same time the everyday interests
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in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna’s
health, and so on.
Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in
a nobleman’s uniform that had become too tight for him.
He was agitated; this extraordinary gathering not only of
nobles but also of the merchant-classles etats generaux
(States-General)evoked in him a whole series of ideas he
had long laid aside but which were deeply graven in his soul:
thoughts of the Contrat social and the French Revolution.
The words that had struck him in the Emperor’s appealthat
the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation
with his peoplestrengthened this idea. And imagining that
in this direction something important which he had long
awaited was drawing near, he strolled about watching and
listening to conversations, but nowhere finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him.
The Emperor’s manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm,
and then all moved about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of conversation, Pierre heard questions of where
the marshals of the nobility were to stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be given in the Emperor’s
honor, whether they should group themselves by districts or
by whole provinces... and so on; but as soon as the war was
touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the
talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred
listening to speaking.
A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the
rooms, and a small crowd was pressing round him. Pierre


1271

went up to the circle that had formed round the speaker and
listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a military uniform of Catherine’s time, was sauntering with a pleasant smile among
the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He too approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and
nods of approval, as he always did, to what the speaker was
saying. The retired naval man was speaking very boldly, as
was evident from the expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact that some people Pierre knew as the
meekest and quietest of men walked away disapprovingly
or expressed disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his way
into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite
different from his own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical, and aristocratic baritone voice,
pleasantly swallowing his r’s and generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to his servant, ‘Heah!
Bwing me my pipe!’ It was indicative of dissipation and the
exercise of authority.
‘What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia
for the Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte’n?
If the noble awistocwacy of the pwovince of Moscow thinks
fit, it can show its loyalty to our sov’weign the Empewah in
other ways. Have we fo’gotten the waising of the militia in
the yeah ‘seven? All that did was to enwich the pwiests’ sons
and thieves and wobbahs...’
Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.
‘And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all!
It only wuined our farming! Bettah have another conscwip1272

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tion... o’ ou’ men will wetu’n neithah soldiers no’ peasants,
and we’ll get only depwavity fwom them. The nobility don’t
gwudge theah livesevewy one of us will go and bwing in
more wecwuits, and the sov’weign’ (that was the way he referred to the Emperor) ‘need only say the word and we’ll all
die fo’ him!’ added the orator with animation.
Count Rostov’s mouth watered with pleasure and he
nudged Pierre, but Pierre wanted to speak himself. He
pushed forward, feeling stirred, but not yet sure what stirred
him or what he would say. Scarcely had he opened his mouth
when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in his head,
with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the
first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to
managing debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct tones:
‘I imagine, sir,’ said he, mumbling with his toothless
mouth, ‘that we have been summoned here not to discuss
whether it’s best for the empire at the present moment to
adopt conscription or to call out the militia. We have been
summoned to reply to the appeal with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what is
bestconscription or the militiawe can leave to the supreme
authority...’
Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He
hardened his heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude into the deliberations of the
nobility. Pierre stepped forward and interrupted him. He
himself did not yet know what he would say, but he began to
speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or express

1273

ing himself in bookish Russian.
‘Excuse me, your excellency,’ he began. (He was well acquainted with the senator, but thought it necessary on this
occasion to address him formally.) ‘Though I don’t agree
with the gentleman...’ (he hesitated: he wished to say, ‘Mon
tres honorable preopinant’‘My very honorable opponent’)
‘with the gentleman... whom I have not the honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not
merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but also
to consider the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine,’ he went on, warming to his subject, ‘that
the Emperor himself would not be satisfied to find in us
merely owners of serfs whom we are willing to devote to
his service, and chair a canon* we are ready to make of ourselvesand not to obtain from us any co-co-counsel.’
*”Food for cannon.’
Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the
senator’s sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre’s remarks. Only Count Rostov was pleased with them as he had
been pleased with those of the naval officer, the senator, and
in general with whatever speech he had last heard.
‘I think that before discussing these questions,’ Pierre
continued, ‘we should ask the Emperormost respectfully
ask His Majestyto let us know the number of our troops
and the position in which our army and our forces now are,
and then..’
But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was
attacked from three sides. The most vigorous attack came
from an old acquaintance, a boston player who had always
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War and Peace

been well disposed toward him, Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether as a result of the
uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw before him
quite a different man. With a sudden expression of malevolence on his aged face, Adraksin shouted at Pierre:
‘In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question
the Emperor about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that right, the Emperor could not answer such a
question. The troops are moved according to the enemy’s
movements and the number of men increases and decreases..’
Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and
about forty years of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at
the gypsies’ and knew as a bad cardplayer, and who, also
transformed by his uniform, came up to Pierre, interrupted
Adraksin.
‘Yes, and this is not a time for discussing,’ he continued,
‘but for acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers,
to carry off our wives and children.’ The nobleman smote
his breast. ‘We will all arise, every one of us will go, for
our father the Tsar!’ he shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes.
Several approving voices were heard in the crowd. ‘We are
Russians and will not grudge our blood in defense of our
faith, the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease raving
if we are sons of our Fatherland! We will show Europe how
Russia rises to the defense of Russia!’
Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He
felt that his words, apart from what meaning they conveyed,


1275

were less audible than the sound of his opponent’s voice.
Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing
approval; several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the
orator at the end of a phrase, said:
‘That’s right, quite right! Just so!’
Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his
money, his serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the
state of affairs in order to be able to improve it, but he was
unable to speak. Many voices shouted and talked at the
same time, so that Count Rostov had not time to signify his
approval of them all, and the group increased, dispersed, reformed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the largest
hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre’s attempt to
speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed
aside, and people turned away from him as from a common
enemy. This happened not because they were displeased by
the substance of his speech, which had even been forgotten
after the many subsequent speeches, but to animate it the
crowd needed a tangible object to love and a tangible object
to hate. Pierre became the latter. Many other orators spoke
after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many
spoke eloquently and with originality.
Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was
recognized (cries of ‘author! author!’ were heard in the
crowd), said that ‘hell must be repulsed by hell,’ and that he
had seen a child smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps, but ‘we will not be that child.’
‘Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!’ was repeated approvingly in
the back rows of the crowd.
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War and Peace

The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat grayhaired or bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and
besashed almost all of whom Pierre had seen in their own
homes with their buffoons, or playing boston at the clubs.
With an incessant hum of voices the crowd advanced to the
table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of the
chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes
two together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to say and hastened to supply it. Others in that
heat and crush racked their brains to find some thought
and hastened to utter it. The old magnates, whom Pierre
knew, sat and turned to look first at one and then at another, and their faces for the most part only expressed the fact
that they found it very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and
the general desire to show that they were ready to go to all
lengthswhich found expression in the tones and looks more
than in the substance of the speechesinfected him too. He
did not renounce his opinions, but felt himself in some way
to blame and wished to justify himself.
‘I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make
sacrifices when we know what is needed!’ said he, trying to
be heard above the other voices.
One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his
attention was immediately diverted by an exclamation at
the other side of the table.
‘Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!’ shouted one man.
‘He is the enemy of mankind!’ cried another. ‘Allow me
to speak....’ ‘Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..’


1277

Chapter XXIII
At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding
chin and alert eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with
sash over his shoulder, entered the room, stepping briskly to
the front of the crowd of gentry.
‘Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment,’
said Rostopchin. ‘I am straight from the palace. Seeing the
position we are in, I think there is little need for discussion.
The Emperor has deigned to summon us and the merchants.
Millions will pour forth from there’he pointed to the merchants’ hall‘but our business is to supply men and not spare
ourselves... That is the least we can do!’
A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the table. The whole consultation passed more than
quietly. After all the preceding noise the sound of their old
voices saying one after another, ‘I agree,’ or for variety, ‘I too
am of that opinion,’ and so on had even a mournful effect.
The secretary was told to write down the resolution of
the Moscow nobility and gentry, that they would furnish
ten men, fully equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as the
Smolensk gentry had done. Their chairs made a scraping
noise as the gentlemen who had conferred rose with apparent relief, and began walking up and down, arm in arm, to
stretch their legs and converse in couples.
‘The Emperor! The Emperor!’ a sudden cry resounded
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War and Peace

through the halls and the whole throng hurried to the entrance.
The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two lines of nobles. Every face expressed respectful,
awe-struck curiosity. Pierre stood rather far off and could
not hear all that the Emperor said. From what he did hear
he understood that the Emperor spoke of the danger threatening the empire and of the hopes he placed on the Moscow
nobility. He was answered by a voice which informed him
of the resolution just arrived at.
‘Gentlemen!’ said the Emperor with a quivering voice.
There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so that Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human
voice of the Emperor saying with emotion:
‘I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but
today it has surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the
name of the Fatherland! Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most
precious..’
The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing
round him, and rapturous exclamations were heard from
all sides.
‘Yes, most precious... a royal word,’ said Count Rostov,
with a sob. He stood at the back, and, though he had heard
hardly anything, understood everything in his own way.
From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of
the merchants. There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre
was among those who saw him come out from the merchants’ hall with tears of emotion in his eyes. As became
known later, he had scarcely begun to address the mer

1279

chants before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded
in a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was
coming out accompanied by two merchants, one of whom
Pierre knew, a fat otkupshchik. The other was the mayor, a
man with a thin sallow face and narrow beard. Both were
weeping. Tears filled the thin man’s eyes, and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright like a child and kept repeating:
‘Our lives and propertytake them, Your Majesty!’
Pierre’s one feeling at the moment was a desire to show
that he was ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech with its
constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing it. Having heard that Count Mamonov was furnishing
a regiment, Bezukhov at once informed Rostopchin that he
would give a thousand men and their maintenance.
Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed
without tears, and at once consented to Petya’s request and
went himself to enter his name.
Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles
all took off their uniforms and settled down again in their
homes and clubs, and not without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the enrollment, feeling amazed
themselves at what they had done.

1280

War and Peace

BOOK TEN: 1812



1281

Chapter I
Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could
not resist going to Dresden, could not help having his head
turned by the homage he received, could not help donning a
Polish uniform and yielding to the stimulating influence of
a June morning, and could not refrain from bursts of anger
in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.
Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to
be personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command
the army in the best way, because he wished to fulfill his
duty and earn fame as a great commander. Rostov charged
the French because he could not restrain his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same way the innumerable
people who took part in the war acted in accord with their
personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and aims.
They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were
doing and did it of their own free will, but they all were
involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed
from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable
fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social
hierarchy the less are they free.
The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing
remains of that time but its historic results.
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War and Peace

Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain
personal aims, to further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of them at all expectedneither Napoleon,
nor Alexander, nor still less any of those who did the actual
fighting.
The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812
is clear to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on
the one hand, its advance into the heart of Russia late in the
season without any preparation for a winter campaign and,
on the other, the character given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the foe this aroused
among the Russian people. But no one at the time foresaw
(what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an
army of eight hundred thousand menthe best in the world
and led by the best generalcould be destroyed in conflict
with a raw army of half its numerical strength, and led by
inexperienced commanders as the Russian army was. Not
only did no one see this, but on the Russian side every effort
was made to hinder the only thing that could save Russia,
while on the French side, despite Napoleon’s experience and
so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing
the very thing that was bound to lead to destruction.
In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are
very fond of saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he sought a battle and that his marshals
advised him to stop at Smolensk, and of making similar
statements to show that the danger of the campaign was even
then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of telling


1283

us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of
Russia, and this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again
to Alexander himselfpointing to notes, projects, and letters
which contain hints of such a line of action. But all these
hints at what happened, both from the French side and
the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in with the
event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have
been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of hints and expectations to the contrary which were
current then but have now been forgotten because the event
falsified them. There are always so many conjectures as to
the issue of any event that however it may end there will always be people to say: ‘I said then that it would be so,’ quite
forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures many
were to quite the contrary effect.
Conjectures as to Napoleon’s awareness of the danger of
extending his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the
enemy into the depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind,
and only by much straining can historians attribute such
conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals, or such plans
to the Russian commanders. All the facts are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period of the
war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw
the French into the heart of the country, but from their first
entry into Russia everything was done to stop them. And
not only was Napoleon not afraid to extend his line, but he
welcomed every step forward as a triumph and did not seek
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battle as eagerly as in former campaigns, but very lazily.
At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the
armies was no advantage if we meant to retire and lure the
enemy into the depths of the country. Our Emperor joined
the army to encourage it to defend every inch of Russian soil
and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp was formed
on Pfuel’s plan, and there was no intention of retiring farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for
every step they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting
the enemy even reach Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow, and when our armies did
unite he was displeased that Smolensk was abandoned and
burned without a general engagement having been fought
under its walls.
So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders
and people were still more provoked at the thought that our
forces were retreating into the depths of the country.
Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into
the country and missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he was at Smolensk and thought only
of how to advance farther, though as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.
The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the
danger of the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and
the Russian commanders then think of luring Napoleon
on, but quite the contrary. The luring of Napoleon into the
depths of the country was not the result of any plan, for no
one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most com

1285

plex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those
who took part in the war and had no perception whatever
of the inevitable, or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about fortuitously. The armies were divided
at the commencement of the campaign. We tried to unite
them, with the evident intention of giving battle and checking the enemy’s advance, and by this effort to unite them
while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily withdrawing the armies at an acute anglewe led the
French on to Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the French advanced between our two
armies; the angle became still more acute and we withdrew
still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an unpopular
foreigner disliked by Bagration (who would come his command), and Bagrationbeing in command of the second
armytried to postpone joining up and coming under Barclay’s command as long as he could. Bagration was slow in
effecting the junctionthough that was the chief aim of all at
headquartersbecause, as he alleged, he exposed his army to
danger on this march, and it was best for him to retire more
to the left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from
flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for
his army; and it looks as if he planned this in order not to
come under the command of the detested foreigner Barclay,
whose rank was inferior to his own.
The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but
his presence and ignorance of what steps to take, and the
enormous number of advisers and plans, destroyed the first
army’s energy and it retired.
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War and Peace

The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp,
but Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed his energy to influence Alexander,
and Pfuel’s whole plan was abandoned and the command
entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies were divided, there
was no unity of command, and Barclay was unpopular; but
from this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the
foreign commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand
indecision and the avoidance of a battle (which we could not
have refrained from had the armies been united and had
someone else, instead of Barclay, been in command) and
on the other an ever-increasing indignation against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.
At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and indeed the only pretext for his departure it was
decided that it was necessary for him to inspire the people
in the capitals and arouse the nation in general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor to Moscow the
strength of the Russian army was trebled.
He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief’s
undivided control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action would then be taken, but the command of the
armies became still more confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of adjutants general
remained with the army to keep the commander in chief
under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling less free than ever under the observation of all these
‘eyes of the Emperor,’ became still more cautious of under

1287

taking any decisive action and avoided giving battle.
Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at
treachery and demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the others of that group stirred
up so much trouble that Barclay, under pretext of sending
papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish adjutants
general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle
with Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.
At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration disliked it.
Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house occupied
by Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet
and report to his senior officer Bagration.
Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest
of magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having
submitted, agreed with him less than ever. By the Emperor’s orders Bagration reported direct to him. He wrote to
Arakcheev, the Emperor’s confidant: ‘It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with the Minister (meaning
Barclay). For God’s sake send me somewhere else if only in
command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here. Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and
there is no sense in anything. I thought I was really serving
my sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am
serving Barclay. I confess I do not want to.’
The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their
like still further embittered the relations between the commanders in chief, and even less unity resulted. Preparations
were made to fight the French before Smolensk. A general
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War and Peace

was sent to survey the position. This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a corps commander,
and, having spent the day with him, returned to Barclay and
condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the battleground he had not seen.
While disputes and intrigues were going on about the
future field of battle, and while we were looking for the
Frenchhaving lost touch with themthe French stumbled
upon Neverovski’s division and reached the walls of Smolensk.
It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save our lines of communication. The battle was
fought and thousands were killed on both sides.
Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the
Emperor and of the whole people. But Smolensk was burned
by its own inhabitants-who had been misled by their governor. And these ruined inhabitants, setting an example to
other Russians, went to Moscow thinking only of their own
losses but kindling hatred of the foe. Napoleon advanced
farther and we retired, thus arriving at the very result which
caused his destruction.



1289

Chapter II
The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for
Princess Mary to come to his study.
‘Well? Are you satisfied now?’ said he. ‘You’ve made me
quarrel with my son! Satisfied, are you? That’s all you wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts me, it hurts. I’m old and weak and
this is what you wanted. Well then, gloat over it! Gloat over
it!’
After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a
whole week. He was ill and did not leave his study.
Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this
illness the old prince not only excluded her from his room,
but did not admit Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon
alone attended him.
At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his former way of life, devoting himself with special
activity to building operations and the arrangement of
the gardens and completely breaking off his relations with
Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks and cold tone to his
daughter seemed to say: ‘There, you see? You plotted against
me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my relations with that
Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I
need neither her nor you!’
Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching his lessons, teaching him Russian and music
1290

War and Peace

herself, and talking to Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent
over her books, with her old nurse, or with ‘God’s folk’ who
sometimes came by the back door to see her.
Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think
about wars. She feared for her brother who was in it, was
horrified by and amazed at the strange cruelty that impels
men to kill one another, but she did not understand the
significance of this war, which seemed to her like all previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this war,
though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was
passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain
his own conception of it to her, and though the ‘God’s folk’
who came to see her reported, in their own way, the rumors
current among the people of an invasion by Antichrist, and
though Julie (now Princess Drubetskaya), who had resumed
correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.
‘I write you in Russian, my good friend,’ wrote Julie in
her Frenchified Russian, ‘because I have a detestation for all
the French, and the same for their language which I cannot
support to hear spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.
‘My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in
Jewish taverns, but the news which I have inspires me yet
more.
‘You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing his two sons and saying: ‘I will perish with them
but we will not be shaken!’ And truly though the enemy
was twice stronger than we, we were unshakable. We pass


1291

the time as we can, but in war as in war! The princesses
Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy
widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our
charpie, only you, my friend, are missing...’ and so on.
The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full
significance of this war was that the old prince never spoke
of it, did not recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he
mentioned it at dinner. The prince’s tone was so calm and
confident that Princess Mary unhesitatingly believed him.
All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and
even animated. He planned another garden and began a
new building for the domestic serfs. The only thing that
made Princess Mary anxious about him was that he slept
very little and, instead of sleeping in his study as usual,
changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another
day he remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the
drawing room and dozed there without undressing, whileinstead of Mademoiselle Bouriennea serf boy read to him.
Then again he would spend a night in the dining room.
On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince
Andrew. In his first letter which came soon after he had left
home, Prince Andrew had dutifully asked his father’s forgiveness for what he had allowed himself to say and begged
to be restored to his favor. To this letter the old prince had
replied affectionately, and from that time had kept the
Frenchwoman at at Prince Andrew’s second letter, written
near Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave
a brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a
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plan he had drawn and forecasts as to the further progress
of the war. In this letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his
father the danger of staying at Bald Hills, so near the theater
of war and on the army’s direct line of march, and advised
him to move to Moscow.
At dinner that day, on Dessalles’ mentioning that the
French were said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old
prince remembered his son’s letter.
‘There was a letter from Prince Andrew today,’ he said to
Princess Mary‘Haven’t you read it?’
‘No, Father,’ she replied in a frightened voice.
She could not have read the letter as she did not even
know it had arrived.
‘He writes about this war,’ said the prince, with the ironic
smile that had become habitual to him in speaking of the
present war.
‘That must be very interesting,’ said Dessalles. ‘Prince
Andrew is in a position to know..’
‘Oh, very interesting!’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
‘Go and get it for me,’ said the old prince to Mademoiselle Bourienne. ‘You knowunder the paperweight on the
little table.’
Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.
‘No, don’t!’ he exclaimed with a frown. ‘You go, Michael
Ivanovich.’
Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as
soon as he had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down his napkin and went himself.
‘They can’t do anything... always make some muddle,’ he


1293

muttered.
While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in
silence. The old prince returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivanovich, bringing the letter and a plan.
These he put down beside himnot letting anyone read them
at dinner.
On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to
Princess Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the
new building and fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the
letter aloud. When she had done so Princess Mary looked
inquiringly at her father. He was examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.
‘What do you think of it, Prince?’ Dessalles ventured to
ask.
‘I? I?...’ said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and
not taking his eyes from the plan of the building.
‘Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us
that..’
‘Ha ha ha! The theater of war!’ said the prince. ‘I have
said and still say that the theater of war is Poland and the
enemy will never get beyond the Niemen.’
Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was
talking of the Niemen when the enemy was already at the
Dnieper, but Princess Mary, forgetting the geographical
position of the Niemen, thought that what her father was
saying was correct.
‘When the snow melts they’ll sink in the Polish swamps.
Only they could fail to see it,’ the prince continued, evident1294

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ly thinking of the campaign of 1807 which seemed to him
so recent. ‘Bennigsen should have advanced into Prussia
sooner, then things would have taken a different turn..’
‘But, Prince,’ Dessalles began timidly, ‘the letter mentions Vitebsk...’
‘Ah, the letter? Yes...’ replied the prince peevishly. ‘Yes...
yes...’ His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He
paused. ‘Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at... at...
what river is it?’
Dessalles dropped his eyes.
‘The prince says nothing about that,’ he remarked gently.
‘Doesn’t he? But I didn’t invent it myself.’
No one spoke for a long time.
‘Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich,’ he suddenly went
on, raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building,
‘tell me how you mean to alter it...’
Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince
after speaking to him about the building looked angrily at
Princess Mary and Dessalles and went to his own room.
Princess Mary saw Dessalles’ embarrassed and astonished look fixed on her father, noticed his silence, and was
struck by the fact that her father had forgotten his son’s letter on the drawing-room table; but she was not only afraid
to speak of it and ask Dessalles the reason of his confusion
and silence, but was afraid even to think about it.
In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince,
came to Princess Mary for Prince Andrew’s letter which
had been forgotten in the drawing room. She gave it to him


1295

and, unpleasant as it was to her to do so, ventured to ask
him what her father was doing.
‘Always busy,’ replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale.
‘He’s worrying very much about the new building. He has
been reading a little, but now’Michael Ivanovich went on,
lowering his voice‘now he’s at his desk, busy with his will, I
expect.’ (One of the prince’s favorite occupations of late had
been the preparation of some papers he meant to leave at his
death and which he called his ‘will.’)
‘And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?’ asked Princess Mary.
‘Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time.’

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Chapter III
When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the
letter, the old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his
eyes, was sitting at his open bureau with screened candles,
holding a paper in his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat
dramatic attitude was reading his manuscripthis ‘Remarks’
as he termed itwhich was to be transmitted to the Emperor
after his death.
When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the
prince’s eyes evoked by the memory of the time when the
paper he was now reading had been written. He took the
letter from Michael Ivanovich’s hand, put it in his pocket,
folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had long
been waiting.
The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk
and, walking up and down the room past Alpatych who
stood by the door, he gave his instructions.
‘First, notepaperdo you hear? Eight quires, like this sample, gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish,
sealing wax, as in Michael Ivanovich’s list.’
He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his
notes.
‘Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the
deed.’
Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were want

1297

ed and had to be of a special shape the prince had himself
designed, and a leather case had to be ordered to keep the
‘will’ in.
The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and
still the prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into
thought, closed his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a
slight movement.
‘Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I’ll send after
you.’
Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau,
glanced into it, fingered his papers, closed the bureau again,
and sat down at the table to write to the governor.
It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter.
He wished to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to
and that most depressing thoughts came to him in bed. So
he called Tikhon and went through the rooms with him to
show him where to set up the bed for that night.
He went about looking at every corner. Every place
seemed unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary
couch in the study. That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive thoughts he had had when
lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere, but the corner
behind the piano in the sitting room was better than other
places: he had never slept there yet.
With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and began putting it up.
‘That’s not right! That’s not right!’ cried the prince, and
himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and then
closer in again.
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‘Well, at last I’ve finished, now I’ll rest,’ thought the
prince, and let Tikhon undress him.
Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest
himself of his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat
down heavily on the bed, and appeared to be meditating
as he looked contemptuously at his withered yellow legs.
He was not meditating, but only deferring the moment of
making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on the
bed. ‘Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and
you would release me!’ thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that effort for the twenty-thousandth time and
lay down. But hardly had he done so before he felt the bed
rocking backwards and forwards beneath him as if it were
breathing heavily and jolting. This happened to him almost
every night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.
‘No peace, damn them!’ he muttered, angry he knew not
with whom. ‘Ah yes, there was something else important,
very important, that I was keeping till I should be in bed.
The bolts? No, I told him about them. No, it was something,
something in the drawing room. Princess Mary talked
some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something. Something in my pocketcan’t remember..’
‘Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?’
‘About Prince Michael..’
‘Be quiet, quiet!’ The prince slapped his hand on the table.
‘Yes, I know, Prince Andrew’s letter! Princess Mary read it.
Dessalles said something about Vitebsk. Now I’ll read it.’
He had the letter taken from his pocket and the tableon
which stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candlem

1299

oved close to the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began
reading. Only now in the stillness of the night, reading it by
the faint light under the green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.
‘The French at Vitebsk, in four days’ march they may be
at Smolensk; perhaps are already there! Tikhon!’ Tikhon
jumped up. ‘No, no, I don’t want anything!’ he shouted.
He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his
eyes. And there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian camp, and himself a young general
without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin’s gaily colored tent, and a burning sense of
jealousy of ‘the favorite’ agitated him now as strongly as it
had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that first
meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump,
rather sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress
Mother, with her smile and her words at her first gracious
reception of him, and then that same face on the catafalque,
and the encounter he had with Zubov over her coffin about
his right to kiss her hand.
‘Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have
done with all the present! Quicker, quickerand that they
should leave me in peace!’

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Chapter IV
Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski’s estate, lay forty miles east from Smolensk and two miles from the main
road to Moscow.
The same evening that the prince gave his instructions
to Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary,
told her that, as the prince was not very well and was taking
no steps to secure his safety, though from Prince Andrew’s
letter it was evident that to remain at Bald Hills might be
dangerous, he respectfully advised her to send a letter by
Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at Smolensk, asking
him to let her know the state of affairs and the extent of the
danger to which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote
this letter to the Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it,
and it was given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it
to the Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if
there was danger.
Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white
beaver hata present from the princeand carrying a stick as
the prince did, went out accompanied by his family. Three
well-fed roans stood ready harnessed to a small conveyance
with a leather hood.
The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald
Hills to drive with ringing bells; but on a long journey Al

1301

patych liked to have them. His satellitesthe senior clerk, a
countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and various domestic
serfswere seeing him off.
His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for
him to sit on and behind his back. His old sister-in-law
popped in a small bundle, and one of the coachmen helped
him into the vehicle.
‘There! There! Women’s fuss! Women, women!’ said Alpatych, puffing and speaking rapidly just as the prince did,
and he climbed into the trap.
After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done,
Alpatych, not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat
from his bald head and crossed himself three times.
‘If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For
Christ’s sake think of us!’ cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war and the enemy.
‘Women, women! Women’s fuss!’ muttered Alpatych to
himself and started on his journey, looking round at the
fields of yellow rye and the still-green, thickly growing oats,
and at other quite black fields just being plowed a second
time.
As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year’s
splendid crop of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield
which here and there were already being reaped, made his
calculations as to the sowing and the harvest, and asked
himself whether he had not forgotten any of the prince’s orders.
Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at
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the town toward evening on the fourth of August.
Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains
and troops on the road. As he approached Smolensk he
heard the sounds of distant firing, but these did not impress
him. What struck him most was the sight of a splendid field
of oats in which a camp had been pitched and which was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder. This
fact impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own
business he soon forgot it.
All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had
been bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went
beyond that limit. Everything not connected with the execution of the prince’s orders did not interest and did not
even exist for Alpatych.
On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of
August he put up in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper,
at the inn kept by Ferapontov, where he had been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years. Some thirty years
ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych’s advice, had bought a wood
from the prince, had begun to trade, and now had a house,
an inn, and a corn dealer’s shop in that province. He was a
stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips,
a broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and a round belly.
Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov
was standing before his shop which opened onto the street.
On seeing Alpatych he went up to him.
‘You’re welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the
town, but you have come to it,’ said he.


1303

‘Why are they leaving the town?’ asked Alpatych.
‘That’s what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the
French.’
‘Women’s fuss, women’s fuss!’ said Alpatych.
‘Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders
have been given not to let them in, so that must be right.
And the peasants are asking three rubles for cartingit isn’t
Christian!’
Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a
samovar and for hay for his horses, and when he had had
his tea he went to bed.
All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next
morning Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town
and went out on business. It was a sunny morning and by
eight o’clock it was already hot. ‘A good day for harvesting,’
thought Alpatych.
From beyond the town firing had been heard since early
morning. At eight o’clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of musketry. Many people were hurrying
through the streets and there were many soldiers, but cabs
were still driving about, tradesmen stood at their shops, and
service was being held in the churches as usual. Alpatych
went to the shops, to government offices, to the post office,
and to the Governor’s. In the offices and shops and at the
post office everyone was talking about the army and about
the enemy who was already attacking the town, everybody
was asking what should be done, and all were trying to calm
one another.
In front of the Governor’s house Alpatych found a large
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number of people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the
Governor’s. At the porch he met two of the landed gentry,
one of whom he knew. This man, an ex-captain of police,
was saying angrily:
‘It’s no joke, you know! It’s all very well if you’re single.
‘One man though undone is but one,’ as the proverb says, but
with thirteen in your family and all the property... They’ve
brought us to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they to
do that? They ought to be hangedthe brigands!..’
‘Oh come, that’s enough!’ said the other.
‘What do I care? Let him hear! We’re not dogs,’ said
the ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.
‘Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?’
‘To see the Governor by his excellency’s order,’ answered
Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand
into the bosom of his coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... He has ordered me to inquire into the
position of affairs,’ he added.
‘Yes, go and find out!’ shouted the angry gentleman.
‘They’ve brought things to such a pass that there are no carts
or anything!... There it is again, do you hear?’ said he, pointing in the direction whence came the sounds of firing.
‘They’ve brought us all to ruin... the brigands!’ he repeated, and descended the porch steps.
Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were tradesmen, women, and officials, looking
silently at one another. The door of the Governor’s room
opened and they all rose and moved forward. An official


1305

ran out, said some words to a merchant, called a stout official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and
vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring
looks and questions addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the official came out addressed him, one
hand placed in the breast of his buttoned coat, and handed
him two letters.
‘To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince
Bolkonski,’ he announced with such solemnity and significance that the official turned to him and took the letters.
A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and
hurriedly said to him:
‘Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I
acted on the highest instructionshere...’ and he handed a paper to Alpatych. ‘Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is
that they should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself.
Inform them..’
But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into the room and began to say something in French.
The Governor’s face expressed terror.
‘Go,’ he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began
questioning the officer.
Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on
Alpatych when he came out of the Governor’s room. Involuntarily listening now to the firing, which had drawn nearer
and was increasing in strength, Alpatych hurried to his inn.
The paper handed to him by the Governor said this:
‘I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the
slightest danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threat1306

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ened with any. I from the one side and Prince Bagration
from the other are marching to unite our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be effected on the 22nd instant,
and both armies with their united forces will defend our
compatriots of the province entrusted to your care till our
efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland,
or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished.
From this you will see that you have a perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolensk, for those defended by two
such brave armies may feel assured of victory.’ (Instructions
from Barclay de Tolly to Baron Asch, the civil governor of
Smolensk, 1812.)
People were anxiously roaming about the streets.
Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and
cupboards kept emerging from the gates of the yards and
moving along the streets. Loaded carts stood at the house
next to Ferapontov’s and women were wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round
barking in front of the harnessed horses.
Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went straight to the shed where his horses and trap
were. The coachman was asleep. He woke him up, told him
to harness, and went into the passage. From the host’s room
came the sounds of a child crying, the despairing sobs of a
woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of Ferapontov. The
cook began running hither and thither in the passage like a
frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered.
‘He’s done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her...
dragged her about so!..’


1307

‘What for?’ asked Alpatych.
‘She kept begging to go away. She’s a woman! ‘Take me
away,’ says she, ‘don’t let me perish with my little children!
Folks,’ she says, ‘are all gone, so why,’ she says, ‘don’t we go?’
And he began beating and pulling her about so!’
At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and
not wishing to hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper’s, where he had left his purchases.
‘You brute, you murderer!’ screamed a thin, pale woman
who, with a baby in her arms and her kerchief torn from her
head, burst through the door at that moment and down the
steps into the yard.
Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych
adjusted his waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the opposite room.
‘Going already?’ said he.
Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his packages and asked how much he owed.
‘We’ll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor’s?’
asked Ferapontov. ‘What has been decided?’
Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him
anything definite.
‘With our business, how can we get away?’ said Ferapontov. ‘We’d have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh
and I tell them they’re not Christians to ask it! Selivanov,
now, did a good stroke last Thursdaysold flour to the army
at nine rubles a sack. Will you have some tea?’ he added.
While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over their tea talked of the price of corn, the crops,
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and the good weather for harvesting.
‘Well, it seems to be getting quieter,’ remarked Ferapontov, finishing his third cup of tea and getting up. ‘Ours must
have got the best of it. The orders were not to let them in.
So we’re in force, it seems.... They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove them into the river Marina and
drowned some eighteen thousand in one day.’
Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the
coachman who had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels, hoofs, and bells was heard from
the gateway as a little trap passed out.
It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was
in shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych
looked out of the window and went to the door. Suddenly
the strange sound of a far-off whistling and thud was heard,
followed by a boom of cannon blending into a dull roar that
set the windows rattling.
He went out into the street: two men were running past
toward the bridge. From different sides came whistling
sounds and the thud of cannon balls and bursting shells
falling on the town. But these sounds were hardly heard in
comparison with the noise of the firing outside the town
and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town
was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which
Napoleon had ordered up after four o’clock. The people did
not at once realize the meaning of this bombardment.
At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only
aroused curiosity. Ferapontov’s wife, who till then had not
ceased wailing under the shed, became quiet and with the


1309

baby in her arms went to the gate, listening to the sounds
and looking in silence at the people.
The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With
lively curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over their heads. Several people came
round the corner talking eagerly.
‘What force!’ remarked one. ‘Knocked the roof and ceiling all to splinters!’
‘Routed up the earth like a pig,’ said another.
‘That’s grand, it bucks one up!’ laughed the first. ‘Lucky
you jumped aside, or it would have wiped you out!’
Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had fallen on a house close to them. Meanwhile
still more projectiles, now with the swift sinister whistle of
a cannon ball, now with the agreeable intermittent whistle
of a shell, flew over people’s heads incessantly, but not one
fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych was getting into his
trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.
‘What are you staring at?’ he shouted to the cook, who
in her red skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare
elbows, had stepped to the corner to listen to what was being said.
‘What marvels!’ she exclaimed, but hearing her master’s
voice she turned back. pulling down her tucked-up skirt.
Once more something whistled, but this time quite close,
swooping downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the
middle of the street, something exploded, and the street was
shrouded in smoke.
‘Scoundrel, what are you doing?’ shouted the innkeeper,
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rushing to the cook.
At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard
from different sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and
people crowded silently with pale faces round the cook. The
loudest sound in that crowd was her wailing.
‘Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don’t let me die!
My good souls!..’
Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The
cook, with her thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been
carried into the kitchen. Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children and the house porter were all sitting
in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the whistling of
projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which
rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment.
The mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone
came into the cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had
become of her husband who had remained in the street. A
shopman who entered told her that her husband had gone
with others to the cathedral, whence they were fetching the
wonder-working icon of Smolensk.
Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych
left the cellar and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky
that had been so clear was clouded with smoke, through
which, high up, the sickle of the new moon shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a hush
seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of
footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle
of fires which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook’s
moans had now subsided. On two sides black curling clouds


1311

of smoke rose and spread from the fires. Through the streets
soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran confusedly in
different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov’s yard before Alpatych’s
eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment,
thronging and hurrying, blocked the street.
Noticing him, an officer said: ‘The town is being abandoned. Get away, get away!’ and then, turning to the soldiers,
shouted:
‘I’ll teach you to run into the yards!’
Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman,
and told him to set off. Ferapontov’s whole household came
out too, following Alpatych and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then, suddenly began to wail
as they looked at the firesthe smoke and even the flames of
which could be seen in the failing twilightand as if in reply
the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts
of the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman
arranged the tangled reins and traces of their horses with
trembling hands.
As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some
ten soldiers in Ferapontov’s open shop, talking loudly and
filling their bags and knapsacks with flour and sunflower
seeds. Just then Ferapontov returned and entered his shop.
On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at them, but
suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, burst into sobs
and laughter:
‘Loot everything, lads! Don’t let those devils get it!’ he
cried, taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them
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into the street.
Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others
went on filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov
turned to him:
‘Russia is done for!’ he cried. ‘Alpatych, I’ll set the place
on fire myself. We’re done for!...’ and Ferapontov ran into
the yard.
Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the
street blocking it completely, so that Alpatych could not
pass out and had to wait. Ferapontov’s wife and children
were also sitting in a cart waiting till it was it was possible
to drive out.
Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new
moon shone out amid the smoke that screened it. On the
sloping descent to the Dnieper Alpatych’s cart and that of
the innkeeper’s wife, which were slowly moving amid the
rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to stop. In a side
street near the crossroads where the vehicles had stopped,
a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already
burning itself out. The flames now died down and were lost
in the black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly,
lighting up with strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the crossroads. Black figures flitted about
before the fire, and through the incessant crackling of the
flames talking and shouting could be heard. Seeing that his
trap would not be able to move on for some time, Alpatych
got down and turned into the side street to look at the fire.
Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards
near it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat


1313

dragging burning beams into another yard across the street,
while others carried bundles of hay.
Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high
barn which was blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire
and the back wall had fallen in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters were alight. The crowd was evidently
watching for the roof to fall in, and Alpatych watched for it
too.
‘Alpatych!’ a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.
‘Mercy on us! Your excellency!’ answered Alpatych, immediately recognizing the voice of his young prince.
Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black
horse, was looking at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
‘Your... your excellency,’ stammered Alpatych and broke
into sobs. ‘Are we really lost? Master!..’
‘Why are you here?’ Prince Andrew repeated.
At that moment the flames flared up and showed his
young master’s pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had
been sent there and how difficult it was to get away.
‘Are we really quite lost, your excellency?’ he asked
again.
Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook
and raising his knee began writing in pencil on a page he
tore out. He wrote to his sister:
‘Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the enemy within a week. Set off immediately for
Moscow. Let me know at once when you will start. Send by
special messenger to Usvyazh.’
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Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he
told him how to arrange for departure of the prince, the
princess, his son, and the boy’s tutor, and how and where to
let him know immediately. Before he had had time to finish
giving these instructions, a chief of staff followed by a suite
galloped up to him.
‘You are a colonel?’ shouted the chief of staff with a German accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. ‘Houses
are set on fire in your presence and you stand by! What does
this mean? You will answer for it!’ shouted Berg, who was
now assistant to the chief of staff of the commander of the
left flank of the infantry of the first army, a place, as Berg
said, ‘very agreeable and well en evidence.’
Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went
on speaking to Alpatych.
‘So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and
if by the tenth I don’t receive news that they have all got
away I shall have to throw up everything and come myself
to Bald Hills.’
‘Prince,’ said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, ‘I only
spoke because I have to obey orders, because I always do
obey exactly.... You must please excuse me,’ he went on apologetically.
Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for
a moment and wreaths of black smoke rolled from under
the roof. There was another terrible crash and something
huge collapsed.
‘Ou-rou-rou!’ yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the
collapsing roof of the barn, the burning grain in which dif

1315

fused a cakelike aroma all around. The flames flared up
again, lighting the animated, delighted, exhausted faces of
the spectators.
The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:
‘It’s fine, lads! Now it’s raging... It’s fine!’
‘That’s the owner himself,’ cried several voices.
‘Well then,’ continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, ‘report to them as I have told you”; and not replying a word to
Berg who was now mute beside him, he touched his horse
and rode down the side street.

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War and Peace

Chapter V
From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed
by the enemy. On the tenth of August the regiment Prince
Andrew commanded was marching along the highroad past
the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat and drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day fleecy clouds
floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the sun, but
toward evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in
reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the
earth. The unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain.
The marshes dried up. The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched meadows. Only at night
and in the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the troops
marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when
the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches
deep. As soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery
and baggage wagons moved noiselessly through the deep
dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that
never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded
by the feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a
cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and worst of all in the lungs of the men and beasts as


1317

they moved along that road. The higher the sun rose the
higher rose that cloud of dust, and through the screen of its
hot fine particles one could look with naked eye at the sun,
which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded
sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied
over their noses and mouths. When they passed through a
village they all rushed to the wells and fought for the water
and drank it down to the mud.
Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the
management of that regiment, the welfare of the men and
the necessity of receiving and giving orders, engrossed him.
The burning of Smolensk and its abandonment made an
epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against the foe
made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely devoted
to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind
to his men and officers. In the regiment they called him ‘our
prince,’ were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind
and gentle only to those of his regiment, to Timokhin and
the likepeople quite new to him, belonging to a different
world and who could not know and understand his past.
As soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone
from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded
him of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations
with that former circle he confined himself to trying to do
his duty and not to be unfair.
In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy
light to Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment
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of Smolensk on the sixth of August (he considered that it
could and should have been defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to pillage his
dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled.
But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew
had something to think about entirely apart from general
questions. Two days previously he had received news that
his father, son, and sister had left for Moscow; and though
there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief
decided that he must ride there.
He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on the march, rode to his father’s estate where he had
been born and spent his childhood. Riding past the pond
where there used always to be dozens of women chattering
as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden beetles,
Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and
that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half
submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the
pond. He rode to the keeper’s lodge. No one at the stone
entrance gates of the drive and the door stood open. Grass
had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and horses
and calves were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were
broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and
others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one
replied. Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to
the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden fence
was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn


1319

off with the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in
his childhood had often seen at the gate was sitting on a
green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe.
He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He
was sitting on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on,
and beside him strips of bast were hanging on the broken
and withered branch of a magnolia.
Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the
old garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her
foal were wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at one window
which was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran
into the house. Alpatych, having sent his family away, was
alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors reading the Lives
of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had come, he
went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat,
and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and
kissing Prince Andrew’s knee.
Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to report on the position of affairs. Everything precious
and valuable had been removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy
quarters of grain had also been carted away. The hay and
the spring corn, of which Alpatych said there had been a
remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered by the
troops and mown down while still green. The peasants were
ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a
few remained.
Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:
‘When did my father and sister leave?’ meaning when
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did they leave for Moscow.
Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their
departure for Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the
seventh and again went into details concerning the estate
management, asking for instructions.
‘Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for them? We have still six hundred quarters left,’ he
inquired.
‘What am I to say to him?’ thought Prince Andrew, looking down on the old man’s bald head shining in the sun and
seeing by the expression on his face that the old man himself understood how untimely such questions were and only
asked them to allay his grief.
‘Yes, let them have it,’ replied Prince Andrew.
‘If you noticed some disorder in the garden,’ said Alpatych, ‘it was impossible to prevent it. Three regiments
have been here and spent the night, dragoons mostly. I took
down the name and rank of their commanding officer, to
hand in a complaint about it.’
‘Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if
the enemy occupies the place?’ asked Prince Andrew.
Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at
him, and suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm.
‘He is my refuge! His will be done!’ he exclaimed.
A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across
the meadow toward the prince.
‘Well, good-by!’ said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych. ‘You must go away too, take away what you can and
tell the serfs to go to the Ryazan estate or to the one near


1321

Moscow.’
Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew’s leg and burst into
sobs. Gently disengaging himself, the prince spurred his
horse and rode down the avenue at a gallop.
The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden,
like a fly impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead,
tapping the last on which he was making the bast shoe, and
two little girls, running out from the hot house carrying in
their skirts plums they had plucked from the trees there,
came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young master, the
elder one frightened look clutched her younger companion
by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick up some green plums they had dropped.
Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them see that they had been observed. He was
sorry for the pretty frightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible desire to do so. A new
sensation of comfort and relief came over him when, seeing
these girls, he realized the existence of other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as legitimate as
those that occupied him. Evidently these girls passionately
desired one thingto carry away and eat those green plums
without being caughtand Prince Andrew shared their wish
for the success of their enterprise. He could not resist looking at them once more. Believing their danger past, they
sprang from their ambush and, chirruping something in
their shrill little voices and holding up their skirts, their
bare little sunburned feet scampered merrily and quickly
across the meadow grass.
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Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the dusty highroad along which the troops were
moving. But not far from Bald Hills he again came out
on the road and overtook his regiment at its halting place
by the dam of a small pond. It was past one o’clock. The
sun, a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his
back intolerably through his black coat. The dust always
hung motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the
resting troops. There was no wind. As he crossed the dam
Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and freshness of the pond.
He longed to get into that water, however dirty it might be,
and he glanced round at the pool from whence came sounds
of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy, green pond had
risen visibly more than a foot, flooding the dam, because
it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with brickred hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in
it. All this naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in that dirty pool like carp stuffed
into a watering can, and the suggestion of merriment in that
floundering mass rendered it specially pathetic.
One fair-haired young soldier of the third company,
whom Prince Andrew knew and who had a strap round the
calf of one leg, crossed himself, stepped back to get a good
run, and plunged into the water; another, a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood up to his
waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure
and snorted with satisfaction as he poured the water over
his head with hands blackened to the wrists. There were
sounds of men slapping one another, yelling, and puffing.


1323

Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond,
there was healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer,
Timokhin, with his red little nose, standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing the prince,
but made up his mind to address him nevertheless.
‘It’s very nice, your excellency! Wouldn’t you like to?’
said he.
‘It’s dirty,’ replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.
‘We’ll clear it out for you in a minute,’ said Timokhin, and, still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the
pond.
‘The prince wants to bathe.’
‘What prince? Ours?’ said many voices, and the men
were in such haste to clear out that the prince could hardly
stop them. He decided that he would rather himself with
water in the barn.
‘Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!’ he thought, and he looked
at his own naked body and shuddered, not from cold but
from a sense of disgust and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that immense number of
bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.
On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk
road:
Dear Count Alexis Andreevich(He was writing to
Arakcheev but knew that his letter would be read by the
Emperor, and therefore weighed every word in it to the best
of his ability.)
I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already re1324

War and Peace

ported the abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is
pitiable and sad, and the whole army is in despair that this
most important place has been wantonly abandoned. I, for
my part, begged him personally most urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to consent.
I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a
fix as never before and might have lost half his army but
could not have taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and are
fighting, as never before. With fifteen thousand men I held
the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him; but he
would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for him, he ought, it seems
to me, not to live. If he reports that our losses were great, it
is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not more, and not
even that; but even were they ten thousand, that’s war! But
the enemy has lost masses...
What would it have cost him to hold out for another two
days? They would have had to retire of their own accord, for
they had no water for men or horses. He gave me his word
he would not retreat, but suddenly sent instructions that he
was retiring that night. We cannot fight in this way, or we
may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...
There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you should make peace after all our sacrifices and
such insane retreats! You would set all Russia against you
and every one of us would feel ashamed to wear the uniform. If it has come to thiswe must fight as long as Russia
can and as long as there are men able to stand...
One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your


1325

Minister may perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general
he is not merely bad but execrable, yet to him is entrusted
the fate of our whole country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear that the man who
advocates the conclusion of a peace, and that the Minister
should command the army, does not love our sovereign and
desires the ruin of us all. So I write you frankly: call out
the militia. For the Minister is leading these visitors after
him to Moscow in a most masterly way. The whole army
feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be more Napoleon’s man than ours, and
he is always advising the Minister. I am not merely civil to
him but obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior.
This is painful, but, loving my benefactor and sovereign, I
submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts
our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our retreat
we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than
fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not
have happened. Tell me, for God’s sake, what will Russia,
our mother Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why
are we abandoning our good and gallant Fatherland to such
rabble and implanting feelings of hatred and shame in all
our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom are we
afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating, a
coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The whole
army bewails it and calls down curses upon him...

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War and Peace

Chapter VI
Among the innumerable categories applicable to the
phenomena of human life one may discriminate between
those in which substance prevails and those in which form
prevails. To the latteras distinguished from village, country,
provincial, or even Moscow lifewe may allot Petersburg life,
and especially the life of its salons. That life of the salons is
unchanging. Since the year 1805 we had made peace and
had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had made constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna
Pavlovna Helene remained just as they had beenthe one seven and the other five years before. At Anna Pavlovna’s they
talked with perplexity of Bonaparte’s successes just as before and saw in them and in the subservience shown to him
by the European sovereigns a malicious conspiracy, the sole
object of which was to cause unpleasantness and anxiety to
the court circle of which Anna Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene’s salon, which Rumyantsev himself
honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a remarkably
intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in
1812 as in 1808 of the ‘great nation’ and the ‘great man,’ and
regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which, according to them, ought to be promptly terminated by peace.
Of late, since the Emperor’s return from the army, there
had been some excitement in these conflicting salon circles


1327

and some demonstrations of hostility to one another, but
each camp retained its own tendency. In Anna Pavlovna’s
circle only those Frenchmen were admitted who were deeprooted legitimists, and patriotic views were expressed to the
effect that one ought not to go to the French theater and
that to maintain the French troupe was costing the government as much as a whole army corps. The progress of the
war was eagerly followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were circulated. In the French circle of
Helene and Rumyantsev the reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted and all Napoleon’s
attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that circle they
discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations
for a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls’ educational establishments under the patronage of the Dowager
Empress. In Helene’s circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal demonstrations which would very
soon end in peace, and the view prevailed expressed by Bilibinwho now in Petersburg was quite at home in Helene’s
house, which every clever man was obliged to visitthat not
by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters
be settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasmnews of
which had reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor’s returnwas ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly,
though with much caution.
Anna Pavlovna’s circle on the contrary was enraptured
by this enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the
deeds of the ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his
former important posts, formed a connecting link between
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these two circles. He visited his ‘good friend Anna Pavlovna’ as well as his daughter’s ‘diplomatic salon,’ and often in
his constant comings and goings between the two camps
became confused and said at Helene’s what he should have
said at Anna Pavlovna’s and vice versa.
Soon after the Emperor’s return Prince Vasili in a conversation about the war at Anna Pavlovna’s severely condemned
Barclay de Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be
appointed commander in chief. One of the visitors, usually
spoken of as ‘a man of great merit,’ having described how
he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly chosen chief of the
Petersburg militia, presiding over the enrollment of recruits
at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest that Kutuzov
would be the man to satisfy all requirements.
Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that
Kutuzov had done nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.
‘I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility,’ Prince Vasili interrupted, ‘but they did not listen to me.
I told them his election as chief of the militia would not
please the Emperor. They did not listen to me.
‘It’s all this mania for opposition,’ he went on. ‘And who
for? It is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm
of those Muscovites,’ Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for
a moment that though at Helene’s one had to ridicule the
Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pavlovna’s one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. ‘Now, is
it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the oldest general in Russia,
should preside at that tribunal? He will get nothing for his


1329

pains! How could they make a man commander in chief
who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the very worst morals! A good reputation he
made for himself at Bucharest! I don’t speak of his capacity
as a general, but at a time like this how they appoint they
appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively blind? A fine
idea to have a blind general! He can’t see anything. To play
blindman’s bluff? He can’t see at all!’
No one replied to his remarks.
This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on
the twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince.
This might indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore
Prince Vasili’s opinion continued to be correct though he
was not now in any hurry to express it. But on the eighth of
August a committee, consisting of Field Marshal Saltykov,
Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and Kochubey met to
consider the progress of the war. This committee came to
the conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity
in the command and though the members of the committee were aware of the Emperor’s dislike of Kutuzov, after a
short deliberation they agreed to advise his appointment as
commander in chief. That same day Kutuzov was appointed
commander in chief with full powers over the armies and
over the whole region occupied by them.
On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna’s
again met the ‘man of great merit.’ The latter was very attentive to Anna Pavlovna because he wanted to be appointed
director of one of the educational establishments for young
ladies. Prince Vasili entered the room with the air of a hap1330

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py conqueror who has attained the object of his desires.
‘Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is
field marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so
delighted! At last we have a man!’ said he, glancing sternly
and significantly round at everyone in the drawing room.
The ‘man of great merit,’ despite his desire to obtain the
post of director, could not refrain from reminding Prince
Vasili of his former opinion. Though this was impolite to
Prince Vasili in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room, and also to
Anna Pavlovna herself who had received the news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.
‘But, Prince, they say he is blind!’ said he, reminding
Prince Vasili of his own words.
‘Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough,’ said Prince Vasili
rapidly, in a deep voice and with a slight coughthe voice and
cough with which he was wont to dispose of all difficulties.
‘He sees well enough,’ he added. ‘And what I am so pleased
about,’ he went on, ‘is that our sovereign has given him full
powers over all the armies and the whole regionpowers no
commander in chief ever had before. He is a second autocrat,’ he concluded with a victorious smile.
‘God grant it! God grant it!’ said Anna Pavlovna.
The ‘man of great merit,’ who was still a novice in court
circles, wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her
former position on this question, observed:
‘It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov
those powers. They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, when he said to Kutuzov: ‘Your Emperor and
the Fatherland award you this honor.’


1331

‘Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech,’ said Anna
Pavlovna.
‘Oh, no, no!’ warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would
not now yield Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov
was not only admirable himself, but was adored by everybody. ‘No, that’s impossible,’ said he, ‘for our sovereign
appreciated him so highly before.’
‘God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power
and does not allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel,’ observed Anna Pavlovna.
Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince
Vasili said in a whisper:
‘I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that the Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do
you know what he said to the Emperor?’
And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have
been spoken by Kutuzov to the Emperor. ‘I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor reward him if he does right.’
‘Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known
him a long time!’
‘They even say,’ remarked the ‘man of great merit’ who
did not yet possess courtly tact, ‘that his excellency made it
an express condition that the sovereign himself should not
be with the army.’
As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna
Pavlovna turned away from him and glanced sadly at one
another with a sigh at his naivete.

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Chapter VII
While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had
already passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon’s historian Thiers, like other of his
historians, trying to justify his hero says that he was drawn
to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic events
in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by
the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law
of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation
for events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity
comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer
having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake
in the opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game
there were similar mistakes and that none of his moves were
perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much
more complex than this is the game of war, which occurs
under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will that
manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of various wills!
After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma, and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche,


1333

but it happened that owing to a conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till
they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From
Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on Moscow.
Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville
sacree des peuples d’Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme de pagodes chinoises,* this Moscow
gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest. On the march from
Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard,
his pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff,
dropped behind to question a Russian prisoner captured by
the cavalry. Followed by Lelorgne d’Ideville, an interpreter,
he overtook Napoleon at a gallop and reined in his horse
with an amused expression.
*”Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the
sacred city of Alexander’s people, Moscow with its innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas.’
‘Well?’ asked Napoleon.
‘One of Platov’s Cossacks says that Platov’s corps is joining up with the main army and that Kutuzov has been
appointed commander in chief. He is a very shrewd and
garrulous fellow.’
Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a
horse and bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him
himself. Several adjutants galloped off, and an hour later,
Lavrushka, the serf Denisov had handed over to Rostov,
rode up to Napoleon in an orderly’s jacket and on a French
cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told
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him to ride by his side and began questioning him.
‘You are a Cossack?’
‘Yes, a Cossack, your Honor.’
‘The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for
Napoleon’s plain appearance had nothing about it that would
reveal to an Oriental mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the incidents of the war,’ says
Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality Lavrushka, having
got drunk the day before and left his master dinnerless, had
been whipped and sent to the village in quest of chickens,
where he engaged in looting till the French took him prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys
who have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do
everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render
any sort of service to their master, and are keen at guessing
their master’s baser impulses, especially those prompted by
vanity and pettiness.
Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose
identity he had easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was
not in the least abashed but merely did his utmost to gain
his new master’s favor.
He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon’s
presence could no more intimidate him than Rostov’s, or a
sergeant major’s with the rods, would have done, for he had
nothing that either the sergeant major or Napoleon could
deprive him of.
So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among
the orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him
whether the Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or


1335

not, Lavrushka screwed up his eyes and considered.
In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his
type see cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not
answer immediately.
‘It’s like this,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if there’s a battle soon,
yours will win. That’s right. But if three days pass, then after
that, well, then that same battle will not soon be over.’
Lelorgne d’Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to
Napoleon thus: ‘If a battle takes place within the next three
days the French will win, but if later, God knows what will
happen.’ Napoleon did not smile, though he was evidently
in high good humor, and he ordered these words to be repeated.
Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further,
pretending not to know who Napoleon was, added:
‘We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has
beaten everybody in the world, but we are a different
matter...’without knowing why or how this bit of boastful
patriotism slipped out at the end.
The interpreter translated these words without the last
phrase, and Bonaparte smiled. ‘The young Cossack made
his mighty interlocutor smile,’ says Thiers. After riding a
few paces in silence, Napoleon turned to Berthier and said
he wished to see how the news that he was talking to the
Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written his
immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would affect
this enfant du Don.*
*”Child of the Don.’
The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.
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Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex
him and that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to
gratify his new masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes wide, and assumed
the expression he usually put on when taken to be whipped.
‘As soon as Napoleon’s interpreter had spoken,’ says Thiers,
‘the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another
word, but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose
fame had reached him across the steppes of the East. All
his loquacity was suddenly arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after making
the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored
to its native fields.’
Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so
appealed to his imagination, and ‘the bird restored to its native fields’ galloped to our outposts, inventing on the way
all that had not taken place but that he meant to relate to his
comrades. What had really taken place he did not wish to
relate because it seemed to him not worth telling. He found
the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating with Platov’s detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas
Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to
go for a ride round the neighboring villages with Ilyin; he
let Lavrushka have another horse and took him along with
him.



1337

Chapter VIII
Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as
Prince Andrew supposed.
After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old
prince suddenly seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be called up from the villages and
armed, and wrote a letter to the commander in chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at Bald Hills
to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the commander in chief’s discretion to take measures or not for the
defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia’s oldest generals would be captured or killed, and he announced to his
household that he would remain at Bald Hills.
But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for
the departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little
prince to Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess
Mary, alarmed by her father’s feverish and sleepless activity after his previous apathy, could not bring herself to leave
him alone and for the first time in her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her father’s fury broke
over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every injustice he
had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told her
she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son,
had harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object
of her life to poison his existence, and he drove her from
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his study telling her that if she did not go away it was all the
same to him. He declared that he did not wish to remember her existence and warned her not to dare to let him see
her. The fact that he did not, as she had feared, order her to
be carried away by force but only told her not to let him see
her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that in
the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home
and had not gone away.
The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old
prince donned his full uniform and prepared to visit the
commander in chief. His caleche was already at the door.
Princess Mary saw him walk out of the house in his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden to
review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by
the window listening to his voice which reached her from
the garden. Suddenly several men came running up the avenue with frightened faces.
Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path, and into the avenue. A large crowd of
militiamen and domestics were moving toward her, and in
their midst several men were supporting by the armpits and
dragging along a little old man in a uniform and decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that
fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree
avenue, could not be sure what change there was in his face.
All she could see was that his former stern and determined
expression had altered to one of timidity and submission.
On seeing his daughter he moved his helpless lips and made
a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out what he


1339

wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on
the very couch he had so feared of late.
The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him
and said that the prince had had seizure a paralyzing his
right side.
It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at
Bald Hills, and next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying him.
By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and
the little prince had already left for Moscow.
For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis
in the new house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo,
ever in the same state, getting neither better nor worse. He
was unconscious and lay like a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and lips twitching, and it
was impossible to tell whether he understood what was going on around him or not. One thing was certainthat he was
suffering and wished to say something. But what it was, no
one could tell: it might be some caprice of a sick and halfcrazy man, or it might relate to public affairs, or possibly to
family concerns.
The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was due to physical causes; but Princess Mary
thought he wished to tell her something, and the fact that
her presence always increased his restlessness confirmed
her opinion.
He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally.
There was no hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to
travel, it would not do to let him die on the road. ‘Would it
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not be better if the end did come, the very end?’ Princess
Mary sometimes thought. Night and day, hardly sleeping at
all, she watched him and, terrible to say, often watched him
not with hope of finding signs of improvement but wishing
to find symptoms of the approach of the end.
Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in
herself, yet there it was. And what seemed still more terrible
to her was that since her father’s illness began (perhaps even
sooner, when she stayed with him expecting something to
happen), all the personal desires and hopes that had been
forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened. Thoughts
that had not entered her mind for yearsthoughts of a life free
from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love
and of family happinessfloated continually in her imagination like temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she
would, questions continually recurred to her as to how she
would order her life now, after that. These were temptations
of the devil and Princess Mary knew it. She knew that the
sole weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray.
She assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons, repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt
that a different world had now taken possession of herthe
life of a world of strenuous and free activity, quite opposed
to the spiritual world in which till now she had been confined and in which her greatest comfort had been prayer.
She could not pray, could not weep, and worldly cares took
possession of her.
It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo.
News of the approach of the French came from all sides, and


1341

in one village, ten miles from Bogucharovo, a homestead
had been looted by French marauders.
The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince;
the provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible,
and the head of the rural police having come to Bogucharovo
urged the same thing, saying that the French were only some
twenty-five miles away, that French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the princess did not take
her father away before the fifteenth, he could not answer for
the consequences.
The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares
of preparation and giving orders, for which everyone came
to her, occupied her all day. She spent the night of the fourteenth as usual, without undressing, in the room next to the
one where the prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard
his groans and muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps
of Tikhon and the doctor when they turned him over. Several times she listened at the door, and it seemed to her that
his mutterings were louder than usual and that they turned
him over oftener. She could not sleep and several times went
to the door and listened, wishing to enter but not deciding to
do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw and knew
how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to
him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned
from the look she sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She
knew that her going in during the night at an unusual hour
would irritate him.
But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid
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of losing him. She recalled all her life with him and in every
word and act of his found an expression of his love of her.
Occasionally amid these memories temptations of the devil would surge into her imagination: thoughts of how things
would be after his death, and how her new, liberated life would
be ordered. But she drove these thoughts away with disgust.
Toward morning he became quiet and she fell asleep.
She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed her clearly what chiefly concerned her about her
father’s illness. On waking she listened to what was going on
behind the door and, hearing him groan, said to herself with
a sigh that things were still the same.
‘But what could have happened? What did I want? I want
his death!’ she cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.
She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the
porch. In front of it stood carriages without horses and things
were being packed into the vehicles.
It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at
the porch, still horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying
to arrange her thoughts before going to her father. The doctor
came downstairs and went out to her.
‘He is a little better today,’ said he. ‘I was looking for you.
One can make out something of what he is saying. His head
is clearer. Come in, he is asking for you..’
Princess Mary’s heart beat so violently at this news that
she grew pale and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him, talk to him, feel his eyes on her now that
her whole soul was overflowing with those dreadful, wicked
temptations, was a torment of joy and terror.


1343

‘Come,’ said the doctor.
Princess Mary entered her father’s room and went up to
his bed. He was lying on his back propped up high, and his
small bony hands with their knotted purple veins were lying
on the quilt; his left eye gazed straight before him, his right
eye was awry, and his brows and lips motionless. He seemed
altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His face seemed to
have shriveled or melted; his features had grown smaller.
Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand
pressed hers so that she understood that he had long been
waiting for her to come. He twitched her hand, and his brows
and lips quivered angrily.
She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her. When she changed her position so that his left eye
could see her face he calmed down, not taking his eyes off her
for some seconds. Then his lips and tongue moved, sounds
came, and he began to speak, gazing timidly and imploringly
at her, evidently afraid that she might not understand.
Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him.
The comic efforts with which he moved his tongue made her
drop her eyes and with difficulty repress the sobs that rose
to her throat. He said something, repeating the same words
several times. She could not understand them, but tried to
guess what he was saying and inquiringly repeated the words
he uttered.
‘Mmm...ar...ate...ate...’ he repeated several times.
It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The
doctor thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: ‘Mary, are you afraid?’ The prince shook his head, again
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repeated the same sounds.
‘My mind, my mind aches?’ questioned Princess Mary.
He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took
her hand, and began pressing it to different parts of his breast
as if trying to find the right place for it.
‘Always thoughts... about you... thoughts...’ he then uttered
much more clearly than he had done before, now that he was
sure of being understood.
Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying
to hide her sobs and tears.
He moved his hand over her hair.
‘I have been calling you all night...’ he brought out.
‘If only I had known...’ she said through her tears. ‘I was
afraid to come in.’
He pressed her hand.
‘Weren’t you asleep?’
‘No, I did not sleep,’ said Princess Mary, shaking her
head.
Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself as he did, as much as possible by signs, and her
tongue too seemed to move with difficulty.
‘Dear one... Dearest...’ Princess Mary could not quite
make out what he had said, but from his look it was clear that
he had uttered a tender caressing word such as he had never
used to her before. ‘Why didn’t you come in?’
‘And I was wishing for his death!’ thought Princess Mary.
He was silent awhile.
‘Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!...
thank you!... forgive!... thank you!...’ and tears began to flow


1345

from his eyes. ‘Call Andrew!’ he said suddenly, and a childish, timid expression of doubt showed itself on his face as he
spoke.
He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least it seemed to Princess Mary.
‘I have a letter from him,’ she replied.
He glanced at her with timid surprise.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s with the army, Father, at Smolensk.’
He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then
as if in answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now
he understood and remembered everything, he nodded his
head and reopened his eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, softly and distinctly. ‘Russia has perished.
They’ve destroyed her.’
And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes.
Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and wept
while she gazed at his face.
Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his
eyes, and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.
Then he again opened his eyes and said something none
of them could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon
understood and repeated it. Princess Mary had sought the
meaning of his words in the mood in which he had just been
speaking. She thought he was speaking of Russia, or Prince
Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, or of his own death, and
so she could not guess his words.
‘Put on your white dress. I like it,’ was what he said.
Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still loud1346

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er, and the doctor taking her arm led her out to the veranda,
soothing her and trying to persuade her to prepare for her
journey. When she had left the room the prince again began
speaking about his son, about the war, and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his hoarse voice,
and then he had a second and final stroke.
Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared,
it was hot and sunny. She could understand nothing, think
of nothing and feel nothing, except passionate love for her
father, love such as she thought she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing into the garden and as far as the
pond, along the avenues of young lime trees Prince Andrew
had planted.
‘Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of
me? What use will peace be when he is no longer here?’ Princess Mary murmured, pacing the garden with hurried steps
and pressing her hands to her bosom which heaved with convulsive sobs.
When she had completed the tour of the garden, which
brought her again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bouriennewho had remained at Bogucharovo and did not wish to
leave itcoming toward her with a stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, who had come personally
to point out to the princess the necessity for her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding him;
she led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down
with him. Then, excusing herself, she went to the door of the
old prince’s room. The doctor came out with an agitated face


1347

and said she could not enter.
‘Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!’
She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at
the foot of the slope by the pond, where no one could see her.
She did not know how long she had been there when she was
aroused by the sound of a woman’s footsteps running along
the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha her maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped suddenly as if in
alarm on seeing her mistress.
‘Please come, Princess... The Prince,’ said Dunyasha in a
breaking voice.
‘Immediately, I’m coming, I’m coming!’ replied the princess hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she
was saying, and trying to avoid seeing the girl she ran toward
the house.
‘Princess, it’s God’s will! You must be prepared for everything,’ said the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.
‘Let me alone; it’s not true!’ she cried angrily to him.
The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and
ran to her father’s door. ‘Why are these people with frightened faces stopping me? I don’t want any of them! And what
are they doing here?’ she thought. She opened the door and
the bright daylight in that previously darkened room startled
her. In the room were her nurse and other women. They all
drew back from the bed, making way for her. He was still lying on the bed as before, but the stern expression of his quiet
face made Princess Mary stop short on the threshold.
‘No, he’s not deadit’s impossible!’ she told herself and approached him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she
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pressed her lips to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force of the tenderness she had been feeling for
him vanished instantly and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before her. ‘No, he is no more! He is not,
but here where he was is something unfamiliar and hostile,
some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent mystery!’ And hiding her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into the arms
of the doctor, who held her up.
In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women
washed what had been the prince, tied his head up with a
handkerchief that the mouth should not stiffen while open,
and with another handkerchief tied together the legs that
were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little body
on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged all this and
when, but it all got done as if of its own accord. Toward night
candles were burning round his coffin, a pall was spread over
it, the floor was strewn with sprays of juniper, a printed band
was tucked in under his shriveled head, and in a corner of the
room sat a chanter reading the psalms.
Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse,
so the inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the
drawing room round the coffinthe Marshal, the village Elder,
peasant womenand all with fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and kissed the old prince’s cold and
stiffened hand.



1349

Chapter IX
Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners
had always been absentees, and its peasants were of quite a
different character from those of Bald Hills. They differed
from them in speech, dress, and disposition. They were
called steppe peasants. The old prince used to approve of
them for their endurance at work when they came to Bald
Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches,
but he disliked them for their boorishness.
Prince Andrew’s last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent
the peasants had to pay, had not softened their disposition
but had on the contrary strengthened in them the traits of
character the old prince called boorishness. Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at one time
a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at
another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then of some proclamation of the Tsar’s and of an
oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with which it
was rumored that freedom had been granted them but the
landowners had stopped it), then of Peter Fedorovich’s return to the throne in seven years’ time, when everything
would be made free and so ‘simple’ that there would be no
restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his invasion were connected in their minds with the same sort of
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vague notions of Antichrist, the end of the world, and ‘pure
freedom.’
In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to the crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent
and could work where they pleased. There were very few
resident landlords in the neighborhood and also very few
domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the peasantry
of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of
the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are so
baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly
noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was a movement among
the peasants to emigrate to some unknown ‘warm rivers.’
Hundreds of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk,
suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in whole
families toward the southeast. As birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and
children streamed to the southeast, to parts where none of
them had ever been. They set off in caravans, bought their
freedom one by one or ran away, and drove or walked toward the ‘warm rivers.’ Many of them were punished, some
sent to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road,
many returned of their own accord, and the movement died
down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent
reason. But such undercurrents still existed among the people and gathered new forces ready to manifest themselves
just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the same time simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone living in
close touch with these people it was apparent that these un

1351

dercurrents were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.
Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old prince’s death, noticed an agitation among the
peasants, and that contrary to what was happening in the
Bald Hills district, where over a radius of forty miles all the
peasants were moving away and leaving their villages to be
devastated by the Cossacks, the peasants in the steppe region
round Bogucharovo were, it was rumored, in touch with the
French, received leaflets from them that passed from hand
to hand, and did not migrate. He learned from domestic
serfs loyal to him that the peasant Karp, who possessed
great influence in the village commune and had recently
been away driving a government transport, had returned
with news that the Cossacks were destroying deserted villages, but that the French did not harm them. Alpatych also
knew that on the previous day another peasant had even
brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied by the French, a proclamation by a French general that
no harm would be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would be paid for anything taken from them.
As proof of this the peasant had brought from Visloukhovo
a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that they were
false) paid to him in advance for hay.
More important still, Alpatych learned that on the
morning of the very day he gave the village Elder orders to
collect carts to move the princess’ luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting at which it had been
decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no time to
waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince’s death, the
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Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary’s leaving at once,
as it was becoming dangerous. He had told her that after
the sixteenth he could not be responsible for what might
happen. On the evening of the day the old prince died the
Marshal went away, promising to return next day for the
funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he received tidings that the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had
barely time to remove his own family and valuables from
his estate.
For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed
by the village Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by
the diminutive ‘Dronushka.’
Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous
peasants who grow big beards as soon as they are of age
and go on unchanged till they are sixty or seventy, without
a gray hair or the loss of a tooth, as straight and strong at
sixty as at thirty.
Soon after the migration to the ‘warm rivers,’ in which
he had taken part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder
and overseer of Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post
irreproachably for twenty-three years. The peasants feared
him more than they did their master. The masters, both the
old prince and the young, and the steward respected him
and jestingly called him ‘the Minister.’ During the whole
time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill, never
after sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the
least fatigue, and though he could not read he had never forgotten a single money account or the number of quarters of
flour in any of the endless cartloads he sold for the prince,


1353

nor a single shock of the whole corn crop on any single acre
of the Bogucharovo fields.
Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate,
sent for his Dron on the day of the prince’s funeral and told
him to have twelve horses got ready for the princess’ carriages and eighteen carts for the things to be removed from
Bogucharovo. Though the peasants paid quitrent, Alpatych
thought no difficulty would be made about complying with
this order, for there were two hundred and thirty households at work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well
to do. But on hearing the order Dron lowered his eyes and
remained silent. Alpatych named certain peasants he knew,
from whom he told him to take the carts.
Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away
carting. Alpatych named others, but they too, according to
Dron, had no horses available: some horses were carting for
the government, others were too weak, and others had died
for want of fodder. It seemed that no horses could be had
even for the carriages, much less for the carting.
Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as
Dron was a model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince’s estates for twenty years in vain. He a
model steward, possessing in the highest degree the faculty
of divining the needs and instincts of those he dealt with.
Having glanced at Dron he at once understood that his answers did not express his personal views but the general
mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which the Elder
had already been carried away. But he also knew that Dron,
who had acquired property and was hated by the commune,
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must be hesitating between the two camps: the masters’ and
the serfs’. He noticed this hesitation in Dron’s look and
therefore frowned and moved closer up to him.
‘Now just listen, Dronushka,’ said he. ‘Don’t talk nonsense to me. His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me
orders to move all the people away and not leave them with
the enemy, and there is an order from the Tsar about it too.
Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar. Do you hear?’
‘I hear,’ Dron answered without lifting his eyes.
Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.
‘Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!’ he said, shaking his
head.
‘The power is in your hands,’ Dron rejoined sadly.
‘Eh, Dron, drop it!’ Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his
hand from his bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor
at Dron’s feet. ‘I can see through you and three yards into
the ground under you,’ he continued, gazing at the floor in
front of Dron.
Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych
and again lowered his eyes.
‘You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready
to leave their homes and go to Moscow and to get carts
ready for tomorrow morning for the princess’ things. And
don’t go to any meeting yourself, do you hear?’
Dron suddenly fell on his knees.
‘Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me
and discharge me, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Stop that!’ cried Alpatych sternly. ‘I see through you and
three yards under you,’ he repeated, knowing that his skill


1355

in beekeeping, his knowledge of the right time to sow the
oats, and the fact that he had been able to retain the old
prince’s favor for twenty years had long since gained him
the reputation of being a wizard, and that the power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute of
wizards.
Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted him.
‘What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are
you thinking of, eh?’
‘What am I to do with the people?’ said Dron. ‘They’re
quite beside themselves; I have already told them..’
‘‘Told them,’ I dare say!’ said Alpatych. ‘Are they drinking?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they’ve
fetched another barrel.’
‘Well, then, listen! I’ll go to the police officer, and you tell
them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be
got ready.’
‘I understand.’
Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long time and knew that the chief way to make
them obey is to show no suspicion that they can possibly
disobey. Having wrung a submissive ‘I understand’ from
Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he not
only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of
troops the carts would not be forthcoming.
And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been
provided. In the village, outside the drink shop, anoth1356

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er meeting was being held, which decided that the horses
should be driven out into the woods and the carts should
not be provided. Without saying anything of this to the
princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of
the carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had those
horses got ready for the princess’ carriages. Meanwhile he
went himself to the police authorities.



1357

Chapter X
After her father’s funeral Princess Mary shut herself up
in her room and did not admit anyone. A maid came to the
door to say that Alpatych was asking for orders about their
departure. (This was before his talk with Dron.) Princess
Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she had been lying
and replied through the closed door that she did not mean
to go away and begged to be left in peace.
The windows of the room in which she was lying looked
westward. She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons of the leather cushion and seeing nothing
but that cushion, and her confused thoughts were centered
on one subjectthe irrevocability of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not suspected, but which had
shown itself during her father’s illness. She wished to pray
but did not dare to, dared not in her present state of mind
address herself to God. She lay for a long time in that position.
The sun had reached the other side of the house, and
its slanting rays shone into the open window, lighting up
the room and part of the morocco cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of her thoughts suddenly
stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed her hair, got
up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the
freshness of the clear but windy evening.
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‘Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and
no one will hinder you,’ she said to herself, and sinking into
a chair she let her head fall on the window sill.
Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from
the garden and kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black dress and weepers. She softly
approached Princess Mary, sighed, kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess looked up at her. All their
former disharmony and her own jealousy recurred to her
mind. But she remembered too how he had changed of late
toward Mademoiselle Bourienne and could not bear to see
her, thereby showing how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had mentally addressed to her. ‘Besides, is it for
me, for me who desired his death, to condemn anyone?’ she
thought.
Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of
Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a
distance, but who yet was dependent on her and living in
her house. She felt sorry for her and held out her hand with
a glance of gentle inquiry. Mademoiselle Bourienne at once
began crying again and kissed that hand, speaking of the
princess’ sorrow and making herself a partner in it. She said
her only consolation was the fact that the princess allowed
her to share her sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings
should sink into nothing but this great grief; that she felt
herself blameless in regard to everyone, and that he, from
above, saw her affection and gratitude. The princess heard
her, not heeding her words but occasionally looking up at
her and listening to the sound of her voice.


1359

‘Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne after a pause. ‘I understand that you
could not, and cannot, think of yourself, but with my love
for you I must do so.... Has Alpatych been to you? Has he
spoken to you of going away?’ she asked.
Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand
who was to go or where to. ‘Is it possible to plan or think of
anything now? Is it not all the same?’ she thought, and did
not reply.
‘You know, chere Marie,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne,
‘that we are in dangerare surrounded by the French. It
would be dangerous to move now. If we go we are almost
sure to be taken prisoners, and God knows..’
Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she was talking about.
‘Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me
now,’ she said. ‘Of course I would on no account wish to
go away from him.... Alpatych did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do nothing, nothing, and don’t
want to...’
‘I’ve spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to
get away tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to
stay here,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne. ‘Because, you will
agree, chere Marie, to fall into the hands of the soldiers or
of riotous peasants would be terrible.’
Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General
Rameau’s, telling people not to leave their homes and that
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tion. She handed this to the princess.
‘I think it would be best to appeal to that general,’ she
continued, ‘and and am sure that all due respect would be
shown you.’
Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to
quiver with stifled sobs.
‘From whom did you get this?’ she asked.
‘They probably recognized that I am French, by my
name,’ replied Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.
Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the
window and with a pale face went out of the room and into
what had been Prince Andrew’s study.
‘Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody
to me!’ she said, ‘and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to
come to me,’ she added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
voice. ‘We must go at once, at once!’ she said, appalled at the
thought of being left in the hands of the French.
‘If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the
French! That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski,
asked General Rameau for protection and accepted his favor!’ This idea horrified her, made her shudder, blush, and
feel such a rush of anger and pride as she had never experienced before. All that was distressing, and especially all
that was humiliating, in her position rose vividly to her
mind. ‘They, the French, would settle in this house: M. le
General Rameau would occupy Prince Andrew’s study and
amuse himself by looking through and reading his letters
and papers. Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honors
of Bogucharovo for him. I should be given a small room as a


1361

favor, the soldiers would violate my father’s newly dug grave
to steal his crosses and stars, they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to sympathize
with my sorrow...’ thought Princess Mary, not thinking her
own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and
her brother. For herself she did not care where she remained
or what happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily
she thought their thoughts and felt their feelings. What they
would have said and what they would have done she felt
bound to say and do. She went into Prince Andrew’s study,
trying to enter completely into his ideas, and considered her
position.
The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her father’s death, all at once rose before her with a
new, previously unknown force and took possession of her.
Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now
for Michael Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the other maids could not say in
how far Mademoiselle Bourienne’s statement was correct.
Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the police. Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being
sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With just the same smile of agreement with which
for fifteen years he had been accustomed to answer the old
prince without expressing views of his own, he now replied
to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite could be got from
his answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken, emaciated face that bore the stamp of inconsolable grief, replied:
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‘Yes, Princess’ to all Princess Mary’s questions and hardly
refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.
At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and
with a deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the
doorpost.
Princess Mary walked up and down the room and
stopped in front of him.
‘Dronushka,’ she said, regarding as a sure friend this
Dronushka who always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to the fair at Vyazma every year and
smilingly offer it to her, ‘Dronushka, now since our misfortune...’ she began, but could not go on.
‘We are all in God’s hands,’ said he, with a sigh.
They were silent for a while.
‘Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I
have no one to turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can’t
even go away?’
‘Why shouldn’t you go away, your excellency? You can
go,’ said Dron.
‘I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy.
Dear friend, I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have
nobody! I want to go away tonight or early tomorrow morning.’
Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and
said: ‘There are no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so.’
‘Why are there none?’ asked the princess.
‘It’s all God’s scourge,’ said Dron. ‘What horses we had
have been taken for the army or have diedthis is such a year!
It’s not a case of feeding horseswe may die of hunger our

1363

selves! As it is, some go three days without eating. We’ve
nothing, we’ve been ruined.’
Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.
‘The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?’ she
asked.
‘They’re dying of hunger,’ said Dron. ‘It’s not a case of
carting.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me, Dronushka? Isn’t it possible
to help them? I’ll do all I can...’
To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment
when such sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich
people and poor, and the rich could refrain from helping
the poor. She had heard vaguely that there was such a thing
as ‘landlord’s corn’ which was sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father nor her brother
would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only feared
to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of
the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget
her own grief. She began asking Dron about the peasants’
needs and what there was in Bogucharovo that belonged to
the landlord.
‘But we have grain belonging to my brother?’ she said.
‘The landlord’s grain is all safe,’ replied Dron proudly.
‘Our prince did not order it to be sold.’
‘Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give
you leave in my brother’s name,’ said she.
Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.
‘Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute
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it all. I give this order in my brother’s name; and tell them
that what is ours is theirs. We do not grudge them anything.
Tell them so.’
‘ Dron looked intently at the princess while she was
speaking.
‘Discharge me, little mother, for God’s sake! Order the
keys to be taken from me,’ said he. ‘I have served twentythree years and have done no wrong. Discharge me, for
God’s sake!’
Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her
or why he was asking to be discharged. She replied that she
had never doubted his devotion and that she was ready to do
anything for him and for the peasants.



1365

Chapter XI
An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that
Dron had come, and all the peasants had assembled at the
barn by the princess’ order and wished to have word with
their mistress.
‘But I never told them to come,’ said Princess Mary. ‘I
only told Dron to let them have the grain.’
‘Only, for God’s sake, Princess dear, have them sent away
and don’t go out to them. It’s all a trick,’ said Dunyasha, ‘and
when Yakov Alpatych returns let us get away... and please
don’t..’
‘What is a trick?’ asked Princess Mary in surprise.
‘I know it is, only listen to me for God’s sake! Ask nurse
too. They say they don’t agree to leave Bogucharovo as you
ordered.’
‘You’re making some mistake. I never ordered them to go
away,’ said Princess Mary. ‘Call Dronushka.’
Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha’s words; the peasants had come by the princess’ order.
‘But I never sent for them,’ declared the princess. ‘You
must have given my message wrong. I only said that you
were to give them the grain.’
Dron only sighed in reply.
‘If you order it they will go away,’ said he.
‘No, no. I’ll go out to them,’ said Princess Mary, and in
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spite of the nurse’s and Dunyasha’s protests she went out
into the porch; Dron, Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael
Ivanovich following her.
‘They probably think I am offering them the grain to
bribe them to remain here, while I myself go away leaving
them to the mercy of the French,’ thought Princess Mary. ‘I
will offer them monthly rations and housing at our Moscow
estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in my place,’
she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the crowd
standing on the pasture by the barn.
The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly
took off their hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt, came close up to them. So many different
eyes, old and young, were fixed on her, and there were so
many different faces, that she could not distinguish any of
them and, feeling that she must speak to them all at once,
did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she
boldly began her speech.
‘I am very glad you have come,’ she said without raising
her eyes, and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. ‘Dronushka tells me that the war has ruined you. That is
our common misfortune, and I shall grudge nothing to help
you. I am myself going away because it is dangerous here...
the enemy is near... because... I am giving you everything,
my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all our grain,
so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been told
that I am giving you the grain to keep you herethat is not
true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belong

1367

ings to our estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see
to it that there you shall want for nothing. You shall be given
food and lodging.’
The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard
in the crowd.
‘I am not doing this on my own account,’ she continued, ‘I
do it in the name of my dead father, who was a good master
to you, and of my brother and his son.’
Again she paused. No one broke the silence.
‘Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that is mine is yours,’ she concluded, scanning
the faces before her.
All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She could not fathom whether it was curiosity,
devotion, gratitude, or apprehension and distrustbut the expression on all the faces was identical.
‘We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won’t do
for us to take the landlord’s grain,’ said a voice at the back of
the crowd.
‘But why not?’ asked the princess.
No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the
crowd, found that every eye she met now was immediately
dropped.
‘But why don’t you want to take it?’ she asked again.
No one answered.
The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to
catch someone’s eye.
‘Why don’t you speak?’ she inquired of a very old man
who stood just in front of her leaning on his stick. ‘If you
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think something more is wanted, tell me! I will do anything,’
said she, catching his eye.
But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and
muttered:
‘Why should we agree? We don’t want the grain.’
‘Why should we give up everything? We don’t agree. Don’t
agree.... We are sorry for you, but we’re not willing. Go away
yourself, alone...’ came from various sides of the crowd.
And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical
expression, though now it was certainly not an expression of
curiosity or gratitude, but of angry resolve.
‘But you can’t have understood me,’ said Princess Mary
with a sad smile. ‘Why don’t you want to go? I promise to
house and feed you, while here the enemy would ruin you..’
But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.
‘We’re not willing. Let them ruin us! We won’t take your
grain. We don’t agree.’
Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone’s eye, but
not a single eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently
they were all trying to avoid her look. She felt strange and
awkward.
‘Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down
your houses and go into bondage! I dare say! ‘I’ll give you
grain, indeed!’ she says,’ voices in the crowd were heard saying.
With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and
went back to the house. Having repeated her order to Dron to
have horses ready for her departure next morning, she went
to her room and remained alone with her own thoughts.


1369

Chapter XII
For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open
window of her room hearing the sound of the peasants’
voices that reached her from the village, but it was not of
them she was thinking. She felt that she could not understand them however much she might think about them. She
thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after the break
caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to
the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.
After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm
and fresh. Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a
cock crowed, the full moon began to show from behind the
lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.
Pictures of the near pasther father’s illness and last momentsrose one after another to her memory. With mournful
pleasure she now lingered over these images, repelling with
horror only the last one, the picture of his death, which she
felt she could not contemplate even in imagination at this
still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they
seemed now present, now past, and now future.
She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first
stroke and was being dragged along by his armpits through
the garden at Bald Hills, muttering something with his
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helpless tongue, twitching his gray eyebrows and looking
uneasily and timidly at her.
‘Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day
he died,’ she thought. ‘He had always thought what he said
then.’ And she recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills
before he had the last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against his will. She had
not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going to
the door of the conservatory where he slept that night had
listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was
saying something to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its
warm nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted
to talk. ‘And why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he let me be
there instead of Tikhon?’ Princess Mary had thought and
thought again now. ‘Now he will never tell anyone what he
had in his soul. Never will that moment return for him or
for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and
not Tikhon but I might have heard and understood him.
Why didn’t I enter the room?’ she thought. ‘Perhaps he
would then have said to me what he said the day he died.
While talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door.
It was sad and painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did
not understand him. I remember how he began speaking to
him about Lise as if she were alivehe had forgotten she was
deadand Tikhon reminded him that she was no more, and
he shouted, ‘Fool!’ He was greatly depressed. From behind
the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and
loudly exclaimed, ‘My God!’ Why didn’t I go in then? What


1371

could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have been comforted and would have
said that word to me.’ And Princess Mary uttered aloud the
caressing word he had said to her on the day of his death.
‘Dear-est!’ she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears that
relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not
the face she had known ever since she could remember and
had always seen at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she
had seen for the first time quite closely, with all its wrinkles
and details, when she stooped near to his mouth to catch
what he said.
‘Dear-est!’ she repeated again.
‘What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What
is he thinking now?’ This question suddenly presented itself
to her, and in answer she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as he lay in his coffin with his
chin bound up with a white handkerchief. And the horror
that had seized her when she touched him and convinced
herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and
horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something
else and to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes
she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead face, and she felt that the silence
brooding over the house and within it held her fast.
‘Dunyasha,’ she whispered. ‘Dunyasha!’ she screamed
wildly, and tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the
servants’ quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running toward her.
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Chapter XIII
On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity
and by an hussar orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten
miles from Bogucharovo, and went for a rideto try a new
horse Ilyin had bought and to find out whether there was
any hay to be had in the villages.
For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between
the two hostile armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian
rearguard to get to it as for the French vanguard; Rostov, as
a careful squadron commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo before the French could
get them.
Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the
way to Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house
and farm where they hoped to find many domestic serfs
and pretty girls, they questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one another to try
Ilyin’s horse.
Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was
the property of that very Bolkonski who had been engaged
to his sister.
Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race
along the incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin, was the first to gallop into the village


1373

street.
‘You’re first!’ cried Ilyin, flushed.
‘Yes, always first both on the grassland and here,’ answered Rostov, stroking his heated Donets horse.
‘And I’d have won on my Frenchy, your excellency,’ said
Lavrushka from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse,
‘only I didn’t wish to mortify you.
They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd
of peasants was standing.
Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the
new arrivals without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled faces and scanty beards emerged from
the tavern, smiling, staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the officers.
‘Fine fellows!’ said Rostov laughing. ‘Is there any hay
here?’
‘And how like one another,’ said Ilyin.
‘A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!’ sang one of the peasants with a blissful smile.
One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to
Rostov.
‘Who do you belong to?’ he asked.
‘The French,’ replied Ilyin jestingly, ‘and here is Napoleon himself’and he pointed to Lavrushka.
‘Then you are Russians?’ the peasant asked again.
‘And is there a large force of you here?’ said another, a
short man, coming up.
‘Very large,’ answered Rostov. ‘But why have you collected here?’ he added. ‘Is it a holiday?’
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‘The old men have met to talk over the business of the
commune,’ replied the peasant, moving away.
At that moment, on the road leading from the big house,
two women and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.
‘The one in pink is mine, so keep off!’ said Ilyin on seeing
Dunyasha running resolutely toward him.
‘She’ll be ours!’ said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.
‘What do you want, my pretty?’ said Ilyin with a smile.
‘The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your
name.’
‘This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am
your humble servant.’
‘Co-o-om-pa-ny!’ roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following
Dunyasha, Alpatych advanced to Rostov, having bared his
head while still at a distance.
‘May I make bold to trouble your honor?’ said he respectfully, but with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of
this officer and with a hand thrust into his bosom. ‘My
mistress, daughter of General in Chief Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of these
people’he pointed to the peasants‘asks you to come up to
the house.... Won’t you, please, ride on a little farther,’ said
Alpatych with a melancholy smile, ‘as it is not convenient in
the presence of...?’ He pointed to the two peasants who kept
as close to him as horseflies to a horse.
‘Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive


1375

us for Christ’s sake, eh?’ said the peasants, smiling joyfully
at him.
Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.
‘Or perhaps they amuse your honor?’ remarked Alpatych
with a staid air, as he pointed at the old men with his free
hand.
‘No, there’s not much to be amused at here,’ said Rostov,
and rode on a little way. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here don’t wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and
threaten to unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up since morning, her excellency
cannot get away.’
‘Impossible!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘I have the honor to report to you the actual truth,’ said
Alpatych.
Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and
followed Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the
state of affairs. It appeared that the princess’ offer of corn to
the peasants the previous day, and her talk with Dron and
at the meeting, had actually had so bad an effect that Dron
had finally given up the keys and joined the peasants and
had not appeared when Alpatych sent for him; and that in
the morning when the princess gave orders to harness for
her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the
barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the
village: that there was an order not to move, and that they
would unharness the horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was chiefly Karp who did the
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talking, Dron not showing himself in the crowd) that they
could not let the princess go, that there was an order to the
contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her as before and obey her in everything.
At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping
along the road, Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of
Alpatych, her nurse, and the maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the cavalrymen were
espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
away, and the women in the house began to wail.
‘Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!’ exclaimed deeply
moved voices as Rostov passed through the anteroom.
Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the
large sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She could
not grasp who he was and why he had come, or what was
happening to her. When she saw his Russian face, and by
his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a
man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered and
trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck
Rostov as a romantic event. ‘A helpless girl overwhelmed
with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And
what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and expression!’ thought he
as he looked at her and listened to her timid story.
When she began to tell him that all this had happened
the day after her father’s funeral, her voiced trembled. She
turned away, and then, as if fearing he might take her words
as meant to move him to pity, looked at him with an ap

1377

prehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostov’s
eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at
him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of
her face to be forgotten.
‘I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here and am able to show my readiness to
serve you,’ said Rostov, rising. ‘Go when you please, and I
give you my word of honor that no one shall dare to cause
you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort.’ And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood,
he moved toward the door.
Rostov’s deferential tone seemed to indicate that though
he would consider himself happy to be acquainted with her,
he did not wish to take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.
Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.
‘I am very, very grateful to you,’ she said in French, ‘but
I hope it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to
blame for it.’ She suddenly began to cry.
‘Excuse me!’ she said.
Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another
low bow.

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Chapter XIV
Well, is she pretty? Ah, friendmy pink one is delicious; her
name is Dunyasha...’
But on glancing at Rostov’s face Ilyin stopped short. He
saw that his hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought.
Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying
strode off with rapid steps to the village.
‘I’ll show them; I’ll give it to them, the brigands!’ said he
to himself.
Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run,
kept up with him with difficulty.
‘What decision have you been pleased to come to?’ said
he.
Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and
sternly turned on Alpatych.
‘Decision? What decision? Old dotard!...’ cried he. ‘What
have you been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you
can’t manage them? You’re a traitor youself! I know you. I’ll
flay you all alive!...’ And as if afraid of wasting his store of
anger, he left Alpatych and went rapidly forward. Alpatych,
mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with Rostov at a
gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said the
peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it
would be imprudent to ‘overresist’ them without an armed


1379

force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?
‘I’ll give them armed force... I’ll ‘overresist’ them!’ uttered Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational
animal fury and the need to vent it.
Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the
nearer he drew to it the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results. The peasants in
the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw Rostov’s
rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.
After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had
gone to see the princess, a certain confusion and dissension
had arisen among the crowd. Some of the peasants said that
these new arrivals were Russians and might take it amiss
that the mistress was being detained. Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and others attacked
their ex-Elder.
‘How many years have you been fattening on the commune?’ Karp shouted at him. ‘It’s all one to you! You’ll dig
up your pot of money and take it away with you.... What does
it matter to you whether our homes are ruined or not?’
‘We’ve been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave
their homes or take away a single grain, and that’s all about
it!’ cried another.
‘It was your son’s turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You
begrudged your lump of a son,’ a little old man suddenly began attacking Dron‘and so they took my Vanka to be shaved
for a soldier! But we all have to die.’
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‘To be sure, we all have to die. I’m not against the commune,’ said Dron.
‘That’s itnot against it! You’ve filled your belly...’
The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov,
followed by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the
crowd, Karp, thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling
a little, walked to the front. Dron on the contrary retired to
the rear and the crowd drew closer together.
‘Who is your Elder here? Hey?’ shouted Rostov, coming
up to the crowd with quick steps.
‘The Elder? What do you want with him?...’ asked Karp.
But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap
flew off and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.
‘Caps off, traitors!’ shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice.
‘Where’s the Elder?’ he cried furiously.
‘The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych,
you!’ meek and flustered voices here and there were heard
calling and caps began to come off their heads.
‘We don’t riot, we’re following the orders,’ declared Karp,
and at that moment several voices began speaking together.
‘It’s as the old men have decidedthere’s too many of you
giving orders.’
‘Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!’ cried Rostov
unmeaningly in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the
collar. ‘Bind him, bind him!’ he shouted, though there was
no one to bind him but Lavrushka and Alpatych.
Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by
the arms from behind.


1381

‘Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?’ he called
out.
Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them
by name to come and bind Karp. The men obediently came
out of the crowd and began taking off their belts.
‘Where’s the Elder?’ demanded Rostov in a loud voice.
With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the
crowd.
‘Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!’ shouted Rostov, as if that order, too, could not possibly meet with any
opposition.
And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron,
who took off his own belt and handed it to them, as if to
aid them.
‘And you all listen to me!’ said Rostov to the peasants. ‘Be
off to your houses at once, and don’t let one of your voices
be heard!’
‘Why, we’ve not done any harm! We did it just out of
foolishness. It’s all nonsense... I said then that it was not in
order,’ voices were heard bickering with one another.
‘There! What did I say?’ said Alpatych, coming into his
own again. ‘It’s wrong, lads!’
‘All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych,’ came the answers,
and the crowd began at once to disperse through the village.
The two bound men were led off to the master’s house.
The two drunken peasants followed them.
‘Aye, when I look at you!...’ said one of them to Karp.
‘How can one talk to the masters like that? What were
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you thinking of, you fool?’ added the other‘A real fool!’
Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard
of the Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the proprietor’s goods and packing them on the
carts, and Dron, liberated at Princess Mary’s wish from the
cupboard where he had been confined, was standing in the
yard directing the men.
‘Don’t put it in so carelessly,’ said one of the peasants,
a man with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a
housemaid. ‘You know it has cost money! How can you
chuck it in like that or shove it under the cord where it’ll
get rubbed? I don’t like that way of doing things. Let it all be
done properly, according to rule. Look here, put it under the
bast matting and cover it with haythat’s the way!’
‘Eh, books, books!’ said another peasant, bringing out
Prince Andrew’s library cupboards. ‘Don’t catch up against
it! It’s heavy, ladssolid books.’
‘Yes, they worked all day and didn’t play!’ remarked the
tall, round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the dictionaries that were on the top.
Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov
did not go back to the house but remained in the village
awaiting her departure. When her carriage drove out of the
house, he mounted and accompanied her eight miles from
Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our troops.
At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for
the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.
‘How can you speak so!’ he blushingly replied to Princess Mary’s expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as


1383

she termed what had occurred. ‘Any police officer would
have done as much! If we had had only peasants to fight,
we should not have let the enemy come so far,’ said he with
a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. ‘I am
only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and
consolation and hope to meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don’t want to make me blush, please don’t
thank me!’
But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words,
thanked him with the whole expression of her face, radiant
with gratitude and tenderness. She could not believe that
there was nothing to thank him for. On the contrary, it
seemed to her certain that had he not been there she would
have perished at the hands of the mutineers and of the
French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and obvious danger to save her, and even more certain was it that
he was a man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand
her position and her sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the
tears rising in them when she herself had begun to cry as
she spoke of her loss, did leave her memory.
When she had taken leave of him and remained alone
she suddenly felt her eyes filling with tears, and then not for
the first time the strange question presented itself to her:
did she love him?
On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess’
position was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with
her in the carriage, more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window and smiled at something
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with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.
‘Well, supposing I do love him?’ thought Princess Mary.
Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that
she had fallen in love with a man who would perhaps never
love her, she comforted herself with the thought that no one
would ever know it and that she would not be to blame if,
without ever speaking of it to anyone, she continued to the
end of her life to love the man with whom she had fallen in
love for the first and last time in her life.
Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy,
and his words, happiness did not appear impossible to her.
It was at those moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling
as she looked out of the carriage window.
‘Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and
at that very moment?’ thought Princess Mary. ‘And that
caused his sister to refuse my brother?’ And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of Providence.
The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very
agreeable one. To remember her gave him pleasure, and
when his comrades, hearing of his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay and having
picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he grew
angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive to him
and had an enormous fortune, had against his will more
than once entered his head. For himself personally Nicholas
could not wish for a better wife: by marrying her he would
make the countess his mother happy, would be able to put
his father’s affairs in order, and would evenhe felt itensure


1385

Princess Mary’s happiness.
But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov
grew angry when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.

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Chapter XV
On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrew and sent an order for him to report at
headquarters.
Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the
very day and at the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing
the troops for the first time. He stopped in the village at the
priest’s house in front of which stood the commander in
chief’s carriage, and he sat down on the bench at the gate
awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came now sounds
of regimental music and now the roar of many voices shouting ‘Hurrah!’ to the new commander in chief. Two orderlies,
a courier and a major-domo, stood near by, some ten paces
from Prince Andrew, availing themselves of Kutuzov’s absence and of the fine weather. A short, swarthy lieutenant
colonel of hussars with thick mustaches and whiskers rode
up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrew, inquired
whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and
whether he would soon be back.
Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene
Highness’ staff but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned to a smart orderly, who, with the peculiar
contempt with which a commander in chief’s orderly speaks
to officers, replied:


1387

‘What? His Serene Highness? I expect he’ll be here soon.
What do you want?’
The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the orderly’s tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a
dispatch runner, and approached Bolkonski with a slight
bow. Bolkonski made room for him on the bench and the
lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.
‘You’re also waiting for the commander in chief?’ said
he. ‘They say he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It’s awful
with those sausage eaters! Ermolov had weason to ask to be
pwomoted to be a German! Now p’waps Wussians will get a
look in. As it was, devil only knows what was happening. We
kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in the
campaign?’ he asked.
‘I had the pleasure,’ replied Prince Andrew, ‘not only of
taking part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I
held dearnot to mention the estate and home of my birthmy
father, who died of grief. I belong to the province of Smolensk.’
‘Ah? You’re Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your
acquaintance! I’m Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known
as ‘Vaska,’’ said Denisov, pressing Prince Andrew’s hand and
looking into his face with a particularly kindly attention.
‘Yes, I heard,’ said he sympathetically, and after a short pause
added: ‘Yes, it’s Scythian warfare. It’s all vewy wellonly not
for those who get it in the neck. So you are Pwince Andwew
Bolkonski?’ He swayed his head. ‘Vewy pleased, Pwince, to
make your acquaintance!’ he repeated again, smiling sadly,
and he again pressed Prince Andrew’s hand.
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Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had
told him of her first suitor. This memory carried him sadly
and sweetly back to those painful feelings of which he had
not thought lately, but which still found place in his soul.
Of late he had received so many new and very serious impressionssuch as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit to Bald
Hills, and the recent news of his father’s deathand had experienced so many emotions, that for a long time past those
memories had not entered his mind, and now that they did,
they did not act on him with nearly their former strength.
For Denisov, too, the memories awakened by the name of
Bolkonski belonged to a distant, romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha’s singing he had proposed to
a little girl of fifteen without realizing what he was doing.
He smiled at the recollection of that time and of his love for
Natasha, and passed at once to what now interested him
passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign
he had devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now
wished to propose it to Kutuzov. The plan was based on the
fact that the French line of operation was to extended, and
it proposed that instead of, or concurrently with, action on
the front to bar the advance of the French, we should attack
their line of communication. He began explaining his plan
to Prince Andrew.
‘They can’t hold all that line. It’s impossible. I will undertake to bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men
and I will bweak the line, that’s certain! There’s only one
wayguewilla warfare!’


1389

Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his
plan to Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts
were heard from the army, growing more incoherent and
more diffused, mingling with music and songs and coming
from the field where the review was held. Sounds of hoofs
and shouts were nearing the village.
‘He’s coming! He’s coming!’ shouted a Cossack standing
at the gate.
Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a
knot of soldiers (a guard of honor) was standing, and they
saw Kutuzov coming down the street mounted on a rather
small sorrel horse. A huge suite of generals rode behind him.
Barclay was riding almost beside him, and a crowd of officers
ran after and around them shouting, ‘Hurrah!’
His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov
was impatiently urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly
under his weight, and he raised his hand to his white Horse
Guard’s cap with a red band and no peak, nodding his head
continually. When he came up to the guard of honor, a fine
set of Grenadiers mostly wearing decorations, who were giving him the salute, he looked at them silently and attentively
for nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a commander and
then turned to the crowd of generals and officers surrounding him. Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he
shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity.
‘And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well,
good-by, General,’ he added, and rode into the yard past
Prince Andrew and Denisov.
‘Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!’ shouted those behind him.
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Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had
grown still more corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached
eyeball, the scar, and the familiar weariness of his expression
were still the same. He was wearing the white Horse Guard’s
cap and a military overcoat with a whip hanging over his
shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and swayed limply
on his brisk little horse.
‘Whew... whew... whew!’ he whistled just audibly as he
rode into the yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed
strain felt by a man who means to rest after a ceremony. He
drew his left foot out of the stirrup and, lurching with his
whole body and puckering his face with the effort, raised it
with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned on his knee, groaned,
and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks and adjutants who stood ready to assist him.
He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up
his eyes, glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved with his waddling gait to the porch.
‘Whew... whew... whew!’ he whistled, and again glanced at
Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old men, it was only
after some seconds that the impression produced by Prince
Andrew’s face linked itself up with Kutuzov’s remembrance
of his personality.
‘Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my
dear boy? Come along...’ said he, glancing wearily round, and
he stepped onto the porch which creaked under his weight.
He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the
porch.
‘And how’s your father?’


1391

‘I received news of his death, yesterday,’ replied Prince
Andrew abruptly.
Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay
and then took off his cap and crossed himself:
‘May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God’s will be done
to us all!’ He sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was
silent for a while. ‘I loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my heart.’
He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat
breast, and for some time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw that Kutuzov’s flabby lips
were trembling and that tears were in his eyes. He sighed and
pressed on the bench with both hands to raise himself.
‘Come! Come with me, we’ll have a talk,’ said he.
But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his
superiors than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the
steps of the porch, despite the angry whispers of the adjutants
who tried to stop him. Kutuzov, his hands still pressed on the
seat, glanced at him glumly. Denisov, having given his name,
announced that he had to communicate to his Serene Highness a matter of great importance for their country’s welfare.
Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his hands with a
gesture of annoyance, folded them across his stomach, repeating the words: ‘For our country’s welfare? Well, what is
it? Speak!’ Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see
the color rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face) and
boldly began to expound his plan of cutting the enemy’s lines
of communication between Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov
came from those parts and knew the country well. His plan
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seemed decidedly a good one, especially from the strength
of conviction with which he spoke. Kutuzov looked down at
his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from
it. And from that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general
with a portfolio under his arm really did appear.
‘What?’ said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov’s explanations, ‘are you ready so soon?’
‘Ready, your Serene Highness,’ replied the general.
Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: ‘How is one
man to deal with it all?’ and again listened to Denisov.
‘I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer,’ said Denisov, ‘that I can bweak Napoleon’s line of communication!’
‘What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich Denisov?’ asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.
‘He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness.’
‘Ah, we were friends,’ said Kutuzov cheerfully. ‘All right,
all right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we’ll
have a talk.’
With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his
hand for the papers Konovnitsyn had brought him.
‘Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?’
said the general on duty in a discontented voice, ‘the plans
must be examined and several papers have to be signed.’
An adjutant came out and announced that everything
was in readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish
to enter that room till he was disengaged. He made a grimace...
‘No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear


1393

boy. I’ll look at them here,’ said he. ‘Don’t go away,’ he added,
turning to Prince Andrew, who remained in the porch and
listened to the general’s report.
While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the
whisper of a woman’s voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door. Several times on glancing that way he noticed
behind that door a plump, rosy, handsome woman in a pink
dress with a lilac silk kerchief on her head, holding a dish
and evidently awaiting the entrance of the commander in
chief. Kutiizov’s adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew that
this was the wife of the priest whose home it was, and that
she intended to offer his Serene Highness bread and salt.
‘Her husband has welcomed his Serene Highness with the
cross at the church, and she intends to welcome him in the
house.... She’s very pretty,’ added the adjutant with a smile. At
those words Kutuzov looked round. He was listening to the
general’s reportwhich consisted chiefly of a criticism of the
position at Tsarevo-Zaymishcheas he had listened to Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the discussion
at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only
because he had ears which, though there was a piece of tow
in one of them, could not help hearing; but it was evident
that nothing the general could say would surprise or even
interest him, that he knew all that would be said beforehand,
and heard it all only because he had to, as one has to listen
to the chanting of a service of prayer. All that Denisov had
said was clever and to the point. What the general was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was evident
that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew
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of something else that would decide the mattersomething
independent of clever. ness and knowledge. Prince Andrew
watched the commander in chief’s face attentively, and the
only expression he could see there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the feminine whispering behind
the door, and a desire to observe propriety. It was evident
that Kutuzov despised cleverness and learning and even the
patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised them not
because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledgehe did not
try to display any of thesebut because of something else. He
despised them because of his old age and experience of life.
The only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during
that report referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the
end of the report the general put before him for signature a
paper relating to the recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by the soldiers, when
landowners lodged petitions for compensation.
After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and shook his head.
‘Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all,
my dear fellow,’ said he, ‘into the fire with all such things! Let
them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts’ content. I
don’t order it or allow it, but I don’t exact compensation either. One can’t get on without it. ‘When wood is chopped the
chips will fly.’’ He looked at the paper again. ‘Oh, this German precision!’ he muttered, shaking his head.



1395

Chapter XVI
‘Well, that’s all!’ said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the
documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds
in his fat white neck he moved toward the door with a more
cheerful expression.
The priest’s wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish
she had after all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had so long been preparing for it, and
with a low bow offered it to Kutuzov.
He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his
hand, and said:
‘Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!’
He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and
put them on the dish for her. ‘Well, my dear, and how are
we getting on?’ he asked, moving to the door of the room
assigned to him. The priest’s wife smiled, and with dimples
in her rosy cheeks followed him into the room. The adjutant
came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to lunch
with him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again
called to Kutuzov. He found him reclining in an armchair,
still in the same unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand
a French book which he closed as Prince Andrew entered,
marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the
cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de
Genlis.
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War and Peace

‘Well, sit down, sit down here. Let’s have a talk,’ said Kutuzov. ‘It’s sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that
I am a father to you, a second father...’
Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father’s
death, and what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed
through it.
‘What... what they have brought us to!’ Kutuzov suddenly cried in an agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to
himself from Prince Andrew’s story the condition Russia
was in. ‘But give me time, give me time!’ he said with a grim
look, evidently not wishing to continue this agitating conversation, and added: ‘I sent for you to keep you with me.’
‘I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am longer fit
for the staff,’ replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.
Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.
‘But above all,’ added Prince Andrew, ‘I have grown used
to my regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men
also like me. I should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being with you, believe me..’
A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up
Kutuzov’s podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short.
‘I am sorry, for I need you. But you’re right, you’re right!
It’s not here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men are not. The regiments would not be what
they are if the would-be advisers served there as you do. I
remember you at Austerlitz.... I remember, yes, I remember
you with the standard!’ said Kutuzov, and a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew’s face at this recollection.


1397

Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov
offered his cheek to be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man’s eyes. Though Prince Andrew
knew that Kutuzov’s tears came easily, and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a wish to
show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz
was both pleasant and flattering to him.
‘Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is
the path of honor!’ He paused. ‘I missed you at Bucharest,
but I needed someone to send.’ And changing the subject,
Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish war and the peace
that had been concluded. ‘Yes, I have been much blamed,’ he
said, ‘both for that war and the peace... but everything came
at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre.*
And there were as many advisers there as here...’ he went on,
returning to the subject of ‘advisers’ which evidently occupied him. ‘Ah, those advisers!’ said he. ‘If we had listened to
them all we should not have made peace with Turkey and
should not have been through with that war. Everything
in haste, but more haste, less speed. Kamenski would have
been lost if he had not died. He stormed fortresses with
thirty thousand men. It is not difficult to capture a fortress
but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming and
attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski sent
soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things
and took more fortresses than Kamenski and made the but
eat horseflesh!’ He swayed his head. ‘And the French shall
too, believe me,’ he went on, growing warmer and beating
his chest, ‘I’ll make them eat horseflesh!’ And tears again
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dimmed his eyes.
*”Everything comes in time to him who knows how to
wait.’
‘But shan’t we have to accept battle?’ remarked Prince
Andrew.
‘We shall if everybody wants it; it can’t be helped.... But
believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than
those two: patience and time, they will do it all. But the advisers n’entendent pas de cette oreille, voila le mal.* Some
want a thingothers don’t. What’s one to do?’ he asked, evidently expecting an answer. ‘Well, what do you want us to
do?’ he repeated and his eye shone with a deep, shrewd look.
‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ he continued, as Prince Andrew
still did not reply: ‘I will tell you what to do, and what I do.
Dans le doute, mon cher,’ he paused, ‘abstiens-toi”*[2]he articulated the French proverb deliberately.
*”Don’t see it that way, that’s the trouble.’
*[2] ‘When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing.’
‘Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all
my heart I share your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince, nor a commander in chief, but
a father! If you want anything come straight to me. Goodby, my dear boy.’
Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief
and went on with his unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du
Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why
it was, but after that interview with Kutuzov he went back


1399

to his regiment reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been entrusted. The
more he realized the absence of all personal motive in that
old manin whom there seemed to remain only the habit of
passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping events and
drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the course of eventsthe more reassured he was that
everything would be as it should. ‘He will not bring in any
plan of his own. He will not devise or undertake anything,’
thought Prince Andrew, ‘but he will hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place. He
will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He understands that there is something stronger and
more important than his own willthe inevitable course of
events, and he can see them and grasp their significance,
and seeing that significance can refrain from meddling and
renounce his personal wish directed to something else. And
above all,’ thought Prince Andrew, ‘one believes in him
because he’s Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the
French proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said:
‘What they have brought us to!’ and had a sob in it when he
said he would ‘make them eat horseflesh!’’
On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the
unanimity and general approval were founded with which,
despite court influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as
commander in chief was received.

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Chapter XVII
After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there
in its usual course, and its course was so very usual that it
was difficult to remember the recent days of patriotic elation
and ardor, hard to believe that Russia was really in danger
and that the members of the English Club were also sons
of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice everything for it. The
one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor everyone had
displayed during the Emperor’s stay was the call for contributions of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the
promises had been made assumed a legal, official form and
became unavoidable.
With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the Moscovites’
view of their situation did not grow more serious but on the
contrary became even more frivolous, as always happens
with people who see a great danger approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with
equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a
man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of
escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too
depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not
in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general
course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what
is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant.
In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in


1401

society to the second. So it was now with the inhabitants of
Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in Moscow as that year.
Rostopchin’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a
drink shop, a potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, ‘whohaving been a militiaman and having
had rather too much at the pubheard that Napoleon wished
to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very
bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under the
sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people,’
were read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasili
Lvovich Pushkin’s bouts rimes.
In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to
read these broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka
jeered at the French, saying: ‘They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our buckwheat porridge, and choke
themselves with cabbage soup. They are all dwarfs and one
peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork.’ Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and vulgar.
It was said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and
even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been
some spies and agents of Napoleon among them; but this
was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchin’s witty remark on
that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nizhni by
boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in French: ‘Rentrez
en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n’en faites pas une
barque de Charon.’* There was talk of all the government
offices having been already removed from Moscow, and
to this Shinshin’s witticism was addedthat for that alone
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Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that
Mamonov’s regiment would cost him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even more on his,
but that the best thing about Bezukhov’s action was that he
himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of
his regiment without charging anything for the show.
*”Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to
make it a barque of Charon.’
‘You don’t spare anyone,’ said Julie Drubetskaya as she
collected and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with
her thin, beringed fingers.
Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was
giving a farewell soiree.
‘Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What pleasure is there to be so caustique?’
‘A forfeit!’ cried a young man in militia uniform whom
Julie called ‘mon chevalier,’ and who was going with her to
Nizhni.
In Julie’s set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had
been agreed that they would speak nothing but Russian and
that those who made a slip and spoke French should pay
fines to the Committee of Voluntary Contributions.
‘Another forfeit for a Gallicism,’ said a Russian writer
who was present. ‘‘What pleasure is there to be’ is not Russian!’
‘You spare no one,’ continued Julie to the young man
without heeding the author’s remark.
‘For caustiqueI am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay again for the pleasure of telling you the truth.


1403

For Gallicisms I won’t be responsible,’ she remarked, turning to the author: ‘I have neither the money nor the time,
like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a master to teach me Russian!’
‘Ah, here he is!’ she added. ‘Quand on... No, no,’ she said
to the militia officer, ‘you won’t catch me. Speak of the sun
and you see its rays!’ and she smiled amiably at Pierre. ‘We
were just talking of you,’ she said with the facility in lying
natural to a society woman. ‘We were saying that your regiment would be sure to be better than Mamonov’s.’
‘Oh, don’t talk to me of my regiment,’ replied Pierre,
kissing his hostess’ hand and taking a seat beside her. ‘I am
so sick of it.’
‘You will, of course, command it yourself?’ said Julie, directing a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.
The latter in Pierre’s presence had ceased to be caustic,
and his face expressed perplexity as to what Julie’s smile
might mean. In spite of his absent-mindedness and good
nature, Pierre’s personality immediately checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.
‘No,’ said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout
body. ‘I should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I should hardly be able to climb onto a
horse.’
Among those whom Julie’s guests happened to choose to
gossip about were the Rostovs.
‘I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way,’ said Julie.
‘And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The
Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his estate near
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Moscow, but it drags on and on. He asks too much.’
‘No, I think the sale will come off in a few days,’ said
someone. ‘Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now.’
‘Why?’ asked Julie. ‘You don’t think Moscow is in danger?’
‘Then why are you leaving?’
‘I? What a question! I am going because... well, because
everyone is going: and besidesI am not Joan of Arc or an
Amazon.’
‘Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips
of linen.’
‘If he manages the business properly he will be able to
pay off all his debts,’ said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.
‘A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they
stay on so long in Moscow? They meant to leave for the
country long ago. Natalie is quite well again now, isn’t she?’
Julie asked Pierre with a knowing smile.
‘They are waiting for their younger son,’ Pierre replied.
‘He joined Obolenski’s Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment is being formed. But now they have
had him transferred to my regiment and are expecting
him every day. The count wanted to leave long ago, but the
countess won’t on any account leave Moscow till her son
returns.’
‘I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs’.
Natalie has recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a
song. How easily some people get over everything!’


1405

‘Get over what?’ inquired Pierre, looking displeased.
Julie smiled.
‘You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in
Madame de Souza’s novels.’
‘What knights? What do you mean?’ demanded Pierre,
blushing.
‘Oh, come, my dear count! C’est la fable de tout Moscou.
Je vous admire, ma parole d’honneur!’*
*”It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!’
‘Forfeit, forfeit!’ cried the militia officer.
‘All right, one can’t talkhow tiresome!’
‘What is ‘the talk of all Moscow’?’ Pierre asked angrily,
rising to his feet.
‘Come now, Count, you know!’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Pierre.
‘I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was
always more friendly with Verathat dear Vera.’
‘No, madame!’ Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure,
‘I have not taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova’s
knight at all, and have not been their house for nearly a
month. But I cannot understand the cruelty..’
‘Qui s’excuse s’accuse,’* said Julie, smiling and waving
the lint triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the subject. ‘Do you know what I heard today?
Poor Mary Bolkonskaya arrived in Moscow yesterday. Do
you know that she has lost her father?’
*”Who excuses himself, accuses himself.’
‘Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her,’
said Pierre.
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‘I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to
their estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew.’
‘Well, and how is she?’ asked Pierre.
‘She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her?
It is quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded,
and they wanted to kill her and had wounded some of her
people. He rushed in and saved her...’
‘Another romance,’ said the militia officer. ‘Really, this
general flight has been arranged to get all the old maids
married off. Catiche is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another.’
‘Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu
amoureuse du jeune homme.’*
*”A little bit in love with the young man.’
‘Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!’
‘But how could one say that in Russian?’



1407

Chapter XVIII
When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin’s broadsheets that had been brought that day.
The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin
had forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the
contrary he was glad that ladies and tradesmen’s wives were
leaving the city. ‘There will be less panic and less gossip,’ ran
the broadsheet ‘but I will stake my life on it that that will
not enter Moscow.’ These words showed Pierre clearly for the
first time that the French would enter Moscow. The second
broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at Vyazma,
that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that
as many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed,
weapons were ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols,
and muskets which could be had at a low price. The tone of
the proclamation was not as jocose as in the former Chigirin
talks. Pierre pondered over these broadsheets. Evidently the
terrible stormcloud he had desired with the whole strength
of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in him
was drawing near.
‘Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?’ he
asked himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack of
cards that lay on the table and began to lay them out for a
game of patience.
‘If this patience comes out,’ he said to himself after shuf1408

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fling the cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his
head, ‘if it comes out, it means... what does it mean?’
He had not decided what it should mean when he heard
the voice of the eldest princess at the door asking whether
she might come in.
‘Then it will mean that I must go to the army,’ said Pierre
to himself. ‘Come in, come in!’ he added to the princess.
Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and
long waist, was still living in Pierre’s house. The two younger
ones had both married.
‘Excuse my coming to you, cousin,’ she said in a reproachful and agitated voice. ‘You know some decision must be
come to. What is going to happen? Everyone has left Moscow
and the people are rioting. How is it that we are staying on?’
‘On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine,’
said Pierre in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling uncomfortable in the role of her
benefactor.
‘Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna
told me today how our troops are distinguishing themselves.
It certainly does them credit! And the people too are quite
mutinousthey no longer obey, even my maid has taken to
being rude. At this rate they will soon begin beating us.
One can’t walk in the streets. But, above all, the French will
be here any day now, so what are we waiting for? I ask just
one thing of you, cousin,’ she went on, ‘arrange for me to be
taken to Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can’t live under
Bonaparte’s rule.’
‘Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your informa

1409

tion from? On the contrary..’
‘I won’t submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they
please.... If you don’t want to do this..’
‘But I will, I’ll give the order at once.’
The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone
to be angry with. Muttering to herself, she sat down on a
chair.
‘But you have been misinformed,’ said Pierre. ‘Everything is quiet in the city and there is not the slightest danger.
See! I’ve just been reading...’ He showed her the broadsheet.
‘Count Rostopchin writes that he will stake his life on it that
the enemy will not enter Moscow.’
‘Oh, that count of yours!’ said the princess malevolently.
‘He is a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people
to riot. Didn’t he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, ‘whoever it might be, should be dragged to the lockup
by his hair’? (How silly!) ‘And honor and glory to whoever
captures him,’ he says. This is what his cajolery has brought
us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the mob near killed her because she said something in French.’
‘Oh, but it’s so... You take everything so to heart,’ said
Pierre, and began laying out his cards for patience.
Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join
the army, but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same
state of agitation, irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same
time joyfully expecting something terrible.
Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre’s
head steward came to inform him that the money needed for
the equipment of his regiment could not be found without
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selling one of the estates. In general the head steward made
out to Pierre that his project of raising a regiment would ruin
him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely able to repress a smile.
‘Well then, sell it,’ said he. ‘What’s to be done? I can’t draw
back now!’
The worse everything became, especially his own affairs,
the better was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it
that the catastrophe he expected was approaching. Hardly
anyone he knew was left in town. Julie had gone, and so had
Princess Mary. Of his intimate friends only the Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see them.
To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of
Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up
next day. The balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned
that it was being constructed by the Emperor’s desire. The
Emperor had written to Count Rostopchin as follows:
As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and intelligent men for his car and send a courier to
General Kutuzov to let him know. I have informed him of
the matter.
Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where
he descends for the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the enemy’s hands. It is essential for him
to combine his movements with those of the commander in
chief.
On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the
Bolotnoe Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe
Place, stopped and got out of his trap. A French cook accused


1411

of being a spy was being flogged. The flogging was only just
over, and the executioner was releasing from the flogging
bench a stout man with red whiskers, in blue stockings and a
green jacket, who was moaning piteously. Another criminal,
thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces they were
both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look resembling that on the thin Frenchman’s face, Pierre pushed
his way in through the crowd.
‘What is it? Who is it? What is it for?’ he kept asking.
But the attention of the crowdofficials, burghers, shopkeepers, peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisseswas
so eagerly centered on what was passing in Lobnoe Place
that no one answered him. The stout man rose, frowned,
shrugged his shoulders, and evidently trying to appear firm
began to pull on his jacket without looking about him, but
suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in the way
full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself
for doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to
stifle their feelings of pity as it seemed to Pierre.
‘He’s cook to some prince.’
‘Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a
Frenchman... sets his teeth on edge!’ said a wrinkled clerk
who was standing behind Pierre, when the Frenchman began to cry.
The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke
would be appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others
continued to watch in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.
Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily
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away, went back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took his seat. As they drove along he
shuddered and exclaimed several times so audibly that the
coachman asked him:
‘What is your pleasure?’
‘Where are you going?’ shouted Pierre to the man, who
was driving to Lubyanka Street.
‘To the Governor’s, as you ordered,’ answered the coachman.
‘Fool! Idiot!’ shouted Pierre, abusing his coachmana thing
he rarely did. ‘Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!’
‘I must get away this very day,’ he murmured to himself.
At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd
surrounding the Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made
up his mind that he could no longer remain in Moscow and
would leave for the army that very day that it seemed to him
that either he had told the coachman this or that the man
ought to have known it for himself.
On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafeyhis head
coachman who knew everything, could do anything, and
was known to all Moscowthat he would leave that night for
the army at Mozhaysk, and that his saddle horses should
be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day, so on
Evstafey’s representation Pierre had to put off his departure
till next day to allow time for the relay horses to be sent on
in advance.
On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell
of rain, and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there


1413

had been a great battle that evening. (This was the battle of
Shevardino.) He was told that there in Perkhushkovo the
earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer his
questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was
approaching Mozhaysk.
Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and
at the hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be had. It was full of officers.
Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers,
wagons, caissons, and cannon were everywhere. Pierre
pushed forward as fast as he could, and the farther he left
Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea of
troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and
a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It
was a feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor’s visita sense of the necessity of
undertaking something and sacrificing something. He now
experienced a glad consciousness that everything that constitutes men’s happinessthe comforts of life, wealth, even life
itselfis rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with
something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did not
try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular delight in sacrificing everything. He was not occupied
with the question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and joyous sensation.

1414

War and Peace

Chapter XIX
On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot
was fired by either side, and on the twenty-sixth the battle
of Borodino itself took place.
Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino
fought? There was not the least sense in it for either the
French or the Russians. Its immediate result for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer
to the destruction of Moscowwhich we feared more than
anything in the world; and for the French its immediate result was that they were brought nearer to the destruction of
their whole armywhich they feared more than anything in
the world. What the result must be was quite obvious, and
yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov accepted that battle.
If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would
seem that it must have been obvious to Napoleon that by
advancing thirteen hundred miles and giving battle with a
probability of losing a quarter of his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have been equally
clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the
loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that
if when playing draughts I have one man less and go on ex

1415

changing, I shall certainly lose, and therefore should not
exchange. When my opponent has sixteen men and I have
fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than he, but when I
have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times as
strong as I am.
Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the French was about as five to six, but after that
battle it was little more than one to two: previously we had
a hundred thousand against a hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a
hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be
a commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army
and lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it
is said that he expected to end the campaign by occupying
Moscow as he had ended a previous campaign by occupying
Vienna, there is much evidence to the contrary. Napoleon’s
historians themselves tell us that from Smolensk onwards
he wished to stop, knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not
be the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the
state in which Russian towns were left to him, and had not
received a single reply to his repeated announcements of his
wish to negotiate.
In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what
had occurred, the historians provided cunningly devised
evidence of the foresight and genius the generals who, of
all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved and in1416

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voluntary.
The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which
the heroes furnish the whole interest of the story, and we
are still unable to accustom ourselves to the fact that for our
epoch histories of that kind are meaningless.
On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and
the preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also
exists a definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the historians describe the affair as follows:
The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk
sought out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found such a position at Borodino.
The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance
on the left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and
almost at a right angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the
very place where the battle was fought.
In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was
set up on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On
the twenty-fourth, we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the twenty-sixth, attacked
the whole Russian army, which was in position on the field
of Borodino.
So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone
who cares to look into the matter can easily convince himself.
The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on
the contrary, during the retreat passed many positions better than Borodino. They did not stop at any one of these
positions because Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position


1417

he had not himself chosen, because the popular demand for
a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly enough, and
because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the militia,
and for many other reasons. The fact is that other positions they had passed were stronger, and that the position
at Borodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from
being strong, was no more a position than any other spot
one might find in the Russian Empire by sticking a pin into
the map at hazard.
Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on
the field of Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to,
the highroad (that is, the position on which the battle took
place), but never till the twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did
they think that a battle might be fought there. This was
shown first by the fact that there were no entrenchments
there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly,
by the position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt
was quite senseless in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it more strongly fortified than
any other post? And why were all efforts exhausted and six
thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at night on the
twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have sufficed to
observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position on
which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that
the Shevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that
position, we have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay
de Tolly and Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino
Redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutuzov
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himself in his report, written in hot haste after the battle,
speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as the left flank of the
position. It was much later, when reports on the battle of
Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the
mistakes of a commander in chief who had to be represented
as infallible) that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced
postwhereas in reality it was simply a fortified point on the
left flankand that the battle of Borodino was fought by us
on an entrenched position previously selected, where as it
was fought on a quite unexpected spot which was almost
unentrenched.
The case was evidently this: a position was selected along
the river Kolochawhich crosses the highroad not at a right
angle but at an acute angleso that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank near the village of Novoe, and the
center at Borodino at the confluence of the rivers Kolocha
and Voyna.
To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without
thinking of how the battle was actually fought, this position,
protected by the river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for
an army whose object was to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.
Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did
not see (as the history books say he did) the position of the
Russians from Utitsa to Borodino (he could not have seen
that position because it did not exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while pursuing the
Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the Rus

1419

sian positionat the Shevardino Redoubtand unexpectedly
for the Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And
the Russians, not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the position they had
intended to occupy and took up a new position which had
not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the
other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to
left (looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the
plain between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodinoa plain no
more advantageous as a position than any other plain in
Russiaand there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.
Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the
twenty-fourth to the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered
an immediate attack on the redoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that the
Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and the battle
would have taken place where we expected it. In that case
we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubtour left flankstill more obstinately. We should have attacked
Napoleon in the center or on the right, and the engagement
would have taken place on the twenty-fifth, in the position
we intended and had fortified. But as the attack on our left
flank took place in the evening after the retreat of our rea
guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridneva), and
as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in
time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of
the twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of
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Borodino was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the twenty-sixth.
After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on the morning of the twenty-fifth without a position
for our left flank, and were forced to bend it back and hastily
entrench it where it chanced to be.
Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth
defended by weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that position was increased by the fact that
the Russian commandersnot having fully realized what
had happened, namely the loss of our position on the left
flank and the shifting of the whole field of the forthcoming
battle from right to leftmaintained their extended position
from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had
to move their forces from right to left during the battle. So
it happened that throughout the whole battle the Russians
opposed the entire French army launched against our left
flank with but half as many men. (Poniatowski’s action
against Utitsa, and Uvarov’s on the right flank against the
French, were actions distinct from the main course of the
battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place at all as
(in an effort to conceal our commanders’ mistakes even at
the cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army
and people) it has been described. The battle of Borodino
was not fought on a chosen and entrenched position with
forces only slightly weaker than those of the enemy, but, as
a result of the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, the Russians
fought the battle of Borodino on an open and almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as the


1421

French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not
merely unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result, but unthinkable to keep an army even from
complete disintegration and flight.
CHAPTER XX
On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving
Mozhaysk. At the descent of the high steep hill, down which
a winding road led out of the town past the cathedral on
the right, where a service was being held and the bells were
ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle and proceeded on foot.
Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down the hill
preceded by its singers. Coming up toward him was a train
of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the engagement the day before. The peasant drivers, shouting and
lashing their horses, kept crossing from side to side. The
carts, in each of which three or four wounded soldiers were
lying or sitting, jolted over the stones that had been thrown
on the steep incline to make it something like a road. The
wounded, bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to the sides of the
carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of
them stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre’s white
hat and green swallow-tail coat.
Pierre’s coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of
wounded to keep to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the hill with its singers, surrounded
Pierre’s carriage and blocked the road. Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in which the road
ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not penetrate
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into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above
Pierre’s head was the bright August sunshine and the bells
sounded merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped
by the side of the road close to Pierre. The driver in his bast
shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one of its
tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band
on his little horse.
One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm
who was following the cart on foot, caught hold of it with
his sound hand and turned to look at Pierre.
‘I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or
take us on to Moscow?’ he asked.
Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the
question. He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that
had met the convoy of wounded, now at the cart by which
he was standing, in which two wounded men were sitting
and one was lying. One of those sitting up in the cart had
probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was
wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of a
baby’s head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one side.
This soldier was looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a fair-haired recruit as white as
though there was no blood in his thin face, looked at Pierre
kindly, with a fixed smile. The third lay prone so that his
face was not visible. The cavalry singers were passing close
by:
Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,
Living in a foreign land.
they sang their soldiers’ dance song.


1423

As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the metallic sound of the bells reverberated high
above and the hot rays of the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another sort of merriment. But beneath
the slope, by the cart with the wounded near the panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber, and sad.
The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the
cavalry singers.
‘Oh, the coxcombs!’ he muttered reproachfully.
‘It’s not the soldiers only, but I’ve seen peasants today,
too.... The peasantseven they have to go,’ said the soldier
behind the cart, addressing Pierre with a sad smile. ‘No distinctions made nowadays.... They want the whole nation to
fall on themin a word, it’s Moscow! They want to make an
end of it.’
In spite of the obscurity of the soldier’s words Pierre understood what he wanted to say and nodded approval.
The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and
drove on.
He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar
faces, but only saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of different branches of the service, who
all looked with astonishment at his white hat and green tail
coat.
Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and eagerly addressed him. This was one of the
head army doctors. He was driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young surgeon, and on recognizing
Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied the driver’s seat to
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War and Peace

pull up.
‘Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?’ asked
the doctor.
‘Well, you know, I wanted to see..’
‘Yes, yes, there will be something to see...’
Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of taking part in a battle.
The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.
‘Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?’ he said, exchanging glances with his young
companion. ‘Anyhow his Serene Highness knows you and
will receive you graciously. That’s what you must do.’
The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.
‘You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our
position is exactly?’ said Pierre.
‘The position?’ repeated the doctor. ‘Well, that’s not my
line. Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there.
Go up the hillock and you’ll see.’
‘Can one see from there?... If you would..’
But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his
gig.
‘I would go with you but on my honor I’m up to here’and
he pointed to his throat. ‘I’m galloping to the commander
of the corps. How do matters stand?... You know, Count,
there’ll be a battle tomorrow. Out of an army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty thousand
wounded, and we haven’t stretchers, or bunks, or dressers,
or doctors enough for six thousand. We have ten thousand
carts, but we need other things as wellwe must manage as


1425

best we can!’
The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young
and old, who had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had noticed), twenty thousand were
inevitably doomed to wounds and death amazed Pierre.
‘They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but death?’ And by some latent sequence of thought
the descent of the Mozhaysk hill, the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the slanting rays of the sun, and the
songs of the cavalrymen vividly recurred to his mind.
‘The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do
not for a moment think of what awaits them, but pass by,
winking at the wounded. Yet from among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they wonder at my hat!
Strange!’ thought Pierre, continuing his way to Tatarinova.
In front of a landowner’s house to the left of the road
stood carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The commander in chief was putting up there, but just
when Pierre arrived he was not in and hardly any of the staff
were therethey had gone to the church service. Pierre drove
on toward Gorki.
When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street, he saw for the first time peasant militiamen in
their white shirts and with crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated and perspiring, were at
work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to the right of
the road.
Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth along planks, while others stood about
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War and Peace

doing nothing.
Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the
men. On seeing these peasants, who were evidently still
amused by the novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre
once more thought of the wounded men at Mozhaysk and
understood what the soldier had meant when he said: ‘They
want the whole nation to fall on them.’ The sight of these
bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with their
queer, clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their shirts
opening from the left toward the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned collarbones, impressed Pierre more
strongly with the solemnity and importance of the moment
than anything he had yet seen or heard.



1427

Chapter XXI
Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling
militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to
the doctor, the battlefield could be seen.
It was about eleven o’clock. The sun shone somewhat to
the left and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous
panorama which, rising like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied atmosphere.
From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater,
wound the Smolensk highroad, passing through a village
with a white church some five hundred paces in front of the
knoll and below it. This was Borodino. Below the village the
road crossed the river by a bridge and, winding down and
up, rose higher and higher to the village of Valuevo visible
about four miles away, where Napoleon was then stationed.
Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared into a yellowing forest on the horizon. Far in the distance in that birch and fir
forest to the right of the road, the cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery gleamed in the sun. Here and there over
the whole of that blue expanse, to right and left of the forest
and the road, smoking campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troopsours and the enemy’s. The ground to
the rightalong the course of the Kolocha and Moskva riverswas broken and hilly. Between the hollows the villages
of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the distance. On the
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War and Peace

left the ground was more level; there were fields of grain,
and the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been
burned down, could be seen.
All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left
nor the right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations. Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had expected
to find, but only fields, meadows, troops, woods, the smoke
of campfires, villages, mounds, and streams; and try as he
would he could descry no military ‘position’ in this place
which teemed with life, nor could he even distinguish our
troops from the enemy’s.
‘I must ask someone who knows,’ he thought, and addressed an officer who was looking with curiosity at his
huge unmilitary figure.
‘May I ask you,’ said Pierre, ‘what village that is in
front?’
‘Burdino, isn’t it?’ said the officer, turning to his companion.
‘Borodino,’ the other corrected him.
The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk,
moved up to Pierre.
‘Are those our men there?’ Pierre inquired.
‘Yes, and there, further on, are the French,’ said the officer. ‘There they are, there... you can see them.’
‘Where? Where?’ asked Pierre.
‘One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!’
The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on
the left beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that Pierre had noticed on many of the faces he had


1429

met came into his face.
‘Ah, those are the French! And over there?...’ Pierre
pointed to a knoll on the left, near which some troops could
be seen.
‘Those are ours.’
‘Ah, ours! And there?...’ Pierre pointed to another knoll
in the distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay
in a hollow where also some campfires were smoking and
something black was visible.
‘That’s his again,’ said the officer. (It was the Shevardino
Redoubt.) ‘It was ours yesterday, but now it is his.’
‘Then how about our position?’
‘Our position?’ replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. ‘I can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed
nearly all our entrenchments. There, you see? There’s our
center, at Borodino, just there,’ and he pointed to the village in front of them with the white church. ‘That’s where
one crosses the Kolocha. You see down there where the rows
of hay are lying in the hollow, there’s the bridge. That’s our
center. Our right flank is over there’he pointed sharply to
the right, far away in the broken ground‘That’s where the
Moskva River is, and we have thrown up three redoubts
there, very strong ones. The left flank...’ here the officer
paused. ‘Well, you see, that’s difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank was there at Shevardino, you see, where
the oak is, but now we have withdrawn our left wingnow it
is over there, do you see that village and the smoke? That’s
Semenovsk, yes, there,’ he pointed to Raevski’s knoll. ‘But
the battle will hardly be there. His having moved his troops
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War and Peace

there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round to the right
of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a man will be
missing tomorrow!’ he remarked.
An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while
he was giving these explanations had waited in silence for
him to finish speaking, but at this point, evidently not liking the officer’s remark, interrupted him.
‘Gabions must be sent for,’ said he sternly.
The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood
that one might think of how many men would be missing
tomorrow but ought not to speak to speak of it.
‘Well, send number three company again,’ the officer replied hurriedly.
‘And you, are you one of the doctors?’
‘No, I’ve come on my own,’ answered Pierre, and he went
down the hill again, passing the militiamen.
‘Oh, those damned fellows!’ muttered the officer who
followed him, holding his nose as he ran past the men at
work.
‘There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are...
They’ll be here in a minute...’ voices were suddenly heard
saying; and officers, soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the road.
A church procession was coming up the hill from
Borodino. First along the dusty road came the infantry in
ranks, bareheaded and with arms reversed. From behind
them came the sound of church singing.
Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the procession.


1431

‘They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian
Mother of God!’ someone cried.
‘The Smolensk Mother of God,’ another corrected him.
The militiamen, both those who had been in the village
and those who had been at work on the battery, threw down
their spades and ran to meet the church procession. Following the battalion that marched along the dusty road came
priests in their vestmentsone little old man in a hood with
attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and officers
bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover.
This was the icon that had been brought from and had since
accompanied the army. Behind, before, and on both sides,
crowds of militiamen with bared heads walked, ran, and
bowed to the ground.
At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the
men who had been holding it up by the linen bands attached
to it were relieved by others, the chanters relit their censers,
and service began. The hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind played with the hair of the bared
heads and with the ribbons decorating the icon. The singing
did not sound loud under the open sky. An immense crowd
of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen surrounded
the icon. Behind the priest and a chanter stood the notabilities on a spot reserved for them. A bald general with general
with a St. George’s Cross on his neck stood just behind the
priest’s back, and without crossing himself (he was evidently a German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which
he considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to
arouse the patriotism of the Russian people. Another gen1432

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eral stood in a martial pose, crossing himself by shaking his
hand in front of his chest while looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre recognized several
acquaintances among these notables, but did not look at
themhis whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and
militiamen who were all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon
as the tired chanters, who were singing the service for the
twentieth time that day, began lazily and mechanically to
sing: ‘Save from calamity Thy servants, O Mother of God,’
and the priest and deacon chimed in: ‘For to Thee under
God we all flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,’
there again kindled in all those faces the same expression of
consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment
that Pierre had seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at Mozhaysk and momentarily on many and many faces he had
met that morning; and heads were bowed more frequently
and hair tossed back, and sighs and the sound men made as
they crossed themselves were heard.
The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed
against Pierre. Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which way was made for him, was
approaching the icon.
It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position
and on his way back to Tatarinova had stopped where the
service was being held. Pierre recognized him at once by
his peculiar figure, which distinguished him from everybody else.
With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout, round

1433

shouldered body, with uncovered white head and puffy
face showing the white ball of the eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with plunging, swaying gait into the crowd and
stopped behind the priest. He crossed himself with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched the ground with
his hand, and bowed his white head with a deep sigh. Behind
Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence
of the commander in chief, who attracted the attention of
all the superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers without looking at him.
When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the
icon, sank heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and
for a long time tried vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and weight. His white head twitched
with the effort. At last he rose, kissed the icon as a child does
with naively pouting lips, and again bowed till he touched
the ground with his hand. The other generals followed his
example, then the officers, and after them with excited faces,
pressing on one another, crowding, panting, and pushing,
scrambled the soldiers and militiamen.

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Chapter XXII
Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.
‘Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?’ said a
voice.
Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his
knees with his hand (he had probably soiled them when
he, too, had knelt before the icon), came up to him smiling.
Boris was elegantly dressed, with a slightly martial touch
appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.
Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated
himself in the shade of the nearest house, on a bench which
one Cossack had run to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and brilliant suite surrounded
him.
The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng.
Pierre stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to
Boris.
He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to
see the position.
‘This is what you must do,’ said Boris. ‘I will do the honors of the camp to you. You will see everything best from
where Count Bennigsen will be. I am in attendance on him,
you know; I’ll mention it to him. But if you want to ride
round the position, come along with us. We are just going


1435

to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend the night
with me and we’ll arrange a game of cards. Of course you
know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are his quarters,’ and he
pointed to the third house in the village of Gorki.
‘But I should like to see the right flank. They say it’s very
strong,’ said Pierre. ‘I should like to start from the Moskva
River and ride round the whole position.’
‘Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left
flank.’
‘Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski’s regiment? Can
you point it out to me?’
‘Prince Andrew’s? We shall pass it and I’ll take you to
him.’
What about the left flank?’ asked Pierre
‘To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only
knows what state our left flank is in,’ said Boris confidentially lowering his voice. ‘It is not at all what Count Bennigsen
intended. He meant to fortify that knoll quite differently,
but...’ Boris shrugged his shoulders, ‘his Serene Highness
would not have it, or someone persuaded him. You see...’
but Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov, Kutuzov’s adjutant, came up to Pierre. ‘Ah, Kaysarov!’ said
Boris, addressing him with an unembarrassed smile, ‘I was
just trying to explain our position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene Highness could so the intentions of the
French!’
‘You mean the left flank?’ asked Kaysarov.
‘Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong.’
Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men
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from the staff, Boris had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He had established himself with
Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom Boris had been
in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an invaluable man.
In the higher command there were two sharply defined
parties: Kutuzov’s party and that of Bennigsen, the chief
of staff. Boris belonged to the latter and no one else, while
showing servile respect to Kutuzov, could so create an impression that the old fellow was not much good and that
Bennigsen managed everything. Now the decisive moment
of battle had come when Kutuzov would be destroyed and
the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if Kutuzov won the
battle it would be felt that everything was done by Bennigsen. In any case many great rewards would have to be given
for tomorrow’s action, and new men would come to the
front. So Boris was full of nervous vivacity all day.
After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to
him, and he had not time to reply to all the questions about
Moscow that were showered upon him, or to listen to all
that was told him. The faces all expressed animation and
apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the cause of the
excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in questions of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied
by the different expression he saw on other facesan expression that spoke not of personal matters but of the universal
questions of life and death. Kutuzov noticed Pierre’s figure
and the group gathered round him.
‘Call him to me,’ said Kutuzov.


1437

An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness’ wish, and
Pierre went toward Kutuzov’s bench. But a militiaman got
there before him. It was Dolokhov.
‘How did that fellow get here?’ asked Pierre.
‘He’s a creature that wriggles in anywhere!’ was the answer. ‘He has been degraded, you know. Now he wants to
bob up again. He’s been proposing some scheme or other
and has crawled into the enemy’s picket line at night.... He’s
a brave fellow.’
Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.
‘I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness
you might send me away or say that you knew what I was
reporting, but then I shouldn’t lose anything...’ Dolokhov
was saying.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my
Fatherland for which I am ready to die.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘And should your Serene Highness require a man who
will not spare his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may
prove useful to your Serene Highness.’
‘Yes... Yes...’ Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more and more as he looked at Pierre.
Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped
up to Pierre’s side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though
continuing an interrupted conversation:
‘The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to
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die. What heroism, Count!’
Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov’s attention
would be caught by those words, and so it was.
‘What are you saying about the militia?’ he asked Boris.
‘Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highnessfor
deaththey have put on clean shirts.’
‘Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!’ said Kutuzov;
and he closed his eyes and swayed his head. ‘A matchless
people!’ he repeated with a sigh.
‘So you want to smell gunpowder?’ he said to Pierre. ‘Yes,
it’s a pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife’s
adorers. Is she well? My quarters are at your service.’
And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began
looking about absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.
Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew Kaysarov, his adjutant’s brother.
‘Those verses... those verses of Marin’s... how do they go,
eh? Those he wrote about Gerakov: ‘Lectures for the corps
inditing’... Recite them, recite them!’ said he, evidently preparing to laugh.
Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head
to the rhythm of the verses.
When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him
and took his hand.
‘I am very glad to meet you here, Count,’ he said aloud,
regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly
resolute and solemn tone. ‘On the eve of a day when God


1439

alone knows who of us is fated to survive, I am glad of this
opportunity to tell you that I regret the misunderstandings
that occurred between us and should wish you not to have
any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me.’
Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing
what to say to him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.
Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to Pierre and proposed that he should ride with
him along the line.
‘It will interest you,’ said he.
‘Yes, very much,’ replied Pierre.
Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on
their ride along the line.

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Chapter XXIII
From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the
bridge which, when they had looked it from the hill, the officer had pointed out as being the center of our position and
where rows of fragrant new-mown hay lay by the riverside.
They rode across that bridge into the village of Borodino
and thence turned to the left, passing an enormous number
of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed,
which afterwards became known as the Raevski Redoubt,
or the Knoll Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to
it. He did not know that it would become more memorable
to him than any other spot on the plain of Borodino.
They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the
soldiers were dragging away the last logs from the huts and
barns. Then they rode downhill and uphill, across a ryefield
trodden and beaten down as if by hail, following a track
freshly made by the artillery over the furrows of the plowed
land, and reached some fleches* which were still being dug.
*A kind of entrenchment.
At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the
Shevardino Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day
before and where several horsemen could be descried. The
officers said that either Napoleon or Murat was there, and
they all gazed eagerly at this little group of horsemen. Pierre


1441

also looked at them, trying to guess which of the scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted
men rode away from the mound and disappeared.
Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and
began explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre
listened to him, straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the impending battle, but was mortified to
feel that his mental capacity was inadequate for the task. He
could make nothing of it. Bennigsen stopped speaking and,
noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly said to him:
‘I don’t think this interests you?’
‘On the contrary it’s very interesting!’ replied Pierre not
quite truthfully.
From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a
road winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In
the middle of the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang
out and, scared by the tramp of the many horses, grew so
confused that it leaped along the road in front of them for
some time, arousing general attention and laughter, and
only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to one side
and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood
for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where
troops of Tuchkov’s corps were stationed to defend the left
flank.
Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great
deal and with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave
orders of great military importance. In front of Tuchkov’s
troops was some high ground not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, saying that it was
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madness to leave a height which commanded the country
around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of
the generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular
declared with martial heat that they were put there to be
slaughtered. Bennigsen on his own authority ordered the
troops to occupy the high ground. This disposition on the
left flank increased Pierre’s doubt of his own capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and the
generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the
hill, he quite understood them and shared their opinion,
but for that very reason he could not understand how the
man who put them there behind the hill could have made
so gross and palpable a blunder.
Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen supposed, put there to defend the position, but were
in a concealed position as an ambush, that they should not
be seen and might be able to strike an approaching enemy
unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not know this and moved the
troops forward according to his own ideas without mentioning the matter to the commander in chief.



1443

Chapter XXIV
On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay
leaning on his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village
of Knyazkovo at the further end of his regiment’s encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he could see, beside
the wooden fence, a row of thirty year-old birches with their
lower branches lopped off, a field on which shocks of oats
were standing, and some bushes near which rose the smoke
of campfiresthe soldiers’ kitchens.
Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life
now seemed to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt
agitated and irritable as he had done seven years before at
Austerlitz.
He had received and given the orders for next day’s battle
and had nothing more to do. But his thoughtsthe simplest,
clearest, and therefore most terrible thoughtswould give
him no peace. He knew that tomorrow’s battle would be the
most terrible of all he had taken part in, and for the first
time in his life the possibility of death presented itself to
himnot in relation to any worldly matter or with reference
to its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to
his own soulvividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as a certainty. And from the height of this perception all that had
previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold white light without shadows,
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War and Peace

without perspective, without distinction of outline. All
life appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which
he had long been gazing by artificial light through a glass.
Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in clear
daylight and without a glass. ‘Yes, yes! There they are, those
false images that agitated, enraptured, and tormented me,’
said he to himself, passing in review the principal pictures
of the magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the
cold white daylight of his clear perception of death. ‘There
they are, those rudely painted figures that once seemed
splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of society, love of
a woman, the Fatherland itselfhow important these pictures
appeared to me, with what profound meaning they seemed
to be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the
cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for
me.’ The three great sorrows of his life held his attention
in particular: his love for a woman, his father’s death, and
the French invasion which had overrun half Russia. ‘Love...
that little girl who seemed to me brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made romantic plans of
love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I was!’ he said
aloud bitterly. ‘Ah me! I believed in some ideal love which
was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart
from me.... But it was much simpler really.... It was all very
simple and horrible.’
‘When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place
was his: his land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came
and swept him aside, unconscious of his existence, as he


1445

might brush a chip from his path, and his Bald Hills and his
whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says it is a trial sent
from above. What is the trial for, when he is not here and
will never return? He is not here! For whom then is the trial
intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And
tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one of our own men, by a soldier discharging
a musket close to my ear as one of them did yesterday, and
the French will come and take me by head and heels and
fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses,
and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite
ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I
shall not exist..’
He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine,
with their motionless green and yellow foliage and white
bark. ‘To die... to be killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this should still be, but no me...’
And the birches with their light and shade, the curly
clouds, the smoke of the campfires, and all that was around
him changed and seemed terrible and menacing. A cold
shiver ran down his spine. He rose quickly, went out of the
shed, and began to walk about.
After he had returned, voices were heard outside the
shed. ‘Who’s that?’ he cried.
The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov’s
squadron commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the shed followed by an
adjutant and the regimental paymaster.
Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they
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War and Peace

had come about, gave them some further instructions, and
was about to dismiss them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.
‘Devil take it!’ said the voice of a man stumbling over
something.
Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre,
who had tripped over a pole on the ground and had nearly
fallen, coming his way. It was unpleasant to Prince Andrew
to meet people of his own set in general, and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful moments of
his last visit to Moscow.
‘You? What a surprise!’ said he. ‘What brings you here?
This is unexpected!’
As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than
coldnessthey expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at
once. He had approached the shed full of animation, but
on seeing Prince Andrew’s face he felt constrained and ill
at ease.
‘I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests
me,’ said Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word ‘interesting.’ ‘I wish to see the battle.’
‘Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about
war? How would they stop it?’ said Prince Andrew sarcastically. ‘Well, and how’s Moscow? And my people? Have they
reached Moscow at last?’ he asked seriously.
‘Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to
see them, but missed them. They have gone to your estate
near Moscow.’


1447

Chapter XXV
The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew,
apparently reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked
them to stay and have tea. Seats were brought in and so was
the tea. The officers gazed with surprise at Pierre’s huge stout
figure and listened to his talk of Moscow and the position
of our army, round which he had ridden. Prince Andrew
remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding that
Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured
battalion commander.
‘So you understand the whole position of our troops?’
Prince Andrew interrupted him.
‘Yesthat is, how do you mean?’ said Pierre. ‘Not being a
military man I can’t say I have understood it fully, but I understand the general position.’
‘Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it
may,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Oh!’ said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at Prince Andrew. ‘Well, and what do think of Kutuzov’s
appointment?’ he asked.
‘I was very glad of his appointment, that’s all I know,’ replied Prince Andrew.
‘And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow
they are saying heaven knows what about him.... What do
you think of him?’
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‘Ask them,’ replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.
Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly
interrogative smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.
‘We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your excellency,’ said Timokhin timidly, and continually
turning to glance at his colonel.
‘Why so?’ asked Pierre.
‘Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you. Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyani
we dare not touch a stick or a wisp of hay or anything. You
see, we were going away, so he would get it all; wasn’t it so,
your excellency?’ and again Timokhin turned to the prince.
‘But we daren’t. In our regiment two officers were courtmartialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity took
command everything became straight forward. Now we see
light..’
‘Then why was it forbidden?’
Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what
or how to answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.
‘Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the enemy,’ said Prince Andrew with venomous
irony. ‘It is very sound: one can’t permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to marauding. At Smolensk
too he judged correctly that the French might outflank us,
as they had larger forces. But he could not understand this,’
cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape


1449

him involuntarily: ‘he could not understand that there, for
the first time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that
there was a spirit in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the French for two days, and that that
success had increased our strength tenfold. He ordered us
to retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing.
He had no thought of betraying us, he tried to do the best
he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he is
unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out
everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to. How can I explain?... Well, say your father has a
German valet, and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your father’s requirements better than you could, then it’s all right
to let him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you’ll
send the valet away and attend to your father with your own
unpracticed, awkward hands, and will soothe him better
than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it has been
with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could serve
her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have
been making him out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the only result will be that afterwards, ashamed of
their false accusations, they will make him out a hero or a
genius instead of a traitor, and that will be still more unjust.
He is an honest and very punctilious German.’
‘And they say he’s a skillful commander,’ rejoined
Pierre.
‘I don’t understand what is meant by ‘a skillful commander,’’ replied Prince Andrew ironically.
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‘A skillful commander?’ replied Pierre. ‘Why, one who
foresees all contingencies... and foresees the adversary’s intentions.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ said Prince Andrew as if it were a
matter settled long ago.
Pierre looked at him in surprise.
‘And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?’ he remarked.
‘Yes,’ replied Prince Andrew, ‘but with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as
you please and are not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and
two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes
weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of
troops can never be known to anyone. Believe me,’ he went
on, ‘if things depended on arrangements made by the staff,
I should be there making arrangements, but instead of that
I have the honor to serve here in the regiment with these
gentlemen, and I consider that on us tomorrow’s battle will
depend and not on those others.... Success never depends,
and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even
on numbers, and least of all on position.’
‘But on what then?’
‘On the feeling that is in me and in him,’ he pointed to
Timokhin, ‘and in each soldier.’
Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his
commander in alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his
former reticent taciturnity Prince Andrew now seemed ex

1451

cited. He could apparently not refrain from expressing the
thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.
‘A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it!
Why did we lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses
were almost equal to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the battle, and we did lose it. And
we said so because we had nothing to fight for there, we
wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as we could.
‘We’ve lost, so let us run,’ and we ran. If we had not said
that till the evening, heaven knows what might not have
happened. But tomorrow we shan’t say it! You talk about
our position, the left flank weak and the right flank too extended,’ he went on. ‘That’s all nonsense, there’s nothing of
the kind. But what awaits us tomorrow? A hundred million
most diverse chances which will be decided on the instant
by the fact that our men or theirs run or do not run, and
that this man or that man is killed, but all that is being done
at present is only play. The fact is that those men with whom
you have ridden round the position not only do not help
matters, but hinder. They are only concerned with their
own petty interests.’
‘At such a moment?’ said Pierre reproachfully.
‘At such a moment!’ Prince Andrew repeated. ‘To them
it is only a moment affording opportunities to undermine a
rival and obtain an extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow
means this: a Russian army of a hundred thousand and a
French army of a hundred thousand have met to fight, and
the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight
and the side that fights more fiercely and spares itself least
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will win. And if you like I will tell you that whatever happens and whatever muddles those at the top may make, we
shall win tomorrow’s battle. Tomorrow, happen what may,
we shall win!’
‘There now, your excellency! That’s the truth, the real
truth,’ said Timokhin. ‘Who would spare himself now? The
soldiers in my battalion, believe me, wouldn’t drink their
vodka! ‘It’s not the day for that!’ they say.’
All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out
of the shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant.
After they had gone Pierre approached Prince Andrew and
was about to start a conversation when they heard the clatter of three horses’ hoofs on the road not far from the shed,
and looking in that direction Prince Andrew recognized
Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack. They
rode close by continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew
involuntarily heard these words:
‘Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht
kann ich nicht genug Preis geben,’* said one of them.
*”The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently
commend that view.’
‘Oh, ja,’ said the other, ‘der Zweck ist nur den Feind
zu schwachen, so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der
Privat-Personen in Achtung nehmen.’*
*”Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of
course one cannot take into account the loss of private individuals.’
‘Oh, no,’ agreed the other.
‘Extend widely!’ said Prince Andrew with an angry


1453

snort, when they had ridden past. ‘In that ‘extend’ were my
father, son, and sister, at Bald Hills. That’s all the same to
him! That’s what I was saying to youthose German gentlemen won’t win the battle tomorrow but will only make all
the mess they can, because they have nothing in their German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and
haven’t in their hearts the one thing needed tomorrowthat
which Timokhin has. They have yielded up all Europe to
him, and have now come to teach us. Fine teachers!’ and
again his voice grew shrill.
‘So you think we shall win tomorrow’s battle?’ asked
Pierre.
‘Yes, yes,’ answered Prince Andrew absently. ‘One thing
I would do if I had the power,’ he began again, ‘I would
not take prisoners. Why take prisoners? It’s chivalry! The
French have destroyed my home and are on their way to
destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are outraging me
every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are
all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army.
They should be executed! Since they are my foes they cannot be my friends, whatever may have been said at Tilsit.’
‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at
Prince Andrew. ‘I quite agree with you!’
The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk
hill and all that day now seemed to him quite clear and
completely solved. He now understood the whole meaning
and importance of this war and of the impending battle. All
he had seen that day, all the significant and stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for him
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War and Peace

by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in
physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he
had seen, and this explained to him why they all prepared
for death calmly, and as it were lightheartedly.
‘Not take prisoners,’ Prince Andrew continued: ‘That by
itself would quite change the whole war and make it less
cruel. As it is we have played at warthat’s what’s vile! We
play at magnanimity and all that stuff. Such magnanimity
and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of
a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so
kind-hearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating
the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules
of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags
of truce in 1805; they humbugged us and we humbugged
them. They plunder other people’s houses, issue false paper
money, and worst of all they kill my children and my father,
and then talk of rules of war and magnanimity to foes! Take
no prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who has come to this
as I have through the same sufferings..’
Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to
him whether or not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had
been, was suddenly checked in his speech by an unexpected
cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a few times in
silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips quivered
as he began speaking.
‘If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should
go to war only when it was worth while going to certain
death, as now. Then there would not be war because Paul


1455

Ivanovich had offended Michael Ivanovich. And when
there was a war, like this one, it would be war! And then
the determination of the troops would be quite different.
Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon
is leading would not follow him into Russia, and we should
not go to fight in Austria and Prussia without knowing why.
War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and
we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought
to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all
lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a
game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and
frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.
‘But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare?
What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their
encouragement, the ruin of a country’s inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and
falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military
class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness,
ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in
spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone.
All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms,
and he who kills most people receives the highest rewards.
‘They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one
another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then
have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce
a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed
the greater their achievement. How does God above look at
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them and hear them?’ exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill,
piercing voice. ‘Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for
me to live. I see that I have begun to understand too much.
And it doesn’t do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil.... Ah, well, it’s not for long!’ he added.
‘However, you’re sleepy, and it’s time for me to sleep. Go
back to Gorki!’ said Prince Andrew suddenly.
‘Oh no!’ Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with
frightened, compassionate eyes.
‘Go, go! Before a battle one must have one’s sleep out,’ repeated Prince Andrew.
He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed
him. ‘Good-by, be off!’ he shouted. ‘Whether we meet again
or not...’ and turning away hurriedly he entered the shed.
It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out
whether the expression of Prince Andrew’s face was angry
or tender.
For some time he stood in silence considering whether
he should follow him or go away. ‘No, he does not want it!’
Pierre concluded. ‘And I know that this is our last meeting!’
He sighed deeply and rode back to Gorki.
On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a
rug, but he could not sleep.
He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his
imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He
vividly recalled an evening in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited face was telling him how she had gone to
look for mushrooms the previous summer and had lost her
way in the big forest. She incoherently described the depths


1457

of the forest, her feelings, and a talk with a beekeeper she
met, and constantly interrupted her story to say: ‘No, I can’t!
I’m not telling it right; no, you don’t understand,’ though he
encouraged her by saying that he did understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to say. But Natasha was
not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did not
convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced
that day and wished to convey. ‘He was such a delightful
old man, and it was so dark in the forest... and he had such
kind... No, I can’t describe it,’ she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew smiled now the same happy smile as
then when he had looked into her eyes. ‘I understood her,’ he
thought. ‘I not only understood her, but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that frankness of soulthat
very soul of hers which seemed to be fettered by her bodyit
was that soul I loved in her... loved so strongly and happily...’
and suddenly he remembered how his love had ended. ‘He
did not need anything of that kind. He neither saw nor understood anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty
and fresh young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite
his fate. And I?... and he is still alive and gay!’
Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned
him, and again began pacing up and down in front of the
shed.

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Chapter XXVI
On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de
Beausset, prefect of the French Emperor’s palace, arrived
at Napoleon’s quarters at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the
former from Paris and the latter from Madrid.
Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a
box he had brought for the Emperor to be carried before
him and entered the first compartment of Napoleon’s tent,
where he began opening the box while conversing with Napoleon’s aides-de-camp who surrounded him.
Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance
talking to some generals of his acquaintance.
The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom
and was finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting,
he presented now his back and now his plump hairy chest
to the brush with which his valet was rubbing him down.
Another valet, with his finger over the mouth of a bottle,
was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor’s pampered body with an expression which seemed to say that he
alone knew where and how much Eau de Cologne should be
sprinkled. Napoleon’s short hair was wet and matted on the
forehead, but his face, though puffy and yellow, expressed
physical satisfaction. ‘Go on, harder, go on!’ he muttered
to the valet who was rubbing him, slightly twitching and
grunting. An aide-de-camp, who had entered the bedroom


1459

to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in
yesterday’s action, was standing by the door after delivering
his message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon,
frowning, looked at him from under his brows.
‘No prisoners!’ said he, repeating the aide-de-camp’s
words. ‘They are forcing us to exterminate them. So much
the worse for the Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!’ he muttered, hunching his back and presenting his fat
shoulders.
‘All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier
too,’ he said, nodding to the aide-de-camp.
‘Yes, sire,’ and the aide-de-camp disappeared through
the door of the tent.
Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the
blue uniform of the Guards he went with firm quick steps to
the reception room.
De Beausset’s hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the present he had brought from the Empress, on
two chairs directly in front of the entrance. But Napoleon
had dressed and come out with such unexpected rapidity
that he had not time to finish arranging the surprise.
Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and
guessed that they were not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of giving him a surprise, so he
pretended not to see de Beausset and called Fabvier to him,
listening silently and with a stern frown to what Fabvier
told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one
thoughtto be worthy of their Emperorand but one fearto fail
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to please him. The result of that battle had been deplorable.
Napoleon made ironic remarks during Fabvier’s account, as
if he had not expected that matters could go otherwise in
his absence.
‘I must make up for that in Moscow,’ said Napoleon. ‘I’ll
see you later,’ he added, and summoned de Beausset, who
by that time had prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and covered it with a cloth.
De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow
which only the old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to
make, and approached him, presenting an envelope.
Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.
‘You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?’ he asked, suddenly changing his former stern
expression for a most cordial tone.
‘Sire, all Paris regrets your absence,’ replied de Beausset
as was proper.
But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say
something of this kind, and though in his lucid moments
he knew it was untrue, he was pleased to hear it from him.
Again he honored him by touching his ear.
‘I am very sorry to have made you travel so far,’ said he.
‘Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates
of Moscow,’ replied de Beausset.
Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly,
glanced to the right. An aide-de-camp approached with
gliding steps and offered him a gold snuffbox, which he
took.
‘Yes, it has happened luckily for you,’ he said, raising the


1461

open snuffbox to his nose. ‘You are fond of travel, and in
three days you will see Moscow. You surely did not expect
to see that Asiatic capital. You will have a pleasant journey.’
De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste
for travel (of which he had not till then been aware).
‘Ha, what’s this?’ asked Napoleon, noticing that all the
courtiers were looking at something concealed under a
cloth.
With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and
without turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps,
twitching off the cloth at the same time, and said:
‘A present to Your Majesty from the Empress.’
It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of
the son borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor
of Austria, the boy whom for some reason everyone called
‘The King of Rome.’
A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ
in the Sistine Madonna was depicted playing at stick and
ball. The ball represented the terrestrial globe and the stick
in his other hand a scepter.
Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express
by depicting the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth
with a stick, the allegory apparently seemed to Napoleon, as
it had done to all who had seen it in Paris, quite clear and
very pleasing.
‘The King of Rome!’ he said, pointing to the portrait with
a graceful gesture. ‘Admirable!’
With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the
expression of his face at will, he drew nearer to the por1462

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trait and assumed a look of pensive tenderness. He felt that
what he now said and did would be historical, and it seemed
to him that it would now be best for himwhose grandeur
enabled his son to play stick and ball with the terrestrial
globeto show, in contrast to that grandeur, the simplest paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward,
glanced round at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and sat down on it before the portrait. At a single
gesture from him everyone went out on tiptoe, leaving the
great man to himself and his emotion.
Having sat still for a while he touchedhimself not knowing whythe thick spot of paint representing the highest light
in the portrait, rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer
on duty. He ordered the portrait to be carried outside his
tent, that the Old Guard, stationed round it, might not be
deprived of the pleasure of seeing the King of Rome, the son
and heir of their adored monarch.
And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of
breakfasting with him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of the officers and men of the Old
Guard who had run up to see the portrait.
‘Vive l’Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l’Empereur!’
came those ecstatic cries.
After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset’s presence dictated his order of the day to the army.
‘Short and energetic!’ he remarked when he had read
over the proclamation which he had dictated straight off
without corrections. It ran:
Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Vic

1463

tory depends on you. It is essential for us; it will give us all
we need: comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our
country. Behave as you did at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our remotest posterity recall your
achievements this day with pride. Let it be said of each of
you: ‘He was in the great battle before Moscow!’
‘Before Moscow!’ repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de
Beausset, who was so fond of travel, to accompany him on
his ride, he went out of the tent to where the horses stood
saddled.
‘Your Majesty is too kind!’ replied de Beausset to the invitation to accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did
not know how to ride and was afraid of doing so.
But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset
had to mount. When Napoleon came out of the tent the
shouting of the Guards before his son’s portrait grew still
louder. Napoleon frowned.
‘Take him away!’ he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic gesture to the portrait. ‘It is too soon for him to see a
field of battle.’
De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed
deeply, to indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor’s words.

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War and Peace

Chapter XXVII
On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us,
Napoleon spent the whole day on horseback inspecting the
locality, considering plans submitted to him by his marshals, and personally giving commands to his generals.
The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha had been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino
Redoubt on the twenty-fourth, and part of the linethe left
flankhad been drawn back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it the ground was more open and
level than elsewhere. It was evident to anyone, military or
not, that it was here the French should attack. It would seem
that not much consideration was needed to reach this conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the
Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that
special and supreme quality called genius that people are so
apt to ascribe to Napoleon; yet the historians who described
the event later and the men who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.
Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality
with a profound air and in silence, nodded with approval or
shook his head dubiously, and without communicating to
the generals around him the profound course of ideas which
guided his decisions merely gave them his final conclusions
in the form of commands. Having listened to a suggestion


1465

from Davout, who was now called Prince d’Eckmuhl, to
turn the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it should not be
done, without explaining why not. To a proposal made by
General Campan (who was to attack the fleches) to lead his
division through the woods, Napoleon agreed, though the
so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to remark that
a movement through the woods was dangerous and might
disorder the division.
Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino
Redoubt, Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots where two batteries should be set up by the
morrow to act against the Russian entrenchments, and the
places where, in line with them, the field artillery should be
placed.
After giving these and other commands he returned to
his tent, and the dispositions for the battle were written
down from his dictation.
These dispositions, of which the French historians write
with enthusiasm and other historians with profound respect, were as follows:
At dawn the two new batteries established during the
night on the plain occupied by the Prince d’Eckmuhl will
open fire on the opposing batteries of the enemy.
At the same time the commander of the artillery of the
1st Corps, General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan’s
division and all the howitzers of Dessaix’s and Friant’s divisions, will move forward, open fire, and overwhelm with
shellfire the enemy’s battery, against which will operate:
24 guns of the artillery of the Guards
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30 guns of Campan’s division
and 8 guns of Friant’s and Dessaix’s divisions
—
in all 62 guns.
The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche, will place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps,
sixteen in all, on the flanks of the battery that is to bombard
the entrenchment on the left, which will have forty guns in
all directed against it.
General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all the howitzers of the Guard’s artillery against
either one or other of the entrenchments.
During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance
through the wood on the village and turn the enemy’s position.
General Campan will move through the wood to seize
the first fortification.
After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will
be given in accordance with the enemy’s movements.
The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as
the guns of the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of
Morand’s division and of the vice-King’s division will open
a heavy fire on seeing the attack commence on the right
wing.
The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its
three bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand’s
and Gibrard’s divisions, which under his leadership will be
directed against the redoubt and come into line with the
rest of the forces.


1467

All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.
The
Imperial
Camp
near
Mozhaysk,
September, 6, 1812.
These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused
if one allows oneself to regard the arrangements without
religious awe of his genius, related to Napoleon’s orders to
deal with four pointsfour different orders. Not one of these
was, or could be, carried out.
In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed
on the spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which were to come in line with them, 102
guns in all, were to open fire and shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be done, as from
the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not carry
to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air
until the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon’s instructions, moved them forward.
The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the
village through the wood, should turn the Russian left
flank. This could not be done and was not done, because
Poniatowski, advancing on the village through the wood,
met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and did
not turn the Russian position.
The third order was: General Campan will move through
the wood to seize the first fortification. General Campan’s
division did not seize the first fortification but was driven
back, for on emerging from the wood it had to reform under
grapeshot, of which Napoleon was unaware.
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The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village (Borodino) and cross by its three bridges, advancing to
the same heights as Morand’s and Gdrard’s divisions (for
whose movements no directions are given), which under his
leadership will be directed against the redoubt and come
into line with the rest of the forces.
As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made
to execute the orders given him, he was to advance from the
left through Borodino to the redoubt while the divisions of
Morand and Gerard were to advance simultaneously from
the front.
All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not
and could not be executed. After passing through Borodino
the vice-King was driven back to the Kolocha and could get
no farther; while the divisions of Morand and Gerard did
not take the redoubt but were driven back, and the redoubt
was only taken at the end of the battle by the cavalry (a
thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by Napoleon).
So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could be,
executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the fight
has commenced in this manner, orders will be given in accordance with the enemy’s movements, and so it might be
supposed that all necessary arrangements would be made
by Napoleon during the battle. But this was not and could
not be done, for during the whole battle Napoleon was so far
away that, as appeared later, he could not know the course
of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight could
be executed.


1469

Chapter XXVIII
Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he
had not had a cold the orders he gave before and during the
battle would have been still more full of genius and Russia
would have been lost and the face of the world have been
changed. To historians who believe that Russia was shaped
by the will of one manPeter the Greatand that France from
a republic became an empire and French armies went to
Russia at the will of one manNapoleonto say that Russia remained a power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the
twenty-fourth of August may seem logical and convincing.
If it had depended on Napoleon’s will to fight or not to
fight the battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended on his will, then evidently a cold affecting
the manifestation of his will might have saved Russia, and
consequently the valet who omitted to bring Napoleon his
waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth would have been the
savior of Russia. Along that line of thought such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction Voltaire
made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when
he saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to
Charles IX’s stomach being deranged. But to men who do
not admit that Russia was formed by the will of one man,
Peter I, or that the French Empire was formed and the war
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with Russia begun by the will of one man, Napoleon, that
argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes
historic events another answer presents itself, namely, that
the course of human events is predetermined from on highdepends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part
in the events, and that a Napoleon’s influence on the course
of these events is purely external and fictitious.
Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX’s
will, though he gave the order for it and thought it was done
as a result of that order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand men at Borodino
was not due to Napoleon’s will, though he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it was
done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions
appear, yet human dignitywhich tells me that each of us is,
if not more at least not less a man than the great Napoleondemands the acceptance of that solution of the question,
and historic investigation abundantly confirms it.
At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and
killed no one. That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it
was not he who killed people.
The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle
of Borodino not because of Napoleon’s orders but by their
own volition. The whole armyFrench, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutchhungry, ragged, and weary of the campaign,
felt at the sight of an army blocking their road to Moscow
that the wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon


1471

then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have
killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because
it was inevitable.
When they heard Napoleon’s proclamation offering
them, as compensation for mutilation and death, the words
of posterity about their having been in the battle before
Moscow, they cried ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ just as they had cried
‘Vive l’Empereur!’ at the sight of the portrait of the boy
piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy stick, and just as
they would have cried ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ at any nonsense
that might be told them. There was nothing left for them
to do but cry ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and go to fight, in order to
get food and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not
because of Napoleon’s commands that they killed their fellow men.
And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the
battle, for none of his orders were executed and during the
battle he did not know what was going on before him. So the
way in which these people killed one another was not decided by Napoleon’s will but occurred independently of him,
in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people
who took part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question
whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.
Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that
his cold was the cause of his dispositions not being as well
planned as on former occasions, and of his orders during
the battle not being as good as previously, is quite baseless,
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War and Peace

which again shows that Napoleon’s cold on the twenty-sixth
of August was unimportant.
The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are
even better, than previous dispositions by which he had won
victories. His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no
worse than formerly, but much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders only seem worse than previous ones
because the battle of Borodino was the first Napoleon did
not win. The profoundest and most excellent dispositions
and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks oks importance, when they relate to
a battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions
and orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole
volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a
battle that has been won.
The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle
of Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of
composition, but still they were criticizedcriticized for their
very perfection, for their excessive minuteness.
Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as
representative of authority as well as, and even better than,
at other battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of
the battle; he inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he
made no confusion, did not contradict himself, did not get
frightened or run away from the field of battle, but with his
great tact and military experience carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.



1473

Chapter XXIX
On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked:
‘The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!’
Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he
began to talk to him about Paris and about some changes he
meant to make the Empress’ household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details relating to the court.
He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset’s
love of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does when turning up
his sleeves and putting on his apron while a patient is being
strapped to the operating table. ‘The matter is in my hands
and is clear and definite in my head. When the times comes
to set to work I shall do it as no one else could, but now I can
jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed
at my genius.’
Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon
went to rest before the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next day. He was so much interested in
that task that he was unable to sleep, and in spite of his cold
which had grown worse from the dampness of the evening,
he went into the large division of the tent at three o’clock in
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War and Peace

the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked whether the
Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the enemy’s
fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval.
The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.
‘Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?’ Napoleon asked him.
‘Without doubt, sire,’ replied Rapp.
Napoleon looked at him.
‘Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to
say at Smolensk?’ continued Rapp. ‘The wine is drawn and
must be drunk.’
Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning
his head on his hand.
‘This poor army!’ he suddenly remarked. ‘It has diminished greatly since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan,
Rapp. I have always said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards are intact?’ he
remarked interrogatively.
‘Yes, sire,’ replied Rapp.
Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced
at his watch. He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly
morning. It was impossible to give further orders for the
sake of killing time, for the orders had all been given and
were now being executed.
‘Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the Guards?’ asked Napoleon sternly.
‘Yes, sire.’
‘The rice too?’
Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor’s order about


1475

the rice, but Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as
if not believing that his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon ordered another glass
to be brought for Rapp, and silently sipped his own.
‘I have neither taste nor smell,’ he remarked, sniffing at
his glass. ‘This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicinewhat is the good of medicine when it can’t cure a cold!
Corvisart gave me these lozenges but they don’t help at all.
What can doctors cure? One can’t cure anything. Our body
is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it
will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with
remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that should go
for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only
adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is
just a machine for living, that is all.’
And having entered on the path of definition, of which
he was fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a
new one.
‘Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?’ asked he. ‘It
is the art of being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That’s all.’
Rapp made no reply.
‘Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!’ said
Napoleon. ‘We shall see! Do you remember at Braunau
he commanded an army for three weeks and did not once
mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall
see!’
He looked at his watch. It was still only four o’clock.
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War and Peace

He did not feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there
was still nothing to do. He rose, walked to and fro, put on
a warm overcoat and a hat, and went out of the tent. The
night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible moisture
was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were
dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of the Russian line shone through the smoke.
The weather was calm, and the rustle and tramp of the
French troops already beginning to move to take up their
positions were clearly audible.
Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the
fires and listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a
tall guardsman in a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel
before his tent and had drawn himself up like a black pillar
at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon stopped in front of him.
‘What year did you enter the service?’ he asked with that
affectation of military bluntness and geniality with which
he always addressed the soldiers.
The man answered the question.
‘Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its
rice?’
‘It has, Your Majesty.’
Napoleon nodded and walked away.
At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.
It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single
cloud lay in the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out in the faint morning light.
On the right a single deep report of a cannon resound

1477

ed and died away in the prevailing silence. Some minutes
passed. A second and a third report shook the air, then a
fourth and a fifth boomed solemnly near by on the right.
The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before
others rang out and yet more were heard mingling with and
overtaking one another.
Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he dismounted. The game had begun.

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Chapter XXX
On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew,
Pierre ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call
him early in the morning, and then immediately fell asleep
behind a partition in a corner Boris had given up to him.
Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already left the hut. The panes were rattling in the
little windows and his groom was shaking him.
‘Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!’ he
kept repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the
shoulder without looking at him, having apparently lost
hope of getting him to wake up.
‘What? Has it begun? Is it time?’ Pierre asked, waking
up.
‘Hear the firing,’ said the groom, a discharged soldier.
‘All the gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness
himself rode past long ago.’
Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just
bursting forth from behind a cloud that had concealed it,
was shining, with rays still half broken by the clouds, over
the roofs of the street opposite, on the dew-besprinkled dust
of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the windows, the
fence, and on Pierre’s horses standing before the hut. The
roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant ac

1479

companied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.
‘It’s time, Count; it’s time!’ cried the adjutant.
Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre
went down the street to the knoll from which he had looked
at the field of battle the day before. A crowd of military men
was assembled there, members of the staff could be heard
conversing in French, and Kutuzov’s gray head in a white
cap with a red band was visible, his gray nape sunk between
his shoulders. He was looking through a field glass down
the highroad before him.
Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene
before him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama
he had admired from that spot the day before, but now the
whole place was full of troops and covered by smoke clouds
from the guns, and the slanting rays of the bright sun, rising
slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast upon it through the
clear morning air penetrating streaks of rosy, golden tinted
light and long dark shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity of the panorama seemed carved in some precious
stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was
silhouetted against the horizon and was pierced beyond
Valuevo by the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops.
Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed with
copses. There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front
and to the right and left. All this was vivid, majestic, and
unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all was the
view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on
both sides of the Kolocha.
Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of
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War and Peace

it, especially to the left where the Voyna flowing between
its marshy banks falls into the Kolocha, a mist had spread
which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and magically colored
and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns mingled
with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through
that mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water, from the dew, and
from the bayonets of the troops crowded together by the
riverbanks and in Borodino. A white church could be seen
through the mist, and here and there the roofs of huts in
Borodino as well as dense masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and ordnance. And all this moved, or
seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread out over
the whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near
Borodino, so along the entire line outside and above it and
especially in the woods and fields to the left, in the valleys
and on the summits of the high ground, clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing,
now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others
dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the whole expanse.
These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of
sound of the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.
‘Puff!’suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was
seen merging from violet into gray and milky white, and
‘boom!’ came the report a second later.
‘Puff! puff!’and two clouds arose pushing one another


1481

and blending together; and ‘boom, boom!’ came the sounds
confirming what the eye had seen.
Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had
seen as a round compact ball, and in its place already were
balloons of smoke floating to one side, and‘puff’ (with a
pause)‘puff, puff!’ three and then four more appeared and
then from each, with the same interval‘boomboom, boom!’
came the fine, firm, precise sounds in reply. It seemed as
if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes stood
still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran past
them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls
of smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports, while nearer still, in the hollows and woods,
there burst from the muskets small cloudlets that had no
time to become balls, but had their little echoes in just the
same way. ‘Trakh-ta-ta-takh!’ came the frequent crackle
of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in comparison
with the reports of the cannon.
Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining
bayonets, that movement, and those sounds. He turned to
look at Kutuzov and his suite, to compare his impressions
with those of others. They were all looking at the field of
battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with the same
feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent
warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before and had
fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrew.
‘Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!’ Kutuzov was saying to a general who stood beside him, not
taking his eye from the battlefield.
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Having received this order the general passed by Pierre
on his way down the knoll.
‘To the crossing!’ said the general coldly and sternly in
reply to one of the staff who asked where he was going.
‘I’ll go there too, I too!’ thought Pierre, and followed the
general.
The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought
him. Pierre went to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the quietest, clambered onto it,
seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes pressed his
heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles were
slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins, he
galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to smile
as they watched him from the knoll.



1483

Chapter XXXI
Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre
was galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing
sight of him, galloped in among some ranks of infantry
marching ahead of him. He tried to pass either in front
of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers everywhere, all with expression and busy with some unseen
but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in
a white hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to
trample them under his horse’s hoofs.
‘Why ride into the middle of the battalion?’ one of them
shouted at him.
Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre, bending over his saddlebow and hardly able
to control his shying horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers
where there was a free space.
There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers
stood firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware
of it he had come to the bridge across the Kolocha between
Gorki and Borodino, which the French (having occupied
Borodino) were attacking in the first phase of the battle.
Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that
soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in
the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he
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had taken no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the
day before; but despite the incessant firing going on there
he had no idea that this was the field of battle. He did not
notice the sound of the bullets whistling from every side, or
the projectiles that flew over him, did not see the enemy on
the other side of the river, and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded, though many fell near him. He
looked about him with a smile which did not leave his face.
‘Why’s that fellow in front of the line?’ shouted somebody at him again.
‘To the left!... Keep to the right!’ the men shouted to
him.
Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered
one of Raevski’s adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant
looked angrily at him, evidently also intending to shout at
him, but on recognizing him he nodded.
‘How have you got here?’ he said, and galloped on.
Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do,
and afraid of getting in someone’s way again, galloped after
the adjutant.
‘What’s happening here? May I come with you?’ he
asked.
‘One moment, one moment!’ replied the adjutant, and
riding up to a stout colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message and then addressed Pierre.
‘Why have you come here, Count?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Still inquisitive?’
‘Yes, yes,’ assented Pierre.
But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.


1485

‘Here it’s tolerable,’ said he, ‘but with Bagration on the
left flank they’re getting it frightfully hot.’
‘Really?’ said Pierre. ‘Where is that?’
‘Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view
from there and in our battery it is still bearable,’ said the adjutant. ‘Will you come?’
‘Yes, I’ll come with you,’ replied Pierre, looking round
for his groom.
It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering
along or being carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over the day before, a soldier was lying
athwart the rows of scented hay, with his head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.
‘Why haven’t they carried him away?’ Pierre was about
to ask, but seeing the stern expression of the adjutant who
was also looking that way, he checked himself.
Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow
with the adjutant to Raevski’s Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the adjutant’s and jolted him at every step.
‘You don’t seem to be used to riding, Count?’ remarked
the adjutant.
‘No it’s not that, but her action seems so jerky,’ said Pierre
in a puzzled tone.
‘Why... she’s wounded!’ said the adjutant. ‘In the off foreleg above the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you,
Count, on your baptism of fire!’
Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind
the artillery which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening them with the noise of firing, they came to
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a small wood. There it was cool and quiet, with a scent of
autumn. Pierre and the adjutant dismounted and walked
up the hill on foot.
‘Is the general here?’ asked the adjutant on reaching the
knoll.
‘He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way,’
someone told him, pointing to the right.
The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do
with him now.
‘Don’t trouble about me,’ said Pierre. ‘I’ll go up onto the
knoll if I may?’
‘Yes, do. You’ll see everything from there and it’s less
dangerous, and I’ll come for you.’
Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They
did not meet again, and only much later did Pierre learn
that he lost an arm that day.
The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one
afterwards known to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or
Raevski’s Redoubt, and to the French as la grande redoute,
la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre, around which tens of
thousands fell, and which the French regarded as the key to
the whole position.
This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which
trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten
guns that were being fired through openings in the earthwork.
In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns
which also fired incessantly. A little behind the guns stood
infantry. When ascending that knoll Pierre had no notion


1487

that this spot, on which small trenches had been dug and
from which a few guns were firing, was the most important
point of the battle.
On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he
thought it one of the least significant parts of the field.
Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end
of a trench surrounding the battery and gazed at what was
going on around him with an unconsciously happy smile.
Occasionally he rose and walked about the battery still with
that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers who
were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running
past him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery
were being fired continually one after another with a deafening roar, enveloping the whole neighborhood in powder
smoke.
In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed
in support, here in the battery where a small number of men
busy at their work were separated from the rest by a trench,
everyone experienced a common and as it were family feeling of animation.
The intrusion of Pierre’s nonmilitary figure in a white hat
made an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked
askance at him with surprise and even alarm as they went
past him. The senior artillery officer, a tall, long-legged,
pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.
A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously
commanding the two guns entrusted to him, addressed
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Pierre sternly.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘permit me to ask you to stand aside. You
must not be here.’
The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they
looked at Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves
that this man in the white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench with a shy smile
or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up and down
the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,
their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change
into a kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel
for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in general for the animals
that live with the regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre
into their family, adopted him, gave him a nickname (“our
gentleman’), and made kindly fun of him among themselves.
A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he
looked around with a smile as he brushed from his clothes
some earth it had thrown up.
‘And how’s it you’re not afraid, sir, really now?’ a redfaced, broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin
that disclosed a set of sound, white teeth.
‘Are you afraid, then?’ said Pierre.
‘What else do you expect?’ answered the soldier. ‘She has
no mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering down,
out go your innards. One can’t help being afraid,’ he said
laughing.
Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre. They seemed not to have expected him to talk


1489

like anybody else, and the discovery that he did so delighted
them.
‘It’s the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it’s
wonderful! There’s a gentleman for you!’
‘To your places!’ cried the young officer to the men gathered round Pierre.
The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for
the first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with great precision and formality.
The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry
were growing more intense over the whole field, especially
to the left where Bagration’s fleches were, but where Pierre
was the smoke of the firing made it almost impossible to
distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole attention was
engrossed by watching the family circleseparated from
all elseformed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights
and sounds of the battlefield was now replaced by another,
especially since he had seen that soldier lying alone in the
hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he observed
the faces of those around him.
By ten o’clock some twenty men had already been carried
away from the battery; two guns were smashed and cannon
balls fell more and more frequently on the battery and spent
bullets buzzed and whistled around. But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices and jokes
were heard on all sides.
‘A live one!’ shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.
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War and Peace

‘Not this way! To the infantry!’ added another with loud
laughter, seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of
the supports.
‘Are you bowing to a friend, eh?’ remarked another, chaffing a peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.
Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see what was happening in front.
‘They’ve withdrawn the front line, it has retired,’ said
they, pointing over the earthwork.
‘Mind your own business,’ an old sergeant shouted at
them. ‘If they’ve retired it’s because there’s work for them
to do farther back.’
And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a shove with his knee. This was followed by
a burst of laughter.
‘To the fifth gun, wheel it up!’ came shouts from one
side.
‘Now then, all together, like bargees!’ rose the merry
voices of those who were moving the gun.
‘Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman’s hat off!’ cried
the red-faced humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre.
‘Awkward baggage!’ he added reproachfully to a cannon
ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man’s leg.
‘Now then, you foxes!’ said another, laughing at some
militiamen who, stooping low, entered the battery to carry
away the wounded man.
‘So this gruel isn’t to your taste? Oh, you crows! You’re
scared!’ they shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg had been torn off.


1491

‘There, lads... oh, oh!’ they mimicked the peasants, ‘they
don’t like it at all!’
Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt,
and after every loss, the liveliness increased more and
more.
As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and
more vividly and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to what was taking place, the
lightning of hidden fire growing more and more intense
glowed in the faces of these men.
Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not
concerned to know what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching this fire which burned ever
more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the same
way in his own soul.
At ten o’clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in front of the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet
retreated. From the battery they could be seen running back
past it carrying their wounded on their muskets. A general
with his suite came to the battery, and after speaking to the
colonel gave Pierre an angry look and went away again having ordered the infantry supports behind the battery to lie
down, so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from amid
the ranks of infantry to the right of the battery came the
sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks of infantry moved forward.
Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword
hang down, was walking backwards and kept glancing un1492

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easily around.
The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke
but their long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could
still be heard. A few minutes later crowds of wounded men
and stretcher-bearers came back from that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in the battery.
Several men were lying about who had not been removed.
Around the cannon the men moved still more briskly and
busily. No one any longer took notice of Pierre. Once or
twice he was shouted at for being in the way. The senior
officer moved with big, rapid strides from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young officer, with his face
still more flushed, commanded the men more scrupulously
than ever. The soldiers handed up the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business with strained smartness. They
gave little jumps as they walked, as though they were on
springs.
The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face
the fire which Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly.
Pierre standing beside the commanding officer. The young
officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to his superior.
‘I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are
left. Are we to continue firing?’ he asked.
‘Grapeshot!’ the senior shouted, without answering the
question, looking over the wall of the trench.
Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a
gasp and bending double sat down on the ground like a bird
shot on the wing. Everything became strange, confused,
and misty in Pierre’s eyes.


1493

One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck
the earthwork, a soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before, now heard nothing else. On the
right of the battery soldiers shouting ‘Hurrah!’ were running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.
A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by
which he was standing, crumbling down the earth; a black
ball flashed before his eyes and at the same instant plumped
into something. Some militiamen who were entering the
battery ran back.
‘All with grapeshot!’ shouted the officer.
The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened
whisper informed him (as a butler at dinner informs his
master that there is no more of some wine asked for) that
there were no more charges.
‘The scoundrels! What are they doing?’ shouted the officer, turning to Pierre.
The officer’s face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered under his frowning brow.
‘Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!’ he yelled, angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and
speaking to his men.
‘I’ll go,’ said Pierre.
The officer, without answering him, strode across to the
opposite side.
‘Don’t fire.... Wait!’ he shouted.
The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition
stumbled against Pierre.
‘Eh, sir, this is no place for you,’ said he, and ran down
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the slope.
Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young
officer was sitting.
One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him,
falling in front, beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down
the slope. ‘Where am I going?’ he suddenly asked himself
when he was already near the green ammunition wagons.
He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or go
on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to
the ground. At the same instant he was dazzled by a great
flash of flame, and immediately a deafening roar, crackling,
and whistling made his ears tingle.
When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground
leaning on his hands; the ammunition wagons he had been
approaching no longer existed, only charred green boards
and rags littered the scorched grass, and a horse, dangling
fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while another
horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering prolonged and
piercing cries.



1495

Chapter XXXII
Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran
back to the battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors
that surrounded him.
On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were
men doing something there but that no shots were being
fired from the battery. He had no time to realize who these
men were. He saw the senior officer lying on the earth wall
with his back turned as if he were examining something
down below and that one of the soldiers he had noticed before was struggling forward shouting ‘Brothers!’ and trying
to free himself from some men who were holding him by
the arm. He also saw something else that was strange.
But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been
killed, that the soldier shouting ‘Brothers!’ was a prisoner,
and that another man had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had he run into the redoubt before a
thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in a blue uniform rushed
on him sword in hand, shouting something. Instinctively
guarding against the shockfor they had been running together at full speed before they saw one anotherPierre put
out his hands and seized the man (a French officer) by the
shoulder with one hand and by the throat with the other.
The officer, dropping his sword, seized Pierre by his collar.
For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one
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another’s unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what
they had done and what they were to do next. ‘Am I taken
prisoner or have I taken him prisoner?’ each was thinking.
But the French officer was evidently more inclined to think
he had been taken prisoner because Pierre’s strong hand,
impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever tighter
and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something,
when just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball
whistled, and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer’s
head had been torn off, so swiftly had he ducked it.
Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without
further thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the
Frenchman ran back to the battery and Pierre ran down the
slope stumbling over the dead and wounded who, it seemed
to him, caught at his feet. But before he reached the foot of
the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian soldiers
who, stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and
wildly toward the battery. (This was the attack for which
Ermolov claimed the credit, declaring that only his courage
and good luck made such a feat possible: it was the attack in
which he was said to have thrown some St. George’s Crosses
he had in his pocket into the battery for the first soldiers to
take who got there.)
The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our
troops shouting ‘Hurrah!’ pursued them so far beyond the
battery that it was difficult to call them back.
The prisoners were brought down from the battery and
among them was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds of woundedsome known to Pierre


1497

and some unknownRussians and French, with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were carried on
stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto the
knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of that family
circle which had received him as a member he did not find
a single one. There were many dead whom he did not know,
but some he recognized. The young officer still sat in the
same way, bent double, in a pool of blood at the edge of the
earth wall. The red-faced man was still twitching, but they
did not carry him away.
Pierre ran down the slope once more.
‘Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what
they have done!’ he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd
of stretcher bearers moving from the battlefield.
But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and
in front and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be seething in the smoke, and the roar of
cannon and musketry did not diminish, but even increased
to desperation like a man who, straining himself, shrieks
with all his remaining strength.

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War and Peace

Chapter XXXIII
The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought
within the seven thousand feet between Borodino and
Bagration’s fleches. Beyond that space there was, on the one
side, a demonstration made by the Russians with Uvarov’s
cavalry at midday, and on the other side, beyond Utitsa,
Poniatowski’s collision with Tuchkov; but these two were
detached and feeble actions in comparison with what took
place in the center of the battlefield. On the field between
Borodino and the fleches, beside the wood, the chief action
of the day took place on an open space visible from both
sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way.
The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from
several hundred guns.
Then when the whole field was covered with smoke,
two divisions, Campan’s and Dessaix’s, advanced from the
French right, while Murat’s troops advanced on Borodino
from their left.
From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was
standing the fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and
it was more than a mile as the crow flies to Borodino, so
that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,
especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the
whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix’s division advancing
against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered


1499

the hollow that lay between them and the fleches. As soon as
they had descended into that hollow, the smoke of the guns
and musketry on the fleches grew so dense that it covered
the whole approach on that side of it. Through the smoke
glimpses could be caught of something blackprobably menand at times the glint of bayonets. But whether they were
moving or stationary, whether they were French or Russian,
could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.
The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck
straight into Napoleon’s face as, shading his eyes with his
hand, he looked at the fleches. The smoke spread out before
them, and at times it looked as if the smoke were moving, at
times as if the troops moved. Sometimes shouts were heard
through the firing, but it was impossible to tell what was being done there.
Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field
glass, and in its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and sometimes Russians, but when he looked
again with the naked eye, he could not tell where what he
had seen was.
He descended the knoll and began walking up and down
before it.
Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed
intently at the battlefield.
But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from where he was standing down below, or from
the knoll above on which some of his generals had taken
their stand, but even from the fleches themselvesin which by
this time there were now Russian and now French soldiers,
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alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or
maddenedeven at those fleches themselves it was impossible
to make out what was taking place. There for several hours
amid incessant cannon and musketry fire, now Russians
were seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and
now cavalry: they appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do with one another, screamed, and ran back
again.
From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with
reports of the progress of the action, but all these reports
were false, both because it was impossible in the heat of
battle to say what was happening at any given moment and
because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual place
of conflict but reported what they had heard from others;
and also because while an adjutant was riding more than a
mile to Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he
brought was already becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings that Borodino had been
occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in the hands
of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished
the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops
should form up on the farther side and wait. But before that
order was givenalmost as soon in fact as the adjutant had
left Borodinothe bridge had been retaken by the Russians
and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre had been
present at the beginning of the battle.
An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale
and frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their


1501

attack had been repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout
killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been told that
the French had been repulsed, the fleches had in fact been
recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive
and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his orders, which
had either been executed before he gave them or could not
be and were not executed.
The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field
of battle but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual
fighting and only occasionally went within musket range,
made their own arrangements without asking Napoleon
and issued orders where and in what direction to fire and
where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But
even their orders, like Napoleon’s, were seldom carried
out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance
ran back on meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain
where they were, suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly
before them, sometimes rushed back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in pursuit of
the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they
reached the top of the incline turned round and galloped
full speed back again. The infantry moved in the same way,
sometimes running to quite other places than those they
were ordered to go to. All orders as to where and when to
move the guns, when to send infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantryall such orders were
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given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned, without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much
less Napoleon. They did not fear getting into trouble for not
fulfilling orders or for acting on their own initiative, for in
battle what is at stake is what is dearest to manhis own lifeand it sometimes seems that safety lies in running back,
sometimes in running forward; and these men who were
right in the heat of the battle acted according to the mood of
the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward and backward did not improve or alter the position
of the troops. All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of disablement and death was
caused by the balls and bullets that flew over the fields on
which these men were floundering about. As soon as they
left the place where the balls and bullets were flying about,
their superiors, located in the background, re-formed them
and brought them under discipline and under the influence
of that discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where
under the influence of fear of death they lost their discipline
and rushed about according to the chance promptings of
the throng.



1503

Chapter XXXIV
Napoleon’s generalsDavout, Ney, and Murat, who were
near that region of fire and sometimes even entered itrepeatedly led into it huge masses of well-ordered troops. But
contrary to what had always happened in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of the enemy’s flight,
these orderly masses returned thence as disorganized and
terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but their numbers constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat
sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.
Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch,
when Murat’s adjutant galloped up with an assurance that
the Russians would be routed if His Majesty would let him
have another division.
‘Reinforcements?’ said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking at the adjutanta handsome lad with long black
curls arranged like Murat’s ownas though he did not understand his words.
‘Reinforcements!’ thought Napoleon to himself. ‘How
can they need reinforcements when they already have half
the army directed against a weak, unentrenched Russian
wing?’
‘Tell the King of Naples,’ said he sternly, ‘that it is not
noon yet, and I don’t yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..’
The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed
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War and Peace

deeply without removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were being slaughtered.
Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and
Berthier began talking to them about matters unconnected
with the battle.
In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning
to interest Napoleon, Berthier’s eyes turned to look at a general with a suite, who was galloping toward the knoll on
a lathering horse. It was Belliard. Having dismounted he
went up to the Emperor with rapid strides and in a loud
voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity of sending
reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians
were lost if the Emperor would give another division.
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace
up and down without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the generals of the suite around him.
‘You are very fiery, Belliard,’ said Napoleon, when he
again came up to the general. ‘In the heat of a battle it is
easy to make a mistake. Go and have another look and then
come back to me.’
Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of the battlefield galloped up.
‘Now then, what do you want?’ asked Napoleon in the
tone of a man irritated at being continually disturbed.
‘Sire, the prince...’ began the adjutant.
‘Asks for reinforcements?’ said Napoleon with an angry
gesture.
The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of


1505

steps, stopped, came back, and called Berthier.
‘We must give reserves,’ he said, moving his arms slightly apart. ‘Who do you think should be sent there?’ he asked
of Berthier (whom he subsequently termed ‘that gosling I
have made an eagle’).
‘Send Claparede’s division, sire,’ replied Berthier, who
knew all the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.
Napoleon nodded assent.
The adjutant galloped to Claparede’s division and a few
minutes later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll
moved forward. Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.
‘No!’ he suddenly said to Berthier. ‘I can’t send Claparede. Send Friant’s division.’
Though there was no advantage in sending Friant’s
division instead of Claparede’s, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in stopping Claparede and sending
Friant now, the order was carried out exactly. Napoleon did
not notice that in regard to his army he was playing the part
of a doctor who hinders by his medicinesa role he so justly
understood and condemned.
Friant’s division disappeared as the others had done
into the smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants
continued to arrive at a gallop and as if by agreement all
said the same thing. They all asked for reinforcements and
all said that the Russians were holding their positions and
maintaining a hellish fire under which the French army was
melting away.
Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.
M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted
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since morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His Majesty.
‘I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?’ said he.
Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the negation to refer only to the victory and not to the
lunch, M. de Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity
to remark that there is no reason for not having lunch when
one can get it.
‘Go away...’ exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely,
and turned aside.
A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy
beamed on M. de Beausset’s face and he glided away to the
other generals.
Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like
that of an ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging
money about and always winning, suddenly just when he
has calculated all the chances of the game, finds that the
more he considers his play the more surely he loses.
His troops were the same, his generals the same, the
same preparations had been made, the same dispositions,
and the same proclamation courte et energique, he himself
was still the same: he knew that and knew that he was now
even more experienced and skillful than before. Even the
enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and Friedlandyet the
terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally become impotent.
All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned
with success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an


1507

attack by reserves to break the enemy’s line, and a cavalry
attack by ‘the men of iron,’ all these methods had already
been employed, yet not only was there no victory, but from
all sides came the same news of generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the impossibility of driving
back the Russians, and of disorganization among his own
troops.
Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and
uttered a few phrases, marshals and adjutants had come
galloping up with congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the corps of prisoners, bundles
of enemy eagles and standards, cannon and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to gather in
the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something
strange was happening to his troops.
Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw
that this was not the same, not at all the same, as what had
happened in his former battles. He saw that what he was
feeling was felt by all the men about him experienced in
the art of war. All their faces looked dejected, and they all
shunned one another’s eyesonly a de Beausset could fail to
grasp the meaning of what was happening.
But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew
the meaning of a battle not gained by the attacking side in
eight hours, after all efforts had been expended. He knew
that it was a lost battle and that the least accident might
nowwith the fight balanced on such a strained centerdestroy him and his army.
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War and Peace

When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange
Russian campaign in which not one battle had been won,
and in which not a flag, or cannon, or army corps had been
captured in two months, when he looked at the concealed
depression on the faces around him and heard reports of
the Russians still holding their grounda terrible feeling like
a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The
Russians might fall on his left wing, might break through
his center, he himself might be killed by a stray cannon ball.
All this was possible. In former battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now innumerable
unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected
them all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies
that a ruffian is coming to attack him, and raises his arm
to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows should
annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless
and limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness.
The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank
of the French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat
silently on a campstool below the knoll, with head bowed
and elbows on his knees. Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the line to ascertain the
position of affairs.
‘What? What do you say?’ asked Napoleon. ‘Yes, tell
them to bring me my horse.’
He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.
Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the


1509

whole space through which Napoleon rode, horses and men
were lying in pools of blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever before seen such
horrors or so many slain in such a small area. The roar of
guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and
gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does
to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at
Semenovsk, and through the smoke saw ranks of men in
uniforms of a color unfamiliar to him. They were Russians.
The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk
village and its knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly
along their line and sent forth clouds of smoke. It was no
longer a battle: it was a continuous slaughter which could be
of no avail either to the French or the Russians. Napoleon
stopped his horse and again fell into the reverie from which
Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what was going on before him and around him and was supposed to be
directed by him and to depend on him, and from its lack of
success this affair, for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.
One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured
to offer to lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier,
standing near Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this general’s senseless offer.
Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long
time.
‘At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have
my Guard destroyed!’ he said, and turning his horse rode
back to Shevardino.
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War and Peace

Chapter XXXV
On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in
the morning sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy
body relaxed. He gave no orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.
‘Yes, yes, do that,’ he replied to various proposals. ‘Yes,
yes: go, dear boy, and have a look,’ he would say to one or
another of those about him; or, ‘No, don’t, we’d better wait!’
He listened to the reports that were brought him and gave
directions when his subordinates demanded that of him;
but when listening to the reports it seemed as if he were not
interested in the import of the words spoken, but rather in
something elsein the expression of face and tone of voice of
those who were reporting. By long years of military experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that
it is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands
of others struggling with death, and he knew that the result
of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in
chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by
the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched
this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power.
Kutuzov’s general expression was one of concentrated
quiet attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he
found it difficult to master the fatigue of his old and feeble


1511

body.
At eleven o’clock they brought him news that the fleches
captured by the French had been retaken, but that Prince
Bagration was wounded. Kutuzov groaned and swayed his
head.
‘Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it
exactly,’ he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to
the Duke of Wurttemberg who was standing behind him.
‘Will Your Highness please take command of the first
army?’
Soon after the duke’s departurebefore he could possibly
have reached Semenovskhis adjutant came back from him
and told Kutuzov that the duke asked for more troops.
Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over the command of the first army, and a request
to the dukewhom he said he could not spare at such an important momentto return to him. When they brought him
news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the staff officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.
‘Wait a little, gentlemen,’ said he. ‘The battle is won, and
there is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still,
it is better to wait before we rejoice.’
But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the
army.
When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank
with news that the French had captured the fleches and the
village of Semenovsk, Kutuzov, guessing by the sounds of
the battle and by Scherbinin’s looks that the news was bad,
rose as if to stretch his legs and, taking Scherbinin’s arm,
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War and Peace

led him aside.
‘Go, my dear fellow,’ he said to Ermolov, ‘and see whether
something can’t be done.’
Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian
position. The attack directed by Napoleon against our left
flank had been several times repulsed. In the center the
French had not got beyond Borodino, and on their left flank
Uvarov’s cavalry had put the French to flight.
Toward three o’clock the French attacks ceased. On the
faces of all who came from the field of battle, and of those
who stood around him, Kutuzov noticed an expression of
extreme tension. He was satisfied with the day’s successa success exceeding his expectations, but the old man’s strength
was failing him. Several times his head dropped low as if it
were falling and he dozed off. Dinner was brought him.
Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding
past Prince Andrew had said, ‘the war should be extended
widely,’ and whom Bagration so detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen had come from Barclay de
Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on the left flank.
The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the army,
weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the battle
was lost, and sent his favorite officer to the commander in
chief with that news.
Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened
under their puckering lids.
Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached


1513

Kutuzov with a half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak of his cap.
He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly trained
military man, he left it to Russians to make an idol of this
useless old man, but that he knew whom he was dealing
with. ‘Der alte Herr’ (as in their own set the Germans called
Kutuzov) ‘is making himself very comfortable,’ thought
Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes in front of Kutuzov he began to report to ‘the old gentleman’ the position
of affairs on the left flank as Barclay had ordered him to and
as he himself had seen and understood it.
‘All the points of our position are in the enemy’s hands
and we cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men
are running away and it is impossible to stop them,’ he reported.
Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze
on Wolzogen, as if not understand what was said to him.
Wolzogen, noticing ‘the old gentleman’s’ agitation, said
with a smile:
‘I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness what I have seen. The troops are in complete
disorder..’
‘You have seen? You have seen?...’ Kutuzov shouted
frowning, and rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.
‘How... how dare you!...’ he shouted, choking and making a threatening gesture with his trembling arms: ‘How
dare you, sir, say that to me? You know nothing about it.
Tell General Barclay from me that his information is incor1514

War and Peace

rect and that the real course of the battle is better known to
me, the commander in chief, than to him.’
Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov
interrupted him.
‘The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated
on the right flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow
yourself to say what you don’t know! Be so good as to ride
to General Barclay and inform him of my firm intention to
attack the enemy tomorrow,’ said Kutuzov sternly.
All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy
breathing of the panting old general.
‘They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God
and our brave army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we
shall drive him from the sacred soil of Russia,’ said Kutuzov
crossing himself, and he suddenly sobbed as his eyes filled
with tears.
Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips,
stepped silently aside, marveling at ‘the old gentleman’s’
conceited stupidity.
‘Ah, here he is, my hero!’ said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome, dark-haired general who was just ascending the
knoll.
This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the
most important part of the field of Borodino.
Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding
their ground and that the French no longer ventured to attack.
After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:
‘Then you do not think, like some others, that we must


1515

retreat?’
‘On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions
it is always the most stubborn who remain victors,’ replied
Raevski, ‘and in my opinion..’
‘Kaysarov!’ Kutuzov called to his adjutant. ‘Sit down and
write out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you,’ he
continued, addressing another, ‘ride along the line and that
tomorrow we attack.’
While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the
order of the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said
that General Barclay wished to have written confirmation
of the order the field marshal had given.
Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions
for the order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously
wished to receive.
And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which
maintains throughout an army one and the same temper,
known as ‘the spirit of the army,’ and which constitutes the
sinew of war, Kutuzov’s words, his order for a battle next
day, immediately became known from one end of the army
to the other.
It was far from being the same words or the same order
that reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth to mouth at different ends of the army did
not even resemble what Kutuzov had said, but the sense of
his words spread everywhere because what he said was not
the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a feeling that
lay in the commander in chief’s soul as in that of every Rus1516

War and Peace

sian.
And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the
enemy, and hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted to believe, the exhausted, wavering
men felt comforted and inspirited.



1517

Chapter XXXVI
Prince Andrew’s regiment was among the reserves
which till after one o’clock were stationed inactive behind
Semenovsk, under heavy artillery fire. Toward two o’clock
the regiment, having already lost more than two hundred
men, was moved forward into a trampled oatfield in the
gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense,
concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between one and two o’clock.
Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the
regiment here lost another third of its men. From in front
and especially from the right, in the unlifting smoke the
guns boomed, and out of the mysterious domain of smoke
that overlay the whole space in front, quick hissing cannon
balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly. At times, as
if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but
sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a
minute and the slain were continually being dragged away
and the wounded carried off.
With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those not yet killed. The regiment stood in
columns of battalion, three hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and the same mood.
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All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely heard
in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud
of a successful shot and the cry of ‘stretchers!’ was heard.
Most of the time, by their officers’ order, the men sat on the
ground. One, having taken off his shako, carefully loosened
the gathers of its lining and drew them tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay between his palms, polished his
bayonet; another fingered the strap and pulled the buckle of
his bandolier, while another smoothed and refolded his leg
bands and put his boots on again. Some built little houses of
the tufts in the plowed ground, or plaited baskets from the
straw in the cornfield. All seemed fully absorbed in these
pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when rows
of stretchers went past, when some troops retreated, and
when great masses of the enemy came into view through
the smoke, no one paid any attention to these things. But
when our artillery or cavalry advanced or some of our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were
heard on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted
by occurrences quite apart from, and unconnected with,
the battle. It was as if the minds of these morally exhausted
men found relief in everyday, commonplace occurrences.
A battery of artillery was passing in front of the regiment.
The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a trace.
‘Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She’ll fall....
Ah, they don’t see it!’ came identical shouts from the ranks
all along the regiment. Another time, general attention
was attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows
whence, which trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of


1519

the ranks with tail stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell close
by, when it yelped, tucked its tail between its legs, and darted aside. Yells and shrieks of laughter rose from the whole
regiment. But such distractions lasted only a moment, and
for eight hours the men had been inactive, without food, in
constant fear of death, and their pale and gloomy faces grew
ever paler and gloomier.
Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the
regiment, paced up and down from the border of one patch
to another, at the edge of the meadow beside an oatfield,
with head bowed and arms behind his back. There was
nothing for him to do and no orders to be given. Everything
went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the front,
the wounded carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any
soldiers ran to the rear they returned immediately and hastily. At first Prince Andrew, considering it his duty to rouse
the courage of the men and to set them an example, walked
about among the ranks, but he soon became convinced that
this was unnecessary and that there was nothing he could
teach them. All the powers of his soul, as of every soldier
there, were unconsciously bent on avoiding the contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the
meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing
at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides
trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the
mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he
must walk from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he
stripped the flowers from the wormwood that grew along a
boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their
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War and Peace

pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous day’s thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened
with weary ears to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying projectiles from the booming of
the reports, glanced at the tiresomely familiar faces of the
men of the first battalion, and waited. ‘Here it comes... this
one is coming our way again!’ he thought, listening to an
approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. ‘One,
another! Again! It has hit....’ He stopped and looked at the
ranks. ‘No, it has gone over. But this one has hit!’ And again
he started trying to reach the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces from him, a cannon ball
tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill ran down his
back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had
been hita large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.
‘Adjutant!’ he shouted. ‘Order them not to crowd together.’
The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached
Prince Andrew. From the other side a battalion commander
rode up.
‘Look out!’ came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like
a bird whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground,
a shell dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince
Andrew and close to the battalion commander’s horse. The
horse first, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to
show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing the major, and
galloped aside. The horse’s terror infected the men.
‘Lie down!’ cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on


1521

the ground.
Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a
top between him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the field and the meadow.
‘Can this be death?’ thought Prince Andrew, looking
with a quite new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke that curled up from the
rotating black ball. ‘I cannot, I do not wish to die. I love lifeI
love this grass, this earth, this air....’ He thought this, and
at the same time remembered that people were looking at
him.
‘It’s shameful, sir!’ he said to the adjutant. ‘What..’
He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment
came the sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as
from a breaking window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started to one side, raising his arm,
and fell on his chest. Several officers ran up to him. From
the right side of his abdomen, blood was welling out making a large stain on the grass.
The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood
behind the officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his
face in the grass, breathing heavily and noisily.
‘What are you waiting for? Come along!’
The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and
legs, but he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they
set him down again.
‘Pick him up, lift him, it’s all the same!’ cried someone.
They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on
the stretcher.
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War and Peace

‘Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means
death! My God!’voices among the officers were heard saying.
‘It flew a hair’s breadth past my ear,’ said the adjutant.
The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders,
started hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to
the dressing station.
‘Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!’ shouted an officer,
seizing by their shoulders and checking the peasants, who
were walking unevenly and jolting the stretcher.
‘Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!’ said the foremost
peasant.
‘Now that’s right!’ said the one behind joyfully, when he
had got into step.
‘Your excellency! Eh, Prince!’ said the trembling voice of
Timokhin, who had run up and was looking down on the
stretcher.
Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the
speaker from the stretcher into which his head had sunk
deep and again his eyelids drooped.
The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing
station by the wood, where wagons were stationed. The
dressing station consisted of three tents with flaps turned
back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating oats
from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and
pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew
among the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents,
over more than five acres, bloodstained men in various


1523

garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the wounded stood crowds
of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive
from the spot. Disregarding the officers’ orders, the soldiers
stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently,
as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was
taking place before them. From the tents came now loud
angry cries and now plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or to point out those who were to
be brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their turn
outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore,
or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew’s
bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been
bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up
to one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions.
Prince Andrew opened his eyes and for a long time could not
make out what was going on around him. He remembered
the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black
ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps
from him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and
attracting general attention, stood a tall, handsome, blackhaired noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He
had been wounded in the head and leg by bullets. Around
him, eagerly listening to his talk, a crowd of wounded and
stretcher-bearers was gathered.
‘We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we grabbed the King himself!’ cried he, looking
around him with eyes that glittered with fever. ‘If only reserves had come up just then, lads, there wouldn’t have been
1524

War and Peace

nothing left of him! I tell you surely..’
Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew
looked at him with shining eyes and experienced a sense
of comfort. ‘But isn’t it all the same now?’ thought he. ‘And
what will be there, and what has there been here? Why was
I so reluctant to part with life? There was something in this
life I did not and do not understand.’



1525

Chapter XXXVII
One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained
apron, holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger
of one of his small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it.
He raised his head and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a little respite.
After turning his head from right to left for some time, he
sighed and looked down.
‘All right, immediately,’ he replied to a dresser who
pointed Prince Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.
Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.
‘It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are
to have a chance!’ remarked one.
Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that
had only just been cleared and which a dresser was washing
down. Prince Andrew could not make out distinctly what
was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all sides and the
torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distracted
him. All he saw about him merged into a general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill the
whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot
August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the
Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a
canon, the sight of which had even then filled him with hor1526

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ror, as by a presentiment.
There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were
occupied, and on the third they placed Prince Andrew.
For a little while he was left alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two tables. On
the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by
the uniform thrown down beside him. Four soldiers were
holding him, and a spectacled doctor was cutting into his
muscular brown back.
‘Ooh, ooh, ooh!’ grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting
up his swarthy snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones,
and baring his white teeth, he began to wriggle and twitch
his body and utter piercing, ringing, and prolonged yells.
On the other table, round which many people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his head thrown
back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head
seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large,
white, plump leg twitched rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The man was sobbing and choking convulsively.
Two doctorsone of whom was pale and tremblingwere silently doing something to this man’s other, gory leg. When
he had finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an
overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew,
wiping his hands.
He glanced at Prince Andrew’s face and quickly turned
away.
‘Undress him! What are you waiting for?’ he cried angrily to the dressers.


1527

His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came
back to Prince Andrew’s mind when the dresser with sleeves
rolled up began hastily to undo the buttons of his clothes
and undressed him. The doctor bent down over the wound,
felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to someone,
and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he came to himself the
splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted,
the torn flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water
was being sprinkled on his face. As soon as Prince Andrew
opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed him silently on
the lips, and hurried away.
After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince
Andrew enjoyed a blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the best and happiest moments
of his lifeespecially his earliest childhood, when he used to
be undressed and put to bed, and when leaning over him
his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the
pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of lifereturned
to his memory, not merely as something past but as something present.
The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man
the shape of whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew:
they were lifting him up and trying to quiet him.
‘Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!’ his frightened
moans could be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by
sobs.
Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted Andrew
wanted to weep. Whether because he was dying without
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glory, or because he was sorry to part with life, or because
of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or
because he was suffering and others were suffering and that
man near him was groaning so piteouslyhe felt like weeping
childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.
The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained
with clotted blood and with the boot still on.
‘Oh! Oh, ooh!’ he sobbed, like a woman.
The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince Andrew from seeing his face, moved away.
‘My God! What is this? Why is he here?’ said Prince Andrew to himself.
In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had
just been amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men
were supporting him in their arms and offering him a glass
of water, but his trembling, swollen lips could not grasp its
rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. ‘Yes, it is he! Yes, that
man is somehow closely and painfully connected with me,’
thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping what he
saw before him. ‘What is the connection of that man with
my childhood and life?’ he asked himself without finding an
answer. And suddenly a new unexpected memory from that
realm of pure and loving childhood presented itself to him.
He remembered Natasha as he had seen her for the first time
at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with
a frightened happy face ready for rapture, and love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever, awoke in
his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed
between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him


1529

through tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered
everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart.
Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and
wept tender loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and
for his own and their errors.
‘Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us
and for those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love
which God preached on earth and which Princess Mary
taught me and I did not understandthat is what made me
sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me had I
lived. But now it is too late. I know it!’

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War and Peace

Chapter XXXVIII
The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with
dead and wounded, together with the heaviness of his head
and the news that some twenty generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded, and the consciousness of
the impotence of his once mighty arm, produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to look at
the killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his
strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the
battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought
constituted his merit and his greatness. He rode hurriedly
from the battlefield and returned to the Shevardino knoll,
where he sat on his campstool, his sallow face swollen and
heavy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening, with downcast eyes, to the sounds of
firing. With painful dejection he awaited the end of this
action, in which he regarded himself as a participant and
which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling
for a brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm
of life he had served so long. He felt in his own person the
sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield.
The heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the
possibility of suffering and death for himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory (what
need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished


1531

for was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had
been on the Semenovsk heights the artillery commander
had proposed to him to bring several batteries of artillery
up to those heights to strengthen the fire on the Russian
troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon had assented and had given orders that news should be brought to
him of the effect those batteries produced.
An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two
hundred guns had been concentrated on the Russians, as he
had ordered, but that they still held their ground.
‘Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they
hold on,’ said the adjutant.
‘They want more!...’ said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.
‘Sire?’ asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.
‘They want more!’ croaked Napoleon frowning. ‘Let
them have it!’
Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire,
and for which he gave the order only because he thought it
was expected of him, was being done. And he fell back into
that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and againas a
horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for
itselfhe submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him.
And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and
conscience darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening lay more than on all the others
who took part in it. Never to the end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the significance of
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his actions which were too contrary to goodness and truth,
too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able
to grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions,
belauded as they were by half the world, and so he had to
repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity.
Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn
with men killed and maimed (by his will as he believed),
did he reckon as he looked at them how many Russians
there were for each Frenchman and, deceiving himself, find
reason for rejoicing in the calculation that there were five
Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone did
he write in a letter to Paris that ‘the battle field was superb,’
because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the
island of St. Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said
he intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great
deeds he had done, he wrote:
The Russian war should have been the most popular war
of modern times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and security of all; it was purely
pacific and conservative.
It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties
and the beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out, full of well-being and prosperity for
all. The European system was already founded; all that remained was to organize it.
Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I too should have had my Congress and my Holy
Alliance. Those ideas were stolen from me. In that reunion
of great sovereigns we should have discussed our interests


1533

like one family, and have rendered account to the peoples as
clerk to master.
Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but
one people, and anyone who traveled anywhere would have
found himself always in the common fatherland. I should
have demanded the freedom of all navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that
the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to
mere guards for the sovereigns.
On returning to France, to the bosom of the great,
strong, magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I
should have proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future
wars purely defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I
should have associated my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and his constitutional reign
would have begun.
Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the
French the envy of the nations!
My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company with the Empress and during the royal
apprenticeship of my son, to leisurely visiting, with our own
horses and like a true country couple, every corner of the
Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and
everywhere.
Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy
role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the
aim of his actions had been the peoples’ welfare and that he
could control the fate of millions and by the employment of
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power confer benefactions.
‘Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula,’
he wrote further of the Russian war, ‘half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles, Bavarians, Wurttembergers,
Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and Neapolitans. The
Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third composed
of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,
Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of
Hamburg, and so on: it included scarcely a hundred and
forty thousand who spoke French. The Russian expedition
actually cost France less than fifty thousand men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in the
various battles four times more men than the French army;
the burning of Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand
Russians who died of cold and want in the woods; finally, in
its march from Moscow to the Oder the Russian army also
suffered from the severity of the season; so that by the the
time it reached Vilna it numbered only fifty thousand, and
at Kalisch less than eighteen thousand.’
He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his
will, and the horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul.
He boldly took the whole responsibility for what happened,
and his darkened mind found justification in the belief that
among the hundreds of thousands who perished there were
fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.



1535

Chapter XXXIX
Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and various uniforms on the fields and meadows
belonging to the Davydov family and to the crown serfsthose fields and meadows where for hundreds of years the
peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and Semenovsk
had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At the
dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood
for a space of some three acres around. Crowds of men of
various arms, wounded and unwounded, with frightened
faces, dragged themselves back to Mozhaysk from the one
army and back to Valuevo from the other. Other crowds,
exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their officers.
Others held their ground and continued to fire.
Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with
the glitter of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now spread a mist of damp and smoke and a
strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered
and drops of rain began to fall on the dead and wounded,
on the frightened, exhausted, and hesitating men, as if to
say: ‘Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink yourselves!
What are you doing?’
To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food
and rest, it began equally to appear doubtful whether they
should continue to slaughter one another; all the faces ex1536

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pressed hesitation, and the question arose in every soul: ‘For
what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?... You may go and
kill whom you please, but I don’t want to do so anymore!’ By
evening this thought had ripened in every soul. At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what
they were doing and might have thrown up everything and
run away anywhere.
But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all
the horror of what they were doing, though they would have
been glad to leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious
power continued to control them, and they still brought up
the charges, loaded, aimed, and applied the match, though
only one artilleryman survived out of every three, and
though they stumbled and panted with fatigue, perspiring
and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew
just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human
bodies, and that terrible work which was not done by the
will of a man but at the will of Him who governs men and
worlds continued.
Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian
army would have said that, if only the French made one
more slight effort, it would disappear; and anyone looking
at the rear of the French army would have said that the Russians need only make one more slight effort and the French
would be destroyed. But neither the French nor the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly
out.
The Russians did not make that effort because they were
not attacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they


1537

stood blocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at
the end of the battle as at the beginning. But even had the
aim of the Russians been to drive the French from their positions, they could not have made this last effort, for all the
Russian troops had been broken up, there was no part of
the Russian army that had not suffered in the battle, and
though still holding their positions they had lost ONE
HALF of their army.
The French, with the memory of all their former victories
during fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon’s invincibility, with the consciousness that they had captured part
of the battlefield and had lost only a quarter of their men
and still had their Guards intact, twenty thousand strong,
might easily have made that effort. The French had attacked
the Russian army in order to drive it from its position ought
to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians continued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the
French had not been attained and all their efforts and losses
were in vain. But the French did not make that effort. Some
historians say that Napoleon need only have used his Old
Guards, who were intact, and the battle would have been
won. To speak of what would have happened had Napoleon
sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen if autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give
his Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it
could not be done. All the generals, officers. and soldiers
of the French army knew it could not be done, because the
flagging spirit of the troops would not permitit.
It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that
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nightmare feeling of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and soldiers of his army whether
they had taken part in the battle or not, after all their experience of previous battleswhen after one tenth of such efforts
the enemy had fledexperienced a similar feeling of terror
before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as
threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle.
The moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory which is defined by the capture
of pieces of material fastened to sticks, called standards,
and of the ground on which the troops had stood and were
standing, but a moral victory that convinces the enemy of
the moral superiority of his opponent and of his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The French
invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught
received a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but
could not stop, any more than the Russian army, weaker
by one half, could help swerving. By impetus gained, the
French army was still able to roll forward to Moscow, but
there, without further effort on the part of the Russians, it
had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle
of Borodino was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow,
his retreat along the old Smolensk road, the destruction of
the invading army of five hundred thousand men, and the
downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for
the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit had
been laid.


1539

BOOK ELEVEN: 1812

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Chapter I
Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible
to the human mind. Laws of motion of any kind become
comprehensible to man only when he examines arbitrarily
selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a
large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary
division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.
There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients
consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch up with
a tortoise he was following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By the time Achilles
has covered the distance that separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance
ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever.
This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd
answer (that Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily divided into
discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.
By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we
only approach a solution of the problem, but never reach
it. Only when we have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical progression with
a common ratio of one tenth, and have found the sum of


1541

this progression to infinity, do we reach a solution of the
problem.
A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the
art of dealing with the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion which
used to appear insoluble.
This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the
ancients, when dealing with problems of motion admits the
conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to the
chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby
corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements of motion
instead of examining continuous motion.
In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same
thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it
does from innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous.
To understand the laws of this continuous movement is
the aim of history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from
the sum of all those human wills, man’s mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected units. The first method of history
is to take an arbitrarily selected series of continuous events
and examine it apart from others, though there is and can
be no beginning to any event, for one event always flows uninterruptedly from another.
The second method is to consider the actions of some
one mana king or a commanderas equivalent to the sum of
many individual wills; whereas the sum of individual wills
is never expressed by the activity of a single historic per1542

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sonage.
Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth
continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the units it takes, we feel that to
take any unit disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of many
men is expressed by the actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.
It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any
deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to
select some larger or smaller unit as the subject of observationas criticism has every right to do, seeing that whatever
unit history observes must always be arbitrarily selected.
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual
tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating
them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can
we hope to arrive at the laws of history.
The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an extraordinary movement of millions of
people. Men leave their customary pursuits, hasten from
one side of Europe to the other, plunder and slaughter one
another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some
years the whole course of life is altered and presents an intensive movement which first increases and then slackens.
What was the cause of this movement, by what laws was it
governed? asks the mind of man.
The historians, replying to this question, lay before us
the sayings and doings of a few dozen men in a building in


1543

the city of Paris, calling these sayings and doings ‘the Revolution”; then they give a detailed biography of Napoleon and
of certain people favorable or hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on others, and say: that is
why this movement took place and those are its laws.
But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, but plainly says that this method of explanation
is fallacious, because in it a weaker phenomenon is taken as
the cause of a stronger. The sum of human wills produced
the Revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of those
wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.
‘But every time there have been conquests there have
been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in
any state there have been great men,’ says history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time conquerors appear
there have been wars, but this does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the
laws of a war in the personal activity of a single man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten, I hear the
bells of the neighboring church; but because the bells begin
to ring when the hands of the clock reach ten, I have no
right to assume that the movement of the bells is caused by
the position of the hands of the watch.
Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the
whistle and see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I
have no right to conclude that the whistling and the turning
of wheels are the cause of the movement of the engine.
The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring
because the oaks are budding, and really every spring cold
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winds do blow when the oak is budding. But though I do
not know what causes the cold winds to blow when the oak
buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind, for the
force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I see
only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all
the phenomena of life, and I see that however much and
however carefully I observe the hands of the watch, and the
valves and wheels of the engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine moving, or
of the winds of spring. To that I must entirely change my
point of view and study the laws of the movement of steam,
of the bells, and of the wind. History must do the same. And
attempts in this direction have already been made.
To study the laws of history we must completely change
the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and the common, infinitesimally small
elements by which the masses are moved. No one can say in
how far it is possible for man to advance in this way toward
an understanding of the laws of history; but it is evident
that only along that path does the possibility of discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth
part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by historians as has been devoted to describing the
actions of various kings, commanders, and ministers and
propounding the historians’ own reflections concerning
these actions.



1545

Chapter II
The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia.
The Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached, and again from Smolensk to Borodino.
The French army pushed on to Moscow, its goal, its impetus
ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the velocity of a
falling body increases as it approaches the earth. Behind it
were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its goal.
Every soldier in Napoleon’s army felt this and the invasion
moved on by its own momentum.
The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely
a spirit of hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and consolidated. At Borodino
a collision took place. Neither army was broken up, but the
Russian army retreated immediately after the collision as
inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability the
ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum
rolled on for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.
The Russians retreated eighty milesto beyond Moscowand the French reached Moscow and there came to a
standstill. For five weeks after that there was not a single
battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding, mortally
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wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in
Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh
reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and
(after a victoryfor at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict
again remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk,
beyond Smolensk, beyond the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and
farther still.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov
and the whole Russian army were convinced that the battle
of Borodino was a victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a fresh conflict to finish
the enemy and did this not to deceive anyone, but because
he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who had
taken part in the battle knew it.
But all that evening and next day reports came in one after another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army,
and a fresh battle proved physically impossible.
It was impossible to give battle before information had
been collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of
ammunition replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to replace those who had been killed, and
before the men had had food and sleep. And meanwhile,
the very next morning after the battle, the French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by the
force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from its aim.
Kutuzov’s wish was to attack next day, and the whole army
desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so is


1547

not sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it,
and that possibility did not exist. It was impossible not to
retreat a day’s march, and then in the same way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day’s march, and
at last, on the first of September when the army drew near
Moscowdespite the strength of the feeling that had arisen
in all ranksthe force of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last,
day’s march, and abandoned Moscow to the enemy.
For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign
and battles are made by generalsas any one of us sitting
over a map in his study may imagine how he would have
arranged things in this or that battlethe questions present
themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the retreat not do this
or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga road,
abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to
think in that way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any commander
in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does not all
resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at
case in our studies examining some campaign on the map,
with a certain number of troops on this and that side in
a certain known locality, and begin our plans from some
given moment. A commander in chief is never dealing with
the beginning of any eventthe position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in chief is always in
the midst of a series of shifting events and so he never can
at any moment consider the whole import of an event that
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is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous,
uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in chief is
in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries,
contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and
deceptions and is continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict
with one another.
Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that
Kutuzov should have moved his army to the Kaluga road
long before reaching Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander in chief,
especially at a difficult moment, has always before him not
one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these
proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict each
other.
A commander in chief’s business, it would seem, is simply to choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot
do. Events and time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to cross to the Kaluga road,
but just then an adjutant gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French or retire. An order
must be given him at once, that instant. And the order to
retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And after
the adjutant comes the commissary general asking where
the stores are to be taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks
where the wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg
brings a letter from the sovereign which does not admit of
the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the command

1549

er in chief’s rival, the man who is undermining him (and
there are always not merely one but several such), presents
a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning to
the Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs
sleep and refreshment to maintain his energy and a respectable general who has been overlooked in the distribution
of rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants of the
district pray to be defended, and an officer sent to inspect
the locality comes in and gives a report quite contrary to
what was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a
prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all
describe the position of the enemy’s army differently. People
accustomed to misunderstand or to forget these inevitable
conditions of a commander in chief’s actions describe to us,
for instance, the position of the army at Fili and assume that
the commander in chief could, on the first of September,
quite freely decide whether to abandon Moscow or defend
it; whereas, with the Russian army less than four miles from
Moscow, no such question existed. When had that question
been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably
of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on
the twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and
minute of the retreat from Borodino to Fili.

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War and Peace

Chapter III
When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect
the position, told the field marshal that it was impossible to
fight there before Moscow and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.
‘Give me your hand,’ said he and, turning it over so as
to feel the pulse, added: ‘You are not well, my dear fellow.
Think what you are saying!’
Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating
beyond Moscow without a battle.
On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov
gate of Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat
down on a bench by the roadside. A great crowd of generals
gathered round him, and Count Rostopchin, who had come
out from Moscow, joined them. This brilliant company separated into several groups who all discussed the advantages
and disadvantages of the position, the state of the army,
the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military
questions generally. Though they had not been summoned
for the purpose, and though it was not so called, they all
felt that this was really a council of war. The conversations
all dealt with public questions. If anyone gave or asked for
personal news, it was done in a whisper and they immediately reverted to general matters. No jokes, or laughter, or
smiles even, were seen among all these men. They evidently


1551

all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among
themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief
(whose bench formed the center of the gathering) and to
speak so that he might overhear them. The commander in
chief listened to what was being said and sometimes asked
them to repeat their remarks, but did not himself take part
in the conversations or express any opinion. After hearing
what was being said by one or other of these groups he generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though
they were not speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some
discussed the position that had been chosen, criticizing not
the position itself so much as the mental capacity of those
who had chosen it. Others argued that a mistake had been
made earlier and that a battle should have been fought two
days before. Others again spoke of the battle of Salamanca,
which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of
the German princes serving with the Russian army were
discussing the siege of Saragossa and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in a similar manner.) Count
Rostopchin was telling a fourth group that he was prepared
to die with the city train bands under the walls of the capital, but that he still could not help regretting having been
left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he
known it sooner things would have been different.... A fifth
group, displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed the direction the troops would now have
to take. A sixth group was talking absolute nonsense. Ku1552

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tuzov’s expression grew more and more preoccupied and
gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that to
defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full
meaning of those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any senseless commander were to give orders to
fight, confusion would result but the battle would still not
take place. It would not take place because the commanders not merely all recognized the position to be impossible,
but in their conversations were only discussing what would
happen after its inevitable abandonment. How could the
commanders lead their troops to a field of battle they considered it impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and
even the soldiers (who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore could not go to fight, fully
convinced as they were of defeat. If Bennigsen insisted on
the position being defended and others still discussed it, the
question was no longer important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well.
Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to
this without wincing) by insisting that Moscow must be
defended. His aim was as clear as daylight to Kutuzov: if
the defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutuzov who had
brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without giving
battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if
battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the
old man’s mind. One terrible question absorbed him and to
that question he heard no reply from anyone. The question


1553

for him now was: ‘Have I really allowed Napoleon to reach
Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it decided? Can it
have been yesterday when I ordered Platov to retreat, or was
it the evening before, when I had a nap and told Bennigsen
to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when was
this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned.
The army must retreat and the order to do so must be given.’
To give that terrible order seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of the army. And not only did he love
power to which he was accustomed (the honours awarded
to Prince Prozorovski, under whom he had served in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced that he was destined
to save Russia and that that was why, against the Emperor’s wish and by the will of the people, he had been chosen
commander in chief. He was convinced that he alone could
maintain command of the army in these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone could encounter
the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was horrified
at the thought of the order he had to issue. But something
had to be decided, and these conversations around him
which were assuming too free a character must be stopped.
He called the most important generals to him.
‘My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself,’ said
he, rising from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.
CHAPTERIV IV
The Council of War began to assemble at two in the
afternoon in the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov’s hut. The men, women, and children of the large
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peasant family crowded into the back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew’s six-year-old granddaughter
whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had
given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea, remained on
the top of the brick oven in the larger room. Malasha looked
down from the oven with shy delight at the faces, uniforms,
and decorations of the generals, who one after another
came into the room and sat down on the broad benches in
the corner under the icons. ‘Granddad’ himself, as Malasha
in her own mind called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner
behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair,
and continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar
of his coat which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to
pinch his neck. Those who entered went up one by one to
the field marshal; he pressed the hands of some and nodded
to others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to draw back the
curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter moved
his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his Serene
Highness did not wish his face to be seen.
Round the peasant’s deal table, on which lay maps, plans,
pencils, and papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in another bench and put it beside the table.
Ermolov, Kaysarov, and Toll, who had just arrived, sat down
on this bench. In the foremost place, immediately under the
icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high forehead merging into
his bald crown. He had a St. George’s Cross round his neck
and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two days
and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov,
who with rapid gesticulations was giving him some infor

1555

mation, speaking in low tones as they all did. Chubby little
Dokhturov was listening attentively with eyebrows raised
and arms folded on his stomach. On the other side sat
Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in his own
thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and glittering eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward
the black hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now
at Kutuzov and now at the door with a look of impatience.
Konovnitsyn’s firm, handsome, and kindly face was lit up
by a tender, sly smile. His glance met Malasha’s, and the expression of his eyes caused the little girl to smile.
They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext
of inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner.
They waited for him from four till six o’clock and did not
begin their deliberations all that time talked in low tones of
other matters.
Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov
leave his corner and draw toward the table, but not near
enough for the candles that had been placed there to light
up his face.
Bennigsen opened the council with the question: ‘Are
we to abandon Russia’s ancient and sacred capital without
a struggle, or are we to defend it?’ A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a frown on every face and
only Kutuzov’s angry grunts and occasional cough broke
the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too looked
at ‘Granddad.’ She was nearest to him and saw how his
face puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last
long.
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‘Russia’s ancient and sacred capital!’ he suddenly said,
repeating Bennigsen’s words in an angry voice and thereby
drawing attention to the false note in them. ‘Allow me to
tell you, your excellency, that that question has no meaning
for a Russian.’ (He lurched his heavy body forward.) ‘Such
a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The question I have
asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military one.
The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up
Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army as well as Moscow? That is the question on
which I want your opinion,’ and he sank back in his chair.
The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his
game lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others that
a defensive battle at Fili was impossible, but imbued with
Russian patriotism and the love of Moscow, he proposed
to move troops from the right to the left flank during the
night and attack the French right flank the following day.
Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced for
and against that project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to
make a sacrifice before abandoning the capital or guided
by other, personal considerations, these generals seemed
not to understand that this council could not alter the inevitable course of events and that Moscow was in effect
already abandoned. The other generals, however, understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow, of the
direction the army should take in its retreat. Malasha, who
kept her eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning of the council differently. It seemed to


1557

her that it was only a personal struggle between ‘Granddad’
and ‘Long-coat’ as she termed Bennigsen. She saw that they
grew spiteful when they spoke to one another, and in her
heart she sided with ‘Granddad.’ In the midst of the conversation she noticed ‘Granddad’ give Bennigsen a quick,
subtle glance, and then to her joys he saw that ‘Granddad’
said something to ‘Long-coat’ which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and paced angrily up and down the
room. What so affected him was Kutuzov’s calm and quiet
comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen’s
proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left
flank to attack the French right wing.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Kutuzov, ‘I cannot approve of the
count’s plan. Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous, and military history supports that
view. For instance...’ Kutuzov seemed to reflect, searching
for an example, then with a clear, naive look at Bennigsen he
added: ‘Oh yes; take the battle of Friedland, which I think
the count well remembers, and which was... not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near
the enemy..’
There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very
long to them all.
The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and they all felt that there was no more to be said.
During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh
as if preparing to speak. They all looked at him.
‘Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for
the broken crockery,’ said he, and rising slowly he moved to
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the table. ‘Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you
will not agree with me. But I,’ he paused, ‘by the authority
entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country, order a retreat.’
After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and circumspect silence of people who are leaving,
after a funeral.
Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very
different from the way they had spoken during the council,
communicated something to their commander in chief.
Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed
carefully backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet
catching at its projections, and slipping between the legs of
the generals she darted out of the room.
When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long
time with his elbows on the table, thinking always of the
same terrible question: ‘When, when did the abandonment
of Moscow become inevitable? When was that done which
settled the matter? And who was to blame for it?’
‘I did not expect this,’ said he to his adjutant Schneider
when the latter came in late that night. ‘I did not expect this!
I did not think this would happen.’
‘You should take some rest, your Serene Highness,’ replied Schneider.
‘But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!’ exclaimed Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with
his podgy fist. ‘They shall too, if only..’



1559

Chapter V
At that very time, in circumstances even more important
than retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and
burning of Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented
as being the instigator of that event, acted in an altogether
different manner from Kutuzov.
After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow was as inevitable as the retreat of the army
beyond Moscow without fighting.
Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning
but by the feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.
The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened
in all the towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with
Smolensk, without the participation of Count Rostopchin
and his broadsheets. The people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited or tear anyone to
pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the strength to
find what it should do at that most difficult moment. And as
soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away
abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and
burned and destroyed what was left.
The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was and is present in the heart of every Russian.
And a consciousness of this, and a foreboding that Moscow
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would be taken, was present in Russian Moscow society in
1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already in July and
at the beginning of August showed that they expected this.
Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their houses and half their belongings, did so from the
latent patriotism which expresses itself not by phrases or by
giving one’s children to save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically, and
therefore in the way that always produces the most powerful results.
‘It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running away from Moscow,’ they were told. In his
broadsheets Rostopchin impressed on them that to leave
Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed to be called
cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing it
had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose
that Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had committed in conquered countries. The
first people to go away were the rich educated people who
knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had remained intact
and that during Napoleon’s occupation the inhabitants had
spent their time pleasantly in the company of the charming
Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian
ladies, then liked so much.
They went away because for Russians there could be
no question as to whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It was out of the question to be
under French rule, it would be the worst thing that could
happen. They went away even before the battle of Borodi

1561

no and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin’s calls
to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention
to take the wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of
God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were to destroy
the French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchin wrote
in his broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to
fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not do to take
young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter of
Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they were to abandon their property to destruction.
They went away without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to
destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be burned. They
went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in
consequence of their going away that the momentous event
was accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory
of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped
by Count Rostopchin’s orders, had already in June moved
with her Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her
Saratov estate, with a vague consciousness that she was not
Bonaparte’s servant, was really, simply, and truly carrying
out the great work which saved Russia. But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now had
the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions
displaying the icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to
remove icons or the relics of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six
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of them removed the balloon that was being constructed
by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and
related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a
proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding them for
having destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of
having hinted that he would burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch all spies
and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so; now expelled all the French residents from Moscow,
and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of
the whole French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered
the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be arrested and
exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the people
at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of
them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself
drove away by a back gate; now declared that he would not
survive the fall of Moscow, and now wrote French verses
in albums concerning his share in the affairthis man did
not understand the meaning of what was happening but
merely wanted to do something himself that would astonish
people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like
a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable
eventthe abandonment and burning of Moscowand tried
with his puny hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along with it.



1563

Chapter VI
Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to
Petersburg, found herself in a difficult position.
In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a
grandee who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire.
In Vilna she had formed an intimacy with a young foreign
prince. When she returned to Petersburg both the magnate
and the prince were there, and both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problemhow to preserve her intimacy
with both without offending either.
What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to
another woman did not cause the least embarrassment to
Countess Bezukhova, who evidently deserved her reputation
of being a very clever woman. Had she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her awkward position
by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man who can
do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to
be correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone
else was to blame.
The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to
him, said firmly: ‘That’s just like a manselfish and cruel! I expected nothing else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she
suffers, and this is her reward! What right have you, mon1564

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seigneur, to demand an account of my attachments and
friendships? He is a man who has been more than a father
to me!’ The prince was about to say something, but Helene
interrupted him.
‘Well, yes,’ said she, ‘it may be that he has other sentiments
for me than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me
to shut my door on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in
all that relates to my intimate feelings I render account only
to God and to my conscience,’ she concluded, laying her hand
on her beautiful, fully expanded bosom and looking up to
heaven.
‘But for heaven’s sake listen to me!’
‘Marry me, and I will be your slave!’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘You won’t deign to demean yourself by marrying me,
you...’ said Helene, beginning to cry.
The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite
distraught, said through her tears that there was nothing to
prevent her marrying, that there were precedents (there were
up to that time very few, but she mentioned Napoleon and
some other exalted personages), that she had never been her
husband’s wife, and that she had been sacrificed.
‘But the law, religion...’ said the prince, already yielding.
‘The law, religion... What have they been invented for if
they can’t arrange that?’ said Helene.
The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not
occurred to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate


1565

terms.
A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which
Helene gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the
charming Monsieur de Jobert, a man no longer young, with
snow white hair and brilliant black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte*
was presented to her, and in the garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music talked to her for a long
time of the love of God, of Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of
the consolations the one true Catholic religion affords in this
world and the next. Helene was touched, and more than once
tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and
their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came
to seek her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert
came to see Helene when she was alone, and after that often
came again.
*Lay member of the Society of Jesus.
One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church,
where she knelt down before the altar to which she was led.
The enchanting, middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on
her head and, as she herself afterward described it, she felt
something like a fresh breeze wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.
After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She
confessed to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next
day she received a box containing the Sacred Host, which was
left at her house for her to partake of. A few days later Helene
learned with pleasure that she had now been admitted to the
true Catholic Church and that in a few days the Pope himself
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would hear of her and would send her a certain document.
All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the
attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed
in such pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was now in (she wore only white dresses and white
ribbons all that time) gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did
not cause her for a moment to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning that a stupid person
gets the better of cleverer ones, Helenehaving realized that
the main object of all these words and all this trouble was,
after converting her to Catholicism, to obtain money from
her for Jesuit institutions (as to which she received indications)before parting with her money insisted that the various
operations necessary to free her from her husband should be
performed. In her view the aim of every religion was merely
to preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction to
human desires. And with this aim, in one of her talks with
her Father Confessor, she insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her marriage?
They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room. The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene
was wearing a white dress, transparent over her shoulders and
bosom. The abbe, a well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven
chin, a pleasant firm mouth, and white hands meekly folded
on his knees, sat close to Helene and, with a subtle smile on
his lips and a peaceful look of delight at her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his opinion on the
subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his curly hair
and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every mo

1567

ment expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the
abbe, though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the matter.
The course of the Father Confessor’s arguments ran as follows: ‘Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking,
you made a vow of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part,
by entering the married state without faith in the religious
significance of marriage, committed an act of sacrilege. That
marriage lacked the dual significance it should have had. Yet
in spite of this your vow was binding. You swerved from it.
What did you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin?
A venial sin, for you acted without evil intention. If now you
married again with the object of bearing children, your sin
might be forgiven. But the question is again a twofold one:
firstly..’
But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with
one of her bewitching smiles: ‘But I think that having espoused the true religion I cannot be bound by what a false
religion laid upon me.’
The director of her conscience was astounded at having
the case presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus’ egg. He was delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his
pupil’s progress, but could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously constructed.
‘Let us understand one another, Countess,’ said he with
a smile, and began refuting his spiritual daughter’s arguments.

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War and Peace

Chapter VII
Helene understood that the question was very simple
and easy from the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her
directors were making difficulties only because they were
apprehensive as to how the matter would be regarded by the
secular authorities.
So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion
of society. She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate
and told him what she had told her other suitor; that is, she
put the matter so that the only way for him to obtain a right
over her was to marry her. The elderly magnate was at first
as much taken aback by this suggestion of marriage with a
woman whose husband was alive, as the younger man had
been, but Helene’s imperturbable conviction that it was as
simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on
him too. Had Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame, or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been
lost; but not only did she show no signs of secrecy or shame,
on the contrary, with good-natured naivete she told her intimate friends (and these were all Petersburg) that both the
prince and the magnate had proposed to her and that she
loved both and was afraid of grieving either.
A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted to be divorced from her husband (had such a
report spread many would have opposed so illegal an in

1569

tention) but simply that the unfortunate and interesting
Helene was in doubt which of the two men she should marry. The question was no longer whether this was possible,
but only which was the better match and how the matter
would be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid
individuals unable to rise to the height of such a question,
who saw in the project a desecration of the sacrament of
marriage, but there were not many such and they remained
silent, while the majority were interested in Helene’s good
fortune and in the question which match would be the more
advantageous. Whether it was right or wrong to remarry
while one had a husband living they did not discuss, for that
question had evidently been settled by people ‘wiser than
you or me,’ as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that
decision would be to risk exposing one’s stupidity and incapacity to live in society.
Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to Petersburg that summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself
plainly to express an opinion contrary to the general one.
Meeting Helene at a ball she stopped her in the middle of
the room and, amid general silence, said in her gruff voice:
‘So wives of living men have started marrying again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in
all the brothels,’ and with these words Marya Dmitrievna,
turning up her wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round, moved across the room.
Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was
regarded in Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had
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said they only noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one
coarse word she had used, supposing the whole sting of her
remark to lie in that word.
Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had
said and repeated one and the same thing a hundred times,
remarked to his daughter whenever he chanced to see her:
‘Helene, I have a word to say to you,’ and he would lead
her aside, drawing her hand downward. ‘I have heard of
certain projects concerning... you know. Well my dear
child, you know how your father’s heart rejoices to know
that you... You have suffered so much.... But, my dear child,
consult only your own heart. That is all I have to say,’ and
concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek
against his daughter’s and move away.
Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man, and who was one of one of the disinterested
friends so brilliant a woman as Helene always hasmen friends
who can never change into loversonce gave her his view of
the matter at a small and intimate gathering.
‘Listen, Bilibin,’ said Helene (she always called friends of
that sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve
with her white, beringed fingers. ‘Tell me, as you would a
sister, what I ought to do. Which of the two?’
Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a smile on his lips.
‘You are not taking me unawares, you know,’ said he.
‘As a true friend, I have thought and thought again about
your affair. You see, if you marry the prince’he meant the
younger manand he crooked one finger, ‘you forever lose


1571

the chance of marrying the other, and you will displease
the court besides. (You know there is some kind of connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last
days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would
no longer be making a mesalliance by marrying you,’ and
Bilibin smoothed out his forehead.
‘That’s a true friend!’ said Helene beaming, and again
touching Bilibin’s sleeve. ‘But I love them, you know, and
don’t want to distress either of them. I would give my life for
the happiness of them both.’
Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not
even he could help in that difficulty.
‘Une maitresse-femme!* That’s what is called putting
things squarely. She would like to be married to all three at
the same time,’ thought he.
*A masterly woman.
‘But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?’
Bilibin asked, his reputation being so well established that
he did not fear to ask so naive a question. ‘Will he agree?’
‘Oh, he loves me so!’ said Helene, who for some reason
imagined that Pierre too loved her. ‘He will do anything for
me.’
Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something
witty.
‘Even divorce you?’ said he.
Helene laughed.
Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability
of the proposed marriage was Helene’s mother, Princess
Kuragina. She was continually tormented by jealousy of her
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daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a subject near to
her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the idea.
She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce and remarriage during a husband’s lifetime, and the
priest told her that it was impossible, and to her delight
showed her a text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him)
plainly remarriage while the husband is alive.
Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she drove to her daughter’s early one morning
so as to find her alone.
Having listened to her mother’s objections, Helene
smiled blandly and ironically.
‘But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced...’’ said the old princess.
‘Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez
rein. Dans ma position j’ai des devoirs,’* said Helene changing from Russian, in which language she always felt that her
case did not sound quite clear, into French which suited it
better.
*”Oh, Mamma, don’t talk nonsense! You don’t understand anything. In my position I have obligations.
‘But, my dear...’
‘Oh, Mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the
Holy Father, who has the right to grant dispensations..’
Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene
came in to announce that His Highness was in the ballroom
and wished to see her.
‘Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre lui, parce qu’il m’ a manque parole.’*


1573

*”No, tell him I don’t wish to see him, I am furious with
him for not keeping his word to me.’
‘Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,’* said a fair-haired
young man with a long face and nose, as he entered the
room.
*”Countess, there is mercy for every sin.’
The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The
young man who had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and sidled out of the room.
‘Yes, she is right,’ thought the old princess, all her convictions dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. ‘She
is right, but how is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did
not know it? Yet it is so simple,’ she thought as she got into
her carriage.
By the beginning of August Helene’s affairs were clearly
defined and she wrote a letter to her husbandwho, as she
imagined, loved her very muchinforming him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having embraced the one true
faith, and asking him to carry out all the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by the
bearer of the letter.
And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy
and powerful keepingYour friend Helene.
This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was on
the field of Borodino.

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Chapter VIII
Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having
run down from Raevski’s battery a second time, made his
way through a gully to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers,
reached the dressing station, and seeing blood and hearing
cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in the crowds
of soldiers.
The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to
get away quickly from the terrible sensations amid which
he had lived that day and return to ordinary conditions of
life and sleep quietly in a room in his own bed. He felt that
only in the ordinary conditions of life would he be able to
understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such
ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.
Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road
along which he was going, still on all sides there was what
there had been on the field of battle. There were still the
same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers’ overcoats,
the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still
aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and
the dust.
Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road,
Pierre sat down by the roadside.
Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay


1575

leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows
that moved past him in the darkness. He was continually
imagining that a cannon ball was flying toward him with a
terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He had no
idea how long he had been there. In the middle of the night
three soldiers, having brought some firewood, settled down
near him and began lighting a fire.
The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got
the fire to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they
broke some dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with the smell of smoke.
Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were eating and
talking among themselves, taking no notice of him.
‘And who may you be?’ one of them suddenly asked
Pierre, evidently meaning what Pierre himself had in mind,
namely: ‘If you want to eat we’ll give you some food, only let
us know whether you are an honest man.’
‘I, I...’ said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his
social position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the
soldiers and better understood by them. ‘By rights I am a
militia officer, but my men are not here. I came to the battle
and have lost them.’
‘There now!’ said one of the soldiers.
Another shook his head.
‘Would you like a little mash?’ the first soldier asked, and
handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.
Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as
they called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more
delicious than any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bend1576

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ing greedily over it, helping himself to large spoonfuls and
chewing one after another, his was lit up by the fire and the
soldiers looked at him in silence.
‘Where have you to go to? Tell us!’ said one of them.
‘To Mozhaysk.’
‘You’re a gentleman, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Peter Kirilych.’
‘Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we’ll take
you there.’
In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to
Mozhaysk.
By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep hill into the town, the cocks were already
crowing. Pierre went on with the soldiers, quite forgetting
that his inn was at the bottom of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon have remembered this,
such was his state of forgetfulness, had he not halfway up
the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to look for
him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom
recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.
‘Your excellency!’ he said. ‘Why, we were beginning to
despair! How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Pierre.
The soldiers stopped.
‘So you’ve found your folk?’ said one of them. ‘Well,
good-by, Peter Kirilychisn’t it?’


1577

‘Good-by, Peter Kirilych!’ Pierre heard the other voices
repeat.
‘Good-by!’ he said and turned with his groom toward
the inn.
‘I ought to give them something!’ he thought, and felt in
his pocket. ‘No, better not!’ said another, inner voice.
There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all
occupied. Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay down in his carriage.

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Chapter IX
Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before
he felt himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the
distinctness of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of
firing, the thud of projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled
blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and dread of
death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and
lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the
yard. Only someone’s orderly passed through the gateway,
splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper.
Above Pierre’s head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark
roof of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable yards, delightful to
Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.
‘Thank God, there is no more of that!’ he thought, covering up his head again. ‘Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and
how shamefully I yielded to it! But they... they were steady
and calm all the time, to the end...’ thought he.
They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who had
been at the battery, those who had given him food, and
those who had prayed before the icon. They, those strange
men he had not previously known, stood out clearly and
sharply from everyone else.


1579

‘To be a soldier, just a soldier!’ thought Pierre as he fell
asleep, ‘to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by
what makes them what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man? There was a
time when I could have done it. I could have run away from
my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve
as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov.’ And the memory
of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged
Dolokhov flashed through Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of
a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind.
It was taking place at the English Club and someone near
and dear to him sat at the end of the table. ‘Yes, that is he!
It is my benefactor. But he died!’ thought Pierre. ‘Yes, he
died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that
he died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!’ On one
side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov,
and others like them (in his dream the category to which
these men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as
the category of those he termed they), and he heard those
people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor
was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words
was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the
battlefield, but pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor was saying, but he knew (the
categories of thoughts were also quite distinct in his dream)
that he was talking of goodness and the possibility of being
what they were. And they with their simple, kind, firm fac1580

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es surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they
were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know
him. Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got
up, but at that moment his legs grew cold and bare. He felt
ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which
his cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same
penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.
‘It is dawn,’ thought Pierre. ‘But that’s not what I want.
I want to hear and understand my benefactor’s words.’
Again he covered himself up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there. There were only
thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone
was uttering or that he himself was formulating.
Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was
convinced that someone outside himself had spoken them,
though the impressions of that day had evoked them. He
had never, it seemed to him, been able to think and express
his thoughts like that when awake.
‘To endure war is the most difficult subordination of
man’s freedom to the law of God,’ the voice had said. ‘Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you cannot escape
from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act.
The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden. Man
can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who
does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man
would not know his limitations, would not know himself.
The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing,


1581

in his dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all?’ he asked himself. ‘No, not to unite.
Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts
together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must
harness them!’ he repeated to himself with inward rapture,
feeling that these words and they alone expressed what he
wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.
‘Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness.’
‘Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your
excellency!’ some voice was repeating. ‘We must harness, it
is time to harness...’
It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The
sun shone straight into Pierre’s face. He glanced at the dirty
innyard in the middle of which soldiers were watering their
lean horses at the pump while carts were passing out of the
gate. Pierre turned away with repugnance, and closing his
eyes quickly fell back on the carriage seat. ‘No, I don’t want
that, I don’t want to see and understand that. I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One
second more and I should have understood it all! But what
am I to do? Harness, but how can I harness everything?’
and Pierre felt with horror that the meaning of all he had
seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.
The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre
that an officer had come with news that the French were already near Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it.
Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on foot through the town.
The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand
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wounded behind them. There were wounded in the yards,
at the windows of the houses, and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that were to take
some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could
be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which had
overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove
with him to Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the
death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince
Andrew.



1583

Chapter X
On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow.
Close to the gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin’s adjutant.
‘We have been looking for you everywhere,’ said the adjutant. ‘The count wants to see you particularly. He asks you
to come to him at once on a very important matter.’
Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see
the Moscow commander in chief.
Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to
town from his summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and
reception room of his house were full of officials who had
been summoned or had come for orders. Vasilchikov and
Platov had already seen the count and explained to him that
it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would have
to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed
from the inhabitants, the officialsthe heads of the various
government departmentsknew that Moscow would soon
be in the enemy’s hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself
knew it, and to escape personal responsibility they had all
come to the governor to ask how they were to deal with their
various departments.
As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from
the army came out of Rostopchin’s private room.
In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the
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courier made a despairing gesture with his hand and passed
through the room.
While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary
eyes watched the various officials, old and young, military
and civilian, who were there. They all seemed dissatisfied
and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of men, one of whom
he knew. After greeting Pierre they continued their conversation.
‘If they’re sent out and brought back again later on it will
do no harm, but as things are now one can’t answer for anything.’
‘But you see what he writes...’ said another, pointing to a
printed sheet he held in his hand.
‘That’s another matter. That’s necessary for the people,’
said the first.
‘What is it?’ asked Pierre.
‘Oh, it’s a fresh broadsheet.’
Pierre took it and began reading.
His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in
order to join up with the troops moving toward him and
has taken up a strong position where the enemy will not
soon attack him. Forty eight guns with ammunition have
been sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he
will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is even
ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that
the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order,
and we will deal with villains in our own way! When the
time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and
will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are not


1585

wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be best of
all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother
of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we
will have some water blessed. That will help them to get well
quicker. I, too, am well now: one of my eyes was sore but
now I am on the lookout with both.
‘But military men have told me that it is impossible to
fight in the town,’ said Pierre, ‘and that the position..’
‘Well, of course! That’s what we were saying,’ replied the
first speaker.
‘And what does he mean by ‘One of my eyes was sore but
now I am on the lookout with both’?’ asked Pierre.
‘The count had a sty,’ replied the adjutant smiling, ‘and
was very much upset when I told him people had come to
ask what was the matter with him. By the by, Count,’ he
added suddenly, addressing Pierre with a smile, ‘we heard
that you have family troubles and that the countess, your
wife..’
‘I have heard nothing,’ Pierre replied unconcernedly.
‘But what have you heard?’
‘Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say
what I heard.’
‘But what did you hear?’
‘Well, they say,’ continued the adjutant with the same
smile, ‘that the countess, your wife, is preparing to go
abroad. I expect it’s nonsense...’
‘Possibly,’ remarked Pierre, looking about him absent1586

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mindedly. ‘And who is that?’ he asked, indicating a short
old man in a clean blue peasant overcoat, with a big snowwhite beard and eyebrows and a ruddy face.
‘He? That’s a tradesman, that is to say, he’s the restaurant
keeper, Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair
with the proclamation.’
‘Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!’ said Pierre, looking at the
firm, calm face of the old man and seeking any indication
of his being a traitor.
‘That’s not he himself, that’s the father of the fellow who
wrote the proclamation,’ said the adjutant. ‘The young man
is in prison and I expect it will go hard with him.’
An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a
German wearing a cross round his neck, approached the
speaker.
‘It’s a complicated story, you know,’ said the adjutant.
‘That proclamation appeared about two months ago. The
count was informed of it. He gave orders to investigate the
matter. Gabriel Ivanovich here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly sixty-three hands. He
asked one, ‘From whom did you get it?’ ‘From so-and-so.’
He went to the next one. ‘From whom did you get it?’ and
so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you know, ‘a pet of a trader,’’ said the adjutant smiling.
‘They asked him, ‘Who gave it you?’ And the point is that we
knew whom he had it from. He could only have had it from
the Postmaster. But evidently they had come to some understanding. He replied: ‘From no one; I made it up myself.’
They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck to that:


1587

‘I made it up myself.’ And so it was reported to the count,
who sent for the man. ‘From whom did you get the proclamation?’ ‘I wrote it myself.’ Well, you know the count,’ said
the adjutant cheerfully, with a smile of pride, ‘he flared up
dreadfullyand just think of the fellow’s audacity, lying, and
obstinacy!’
‘And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I understand!’ said Pierre.
‘Not at all,’ rejoined the adjutant in dismay. ‘Klyucharev
had his own sins to answer for without that and that is why
he has been banished. But the point is that the count was
much annoyed. ‘How could you have written it yourself?’
said he, and he took up the Hamburg Gazette that was lying on the table. ‘Here it is! You did not write it yourself
but translated it, and translated it abominably, because you
don’t even know French, you fool.’ And what do you think?
‘No,’ said he, ‘I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.’ ‘If that’s so, you’re a traitor and I’ll have you tried, and
you’ll be hanged! Say from whom you had it.’ ‘I have seen
no papers, I made it up myself.’ And that was the end of it.
The count had the father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it.
He was sent for trial and condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him. But he’s
a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman’s
son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures
somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match for
him. That’s the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there was a
large icon of God Almighty painted with a scepter in one
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hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that icon home
with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some
scoundrel of a painter..’



1589

Chapter XI
In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to
the commander in chief.
When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin,
puckering his face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes with
his hand. A short man was saying something, but when
Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went out.
‘Ah, how do you do, great warrior?’ said Rostopchin as
soon as the short man had left the room. ‘We have heard of
your prowess. But that’s not the point. Between ourselves,
mon cher, do you belong to the Masons?’ he went on severely, as though there were something wrong about it which
he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained silent.
‘I am well informed, my friend, but I am aware that there
are Masons and Masons and I hope that you are not one
of those who on pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin
Russia.’
‘Yes, I am a Mason,’ Pierre replied.
‘There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs.
Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to their proper
place. Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the same way, and
so have others who on the plea of building up the temple of
Solomon have tried to destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that there are reasons for this and
that I could not have exiled the Postmaster had he not been
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a harmful person. It has now come to my knowledge that
you lent him your carriage for his removal from town, and
that you have even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I like you and don’t wish you any harm andas you are
only half my ageI advise you, as a father would, to cease all
communication with men of that stamp and to leave here as
soon as possible.’
‘But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?’ asked
Pierre.
‘That is for me to know, but not for you to ask,’ shouted
Rostopchin.
‘If he is accused of circulating Napoleon’s proclamation
it is not proved that he did so,’ said Pierre without looking
at Rostopchin, ‘and Vereshchagin..’
‘There we are!’ Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than
before, frowning suddenly. ‘Vereshchagin is a renegade and
a traitor who will be punished as he deserves,’ said he with
the vindictive heat with which people speak when recalling
an insult. ‘But I did not summon you to discuss my actions,
but to give you adviceor an order if you prefer it. I beg you to
leave the town and break off all communication with such
men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the nonsense out of
anybody’but probably realizing that he was shouting at Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he added,
taking Pierre’s hand in a friendly manner, ‘We are on the
eve of a public disaster and I haven’t time to be polite to everybody who has business with me. My head is sometimes
in a whirl. Well, mon cher, what are you doing personally?’
‘Why, nothing,’ answered Pierre without raising his eyes


1591

or changing the thoughtful expression of his face.
The count frowned.
‘A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as
you can, that’s all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears
to hear. Good-by, my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!’ he shouted
through the doorway after Pierre, ‘is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches of the holy fathers of the
Society of Jesus?’
Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin’s room more
sullen and angry than he had ever before shown himself.
When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some
eight people had come to see him that evening: the secretary
of a committee, the colonel of his battalion, his steward, his
major-domo, and various petitioners. They all had business
with Pierre and wanted decisions from him. Pierre did not
understand and was not interested in any of these questions
and only answered them in order to get rid of these people.
When left alone at last he opened and read his wife’s letter.
‘They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed...
that old man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is
necessary... the meaning of all... one must harness... my wife
is getting married... One must forget and understand...’ And
going to his bed he threw himself on it without undressing
and immediately fell asleep.
When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to
inform him that a special messenger, a police officer, had
come from Count Rostopchin to know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving the town.
A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were
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awaiting him in the drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to see them, went to the back porch
and out through the gate.
From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow
no one of Bezukhov’s household, despite all the search they
made, saw Pierre again or knew where he was.



1593

Chapter XII
The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is, till the eve of the enemy’s entry into the city.
After Petya had joined Obolenski’s regiment of Cossacks
and left for Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was seized with terror. The thought that
both her sons were at the war, had both gone from under her
wing, that today or tomorrow either or both of them might
be killed like the three sons of one of her acquaintances,
struck her that summer for the first time with cruel clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself
to join Petya, or to get him an appointment somewhere
in Petersburg, but neither of these proved possible. Petya
could not return unless his regiment did so or unless he was
transferred to another regiment on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with the army and had not sent a word
since his last letter, in which he had given a detailed account
of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess did not
sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she
saw her sons lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count at last devised means to tranquillize
her. He got Petya transferred from Obolenski’s regiment to
Bezukhov’s, which was in training near Moscow. Though
Petya would remain in the service, this transfer would give
the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of her
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War and Peace

sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for
her Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him
appointed to places where he could not possibly take part in
a battle. As long as Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved her first-born more than all her
other children and even reproached herself for it; but when
her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad at lessons,
was always breaking things in the house and making himself a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his
merry black eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was
just beginning to showwhen he was thrown amid those big,
dreadful, cruel men who were fighting somewhere about
something and apparently finding pleasure in itthen his
mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all
her other children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return, the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think
she would never live to see such happiness. The presence of
Sonya, of her beloved Natasha, or even of her husband irritated her. ‘What do I want with them? I want no one but
Petya,’ she thought.
At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from Nicholas. He wrote from the province of Voronezh
where he had been sent to procure remounts, but that letter
did not set the countess at ease. Knowing that one son was
out of danger she became the more anxious about Petya.
Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs’
acquaintances had left Moscow, and though everybody tried
to persuade the countess to get away as quickly as possible,
she would not bear of leaving before her treasure, her adored


1595

Petya, returned. On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived.
The passionate tenderness with which his mother received
him did not please the sixteen-year-old officer. Though she
concealed from him her intention of keeping him under her
wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing
that he might give way to emotion when with hermight ‘become womanish’ as he termed it to himselfhe treated her
coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow attached
himself exclusively to Natasha for whom he had always had
a particularly brotherly tenderness, almost lover-like.
Owing to the count’s customary carelessness nothing
was ready for their departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were to come from their Ryazan and
Moscow estates to remove their household belongings did
not arrive till the thirtieth.
From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow
was in a bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men
wounded at Borodino were brought in by the Dorogomilov
gate and taken to various parts of Moscow, and thousands
of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their possessions out
by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin’s broadsheets, or
because of them or independently of them, the strangest and
most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some
said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on
the contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the
churches and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some
said there had been another battle after Borodino at which
the French had been routed, while others on the contrary
reported that the Russian army bad been destroyed. Some
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War and Peace

talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the
clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that
Augustin had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been
seized, that the peasants were rioting and robbing people
on their way from Moscow, and so on. But all this was only
talk; in reality (though the Council of Fili, at which it was
decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been held) both
those who went away and those who remained behind felt,
though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly
be abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly
as possible and save their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break up and change, but up to the
first of September nothing had done so. As a criminal who
is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that
is awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its
wonted life, though it knew that the time of its destruction
was near when the conditions of life to which its people were
accustomed to submit would be completely upset.
During the three days preceding the occupation of
Moscow the whole Rostov family was absorbed in various
activities. The head of the family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting the current rumors
from all sides and gave superficial and hasty orders at home
about the preparations for their departure.
The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied with everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya
who was always running away from her, and was jealous of
Natasha with whom he spent all his time. Sonya alone di

1597

rected the practical side of matters by getting things packed.
But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and silent.
Nicholas’ letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had
elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting
of the princess and Nicholas.
‘I was never pleased at Bolkonski’s engagement to
Natasha,’ said the countess, ‘but I always wanted Nicholas
to marry the princess, and had a presentiment that it would
happen. What a good thing it would be!’
Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of
retrieving the Rostovs’ affairs was by Nicholas marrying
a rich woman, and that the princess was a good match. It
was very bitter for her. But despite her grief, or perhaps just
because of it, she took on herself all the difficult work of
directing the storing and packing of their things and was
busy for whole days. The count and countess turned to her
when they had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on the
contrary, far from helping their parents, were generally a
nuisance and a hindrance to everyone. Almost all day long
the house resounded with their running feet, their cries,
and their spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay
not because there was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their hearts and so everything that
happened was a cause for gaiety and laughter to them. Petya
was in high spirits because having left home a boy he had
returned (as everybody told him) a fine young man, because
he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where
there was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had
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War and Peace

come to Moscow where there was to be fighting in a few days,
and chiefly because Natasha, whose lead he always followed,
was in high spirits. Natasha was gay because she had been
sad too long and now nothing reminded her of the cause of
her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was also
happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration
of others was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed
to make them run freelyand Petya adored her. Above all,
they were gay because there was a war near Moscow, there
would be fighting at the town gates, arms were being given
out, everybody was escapinggoing away somewhere, and in
general something extraordinary was happening, and that
is always exciting, especially to the young.



1599

Chapter XIII
On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the
Rostovs’ house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open,
all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and
the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were
trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes
were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying
out the things were treading heavily on the parquet floors.
The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high
and already corded up, others still empty.
The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the
peasants who had come with the carts resounded as they
shouted to one another in the yard and in the house. The
count bad been out since morning. The countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil and was lying
down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress on
her head. Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend
with whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia
to the active army. Sonya was in the ballroom looking after
the packing of the glass and china. Natasha was sitting on
the floor of her dismantled room with dresses, ribbons, and
scarves strewn all about her, gazing fixedly at the floor and
holding in her hands the old ball dress (already out of fashion) which she had worn at her first Petersburg ball.
Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone
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War and Peace

else was so busy, and several times that morning had tried
to set to work, but her heart was not in it, and she could not
and did not know how to do anything except with all her
heart and all her might. For a while she had stood beside
Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help,
but soon gave it up and went to her room to pack her own
things. At first she found it amusing to give away dresses
and ribbons to the maids, but when that was done and what
was left had still to be packed, she found it dull.
‘Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won’t you, dear?’ And
when Dunyasha willingly promised to do it all for her,
Natasha sat down on the floor, took her old ball dress, and
fell into a reverie quite unrelated to what ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was roused from her reverie
by the talk of the maids in the next room (which was theirs)
and by the sound of their hurried footsteps going to the
back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of the window.
An enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had
stopped in the street.
The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen,
maids, footmen, postilions, and scullions stood at the gate,
staring at the wounded.
Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her
hair and holding an end of it in each hand, went out into
the street.
The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had
stepped out of the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with
a hood constructed of bast mats, and was speaking to a pale
young officer who lay inside. Natasha moved a few steps for

1601

ward and stopped shyly, still holding her handkerchief, and
listened to what the housekeeper was saying.
‘Then you have nobody in Moscow?’ she was saying. ‘You
would be more comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours,
for instance... the family are leaving.’
‘I don’t know if it would be allowed,’ replied the officer in
a weak voice. ‘Here is our commanding officer... ask him,’
and he pointed to a stout major who was walking back along
the street past the row of carts.
Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the
wounded officer and at once went to meet the major.
‘May the wounded men stay in our house?’ she asked.
The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.
‘Which one do you want, Ma’am’selle?’ said he, screwing
up his eyes and smiling.
Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and
whole manner were so serious, though she was still holding
the ends of her handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflectionas if considering in how far the
thing was possiblereplied in the affirmative.
‘Oh yes, why not? They may,’ he said.
With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped
back quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking
compassionately to the officer.
‘They may. He says they may!’ whispered Natasha.
The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs’ yard, and dozens of carts with wounded men began at
the invitation of the townsfolk to turn into the yards and to
draw up at the entrances of the houses in Povarskaya Street.
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War and Peace

Natasha was evidently pleased to be dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life. She and Mavra
Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as possible into their yard.
‘Your Papa must be told, though,’ said Mavra Kuzminichna.
‘Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one
day we can move into the drawing room. They can have all
our half of the house.’
‘There now, young lady, you do take things into your
head! Even if we put them into the wing, the men’s room, or
the nurse’s room, we must ask permission.’
‘Well, I’ll ask.’
Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through
the half-open door into the sitting room, where there was a
smell of vinegar and Hoffman’s drops.
‘Are you asleep, Mamma?’
‘Oh, what sleep-?’ said the countess, waking up just as
she was dropping into a doze.
‘Mamma darling!’ said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing her face close to her mother’s, ‘I am sorry,
forgive me, I’ll never do it again; I woke you up! Mavra
Kuzminichna has sent me: they have brought some wounded hereofficers. Will you let them come? They have nowhere
to go. I knew you’d let them come!’ she said quickly all in
one breath.
‘What officers? Whom have they brought? I don’t understand anything about it,’ said the countess.
Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.


1603

‘I knew you’d give permission... so I’ll tell them,’ and,
having kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the
door.
In the hall she met her father, who had returned with
bad news.
‘We’ve stayed too long!’ said the count with involuntary
vexation. ‘The Club is closed and the police are leaving.’
‘Papa, is it all rightI’ve invited some of the wounded into
the house?’ said Natasha.
‘Of course it is,’ he answered absently. ‘That’s not the
point. I beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to
pack, and tomorrow we must go, go, go!...’
And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo
and the servants.
At dinner Petya having returned home told them the
news he had heard. He said the people had been getting
arms in the Kremlin, and that though Rostopchin’s broadsheet had said that he would sound a call two or three days
in advance, the order had certainly already been given for
everyone to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and that
there would be a big battle there.
The countess looked with timid horror at her son’s eager,
excited face as he said this. She realized that if she said a
word about his not going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed
the thought of the impending engagement) he would say
something about men, honor, and the fatherlandsomething
senseless, masculine, and obstinate which there would be
no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and so,
hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with
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War and Peace

her as their protector and defender, she did not answer him,
but after dinner called the count aside and implored him
with tears to take her away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman’s involuntary loving cunning she, who
till then had not shown any alarm, said that she would die
of fright if they did not leave that very night. Without any
pretense she was now afraid of everything.



1605

Chapter XIV
Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter,
increased the countess’ fears still more by telling what she
had seen at a spirit dealer’s in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had been unable to pass because
of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the shop. She had
taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the
barrels at the drink store, having received orders to do so.
After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work
with enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and preparing for their departure. The old count, suddenly setting
to work, kept passing from the yard to the house and back
again, shouting confused instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more. Petya directed things in
the yard. Sonya, owing to the count’s contradictory orders,
lost her head and did not know what to do. The servants ran
noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing.
Natasha, with the ardor characteristic of all she did suddenly set to work too. At first her intervention in the business
of packing was received skeptically. Everybody expected
some prank from her and did not wish to obey her; but she
resolutely and passionately demanded obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed her, and at
last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first exploit,
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which cost her immense effort and established her authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable
Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When
Natasha set to work two cases were standing open in the
ballroom, one almost full up with crockery, the other with
carpets. There was also much china standing on the tables,
and still more was being brought in from the storeroom. A
third case was needed and servants had gone to fetch it.
‘Sonya, wait a bitwe’ll pack everything into these,’ said
Natasha.
‘You can’t, Miss, we have tried to,’ said the butler’s assistant.
‘No, wait a minute, please.’
And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes
and plates wrapped in paper.
‘The dishes must go in here among the carpets,’ said
she.
‘Why, it’s a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into
three cases,’ said the butler’s assistant.
‘Oh, wait, please!’ And Natasha began rapidly and deftly
sorting out the things. ‘These aren’t needed,’ said she, putting aside some plates of Kiev ware. ‘Theseyes, these must
go among the carpets,’ she said, referring to the Saxony china dishes.
‘Don’t, Natasha! Leave it alone! We’ll get it all packed,’
urged Sonya reproachfully.
‘What a young lady she is!’ remarked the major-domo.
But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything
out and began quickly repacking, deciding that the inferi

1607

or Russian carpets and unnecessary crockery should not be
taken at all. When everything had been taken out of the
cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned out that
when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all
been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the
two cases. Only the lid of the case containing the carpets
would not shut down. A few more things might have been
taken out, but Natasha insisted on having her own way. She
packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler’s assistant and
Petyawhom she had drawn into the business of packingpress on the lid, and made desperate efforts herself.
‘That’s enough, Natasha,’ said Sonya. ‘I see you were
right, but just take out the top one.’
‘I won’t!’ cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back the
hair that hung over her perspiring face, while with the other
she pressed down the carpets. ‘Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!’ she cried.
The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands, screamed with delight and tears fell from
her eyes. But this only lasted a moment. She at once set
to work afresh and they now trusted her completely. The
count was not angry even when they told him that Natasha
had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now
came to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded,
and whether it might be corded up. Thanks to Natasha’s directions the work now went on expeditiously, unnecessary
things were left, and the most valuable packed as compactly
as possible.
But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they
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War and Peace

could not get everything packed. The countess had fallen
asleep and the count, having put off their departure till next
morning, went to bed.
Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.
That night another wounded man was driven down the
Povarskaya, and Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing
at the gate, had him brought into the Rostovs’ yard. Mavra
Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very important man.
He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised hood, and
was quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the driver
sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers followed the carriage in a cart.
‘Please come in here. The masters are going away and the
whole house will be empty,’ said the old woman to the old
attendant.
‘Well, perhaps,’ said he with a sigh. ‘We don’t expect to
get him home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it’s a long way from here, and there’s nobody living
in it.’
‘Do us the honor to come in, there’s plenty of everything
in the master’s house. Come in,’ said Mavra Kuzminichna.
‘Is he very ill?’ she asked.
The attendant made a hopeless gesture.
‘We don’t expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor.’
And the old servant got down from the box and went up
to the cart.
‘All right!’ said the doctor.


1609

The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it,
shook his head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into
the yard, and stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna.
‘O, Lord Jesus Christ!’ she murmured.
She invited them to take the wounded man into the
house.
‘The masters won’t object...’ she said.
But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so
they took him into the wing and put him in the room that
had been Madame Schoss’.
This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.

1610

War and Peace

Chapter XV
Moscow’s last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn
day, a Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for
service, just as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.
Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscowthe rabble, that is the poor people, and the price of
commodities. An enormous crowd of factory hands, house
serfs, and peasants, with whom some officials, seminarists,
and gentry were mingled, had gone early that morning to
the Three Hills. Having waited there for Rostopchin who
did not turn up, they became convinced that Moscow would
be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to
the public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of
carts and horses, kept rising, but the value of paper money
and city articles kept falling, so that by midday there were
instances of carters removing valuable goods, such as cloth,
and receiving in payment a half of what they carted, while
peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each, and
furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for
nothing.
In the Rostovs’ staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of former conditions of life was but little noticeable. As
to the serfs the only indication was that three out of their


1611

huge retinue disappeared during the night, but nothing was
stolen; and as to the value of their possessions, the thirty
peasant carts that had come in from their estates and which
many people envied proved to be extremely valuable and
they were offered enormous sums of money for them. Not
only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on
the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of
September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers
came to the Rostovs’ and wounded men dragged themselves
there from the Rostovs’ and from neighboring houses where
they were accommodated, entreating the servants to try to
get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo to whom
these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for the
wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even
mention the matter to the count. Pity these wounded men
as one might, it was evident that if they were given one cart
there would be no reason to refuse another, or all the carts
and one’s own carriages as well. Thirty carts could not save
all the wounded and in the general catastrophe one could
not disregard oneself and one’s own family. So thought the
major-domo on his master’s behalf.
On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his
bedroom softly, so as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward morning, and came out to the porch
in his lilac silk dressing gown. In the yard stood the carts
ready corded. The carriages were at the front porch. The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly
and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing
the count the major-domo made a significant and stern ges1612

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ture to them both to go away.
‘Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?’ asked the count,
and stroking his bald head he looked good-naturedly at the
officer and the orderly and nodded to them. (He liked to see
new faces.)
‘We can harness at once, your excellency.’
‘Well, that’s right. As soon as the countess wakes we’ll be
off, God willing! What is it, gentlemen?’ he added, turning
to the officer. ‘Are you staying in my house?’
The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed
crimson.
‘Count, be so good as to allow me... for God’s sake, to get
into some corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here
with me.... I shall be all right on a loaded cart..’
Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made
the same request on behalf of his master.
‘Oh, yes, yes,yes!’ said the count hastily. ‘I shall be very
pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you’ll see to it. Just unload
one or two carts. Well, what of it... do what’s necessary...’
said the count, muttering some indefinite order.
But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the officer’s face had already sealed the order. The
count looked around him. In the yard, at the gates, at the
window of the wings, wounded officers and their orderlies
were to be seen. They were all looking at the count and moving toward the porch.
‘Please step into the gallery, your excellency,’ said the
major-domo. ‘What are your orders about the pictures?’
The count went into the house with him, repeating his


1613

order not to refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.
‘Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded,’
he added in a soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of
being overheard.
At nine o’clock the countess woke up, and Matrena
Timofeevna, who had been her lady’s maid before her marriage and now performed a sort of chief gendarme’s duty for
her, came to say that Madame Schoss was much offended
and the young ladies’ summer dresses could not be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame Schoss
was offended because her trunk had been taken down from
its cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage taken out of the carts to make room for wounded men
whom the count in the simplicity of his heart had ordered
that they should take with them. The countess sent for her
husband.
‘What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being
unloaded.’
‘You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear...
an officer came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are things that can be bought but think
what being left behind means to them!... Really now, in our
own yardwe asked them in ourselves and there are officers
among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let them be
taken... where’s the hurry?’
The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters. The countess was accustomed to this
tone as a precursor of news of something detrimental to the
children’s interests, such as the building of a new gallery
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War and Peace

or conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater or an
orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose anything
announced in that timid tone and considered it her duty to
do so.
She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said
to her husband: ‘Listen to me, Count, you have managed
matters so that we are getting nothing for the house, and
now you wish to throw away all ourall the children’s property! You said yourself that we have a hundred thousand
rubles’ worth of things in the house. I don’t consent, my
dear, I don’t! Do as you please! It’s the government’s business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the
Lopukhins opposite, they cleared out everything two days
ago. That’s what other people do. It’s only we who are such
fools. If you have no pity on me, have some for the children.’
Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room
without replying.
‘Papa, what are you doing that for?’ asked Natasha, who
had followed him into her mother’s room.
‘Nothing! What business is it of yours?’ muttered the
count angrily.
‘But I heard,’ said Natasha. ‘Why does Mamma object?’
‘What business is it of yours?’ cried the count.
Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.
‘Papa! Here’s Berg coming to see us,’ said she, looking
out of the window.



1615

Chapter XVI
Berg, the Rostovs’ son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the
quiet and agreeable post of assistant to the head of the staff
of the assistant commander of the first division of the Second Army.
On the first of September he had come to Moscow from
the army.
He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that
everyone in the army was asking for leave to visit Moscow
and had something to do there. So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence for family and domestic
reasons.
Berg drove up to his father-in-law’s house in his spruce
little trap with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a
certain prince. He looked attentively at the carts in the yard
and while going up to the porch took out a clean pocket
handkerchief and tied a knot in it.
From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into the drawing room, where he embraced the
count, kissed the hands of Natasha and Sonya, and hastened
to inquire after ‘Mamma’s’ health.
‘Health, at a time like this?’ said the count. ‘Come, tell
us the news! Is the army retreating or will there be another
battle?’
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‘God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,’ said Berg. ‘The army is burning with a spirit of
heroism and the leaders, so to say, have now assembled in
council. No one knows what is coming. But in general I can
tell you, Papa, that such a heroic spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which theywhich it’ (he corrected
himself) ‘has shown or displayed in the battle of the twenty-sixththere are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell you,
Papa’ (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had
heard speaking had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he
should have struck his breast at the words ‘Russian army’),
‘I tell you frankly that we, the commanders, far from having
to urge the men on or anything of that kind, could hardly
restrain those... those... yes, those exploits of antique valor,’
he went on rapidly. ‘General Barclay de Tolly risked his life
everywhere at the head of the troops, I can assure you. Our
corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!’
And Berg related all that he remembered of the various
tales he had heard those days. Natasha watched him with an
intent gaze that confused him, as if she were trying to find
in his face the answer to some question.
‘Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian
warriors cannot be imagined or adequately praised!’ said
Berg, glancing round at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her intent look with a smile. ‘‘Russia
is not in Moscow, she lives in the hearts of her sons!’ Isn’t it
so, Papa?’ said he.
Just then the countess came in from the sitting room
with a weary and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly


1617

jumped up, kissed her hand, asked about her health, and,
swaying his head from side to side to express sympathy, remained standing beside her.
‘Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and
sad times for every Russian. But why are you so anxious?
You have still time to get away...’
‘I can’t think what the servants are about,’ said the
countess, turning to her husband. ‘I have just been told that
nothing is ready yet. Somebody after all must see to things.
One misses Mitenka at such times. There won’t be any end
to it.’
The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained himself. He got up from his chair and went to the
door.
At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to
blow his nose and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking
his head sadly and significantly.
‘And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa,’ said he.
‘Hm...’ said the count, and stopped.
‘I was driving past Yusupov’s house just now,’ said Berg
with a laugh, ‘when the steward, a man I know, ran out and
asked me whether I wouldn’t buy something. I went in out
of curiosity, you know, and there is a small chiffonier and a
dressing table. You know how dear Vera wanted a chiffonier
like that and how we had a dispute about it.’ (At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg involuntarily
changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable domestic arrangements.) ‘And it’s such a beauty! It pulls out and
has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has
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long wanted one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw
so many of those peasant carts in your yard. Please let me
have one, I will pay the man well, and..’
The count frowned and coughed.
‘Ask the countess, I don’t give orders.’
‘If it’s inconvenient, please don’t,’ said Berg. ‘Only I so
wanted it, for dear Vera’s sake.’
‘Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the
devil...’ cried the old count. ‘My head’s in a whirl!’
And he left the room. The countess began to cry.
‘Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!’ said Berg.
Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it
difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then
ran downstairs.
Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded
carts were still standing in the yard. Two of them had been
uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing into one of
them helped by an orderly.
‘Do you know what it’s about?’ Petya asked Natasha.
She understood that he meant what were their parents
quarreling about. She did not answer.
‘It’s because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the
wounded,’ said Petya. ‘Vasilich told me. I consider..’
‘I consider,’ Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning
her angry face to Petya, ‘I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I don’t know what. Are we despicable Germans?’
Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of
weakening and letting the force of her anger run to waste,


1619

she turned and rushed headlong up the stairs.
Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with
the respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in
hand, was pacing up and down the room, when Natasha,
her face distorted by anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid steps.
‘It’s horrid! It’s abominable! she screamed. ‘You can’t
possibly have ordered it!’
Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count stood still at the window and listened.
‘Mamma, it’s impossible: see what is going on in the
yard!’ she cried. ‘They will be left!..’
‘What’s the matter with you? Who are ‘they’? What do
you want?’
‘Why, the wounded! It’s impossible, Mamma. It’s monstrous!... No, Mamma darling, it’s not the thing. Please
forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what does it matter what we
take away? Only look what is going on in the yard... Mamma!... It’s impossible!’
The count stood by the window and listened without
turning round. Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer
to the window.
The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full
of shame for her mother, saw her agitation, and understood
why her husband did not turn to look at her now, and she
glanced round quite disconcerted.
‘Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?’ she said,
not surrendering at once.
‘Mamma, darling, forgive me!’
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But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up
to her husband.
‘My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don’t
understand about it,’ said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.
‘The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen,’ muttered the
count through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who
was glad to hide her look of shame on his breast.
‘Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?...’ asked Natasha.
‘We will still take all the most necessary things.’
The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at which she used to run when playing at tag, ran
through the ballroom to the anteroom and downstairs into
the yard.
The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the strange order she brought them until the count
himself, in his wife’s name, confirmed the order to give
up all the carts to the wounded and take the trunks to the
storerooms. When they understood that order the servants
set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it seemed
the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an
hour before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the
wounded should be left behind and the goods carted away
but that had seemed the only thing to do.
The whole household, as if to atone for not having done
it sooner, set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the
wounded in the carts. The wounded dragged themselves out
of their rooms and stood with pale but happy faces round


1621

the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread to the
neighboring houses, from which wounded men began to
come into the Rostovs’ yard. Many of the wounded asked
them not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the
top of the things. But the work of unloading, once started,
could not be arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all
or only half the things were left behind. Cases full of china,
bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully
packed the night before now lay about the yard, and still
they went on searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have another
and yet another cart.
‘We can take four more men,’ said the steward. ‘They can
have my trap, or else what is to become of them?’
‘Let them have my wardrobe cart,’ said the countess.
‘Dunyasha can go with me in the carriage.’
They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take
wounded men from a house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was bright and animated. Natasha
was in a state of rapturous excitement such as she had not
known for a long time.
‘What could we fasten this onto?’ asked the servants,
trying to fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. ‘We must keep at least one cart.’
‘What’s in it?’ asked Natasha.
‘The count’s books.’
‘Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It’s not wanted.’
The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as
to where Count Peter could sit.
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‘On the box. You’ll sit on the box, won’t you, Petya?’ cried
Natasha.
Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was quite different from Natasha’s. She was putting
away the things that had to be left behind and making a list
of them as the countess wished, and she tried to get as much
taken away with them as possible.



1623

Chapter XVII
Before two o’clock in the afternoon the Rostovs’ four
carriages, packed full and with the horses harnessed, stood
at the front door. One by one the carts with the wounded
had moved out of the yard.
The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya’s attention as it passed the front porch. With
the help of a maid she was arranging a seat for the countess
in the huge high coach that stood at the entrance.
‘Whose caleche is that?’ she inquired, leaning out of the
carriage window.
‘Why, didn’t you know, Miss?’ replied the maid. ‘The
wounded prince: he spent the night in our house and is going with us.’
‘But who is it? What’s his name?’
‘It’s our intended that wasPrince Bolkonski himself! They
say he is dying,’ replied the maid with a sigh.
Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess.
The countess, tired out and already dressed in shawl and
bonnet for her journey, was pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to assemble for the usual
silent prayer with closed doors before starting. Natasha was
not in the room.
‘Mamma,’ said Sonya, ‘Prince Andrew is here, mortally
wounded. He is going with us.’
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The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya’s arm, glanced around.
‘Natasha?’ she murmured.
At that moment this news had only one significance for
both of them. They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what
would happen if she heard this news stifled all sympathy for
the man they both liked.
‘Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us,’ said
Sonya.
‘You say he is dying?’
Sonya nodded.
The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to
cry.
‘The ways of God are past finding out!’ she thought, feeling that the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming
manifest in all that was now taking place.
‘Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What’s the matter?’ asked Natasha, as with animated face she ran into the
room.
‘Nothing,’ answered the countess. ‘If everything is ready
let us start.’
And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.
Natasha looked at her inquiringly.
‘What is it? What has happened?’
‘Nothing... No..’
‘Is it something very bad for me? What is it?’ persisted
Natasha with her quick intuition.
Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Ma

1625

dame Schoss, Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into
the drawing room and, having closed the doors, they all sat
down and remained for some moments silently seated without looking at one another.
The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh
crossed himself before the icon. All the others did the same.
Then the count embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich,
who were to remain in Moscow, and while they caught at his
hand and kissed his shoulder he patted their backs lightly
with some vaguely affectionate and comforting words. The
countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on
her knees before the icons that had been left here and there
hanging on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which
some family tradition was connected, were being taken with
them.)
In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had
armed with swords and daggers, with trousers tucked inside
their high boots and with belts and girdles tightened, were
taking leave of those remaining behind.
As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put in the wrong place, and for a long time two
menservants stood one on each side of the open door and the
carriage steps waiting to help the countess in, while maids
rushed with cushions and bundles from the house to the
carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.
‘They always will forget everything!’ said the countess.
‘Don’t you know I can’t sit like that?’
And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but
with an aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach
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to rearrange the seat.
‘Oh, those servants!’ said the count, swaying his head.
Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to drive her, sat perched up high on the box and
did not so much as glance round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years’ experience he knew it would
be some time yet before the order, ‘Be off, in God’s name!’
would be given him: and he knew that even when it was said
he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent
back to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even
after that he would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of the window and beg him for the love
of heaven to drive carefully down the hill. He knew all this
and therefore waited calmly for what would happen, with
more patience than the horses, especially the near one, the
chestnut Falcon, who was pawing the ground and champing
his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage steps were folded
and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a
traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she
had to say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and began
crossing himself. The postilion and all the other servants did
the same. ‘Off, in God’s name!’ said Efim, putting on his hat.
‘Start!’ The postilion started the horses, the off pole horse
tugged at his collar, the high springs creaked, and the body
of the coach swayed. The footman sprang onto the box of
the moving coach which jolted as it passed out of the yard
onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted in their
turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In
the carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed them

1627

selves as they passed the church opposite the house. Those
who were to remain in Moscow walked on either side of the
vehicles seeing the travelers off.
Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as
now, sitting in the carriage beside the countess and gazing at
the slowly receding walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned out of the carriage window and looked
back and then forward at the long train of wounded in front
of them. Almost at the head of the line she could see the
raised hood of Prince Andrew’s caleche. She did not know
who was in it, but each time she looked at the procession her
eyes sought that caleche. She knew it was right in front.
In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk
Streets came several other trains of vehicles similar to the
Rostovs’, and as they passed along the Sadovaya Street the
carriages and carts formed two rows abreast.
As they were going round the Sukharev water tower
Natasha, who was inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the
people driving or walking past, suddenly cried out in joyful
surprise:
‘Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it’s he!’
‘Who? Who?’
‘Look! Yes, on my word, it’s Bezukhov!’ said Natasha,
putting her head out of the carriage and staring at a tall,
stout man in a coachman’s long coat, who from his manner
of walking and moving was evidently a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the arch of the Sukharev
tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced, beardless old
man in a frieze coat.
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‘Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman’s coat, with a
queer-looking old boy. Really,’ said Natasha, ‘look, look!’
‘No, it’s not he. How can you talk such nonsense?’
‘Mamma,’ screamed Natasha, ‘I’ll stake my head it’s he! I
assure you! Stop, stop!’ she cried to the coachman.
But the coachman could not stop, for 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 Pierreor someone extraordinarily
like himin 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


1629

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 expressionof which he was conscious without looking at herfilled him
with enchantment.
‘Are you remaining in Moscow, then?’
Pierre hesitated.
‘In Moscow?’ he said in a questioning tone. ‘Yes, in Moscow. Goodby!’
‘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-by, 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.

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War and Peace

Chapter XVIII
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.


1631

‘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
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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 mastermay the kingdom of heaven be hishas 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 fee

1633

ble, 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.
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‘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
the night on a bed made up for him there.
Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many
strange things, accepted Pierre’s taking up his residence
in the house without surprise, and seemed pleased to have
someone to wait on. That same eveningwithout even asking
himself what they were wanted forhe procured a coachman’s coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him the
pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and
stopped and looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as
Pierre turned toward him he wrapped his dressing gown
around him with a shamefaced and angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the coachman’s coat
which Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected
by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol
at the Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.



1635

Chapter XIX
Kutuzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was issued at night on the first of September.
The first troops started at once, and during the night
they marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing the town at the Dorogomilov
bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers crowding and
hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side
and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses
of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and
an unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all
rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and
the boats. Kutuzov himself had driven round by side streets
to the other side of Moscow.
By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov
suburb, where they had ample room. The main army was on
the other side of Moscow or beyond it.
At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second
of September, Napoleon was standing among his troops on
the Poklonny Hill looking at the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to the second of
September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the entry
of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating, memorable week, there had been the extraordinary
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autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the
sun hangs low and gives more heat than in spring, when
everything shines so brightly in the rare clear atmosphere
that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even
the nights are warm, and when in those dark warm nights,
golden stars startle and delight us continually by falling
from the sky.
At ten in the morning of the second of September this
weather still held.
The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow
seen from the Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with
her river, her gardens, and her churches, and she seemed to
be living her usual life, her cupolas glittering like stars in
the sunlight.
The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with
the rather envious and uneasy curiosity men feel when they
see an alien form of life that has no knowledge of them. This
city was evidently living with the full force of its own life. By
the indefinite signs which, even at a distance, distinguish a
living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklonny
Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it
were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.
Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her
significance as the mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.
‘Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou


1637

la sainte. La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait
temps,’* said he, and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and summoned Lelorgne
d’Ideville, the interpreter.
*”That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was high
time.’
‘A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has
lost her honor,’ thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at
Smolensk). From that point of view he gazed at the Oriental
beauty he had not seen before. It seemed strange to him that
his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable, had at
last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now
at the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and
the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him.
‘But could it be otherwise?’ he thought. ‘Here is this
capital at my feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is
he thinking? A strange, beautiful, and majestic city; and
a strange and majestic moment! In what light must I appear to them!’ thought he, thinking of his troops. ‘Here
she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men,’ he reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who
were approaching and forming up. ‘One word from me,
one movement of my hand, and that ancient capital of the
Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and
truly great. But no, it can’t be true that I am in Moscow,’ he
suddenly thought. ‘Yet here she is lying at my feet, with her
golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the
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sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments
of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of
justice and mercy.... It is just this which Alexander will feel
most painfully, I know him.’ (It seemed to Napoleon that
the chief import of what was taking place lay in the personal
struggle between himself and Alexander.) ‘From the height
of the Kremlinyes, there is the Kremlin, yesI will give them
just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true civilization,
I will make generations of boyars remember their conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do
not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false
policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and
that in Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not wish to utilize the fortunes
of war to humiliate an honored monarch. ‘Boyars,’ I will say
to them, ‘I do not desire war, I desire the peace and welfare
of all my subjects.’ However, I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,
impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
Moscow? Yes, there she lies.’
‘Qu’on m’amene les boyars,’* said he to his suite.
*”Bring the boyars to me.’
A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to
fetch the boyars.
Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again
standing in the same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting
the deputation. His speech to the boyars had already taken
definite shape in his imagination. That speech was full of
dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.


1639

He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination
he appointed days for assemblies at the palace of the Tsars,
at which Russian notables and his own would mingle. He
mentally appointed a governor, one who would win the
hearts of the people. Having learned that there were many
charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that
he would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in
Africa he had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque,
so in Moscow he must be beneficent like the Tsars. And in
order finally to touch the hearts of the Russiansand being
like all Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental without a reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma pauvre
mere* he decided that he would place an inscription on all
these establishments in large letters: ‘This establishment is
dedicated to my dear mother.’ Or no, it should be simply:
Maison de ma Mere,*[2] he concluded. ‘But am I really in
Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me, but why is the deputation from the city so long in appearing?’ he wondered.
*”My dear, my tender, my poor mother.’
*[2] ‘House of my Mother.’
Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried
on in whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear
of his suite. Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned
with the news that Moscow was empty, that everyone had
left it. The faces of those who were not conferring together
were pale and perturbed. They were not alarmed by the fact
that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (grave
as that fact seemed), but by the question how to tell the
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Emperorwithout putting him in the terrible position of appearing ridiculousthat he had been awaiting the boyars so
long in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow
but no one else. Some said that a deputation of some sort
must be scraped together, others disputed that opinion and
maintained that the Emperor should first be carefully and
skillfully prepared, and then told the truth.
‘He will have to be told, all the same,’ said some gentlemen of the suite. ‘But, gentlemen..’
The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing
patiently up and down before the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from under his
lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.
‘But it’s impossible...’ declared the gentlemen of the suite,
shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied wordle ridicule...
At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor’s
instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having
been too long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with his hand. A single report of a signaling
gun followed, and the troops, who were already spread out
on different sides of Moscow, moved into the city through
Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and faster, vying with one another, they moved at the double or at a trot,
vanishing amid the clouds of dust they raised and making
the air ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts.
Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode
with them as far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again


1641

stopped and, dismounting from his horse, paced for a long
time by the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting the deputation.
CHAPTER XX
Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people
in it, perhaps a fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty. It was empty in the sense that a
dying queenless hive is empty.
In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial
glance it seems as much alive as other hives.
The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams
of the midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from
a distance it smells of honey like the others, and bees fly
in and out in the same way. But one has only to observe
that hive to realize that there is no longer any life in it. The
bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound
that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper’s tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former
instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees
with their abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an aerial living
sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board,
instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and
venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor
of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey.
There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their
abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive.
There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing
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activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long black
robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily.
They do not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly
only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they flew
out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the
lower part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy
beestamed by toil, clinging to one another’s legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of laborthat used to
hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive, drowsy
shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions
on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued
floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings,
there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying
bees scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not
been cleared away.
The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up
every gap in the combs and keeping the brood warm, he
sees the skillful complex structures of the combs, but no
longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected and
foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling
about the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and
listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without trying
to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense
of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock
awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here
and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and


1643

there a couple of bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their strength
laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without
knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees are
languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one
another, without themselves knowing whether they do it
with friendly or hostile intent. In a third place a crowd of
bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and fight
and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops
from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap
of corpses. The keeper opens the two center partitions to
examine the brood cells. In place of the former close dark
circles formed by thousands of bees sitting back to back and
guarding the high mystery of generation, he sees hundreds
of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They have almost
all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had guarded
and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death.
Only a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on
the enemy’s hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the
rest are dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper
closes the hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time
tears out its contents and burns it clean.
So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon,
weary, uneasy, and morose, paced up and down in front of
the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting what to his mind
was a necessary, if but formal, observance of the proprietiesa deputation.
In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few
people aimlessly moving about, following their old habits
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War and Peace

and hardly aware of what they were doing.
When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed
that Moscow was empty, he looked angrily at his informant,
turned away, and silently continued to walk to and fro.
‘My carriage!’ he said.
He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and
drove into the suburb. ‘Moscow deserted!’ he said to himself. ‘What an incredible event!’
He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in
the Dorogomilov suburb.
The coup de theatre had not come off.



1645

Chapter XXI
The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from
two o’clock at night till two in the afternoon and bore away
with them the wounded and the last of the inhabitants who
were leaving.
The greatest crush during the movement of the troops
took place at the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.
While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing
around the Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the
Stone bridges, a great many soldiers, taking advantage of
the stoppage and congestion, turned back from the bridges
and slipped stealthily and silently past the church of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the
hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they
could easily take things not belonging to them. Crowds of
the kind seen at cheap sales filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were no dealers with voices
of ingratiating affability inviting customers to enter; there
were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of female purchasersbut only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though
without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and
silently making their way out through its passages with
bundles. Tradesmen and their assistants (of whom there
were but few) moved about among the soldiers quite bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked them up
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again, and themselves carried goods away with the help
their assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were
drummers beating the muster call. But the roll of the drums
did not make the looting soldiers run in the direction of
the drum as formerly, but made them, on the contrary, run
farther away. Among the soldiers in the shops and passages
some men were to be seen in gray coats, with closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over his uniform
and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an
overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street,
talking. A third officer galloped up to them.
‘The general orders them all to be driven out at once,
without fail. This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed.’
‘Where are you off to?... Where?...’ he shouted to three
infantrymen without muskets who, holding up the skirts of
their overcoats, were slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. ‘Stop, you rascals!’
‘But how are you going to stop them?’ replied another officer. ‘There is no getting them together. The army should
push on before the rest bolt, that’s all!’
‘How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged
on the bridge, and don’t move. Shouldn’t we put a cordon
round to prevent the rest from running away?’
‘Come, go in there and drive them out!’ shouted the senior officer.
The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer,
and went with him into the arcade. Some soldiers started
running away in a group. A shopkeeper with red pimples on


1647

his cheeks near the nose, and a calm, persistent, calculating
expression on his plump face, hurriedly and ostentatiously
approached the officer, swinging his arms.
‘Your honor!’ said he. ‘Be so good as to protect us! We
won’t grudge trifles, you are welcome to anythingwe shall
be delighted! Pray!... I’ll fetch a piece of cloth at once for
such an honorable gentleman, or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is; but what’s all thissheer robbery!
If you please, could not guards be placed if only to let us
close the shop...’
Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.
‘Eh, what twaddle!’ said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man. ‘When one’s head is gone one doesn’t weep for
one’s hair! Take what any of you like!’ And flourishing his
arm energetically he turned sideways to the officer.
‘It’s all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk,’ said the
first tradesman angrily. ‘Please step inside, your honor!’
‘Talk indeed!’ cried the thin one. ‘In my three shops here
I have a hundred thousand rubles’ worth of goods. Can they
be saved when the army has gone? Eh, what people! ‘Against
God’s might our hands can’t fight.’’
‘Come inside, your honor!’ repeated the tradesman,
bowing.
The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.
‘It’s not my business!’ he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one of the passages.
From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray
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War and Peace

coat with a shaven head was flung out violently.
This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and
the officer. The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in
the shops, but at that moment fearful screams reached them
from the huge crowd on the Moskva bridge and the officer
ran out into the square.
‘What is it? What is it?’ he asked, but his comrade was already galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction
from which the screams came.
The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When
he reached the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the bridge, several overturned carts, and
frightened and laughing faces among the troops. Beside the
cannon a cart was standing to which two horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close to the
wheels. The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside
a child’s chair with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman
uttering piercing and desperate shrieks. He was told by his
fellow officers that the screams of the crowd and the shrieks
of the woman were due to the fact that General Ermolov,
coming up to the crowd and learning that soldiers were dispersing among the shops while crowds of civilians blocked
the bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered and
made a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing
one another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing
desperately, had cleared off the bridge and the troops were
now moving forward.



1649

Chapter XXII
Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone in the streets. The gates and shops were all closed,
only here and there round the taverns solitary shouts or
drunken songs could be heard. Nobody drove through the
streets and footsteps were rarely heard. The Povarskaya was
quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard of the Rostovs’
house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung from
the horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great
drawing room of the house, which had been left with all it
contained, were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the page boy Mishka, Vasilich’s grandson who had
stayed in Moscow with his grandfather. Mishka had opened
the clavichord and was strumming on it with one finger.
The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling with satisfaction before the large mirror.
‘Isn’t it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?’ said the boy, suddenly beginning to strike the keyboard with both hands.
‘Only fancy!’ answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on his face in the mirror.
‘Impudence! Impudence!’ they heard behind them the
voice of Mavra Kuzminichna who had entered silently.
‘How he’s grinning, the fat mug! Is that what you’re here for?
Nothing’s cleared away down there and Vasilich is worn
out. Just you wait a bit!’
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Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of
the room with meekly downcast eyes.
‘Aunt, I did it gently,’ said the boy.
‘I’ll give you something gently, you monkey you!’ cried
Mavra Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. ‘Go
and get the samovar to boil for your grandfather.’
Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord
and closed it, and with a deep sigh left the drawing room
and locked its main door.
Going out into the yard she paused to consider where
she should go nextto drink tea in the servants’ wing with
Vasilich, or into the storeroom to put away what still lay
about.
She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street.
Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.
‘Who do you want?’
‘The countCount Ilya Andreevich Rostov.’
‘And who are you?’
‘An officer, I have to see him,’ came the reply in a pleasant, well-bred Russian voice.
Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of
eighteen, with the round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.
‘They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,’ said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.
The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating
whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue.
‘Ah, how annoying!’ he muttered. ‘I should have come
yesterday.... Ah, what a pity.’


1651

Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and
sympathetically examining the familiar Rostov features of
the young man’s face, his tattered coat and trodden-down
boots.
‘What did you want to see the count for?’ she asked.
‘Oh well... it can’t be helped!’ said he in a tone of vexation
and placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.
He again paused in indecision.
‘You see,’ he suddenly said, ‘I am a kinsman of the count’s
and he has been very kind to me. As you see’ (he glanced
with an amused air and good-natured smile at his coat and
boots) ‘my things are worn out and I have no money, so I
was going to ask the count..’
Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.
‘Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment,’ said she.
And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she
turned and, hurrying away on her old legs, went through
the back yard to the servants’ quarters.
While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the
officer walked about the yard gazing at his worn-out boots
with lowered head and a faint smile on his lips. ‘What a pity
I’ve missed Uncle! What a nice old woman! Where has she
run off to? And how am I to find the nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near the
Rogozhski gate?’ thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna appeared from behind the corner of the house with a
frightened yet resolute look, carrying a rolled-up check kerchief in her hand. While still a few steps from the officer she
unfolded the kerchief and took out of it a white twenty-five1652

War and Peace

ruble assignat and hastily handed it to him.
‘If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he
would of course... but as it is..’
Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not decline, but took the note quietly and thanked
her.
‘If the count had been at home...’ Mavra Kuzminichna
went on apologetically. ‘Christ be with you, sir! May God
preserve you!’ said she, bowing as she saw him out.
Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself,
the officer ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets
toward the Yauza bridge to overtake his regiment.
But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for
some time with moist eyes, pensively swaying her head and
feeling an unexpected flow of motherly tenderness and pity
for the unknown young officer.



1653

Chapter XXIII
From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground
floor of which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and
songs. On benches round the tables in a dirty little room
sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring, with dim
eyes and wide-open mouths, they were all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing discordantly,
arduously, and with great effort, evidently not because they
wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were
drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean
blue coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine
straight nose would have been handsome had it not been
for his thin, compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy,
fixed eyes. Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over
those who were singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished
above their heads his white arm with the sleeve turned up
to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he always
carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it were
most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing should be bare. In the midst of the song cries were
heard, and fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The
tall lad waved his arm.
‘Stop it!’ he exclaimed peremptorily. ‘There’s a fight, lads!’
And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.
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The factory hands followed him. These men, who under
the leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop
that morning, had brought the publican some skins from
the factory and for this had had drink served them. The
blacksmiths from a neighboring smithy, hearing the sounds
of revelry in the tavern and supposing it to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too and a fight in the
porch had resulted.
The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door,
and when the workmen came out the smith, wrenching
himself free from the tavern keeper, fell face downward on
the pavement.
Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing
against the publican with his chest.
The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow
in the face and cried wildly: ‘They’re fighting us, lads!’
At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his
bruised face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: ‘Police! Murder!... They’ve killed a man, lads!’
‘Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to deathkilled!...’
screamed a woman coming out of a gate close by.
A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.
‘Haven’t you robbed people enoughtaking their last
shirts?’ said a voice addressing the publican. ‘What have
you killed a man for, you thief?’
The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared
eyes from the publican to the smith and back again as if
considering whom he ought to fight now.
‘Murderer!’ he shouted suddenly to the publican. ‘Bind


1655

him, lads!’
‘I daresay you would like to bind me!’ shouted the publican, pushing away the men advancing on him, and snatching
his cap from his head he flung it on the ground.
As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the workmen surrounding the publican paused
in indecision.
‘I know the law very well, mates! I’ll take the matter to
the captain of police. You think I won’t get to him? Robbery
is not permitted to anybody now a days!’ shouted the publican, picking up his cap.
‘Come along then! Come along then!’ the publican and
the tall young fellow repeated one after the other, and they
moved up the street together.
The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory
hands and others followed behind, talking and shouting.
At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house
with closed shutters and bearing a bootmaker’s signboard,
stood a score of thin, worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers,
wearing overalls and long tattered coats.
‘He should pay folks off properly,’ a thin workingman,
with frowning brows and a straggly beard, was saying.
‘But he’s sucked our blood and now he thinks he’s quit of
us. He’s been misleading us all the week and now that he’s
brought us to this pass he’s made off.’
On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the
workman ceased speaking, and with eager curiosity all the
bootmakers joined the moving crowd.
‘Where are all the folks going?’
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‘Why, to the police, of course!’
‘I say, is it true that we have been beaten?’ ‘And what did
you think? Look what folks are saying.’
Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking
advantage of the increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.
The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe,
waved his bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention to himself. It was around him that the
people chiefly crowded, expecting answers from him to the
questions that occupied all their minds.
‘He must keep order, keep the law, that’s what the government is there for. Am I not right, good Christians?’ said
the tall youth, with a scarcely perceptible smile. ‘He thinks
there’s no government! How can one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who’d rob us.’
‘Why talk nonsense?’ rejoined voices in the crowd. ‘Will
they give up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun,
and you believed it! Aren’t there plenty of troops on the
march? Let him in, indeed! That’s what the government is
for. You’d better listen to what people are saying,’ said some
of the mob pointing to the tall youth.
By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people
were gathered round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.
‘An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!’
cried voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the
reader.
The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of


1657

August 31 When the crowd collected round him he seemed
confused, but at the demand of the tall lad who had pushed
his way up to him, he began in a rather tremulous voice to
read the sheet from the beginning.
‘Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness,’ he
read (“Sirin Highness,’ said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his lips and a frown on his brow), ‘to consult
with him to act, and to aid the army to exterminate these
scoundrels. We too will take part...’ the reader went on, and
then paused (“Do you see,’ shouted the youth victoriously,
‘he’s going to clear up the whole affair for you....’), ‘in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the devil. I
will come back to dinner, and we’ll set to work. We will do,
completely do, and undo these scoundrels.’
The last words were read out in the midst of complete
silence. The tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident
that no one had understood the last part. In particular, the
words ‘I will come back to dinner,’ evidently displeased
both reader and audience. The people’s minds were tuned
to a high pitch and this was too simple and needlessly comprehensibleit was what any one of them might have said and
therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest
authority should not say.
They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth
moved his lips and swayed from side to side.
‘We should ask him... that’s he himself?’... ‘Yes, ask him
indeed!... Why not? He’ll explain”... voices in the rear of the
crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned to the police superintendent’s trap which drove
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into the square attended by two mounted dragoons.
The superintendent of police, who had that morning by
Count Rostopchin’s orders to burn the barges and had in
connection with that matter acquired a large sum of money
which was at that moment in his pocket, on seeing a crowd
bearing down upon him told his coachman to stop.
‘What people are these?’ he shouted to the men, who
were moving singly and timidly in the direction of his trap.
‘What people are these?’ he shouted again, receiving no
answer.
‘Your honor...’ replied the shopman in the frieze coat,
‘your honor, in accord with the proclamation of his highest
excellency the count, they desire to serve, not sparing their
lives, and it is not any kind of riot, but as his highest excellence said..’
‘The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued concerning you,’ said the superintendent of police. ‘Go
on!’ he ordered his coachman.
The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard
what the superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.
The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a scared look, said something to his coachman,
and his horses increased their speed.
‘It’s a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!’ shouted
the tall youth. ‘Don’t let him go, lads! Let him answer us!
Keep him!’ shouted different people and the people dashed
in pursuit of the trap.
Following the superintendent of police and talking loud

1659

ly the crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.
‘There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away
and left us to perish. Do they think we’re dogs?’ voices in the
crowd were heard saying more and more frequently.

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Chapter XXIV
On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to
Moscow mortified and offended because he had not been
invited to attend the council of war, and because Kutuzov
had paid no attention to his offer to take part in the defense
of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed to him
at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital and
its patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite irrelevant and unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and
surprised by all this, Rostopchin had returned to Moscow.
After supper he lay down on a sofa without undressing, and
was awakened soon after midnight by a courier bringing
him a letter from Kutuzov. This letter requested the count
to send police officers to guide the troops through the town,
as the army was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchin. He had known that
Moscow would be abandoned not merely since his interview
the previous day with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but
ever since the battle of Borodino, for all the generals who
came to Moscow after that battle had said unanimously that
it was impossible to fight another battle, and since then the
government property had been removed every night, and
half the inhabitants had left the city with Rostopchin’s own
permission. Yet all the same this information astonished


1661

and irritated the count, coming as it did in the form of a
simple note with an order from Kutuzov, and received at
night, breaking in on his beauty sleep.
When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he
was then actuated by two important considerations: to
maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold aim all
Rostopchin’s actions appear irreproachable. ‘Why were the
holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores
of corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants
deceived into believing that Moscow would not be given
upand thereby ruined?’ ‘To presence the tranquillity of the
city,’ explains Count Rostopchin. ‘Why were bundles of
useless papers from the government offices, and Leppich’s
balloon and other articles removed?’ ‘To leave the town
empty,’ explains Count Rostopchin. One need only admit
that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a
justification.
All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on
solicitude for public tranquillity.
On what, then, was Count Rostopchin’s fear for the tranquillity of Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there
for assuming any probability of an uprising in the city? The
inhabitants were leaving it and the retreating troops were
filling it. Why should that cause the masses to riot?
Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything
resembling an insurrection ever occur when the enemy
entered a town. More than ten thousand people were still
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in Moscow on the first and second of September, and except for a mob in the governor’s courtyard, assembled there
at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there
would have been even less reason to expect a disturbance
among the people if after the battle of Borodino, when the
surrender of Moscow became certain or at least probable,
Rostopchin instead of exciting the people by distributing
arms and broadsheets had taken steps to remove all the holy
relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and had told
the population plainly that the town would be abandoned.
Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a
sanguine and impulsive man who had always moved in the
highest administrative circles and had no understanding at
all of the people he supposed himself to be guiding. Ever
since the enemy’s entry into Smolensk he had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular feeling
of ‘the heart of Russia.’ Not only did it seem to him (as to
all administrators) that he controlled the external actions
of Moscow’s inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental attitude by means of his broadsheets
and posters, written in a coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not understand from those
in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the fine role
of leader of popular feeling, and had grown so used to it,
that the necessity of relinquishing that role and abandoning
Moscow without any heroic display took him unawares and
he suddenly felt the ground slip away from under his feet, so
that he positively did not know what to do. Though he knew
it was coming, he did not till the last moment wholeheart

1663

edly believe that Moscow would be abandoned, and did not
prepare for it. The inhabitants left against his wishes. If the
government offices were removed, this was only done on the
demand of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly.
He was absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is
often the case with those gifted with an ardent imagination,
though he had long known that Moscow would be abandoned he knew it only with his intellect, he did not believe it
in his heart and did not adapt himself mentally to this new
position of affairs.
All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far
it was useful and had any effect on the people is another
question) had been simply directed toward arousing in the
masses his own feeling of patriotic hatred of the French.
But when events assumed their true historical character, when expressing hatred for the French in words proved
insufficient, when it was not even possible to express that
hatred by fighting a battle, when self-confidence was of no
avail in relation to the one question before Moscow, when
the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one man,
abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative
action all the depth of their national feeling, then the role
chosen by Rostopchin suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no
ground to stand on.
When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold,
peremptory note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated
the more he felt himself to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state property which he should
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have removed, was still in Moscow and it was no longer possible to take the whole of it away.
‘Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such
a pass?’ he ruminated. ‘Not I, of course. I had everything
ready. I had Moscow firmly in hand. And this is what they
have let it come to! Villains! Traitors!’ he thought, without
clearly defining who the villains and traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever they might be
who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position in
which he found himself.
All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which
people came to him from all parts of Moscow. Those about
him had never seen the count so morose and irritable.
‘Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar’s Department has sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from
the Senate, from the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent... asking for information.... What
are your orders about the Fire Brigade? From the governor
of the prison... from the superintendent of the lunatic asylum...’ All night long such announcements were continually
being received by the count.
To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating that orders from him were not now needed, that
the whole affair, carefully prepared by him, had now been
ruined by somebody, and that that somebody would have to
bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.
‘Oh, tell that blockhead,’ he said in reply to the question
from the Registrar’s Department, ‘that he should remain to
guard his documents. Now why are you asking silly ques

1665

tions about the Fire Brigade? They have horses, let them be
off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the French.’
‘Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come: what are your commands?’
‘My commands? Let them go away, that’s all.... And let
the lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command
our armies God evidently means these other madmen to
be free.’
In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison,
Count Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:
‘Do you expect me to give you two battalionswhich we
have not gotfor a convoy? Release them, that’s all about it!’
‘Your excellency, there are some political prisoners,
Meshkov, Vereshchagin..’
‘Vereshchagin! Hasn’t he been hanged yet?’ shouted Rostopchin. ‘Bring him to me!’

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Chapter XXV
Toward nine o’clock in the morning, when the troops
were already moving through Moscow, nobody came to the
count any more for instructions. Those who were able to get
away were going of their own accord, those who remained
behind decided for themselves what they must do.
The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to
Sokolniki, and sat in his study with folded hands, morose,
sallow, and taciturn.
In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population
under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of
being indispensable every administrator finds the chief
reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark,
holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and
himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move
the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises
and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a
delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer
reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator,
instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes
an insignificant, useless, feeble man.
Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated


1667

him.
The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had
stopped, went in to see him at the same time as an adjutant
who informed the count that the horses were harnessed.
They were both pale, and the superintendent of police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he had
received, informed the count that an immense crowd had
collected in the courtyard and wished to see him.
Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked
hastily to his light, luxurious drawing room, went to the
balcony door, took hold of the handle, let it go again, and
went to the window from which he had a better view of the
whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in front, flourishing
his arm and saying something with a stern look. The blood
stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone
of voices was audible through the closed window.
‘Is my carriage ready?’ asked Rostopchin, stepping back
from the window.
‘It is, your excellency,’ replied the adjutant.
Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.
‘But what do they want?’ he asked the superintendent of
police.
‘Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according
to your orders, to go against the French, and they shouted
something about treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your
excellencyI hardly managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..’
‘You may go. I don’t need you to tell me what to do!’ exclaimed Rostopchin angrily.
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He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.
‘This is what they have done with Russia! This is what
they have done with me!’ thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled up within him against the someone to
whom what was happening might be attributed. As often
happens with passionate people, he was mastered by anger
but was still seeking an object on which to vent it. ‘Here is
that mob, the dregs of the people,’ he thought as he gazed
at the crowd: ‘this rabble they have roused by their folly!
They want a victim,’ he thought as he looked at the tall lad
flourishing his arm. And this thought occurred to him just
because he himself desired a victim, something on which to
vent his rage.
‘Is the carriage ready?’ he asked again.
‘Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He is waiting at the porch,’ said the adjutant.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected recollection.
And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out
onto the balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and
caps were doffed, and all eyes were raised to the count.
‘Good morning, lads!’ said the count briskly and loudly.
‘Thank you for coming. I’ll come out to you in a moment,
but we must first settle with the villain. We must punish the
villain who has caused the ruin of Moscow. Wait for me!’
And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and
slammed the door behind him.
A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through
the crowd. ‘He’ll settle with all the villains, you’ll see! And


1669

you said the French... He’ll show you what law is!’ the mob
were saying as if reproving one another for their lack of
confidence.
A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the
front door, gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in
line. The crowd moved eagerly from the balcony toward
the porch. Rostopchin, coming out there with quick angry
steps, looked hastily around as if seeking someone.
‘Where is he?’ he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a
young man coming round the corner of the house between
two dragoons. He had a long thin neck, and his head, that
had been half shaved, was again covered by short hair. This
young man was dressed in a threadbare blue cloth coat lined
with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty,
trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy
chains which hampered his irresolute movements.
‘Ah!’ said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes
from the young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to
the bottom step of the porch. ‘Put him there.’
The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily
to the spot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat
collar which chafed his neck, turned his long neck twice
this way and that, sighed, and submissively folded before
him his thin hands, unused to work.
For several seconds while the young man was taking his
place on the step the silence continued. Only among the
back rows of the people, who were all pressing toward the
one spot, could sighs, groans, and the shuffling of feet be
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heard.
While waiting for the young man to take his place on the
step Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with
his hand.
‘Lads!’ said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. ‘This
man, Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing.’
The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little,
stood in a submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before
him. His emaciated young face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down hopelessly. At the count’s first words
he raised it slowly and looked up at him as if wishing to say
something or at least to meet his eye. But Rostopchin did
not look at him. A vein in the young man’s long thin neck
swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, and suddenly his face flushed.
All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and
rendered more hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled sadly and timidly, and lowering his head
shifted his feet on the step.
‘He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone
over to Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced
the Russian name, he has caused Moscow to perish,’ said
Rostopchin in a sharp, even voice, but suddenly he glanced
down at Vereshchagin who continued to stand in the same
submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight, he raised
his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:
‘Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you.’
The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and


1671

closer to one another. To keep one another back, to breathe
in that stifling atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await
something unknown, uncomprehended, and terrible, was
becoming unbearable. Those standing in front, who had
seen and heard what had taken place before them, all stood
with wide open eyes and mouths, straining with all their
strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing behind
them.
‘Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the
Russian name!’ shouted Rostopchin. ‘Cut him down. I command it.’
Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin’s voice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but
again paused.
‘Count!’ exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of
Vereshchagin in the midst of the momentary silence that
ensued, ‘Count! One God is above us both....’ He lifted his
head and again the thick vein in his thin neck filled with
blood and the color rapidly came and went in his face.
He did not finish what he wished to say.
‘Cut him down! I command it...’ shouted Rostopchin,
suddenly growing pale like Vereshchagin.
‘Draw sabers!’ cried the dragoon officer, drawing his
own.
Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd
and reaching the front ranks carried it swaying to the very
steps of the porch. The tall youth, with a stony look on
his face, and rigid and uplifted arm, stood beside Vereshchagin.
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‘Saber him!’ the dragoon officer almost whispered.
And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with
fury, struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side
of his saber.
‘Ah!’ cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round
with a frightened glance as if not understanding why this
was done to him. A similar moan of surprise and horror ran
through the crowd. ‘O Lord!’ exclaimed a sorrowful voice.
But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped
from Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and
that cry was fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained
to the utmost, that had held the crowd in check suddenly
broke. The crime had begun and must now be completed.
The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and
last wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst
from the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them
off their feet and engulfing them all. The dragoon was about
to repeat his blow. Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands, rushed toward the crowd. The
tall youth, against whom he stumbled, seized his thin neck
with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with him under the
feet of the pressing, struggling crowd.
Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall
youth. And the screams of those that were being trampled
on and of those who tried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd. It was a long time before the
dragoons could extricate the bleeding youth, beaten almost
to death. And for a long time, despite the feverish haste with


1673

which the mob tried to end the work that had been begun,
those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing at Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from
all sides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and
rendering it impossible for them either to kill him or let him
go.
‘Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold
Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture
serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... Whatstill alive?’
Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries
changed to a long-drawn, measured death rattle did the
crowd around his prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly
to change places. Each one came up, glanced at what had
been done, and with horror, reproach, and astonishment
pushed back again.
‘O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he
be alive?’ voices in the crowd could be heard saying. ‘Quite
a young fellow too... must have been a merchant’s son. What
men!... and they say he’s not the right one.... How not the
right one?... O Lord! And there’s another has been beaten
toothey say he’s nearly done for.... Oh, the people... Aren’t
they afraid of sinning?...’ said the same mob now, looking
with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin,
half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and
dust.
A painstaking police officer, considering the presence
of a corpse in his excellency’s courtyard unseemly, told
the dragoons to take it away. Two dragoons took it by its
distorted legs and dragged it along the ground. The gory,
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dust-stained, half-shaven head with its long neck trailed
twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back from it.
At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd
closed in with savage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale and, instead of going to the back
entrance where his carriage awaited him, went with hurried
steps and bent head, not knowing where and why, along
the passage leading to the rooms on the ground floor. The
count’s face was white and he could not control the feverish
twitching of his lower jaw.
‘This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This
way, please...’ said a trembling, frightened voice behind
him.
Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went in the direction indicated. At the back entrance
stood his caleche. The distant roar of the yelling crowd was
audible even there. He hastily took his seat and told the
coachman to drive him to his country house in Sokolniki.
When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no
longer hear the shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with dissatisfaction the agitation and
fear he had betrayed before his subordinates. ‘The mob is
terribledisgusting,’ he said to himself in French. ‘They are
like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease.’ ‘Count!
One God is above us both!’Vereshchagin’s words suddenly recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his
back. But this was only a momentary feeling and Count
Rostopchin smiled disdainfully at himself. ‘I had other duties,’ thought he. ‘The people had to be appeased. Many


1675

other victims have perished and are perishing for the public
good’and he began thinking of his social duties to his family
and to the city entrusted to him, and of himselfnot himself
as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for
the public good) but himself as governor, the representative
of authority and of the Tsar. ‘Had I been simply Theodore
Vasilyevich my course of action would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity
as commander in chief.’
Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and
no longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew physically calm and, as always happens, as soon
as he became physically tranquil his mind devised reasons
why he should be mentally tranquil too. The thought which
tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new one. Since the
world began and men have killed one another no one has
ever committed such a crime against his fellow man without comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le
bien public, the hypothetical welfare of other people.
To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he who commits such a crime always knows just
where that welfare lies. And Rostopchin now knew it.
Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he
had done, but he even found cause for self-satisfaction in
having so successfully contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a criminal and at the same
time pacify the mob.
‘Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death,’
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thought Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to hard labor), ‘he was a traitor and a
spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have killed
two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a
victim and at the same time punished a miscreant.’
Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about domestic arrangements, the count grew quite
tranquil.
Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses
across the Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had
occurred but considering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where he had heard that Kutuzov
was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing the angry
and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov
for his deception. He would make that foxy old courtier
feel that the responsibility for all the calamities that would
follow the abandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia
(as Rostopchin regarded it) would fall upon his doting old
head. Planning beforehand what he would say to Kutuzov,
Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche and gazed sternly
from side to side.
The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it,
in front of the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be
seen some people in white and others like them walking
singly across the field shouting and gesticulating.
One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin’s carriage, and the count himself, his coachman,
and his dragoons looked with vague horror and curiosity
at these released lunatics and especially at the one running


1677

toward them.
Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his
fluttering dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on Rostopchin, shouting something in
a hoarse voice and making signs to him to stop. The lunatic’s solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow, with its beard
growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.
‘Stop! Pull up, I tell you!’ he cried in a piercing voice, and
again shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.
Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.
‘Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the
dead. They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall
rise... shall rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of
God will be overthrown... Thrice will I overthrow it and
thrice re-establish it!’ he cried, raising his voice higher and
higher.
Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done
when the crowd closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away.
‘Go fas... faster!’ he cried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over the ground as fast as the horses
could draw it, but for a long time Count Rostopchin still
heard the insane despairing screams growing fainter in the
distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the astonished,
frightened, bloodstained face of ‘the traitor’ in the fur-lined
coat.
Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already
felt that it had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood.
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Even now he felt clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with time, but that the terrible memory
would, on the contrary, dwell in his heart ever more cruelly
and painfully to the end of his life. He seemed still to hear
the sound of his own words: ‘Cut him down! I command
it...’
‘Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident
I said them.... I need not have said them,’ he thought. ‘And
then nothing would have happened.’ He saw the frightened
and then infuriated face of the dragoon who dealt the blow,
the look of silent, timid reproach that boy in the fur-lined
coat had turned upon him. ‘But I did not do it for my own
sake. I was bound to act that way.... The mob, the traitor...
the public welfare,’ thought he.
Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was
hot. Kutuzov, dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by
the bridge toying with his whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a general’s uniform with
plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said something
in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that
he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and
only the army remained.
‘Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not told me that you would not abandon Moscow
without another battle; all this would not have happened,’
he said.
Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what
was said to him, he was trying to read something peculiar
written at that moment on the face of the man addressing


1679

him. Rostopchin grew confused and became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his penetrating
gaze from Rostopchin’s face muttered softly:
‘No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!’
Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he spoke those words, or uttered them
purposely, knowing them to be meaningless, at any rate
Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left him. And strange
to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where
he began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the
way.

1680

War and Peace

Chapter XXVI
Toward four o’clock in the afternoon Murat’s troops
were entering Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind them rode the King of Naples
himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of
the Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await
news from the advanced detachment as to the condition in
which they had found the citadel, le Kremlin.
Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. They all stared in timid bewilderment
at the strange, long-haired commander dressed up in feathers and gold.
‘Is that their Tsar himself? He’s not bad!’ low voices could
be heard saying.
An interpreter rode up to the group.
‘Take off your cap... your caps!’ These words went from
one to another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an
old porter and asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter,
listening in perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and
not realizing that the interpreter was speaking Russian, did
not understand what was being said to him and slipped behind the others.
Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask
where the Russian army was. One of the Russians under

1681

stood what was asked and several voices at once began
answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from
the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported
that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that
there was probably an ambuscade there.
‘Good!’ said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen
in his suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to
fire at the gates.
The guns emerged at a trot from the column following
Murat and advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the
end of the Vozdvizhenka Street they halted and drew in the
Square. Several French officers superintended the placing of
the guns and looked at the Kremlin through field glasses.
The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and
this sound troubled the French. They imagined it to be a
call to arms. A few infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate.
Beams and wooden screens had been put there, and two
musket shots rang out from under the gate as soon as an
officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was
standing by the guns shouted some words of command to
the officer, and the latter ran back again with his men.
The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
One shot struck a French soldier’s foot, and from behind
the screens came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a word of command the expression of
cheerful serenity on the faces of the French general, officers,
and men changed to one of determined concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from the marshal
to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,
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War and Peace

Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would
probably prove sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the gates ceased. The guns were advanced,
the artillerymen blew the ash off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word ‘Fire!’ This was followed by two whistling
sounds of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled
against the stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams
and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over
the Square.
A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the stone-built Kremlin had died away the French
heard a strange sound above their head. Thousands of crows
rose above the walls and circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound came a
solitary human cry from the gateway and amid the smoke
appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a peasant’s coat.
He grasped a musket and took aim at the French. ‘Fire!’ repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket
and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The
gate again hidden by smoke.
Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French
infantry soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the
gateway lay three wounded and four dead. Two men in
peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall, toward the
Znamenka.
‘Clear that away!’ said the officer, pointing to the beams
and the corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching
the wounded, threw the corpses over the parapet.


1683

Who these men were nobody knew. ‘Clear that away!’
was all that was said of them, and they were thrown over
the parapet and removed later on that they might not stink.
Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent lines to their memory: ‘These wretches had occupied the sacred citadel, having
supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal, and fired’
(the wretches) ‘at the French. Some of them were sabered
and the Kremlin was purged of their presence.’
Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The
French entered the gates and began pitching their camp in
the Senate Square. Out of the windows of the Senate House
the soldiers threw chairs into the Square for fuel and kindled fires there.
Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka
Streets. Others quartered themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy Streets. No masters
of the houses being found anywhere, the French were not
billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in
it as in a camp.
Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a
third of their original number, the French entered Moscow
in good marching order. It was a weary and famished, but
still a fighting and menacing army. But it remained an army
only until its soldiers had dispersed into their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began to
disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army
was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known
1684

War and Peace

as marauders. When five weeks later these same men left
Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They were a mob
of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which
seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when
he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but
merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which
puts its paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized
a handful of nuts will not open its fist for fear of losing what
it holds, and therefore perishes, the French when they left
Moscow had inevitably to perish because they carried their
loot with them, yet to abandon what they had stolen was
as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to open its
paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment
had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was
left. Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be
seen through the windows, laughing and walking through
the rooms. In cellars and storerooms similar men were
busy among the provisions, and in the yards unlocking or
breaking open coach house and stable doors, lighting fires
in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with rolled-up
sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or caressing
women and children. There were many such men both in
the shops and housesbut there was no army.
Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day forbidding the men to disperse about the town,
sternly forbidding any violence to the inhabitants or any
looting, and announcing a roll call for that very evening.
But despite all these measures the men, who had till then
constituted an army, flowed all over the wealthy, deserted


1685

city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As a hungry
herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren
field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army
disperse all over the wealthy city.
No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldierslike
water percolating through sandspread irresistibly through
the city in all directions from the Kremlin into which they
had first marched. The cavalry, on entering a merchant’s
house that had been abandoned and finding there stabling
more than sufficient for their horses, went on, all the same,
to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on
them, and quarreled and even fought with other companies
for them. Before they had had time to secure quarters the
soldiers ran out into the streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been abandoned, rushed to places
where valuables were to be had for the taking. The officers
followed to check the soldiers and were involuntarily drawn
into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had been
left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who
had remained invited commanding officers to their houses,
hoping thereby to secure themselves from being plundered.
There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to
it. All around the quarters occupied by the French were
other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where, they
thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow
engulfed the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is
1686

War and Peace

spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water
disappear and mud results; and in the same way the entry of
the famished army into the rich and deserted city resulted
in fires and looting and the destruction of both the army
and the wealthy city.
The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme
feroce de Rostopchine,* the Russians to the barbarity of the
French. In reality, however, it was not, and could not be,
possible to explain the burning of Moscow by making any
individual, or any group of people, responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which
any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from
whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior
fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as
a heap of shavings has to burn on which sparks continually
fall for several days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a
day passes without conflagrations when the house owners
are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help
burning when its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied
by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals
twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops
in the villages of any district and the number of fires in that
district immediately increases. How much then must the
probability of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden
town where foreign troops are quartered. ‘Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine’ and the barbarity of the French were
not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by the
soldiers’ pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the careless

1687

ness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own.
Even if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no
one had any reason to burn the housesin any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson cannot be regarded
as the cause, for the same thing would have happened without any incendiarism.
*To Rostopchin’s ferocious patriotism.
However tempting it might be for the French to blame
Rostopchin’s ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later on to place an heroic torch in the
hands of their own people, it is impossible not to see that
there could be no such direct cause of the fire, for Moscow
had to burn as every village, factory, or house must burn
which is left by its owners and in which strangers are allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned
by its inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned
it and not by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like Berlin, Vienna,
and other towns, simply because its inhabitants abandoned
it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor
bring them the keys of the city.

1688

War and Peace

Chapter XXVII
The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was
staying by the evening of the second of September.
After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual
circumstances, Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely obsessed by one persistent thought.
He did not know how or when this thought had taken such
possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past,
understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and heard
appeared to him like a dream.
He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of
life’s demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present
condition he was unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph
Alexeevich’s house, on the plea of sorting the deceased’s
books and papers, only in search of rest from life’s turmoil,
for in his mind the memory of Joseph Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm thoughts,
quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he felt
himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph Alexeevich’s study he really found it. When he sat with
his elbows on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study, calm and significant memories of the last
few days rose one after another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and of that vague sense of


1689

his own insignificance and insincerity compared with the
truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his
reverie the idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow which he knew was projected. And
with that object he had asked Gerasim to get him a peasant’s coat and a pistol, confiding to him his intentions of
remaining in Joseph Alexeevich’s house and keeping his
name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction
and solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on
the Masonic manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea
that had previously occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in connection with Bonaparte’s more
than once vaguely presented itself. But the idea that he,
L’russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit to the power of
the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that often passed
through his mind and left no trace behind.
When, having bought the coat merely with the object
of taking part among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the Rostovs and Natasha had said to
him: ‘Are you remaining in Moscow?... How splendid!’ the
thought flashed into his mind that it really would be a good
thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to remain there
and do what he was predestined to do.
Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and
not lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the
Three Hills gate. But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be defended, he suddenly
felt that what before had seemed to him merely a possibil1690

War and Peace

ity had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He
must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must
meet Napoleon and kill him, and either perish or put an
end to the misery of all Europewhich it seemed to him was
solely due to Napoleon.
Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte’s
life in 1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that
the student had been shot. And the risk to which he would
expose his life by carrying out his design excited him still
more.
Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to
this purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and suffering in view of the common calamity, the
same feeling that had caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the
twenty-fifth and to make his way to the very thick of the
battle and had now caused him to run away from his home
and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and
eat the same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and
quite Russian feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and humanfor everything the majority of
men regard as the greatest good in the world. Pierre had
first experienced this strange and fascinating feeling at the
Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and lifeall that men so painstakingly acquire and guardif
it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with which it
can all be renounced.
It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend
his last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mir

1691

rors or glasses for no apparent reason and knowing that it
will cost him all the money he possesses: the feeling which
causes a man to perform actions which from an ordinary
point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal
power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher,
nonhuman criterion of life.
From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for
the first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its influence, but only now found full satisfaction
for it. Moreover, at this moment Pierre was supported in his
design and prevented from renouncing it by what he had
already done in that direction. If he were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the peasant
coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that
he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely
meaningless but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this
Pierre was very sensitive.
Pierre’s physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food,
the vodka he drank during those days, the absence of wine
and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen, two almost sleepless
nights passed on a short sofa without beddingall this kept
him in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The French had already entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of
acting he only thought about his undertaking, going over its
minutest details in his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either the striking of the blow or the
death of Napoleon, but with extraordinary vividness and
1692

War and Peace

melancholy enjoyment imagined his own destruction and
heroic endurance.
‘Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!’ he
thought. ‘Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with
pistol or dagger? But that is all the same! ‘It is not I but the
hand of Providence that punishes thee,’ I shall say,’ thought
he, imagining what he would say when killing Napoleon.
‘Well then, take me and execute me!’ he went on, speaking
to himself and bowing his head with a sad but firm expression.
While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was
talking to himself in this way, the study door opened and
on the threshold appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich,
always so timid before but now quite transformed.
His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew
confused at first, but noticing embarrassment on Pierre’s
face immediately grew bold and, staggering on his thin legs,
advanced into the middle of the room.
‘They’re frightened,’ he said confidentially in a hoarse
voice. ‘I say I won’t surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?’
He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the
table seized it with unexpected rapidity and ran out into
the corridor.
Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped him in the vestibule and tried to take the
pistol from him. Pierre, coming out into the corridor,
looked with pity and repulsion at the half-crazy old man.
Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held on to the


1693

pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic
fancy in his head.
‘To arms! Board them! No, you shan’t get it,’ he yelled.
‘That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodnessplease, sir, to let go! Please, sir...’ pleaded Gerasim, trying
carefully to steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to
the door.
‘Who are you? Bonaparte!...’ shouted Makar Alexeevich.
‘That’s not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and
rest. Allow me to have the pistol.’
‘Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?’ shouted
Makar Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. ‘Board them!’
‘Catch hold!’ whispered Gerasim to the porter.
They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged
him to the door.
The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a
struggle and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.
Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated from the porch and the cook came running into
the vestibule.
‘It’s them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them,
horsemen!’ she cried.
Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in
the now silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking
at the front door could be heard.

1694

War and Peace

Chapter XXVIII
Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his
design he would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood at the half-open door of the corridor,
intending to conceal himself as soon as the French entered.
But the French entered and still Pierre did not retirean irresistible curiosity kept him there.
There were two of them. One was an officera tall, soldierly, handsome manthe other evidently a private or an
orderly, sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks
and a dull expression. The officer walked in front, leaning
on a stick and slightly limping. When he had advanced a
few steps he stopped, having apparently decided that these
were good quarters, turned round to the soldiers standing
at the entrance, and in a loud voice of command ordered
them to put up the horses. Having done that, the officer,
lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his mustache
and lightly touched his hat.
‘Bonjour, la compagnie!’* said he gaily, smiling and looking about him.
*”Good day, everybody!’
No one gave any reply.
‘Vous etes le bourgeois?’* the officer asked Gerasim.
*”Are you the master here?’
Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquir

1695

ing look.
‘Quartier, quartier, logement!’ said the officer, looking
down at the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. ‘Les francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable!
Voyons! Ne nous fachons pas, mon vieux!’* added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim on the shoulder. ‘Well,
does no one speak French in this establishment?’ he asked
again in French, looking around and meeting Pierre’s eyes.
Pierre moved away from the door.
*”Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good
fellows. What the devil! There, don’t let us be cross, old fellow!’
Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to
show him the rooms in the house.
‘Master, not heredon’t understand... me, you...’ said
Gerasim, trying to render his words more comprehensible
by contorting them.
Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before Gerasim’s nose, intimating that he did not understand
him either, and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre
was standing. Pierre wished to go away and conceal himself,
but at that moment he saw Makar Alexeevich appearing at
the open kitchen door with the pistol in his hand. With a
madman’s cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his pistol, and took aim.
‘Board them!’ yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the
trigger. Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at
the same moment Pierre threw himself on the drunkard.
Just when Pierre snatched at and struck up the pistol Ma1696

War and Peace

kar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the trigger, there
was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a cloud
of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the
door.
Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of
French, Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it
down, ran up to the officer and addressed him in French.
‘You are not wounded?’ he asked.
‘I think not,’ answered the Frenchman, feeling himself
over. ‘But I have had a lucky escape this time,’ he added,
pointing to the damaged plaster of the wall. ‘Who is that
man?’ said he, looking sternly at Pierre.
‘Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred,’ said
Pierre rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended
to play. ‘He is an unfortunate madman who did not know
what he was doing.’
The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him
by the collar.
Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.
‘Brigand! You shall pay for this,’ said the Frenchman, letting go of him. ‘We French are merciful after victory, but
we do not pardon traitors,’ he added, with a look of gloomy
dignity and a fine energetic gesture.
Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not
to hold that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman
listened in silence with the same gloomy expression, but
suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For a few seconds
he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed


1697

a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out his
hand.
‘You have saved my life. You are French,’ said he.
For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only
a Frenchman could perform a great deed, and to save his
lifethe life of M. Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regimentwas undoubtedly a very great deed.
But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer’s
conviction based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.
‘I am Russian,’ he said quickly.
‘Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others,’ said the officer, waving
his finger before his nose and smiling. ‘You shall tell me all
about that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot.
Well, and what are we to do with this man?’ he added, addressing himself to Pierre as to a brother.
Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest of human appellations he could not
renounce it, said the officer’s look and tone. In reply to his
last question Pierre again explained who Makar Alexeevich
was and how just before their arrival that drunken imbecile
had seized the loaded pistol which they had not had time to
recover from him, and begged the officer to let the deed go
unpunished.
The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic
gesture with his arm.
‘You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant it you. Lead that man away!’ said he quickly
and energetically, and taking the arm of Pierre whom he
1698

War and Peace

had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his life, he went
with him into the room.
The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the
passage asking what had happened, and expressed their
readiness to punish the culprits, but the officer sternly
checked them.
‘You will be called in when you are wanted,’ he said.
The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had
meanwhile had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.
‘Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen,’ said he. ‘Shall I serve them up?’
‘Yes, and some wine,’ answered the captain.



1699

Chapter XXIX
When the French officer went into the room with Pierre
the latter again thought it his duty to assure him that he was
not French and wished to go away, but the officer would not
hear of it. He was so very polite, amiable, good-natured, and
genuinely grateful to Pierre for saving his life that Pierre
had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in the
parlorthe first room they entered. To Pierre’s assurances
that he was not a Frenchman, the captain, evidently not
understanding how anyone could decline so flattering an
appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre
absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but
for all that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude
for saving his life.
Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity
for perceiving the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre’s feelings were, the latter would probably
have left him, but the man’s animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.
‘A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito,’ said the officer, looking at Pierre’s fine though dirty linen and at the
ring on his finger. ‘I owe my life to you and offer you my
friendship. A Frenchman never forgets either an insult or a
service. I offer you my friendship. That is all I can say.’
There was so much good nature and nobility (in the
1700

War and Peace

French sense of the word) in the officer’s voice, in the
expression of his face and in his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the Frenchman’s smile,
pressed the hand held out to him.
‘Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of
September,’ he introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under his mustache. ‘Will you
now be so good as to tell me with whom I have the honor of
conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance
with that maniac’s bullet in my body?’
Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and,
blushing, began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason for concealing it, but the Frenchman
hastily interrupted him.
‘Oh, please!’ said he. ‘I understand your reasons. You are
an officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms
against us. That’s not my business. I owe you my life. That is
enough for me. I am quite at your service. You belong to the
gentry?’ he concluded with a shade of inquiry in his tone.
Pierre bent his head. ‘Your baptismal name, if you please.
That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That’s all I want
to know.’
When the mutton and an omelet had been served and
a samovar and vodka brought, with some wine which
the French had taken from a Russian cellar and brought
with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like
a healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly


1701

with his strong teeth, continually smacking his lips, and
repeating‘Excellent! Delicious!’ His face grew red and was
covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared
the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought some
hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of claret in it.
He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the kitchen for
them to try. That beverage was already known to the French
and had been given a special name. They called it limonade
de cochon (pig’s lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he had found in the kitchen. But as the
captain had the wine they had taken while passing through
Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and applied himself to
the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to its neck
in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered
the captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all
through dinner.
‘Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive
candle for saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have
bullets enough in my body already. Here is one I got at Wagram’ (he touched his side) ‘and a second at Smolensk’he
showed a scar on his cheek‘and this leg which as you see
does not want to march, I got that on the seventh at the
great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That
deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us
there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor,
in spite of the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see it.’
‘I was there,’ said Pierre.
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‘Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave
foes. The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!’ continued the Frenchman. ‘And you made us pay dear for it. I was
at it three timessure as I sit here. Three times we reached
the guns and three times we were thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur Pierre! Your
grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close up
their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what’s
what, cried ‘Bravo!’ Ha, ha! So you are one of us soldiers!’ he
added, smiling, after a momentary pause. ‘So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur Pierre! Terrible in battle...
gallant... with the fair’ (he winked and smiled), ‘that’s what
the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren’t they?’
The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so
real, and so pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked
back as he looked merrily at him. Probably the word ‘gallant’ turned the captain’s thoughts to the state of Moscow.
‘Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have
all left Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be
afraid of?’
‘Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians
entered it?’ asked Pierre.
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine
chuckle, patting Pierre on the shoulder. ‘What a thing to
say!’ he exclaimed. ‘Paris?... But Paris, Paris..’
‘Paristhe capital of the world,’ Pierre finished his remark
for him.
The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping


1703

short in the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his
laughing, kindly eyes.
‘Well, if you hadn’t told me you were Russian, I should
have wagered that you were Parisian! You have that... I don’t
know what, that...’ and having uttered this compliment, he
again gazed at him in silence.
‘I have been in Paris. I spent years there,’ said Pierre.
‘Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn’t
know Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues
off. Paris is Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the
boulevards,’ and noticing that his conclusion was weaker
than what had gone before, he added quickly: ‘There is only
one Paris in the world. You have been to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don’t esteem you the less for it.’
Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after
the days he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts,
Pierre involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and
good-natured man.
‘To return to your ladiesI hear they are lovely. What a
wretched idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes
when the French army is in Moscow. What a chance those
girls have missed! Your peasants, nowthat’s another thing;
but you civilized people, you ought to know us better than
that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw, all the world’s capitals.... We are feared, but we are
loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor...’ he began, but Pierre interrupted him.
‘The Emperor,’ Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and embarrassed, ‘is the Emperor...?’
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‘The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, geniusthat’s what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell
you so.... I assure you I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count.... But that man has vanquished
me. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist the sight of
the grandeur and glory with which he has covered France.
When I understood what he wantedwhen I saw that he was
preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know, I said to myself:
‘That is a monarch,’ and I devoted myself to him! So there!
Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or
future.’
‘Is he in Moscow?’ Pierre stammered with a guilty look.
The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.
‘No, he will make his entry tomorrow,’ he replied, and
continued his talk.
Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at the gate and by Morel, who came to say that
some Wurttemberg hussars had come and wanted to put
up their horses in the yard where the captain’s horses were.
This difficulty had arisen chiefly because the hussars did not
understand what was said to them in French.
The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and
in a stern voice asked him to what regiment he belonged,
who was his commanding officer, and by what right he
allowed himself to claim quarters that were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the
two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and
of his commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did not understand said, introducing broken


1705

French into his own German, that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had ordered him to
occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who knew
German, translated what the German said to the captain
and gave the captain’s reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in
German. When he had understood what was said to him,
the German submitted and took his men elsewhere. The
captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in a
loud voice.
When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the
same place as before, with his head in his hands. His face
expressed suffering. He really was suffering at that moment.
When the captain went out and he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the position he was in.
It was not that Moscow had been taken or that the happy
conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him.
Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at
the moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his
own weakness. The few glasses of wine he had drunk and
the conversation with this good-natured man had destroyed
the mood of concentrated gloom in which he had spent the
last few days and which was essential for the execution of
his design. The pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were ready.
Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre still considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay
the evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it. He did
not know why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not
carry out his intention. He struggled against the confession
of his weakness but dimly felt that he could not overcome it
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and that his former gloomy frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice, had been dispersed like
dust by contact with the first man he met.
The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and
whistling a tune.
The Frenchman’s chatter which had previously amused
Pierre now repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his
gait, and the gesture with which he twirled his mustache, all
now seemed offensive. ‘I will go away immediately. I won’t
say another word to him,’ thought Pierre. He thought this,
but still sat in the same place. A strange feeling of weakness
tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go away, but
could not do so.
The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful.
He paced up and down the room twice. His eyes shone and
his mustache twitched as if he were smiling to himself at
some amusing thought.
‘The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful,’ he
suddenly said. ‘He’s a German, but a nice fellow all the
same.... But he’s a German.’ He sat down facing Pierre. ‘By
the way, you know German, then?’
Pierre looked at him in silence.
‘What is the German for ‘shelter’?’
‘Shelter?’ Pierre repeated. ‘The German for shelter is Unterkunft.’
‘How do you say it?’ the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.
‘Unterkunft,’ Pierre repeated.
‘Onterkoff,’ said the captain and looked at Pierre for some


1707

seconds with laughing eyes. ‘These Germans are first-rate
fools, don’t you think so, Monsieur Pierre?’ he concluded.
‘Well, let’s have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux,
shall we? Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!’ he called out gaily.
Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain
looked at Pierre by the candlelight and was evidently struck
by the troubled expression on his companion’s face. Ramballe, with genuine distress and sympathy in his face, went
up to Pierre and bent over him.
‘There now, we’re sad,’ said he, touching Pierre’s hand.
‘Have I upset you? No, really, have you anything against
me?’ he asked Pierre. ‘Perhaps it’s the state of affairs?’
Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the
Frenchman’s eyes whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.
‘Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel
friendship for you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of
me. It is for life and death. I say it with my hand on my
heart!’ said he, striking his chest.
‘Thank you,’ said Pierre.
The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when
he learned that ‘shelter’ was Unterkunft in German, and his
face suddenly brightened.
‘Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!’ he cried
gaily, filling two glasses with wine.
Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe
emptied his too, again pressed Pierre’s hand, and leaned his
elbows on the table in a pensive attitude.
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‘Yes, my dear friend,’ he began, ‘such is fortune’s caprice.
Who would have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to
call him? Yet here I am in Moscow with him. I must tell you,
mon cher,’ he continued in the sad and measured tones of a
man who intends to tell a long story, ‘that our name is one
of the most ancient in France.’
And with a Frenchman’s easy and naive frankness the
captain told Pierre the story of his ancestors, his childhood,
youth, and manhood, and all about his relations and his
financial and family affairs, ‘ma pauvre mere’ playing of
course an important part in the story.
‘But all that is only life’s setting, the real thing is lovelove!
Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?’ said he, growing animated. ‘Another glass?’
Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a
third.
‘Oh, women, women!’ and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at Pierre, began talking of love and of his love
affairs.
There were very many of these, as one could easily believe, looking at the officer’s handsome, self-satisfied face,
and noting the eager enthusiasm with which he spoke of
women. Though all Ramballe’s love stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the special charm
and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such sincere
conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the
charm of love and he described women so alluringly that
Pierre listened to him with curiosity.


1709

It was plain that l’amour which the Frenchman was so
fond of was not that low and simple kind that Pierre had
once felt for his wife, nor was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for Natasha. (Ramballe
despised both these kinds of love equally: the one he considered the ‘love of clodhoppers’ and the other the ‘love
of simpletons.’) L’amour which the Frenchman worshiped
consisted principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to
the woman and in a combination of incongruities giving
the chief charm to the feeling.
Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his
love for a fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same
time for a charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter
of the bewitching marquise. The conflict of magnanimity
between the mother and the daughter, ending in the mother’s sacrificing herself and offering her daughter in marriage
to her lover, even now agitated the captain, though it was
the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted an episode
in which the husband played the part of the lover, and hethe loverassumed the role of the husband, as well as several
droll incidents from his recollections of Germany, where
‘shelter’ is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat
sauerkraut and the young girls are ‘too blonde.’
Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain’s memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures
and glowing face, was of how he had saved the life of a Pole
(in general, the saving of life continually occurred in the
captain’s stories) and the Pole had entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while himself entering
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the French service. The captain was happy, the enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by
magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband,
saying as he did so: ‘I have saved your life, and I save your
honor!’ Having repeated these words the captain wiped his
eyes and gave himself a shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this touching recollection.
Listening to the captain’s tales, Pierreas often happens
late in the evening and under the influence of winefollowed
all that was told him, understood it all, and at the same time
followed a train of personal memories which, he knew not
why, suddenly arose in his mind. While listening to these
love stories his own love for Natasha unexpectedly rose to
his mind, and going over the pictures of that love in his
imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe’s
tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and
duty, Pierre saw before his eyes every minutest detail of his
last meeting with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time of that meeting it had not produced
an effect upon himhe had not even once recalled it. But now
it seemed to him that that meeting had had in it something
very important and poetic.
‘Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you,’
he now seemed to hear the words she had uttered and to see
before him her eyes, her smile, her traveling hood, and a
stray lock of her hair... and there seemed to him something
pathetic and touching in all this.
Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish
lady, the captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a


1711

similar impulse to sacrifice himself for love and a feeling of
envy of the legitimate husband.
Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and
felt a need to express the thoughts that filled his mind.
He began to explain that he understood love for a women
somewhat differently. He said that in all his life he had loved
and still loved only one woman, and that she could never
be his.
‘Tiens!’ said the captain.
Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from
his earliest years, but that he had not dared to think of her
because she was too young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name. Afterwards when he had
received a name and wealth he dared not think of her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything
in the world, and especially therefore above himself.
When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether he understood that.
The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did
not understand it he begged Pierre to continue.
‘Platonic love, clouds...’ he muttered.
Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of
frankness, or the thought that this man did not, and never
would, know any of those who played a part in his story,
or whether it was all these things together, something loosened Pierre’s tongue. Speaking thickly and with a faraway
look in his shining eyes, he told the whole story of his life:
his marriage, Natasha’s love for his best friend, her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her. Urged
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on by Ramballe’s questions he also told what he had at first
concealedhis own position and even his name.
More than anything else in Pierre’s story the captain
was impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two
mansions in Moscow, and that he had abandoned everything and not left the city, but remained there concealing
his name and station.
When it was late at night they went out together into the
street. The night was warm and light. To the left of the house
on the Pokrovka a fire glowedthe first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To the right and high up in the sky was
the sickle of the waning moon and opposite to it hung that
bright comet which was connected in Pierre’s heart with his
love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible
remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow seen in the town.
There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire
in the immense city.
Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet,
and at the glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful
emotion. ‘There now, how good it is, what more does one
need?’ thought he. And suddenly remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he leaned against the
fence to save himself from falling.
Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate
with unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on
the sofa and immediately fell asleep.


1713

Chapter XXX
The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was watched from the various roads by the fugitive
Muscovites and by the retreating troops, with many different feelings.
The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen
miles from Moscow. They had started so late on the first of
September, the road had been so blocked by vehicles and
troops, so many things had been forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided to spend that
night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next morning they woke late and were again delayed so often that they
only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten o’clock that evening the Rostov family and the wounded traveling with
them were all distributed in the yards and huts of that large
village. The Rostovs’ servants and coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to their masters,
had supper, fed the horses, and came out into the porches.
In a neighboring hut lay Raevski’s adjutant with a fractured wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him moan
incessantly and piteously, and his moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the autumn night. He had spent the
first night in the same yard as the Rostovs. The countess
said she had been unable to close her eyes on account of his
moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut sim1714

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ply to be farther away from the wounded man.
In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed,
above the high body of a coach standing before the porch,
the small glow of another fire. One glow had long been
visible and everybody knew that it was Little Mytishchi
burningset on fire by Mamonov’s Cossacks.
‘But look here, brothers, there’s another fire!’ remarked
an orderly.
All turned their attention to the glow.
‘But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by
Mamonov’s Cossacks.’
‘But that’s not Mytishchi, it’s farther away.’
‘Look, it must be in Moscow!’
Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the
coach and sat down on its steps.
‘It’s more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there,
and this is right on the other side.’
Several men joined the first two.
‘See how it’s flaring,’ said one. ‘That’s a fire in Moscow:
either in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter.’
No one replied to this remark and for some time they all
gazed silently at the spreading flames of the second fire in
the distance.
Old Daniel Terentich, the count’s valet (as he was called),
came up to the group and shouted at Mishka.
‘What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The
count will be calling and there’s nobody there; go and gather the clothes together.’
‘I only ran out to get some water,’ said Mishka.


1715

‘But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn’t it look
as if that glow were in Moscow?’ remarked one of the footmen.
Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long
time they were all silent. The glow spread, rising and failing, farther and farther still.
‘God have mercy.... It’s windy and dry...’ said another
voice.
‘Just look! See what it’s doing now. O Lord! You can even
see the crows flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!’
‘They’ll put it out, no fear!’
‘Who’s to put it out?’ Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto
been silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. ‘Moscow it is, brothers,’ said he. ‘Mother Moscow, the
white...’ his voice faltered, and he gave way to an old man’s
sob.
And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize
the significance for them of the glow they were watching.
Sighs were heard, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the
count’s old valet.

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Chapter XXXI
The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count
that Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing
gown and went out to look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who
had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only Natasha
and the countess remained in the room. Petya was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment which
was making for Troitsa.
The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on
the bench under the icons just where she had sat down on
arriving and paid no attention to her father’s words. She
was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three
houses off.
‘Oh, how terrible,’ said Sonya returning from the yard
chilled and frightened. ‘I believe the whole of Moscow will
burn, there’s an awful glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it
from the window,’ she said to her cousin, evidently wishing
to distract her mind.
But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what
was said to her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of
the stove. She had been in this condition of stupor since the
morning, when Sonya, to the surprise and annoyance of the
countess, had for some unaccountable reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew’s wound and of his


1717

being with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and
begged to be forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her
fault, paid unceasing attention to her cousin.
‘Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!’ said she.
‘What’s burning?’ asked Natasha. ‘Oh, yes, Moscow.’
And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of
her, she turned her face to the window, looked out in such a
way that it was evident that she could not see anything, and
again settled down in her former attitude.
‘But you didn’t see it!’
‘Yes, really I did,’ Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded
to be left in peace.
Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally,
neither Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything
else could seem of importance to Natasha.
The count returned and lay down behind the partition.
The countess went up to her daughter and touched her
head with the back of her hand as she was wont to do when
Natasha was ill, then touched her forehead with her lips as if
to feel whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her.
‘You are cold. You are trembling all over. You’d better lie
down,’ said the countess.
‘Lie down? All right, I will. I’ll lie down at once,’ said
Natasha.
When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince
Andrew was seriously wounded and was traveling with
their party, she had at first asked many questions: Where
was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And
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could she see him? But after she had been told that she could
not see him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life
was not in danger, she ceased to ask questions or to speak at
all, evidently disbelieving what they told her, and convinced
that say what she might she would still be told the same.
All the way she had sat motionless in a corner of the coach
with wide open eyes, and the expression in them which the
countess knew so well and feared so much, and now she sat
in the same way on the bench where she had seated herself
on arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or had already decided something in her mind. The
countess knew this, but what it might be she did not know,
and this alarmed and tormented her.
‘Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed.’
A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only.
Madame Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay
on the floor.
‘No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor,’ Natasha
replied irritably and she went to the window and opened it.
Through the open window the moans of the adjutant could
be heard more distinctly. She put her head out into the
damp night air, and the countess saw her slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame.
Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning.
She knew Prince Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage; but this
dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya.
‘Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet,’ said the countess,


1719

softly touching Natasha’s shoulders. ‘Come, lie down.’
‘Oh, yes... I’ll lie down at once,’ said Natasha, and began
hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.
When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing
jacket, she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that
had been made up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front, and began replaiting it.
Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved from side to side
from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she sank
gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest
the door.
‘Natasha, you’d better lie in the middle,’ said Sonya.
‘I’ll stay here,’ muttered Natasha. ‘Do lie down,’ she added crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.
The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed
hastily and lay down. The small lamp in front of the icons
was the only light left in the room. But in the yard there
was a light from the fire at Little Mytishchi a mile and a
half away, and through the night came the noise of people
shouting at a tavern Mamonov’s Cossacks had set up across
the street, and the adjutant’s unceasing moans could still
be heard.
For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds
that reached her from inside and outside the room and did
not move. First she heard her mother praying and sighing
and the creaking of her bed under her, then Madame Schoss’
familiar whistling snore and Sonya’s gentle breathing. Then
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War and Peace

the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not answer.
‘I think she’s asleep, Mamma,’ said Sonya softly.
After short silence the countess spoke again but this time
no one replied.
Soon after that Natasha heard her mother’s even breathing. Natasha did not move, though her little bare foot,
thrust out from under the quilt, was growing cold on the
bare floor.
As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket
chirped in a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and
another replied near by. The shouting in the tavern had died
down; only the moaning of the adjutant was heard. Natasha
sat up.
‘Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?’ she whispered.
No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully,
crossed herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and
dirty floor with her slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the
floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and grasped
the cold door handle.
It seemed to her that something heavy was beating
rhythmically against all the walls of the room: it was her
own heart, sinking with alarm and terror and overflowing
with love.
She opened the door and stepped across the threshold
and onto the cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The
cold she felt refreshed her. With her bare feet she touched a
sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened the door into
the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark


1721

in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench beside a bed on
which something was lying, stood a tallow candle with a
long, thick, and smoldering wick.
From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew’s wound and his presence there, Natasha had resolved
to see him. She did not know why she had to, she knew the
meeting would be painful, but felt the more convinced that
it was necessary.
All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that
night. But now that the moment had come she was filled
with dread of what she might see. How was he maimed?
What was left of him? Was he like that incessant moaning of
the adjutant’s? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When she
saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees
raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible
impulse drew her forward. She cautiously took one step and
then another, and found herself in the middle of a small
room containing baggage. Another manTimokhinwas lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two
othersthe doctor and a valetlay on the floor.
The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with
wide-open eyes at this strange apparition of a girl in a white
chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap. The valet’s sleepy,
frightened exclamation, ‘What do you want? What’s the
matter?’ made Natasha approach more swiftly to what was
lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body
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looked, she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell
from the candle wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly
with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she had always
seen him.
He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his
face, his glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her,
and especially his neck, delicate as a child’s, revealed by
the turn-down collar of his shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never seen on him
before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees.
He smiled and held out his hand to her.



1723

Chapter XXXII
Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His
feverish state and the inflammation of his bowels, which
were injured, were in the doctor’s opinion sure to carry him
off. But on the seventh day he ate with pleasure a piece of
bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that
morning. The first night after they left Moscow had been
fairly warm and he had remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked to be taken out and
given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into the hut
had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness.
When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long
time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them
and whispered softly: ‘And the tea?’ His remembering such
a small detail of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt
Prince Andrew’s pulse, and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was dissatisfied because he
knew by experience that if his patient did not die now, he
would do so a little later with greater suffering. Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew’s regiment, had
joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him,
having been wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino.
They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s valet,
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his coach. man, and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly,
looking with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if
trying to understand and remember something.
‘I don’t want any more. Is Timokhin here?’ he asked.
Timokhin crept along the bench to him.
‘I am here, your excellency.’
‘How’s your wound?’
‘Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?’
Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember
something.
‘Couldn’t one get a book?’ he asked.
‘What book?’
‘The Gospels. I haven’t one.’
The doctor promised to procure it for him and began
to ask how he was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all
his questions reluctantly but reasonably, and then said he
wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable
and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak with
which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound,
began examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very
much displeased about something and made a change in
the dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he
groaned again and grew unconscious and delirious from
the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book and put
it under him.
‘What trouble would it be to you?’ he said. ‘I have not got
one. Please get it for me and put it under for a moment,’ he


1725

pleaded in a piteous voice.
The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
‘You fellows have no conscience,’ said he to the valet who
was pouring water over his hands. ‘For just one moment I
didn’t look after you... It’s such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it.’
‘By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!’ said the valet.
The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was
and what was the matter with him and remembered being
wounded and how was when he asked to be carried into the
hut after his caleche had stopped at Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he
again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once
more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all
vividly remembered the moment at the ambulance station
when, at the sight of the sufferings of a man he disliked,
those new thoughts had come to him which promised him
happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he
had now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels. That was why
he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in
which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third
time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody
near him was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the
passage; someone was shouting and singing in the street;
cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on the
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walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around
the candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and
had shaped itself like a mushroom.
His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually
thinks of, feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the power and will to select one sequence
of thoughts or events on which to fix his whole attention. A
healthy man can tear himself away from the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can
then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew’s
mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but
they acted apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and
images occupied him simultaneously. At times his brain
suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth
it had never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in
the midst of its work it would turn to some unexpected idea
and he had not the strength to turn it back again.
‘Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man
cannot be deprived,’ he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut, gazing fixedly before him with feverish
wide open eyes. ‘A happiness lying beyond material forces,
outside the material influences that act on mana happiness
of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every man can
understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible
only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why
was the Son...?’
And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off,
and Prince Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was


1727

a delusion or reality) a soft whispering voice incessantly and
rhythmically repeating ‘piti-piti-piti,’ and then ‘titi,’ and
then again ‘piti-piti-piti,’ and ‘ti-ti’ once more. At the same
time he felt that above his face, above the very middle of it,
some strange airy structure was being erected out of slender
needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music.
He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but
nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the
sound of whispered rhythmic music‘it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching,’ said Prince Andrew to
himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling the
sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this
edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round
the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the
buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his
face. Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not destroy the
structure, though it knocked against the very region of his
face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of importance. It was something white by the
doorthe statue of a sphinx, which also oppressed him.
‘But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,’ he thought,
‘and that’s my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always
stretching and drawing itself out, and ‘piti-piti-piti’ and
‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...? That’s enough, please leave off!’
Prince Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly
thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of his mind
with peculiar clearness and force.
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‘Yeslove,’ he thought again quite clearly. ‘But not love
which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which Iwhile dyingfirst
experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence of
the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel
that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to
love everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is
possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but
an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What
has become of him? Is he alive?...
‘When loving with human love one may pass from love
to hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither death
nor anything else can destroy it. It is the very essence of the
soul. Yet how many people have I hated in my life? And of
them all, I loved and hated none as I did her.’ And he vividly
pictured to himself Natasha, not as he had done in the past
with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but
for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse.
He now understood for the first time all the cruelty of his
rejection of her, the cruelty of his rupture with her. ‘If only
it were possible for me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..’
‘Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!’ flopped
the fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of reality and delirium in which something
particular was happening. In that world some structure


1729

was still being erected and did not fall, something was still
stretching out, and the candle with its red halo was still
burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door;
but besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of
fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the
door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of
the very Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.
‘Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,’ thought
Prince Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained before him with the force of
reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew wished to return
that former world of pure thought, but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering
voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed
him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him.
Prince Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was
a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man
plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came
to himself, Natasha, that same living Natasha whom of all
people he most longed to love with this new pure divine love
that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He
realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not
surprised but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her
knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted
on him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it something quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out
his hand.
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War and Peace

‘You?’ he said. ‘How fortunate!’
With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer
to him on her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent
her face over it and began kissing it, just touching it lightly
with her lips.
‘Forgive me!’ she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him. ‘Forgive me!’
‘I love you,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Forgive...!’
‘Forgive what?’ he asked.
‘Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!’ faltered Natasha in
a scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his
hand more rapidly, just touching it with her lips.
‘I love you more, better than before,’ said Prince Andrew,
lifting her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.
Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha’s thin pale
face, with its swollen lips, was more than plainit was dreadful. But Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining
eyes which were beautiful. They heard the sound of voices
behind them.
Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused
the doctor. Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of
the pain in his leg, had long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare body with the sheet as he
huddled up on his bench.
‘What’s this?’ said the doctor, rising from his bed. ‘Please
go away, madam!’
At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had


1731

noticed her daughter’s absence, knocked at the door.
Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha
went out of the room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing
on her bed.
From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs’ journey, at every halting place and wherever they spent a night,
Natasha never left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor
had to admit that he had not expected from a young girl
either such firmness or such skill in nursing a wounded
man.
Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should
Prince Andrew die in her daughter’s arms during the journeyas, judging by what the doctor said, it seemed might
easily happenshe could not oppose Natasha. Though with
the intimacy now established between the wounded man
and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover
their former engagement would be renewed, no oneleast
of all Natasha and Prince Andrewspoke of this: the unsettled question of life and death, which hung not only over
Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut out all other considerations.

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War and Peace

Chapter XXXIII
On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head
was aching, the clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on his body, and his mind had
a dim consciousness of something shameful he had done
the day before. That something shameful was his yesterday’s
conversation with Captain Ramballe.
It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark
out of doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the
pistol with an engraved stock which Gerasim had replaced
on the writing table, he remembered where he was and what
lay before him that very day.
‘Am I not too late?’ he thought. ‘No, probably he won’t
make his entry into Moscow before noon.’
Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before
him, but hastened to act.
After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was
about to go out. But it then occurred to him for the first time
that he certainly could not carry the weapon in his hand
through the streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol
even under his wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed
in his belt or under his arm. Besides, it had been discharged,
and he had not had time to reload it. ‘No matter, dagger will
do,’ he said to himself, though when planning his design he
had more than once come to the conclusion that the chief


1733

mistake made by the student in 1809 had been to try to kill
Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aim consisted not
in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself that he
would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could
to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market
with the pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.
Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low
on his head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid
making a noise or meeting the captain, and passed out into
the street.
The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much
indifference the evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on fire in several places. The
buildings in Carriage Row, across the river, in the Bazaar
and the Povarskoy, as well as the barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov Bridge, were
all ablaze.
Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and
from there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where
he had long before decided that the deed should should be
done. The gates of most of the houses were locked and the
shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted. The air was
full of smoke and the smell of burning. Now and then he
met Russians with anxious and timid faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking in
the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French
looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of suffering in his face
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War and Peace

and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because
they could not make out to what class he could belong. The
French followed him with astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the other Russians who gazed
at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no attention to
them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were
explaining something to some Russians who did not understand them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know
French.
Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street
a sentinel standing beside a green caisson shouted at him,
but only when the shout was threateningly repeated and he
heard the click of the man’s musket as he raised it did Pierre
understand that he had to pass on the other side of the street.
He heard nothing and saw nothing of what went on around
him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror and
haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after
the previous night’s experience, he was afraid of losing it.
But he was not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not been hindered by anything
on the way, his intention could not now have been carried
out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than four
hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb
to the Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame
of mind in a royal study in the Kremlin, giving detailed
and exact orders as to measures to be taken immediately to
extinguish the fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the
inhabitants. But Pierre did not know this; he was entirely
absorbed in what lay before him, and was torturedas those


1735

are who obstinately undertake a task that is impossible for
them not because of its difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their naturesby the fear of weakening at the
decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.
Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found
his way by instinct and did not go wrong in the side streets
that led to the Povarskoy.
As Pierre approached that street the smoke became
denser and denserhe even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose from under the roofs
of the houses. He met more people in the streets and they
were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something unusual was happening around him, did not realize
that he was approaching the fire. As he was going along a
foot path across a wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy
on one side and the gardens of Prince Gruzinski’s house on
the other, Pierre suddenly heard the desperate weeping of
a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening from a
dream and lifted his head.
By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts
of household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar,
icons, and trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat
a thin woman no longer young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman,
swaying to and fro and muttering something, was choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in
dirty short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother
with a look of stupefaction on their pale frightened faces.
The youngest child, a boy of about seven, who wore an over1736

War and Peace

coat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was crying
in his old nurse’s arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting
on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored plait, was
pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. The woman’s husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undress
uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers
and showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly
brushed forward over his temples, with expressionless face
was moving the trunks, which were placed one on another,
and was dragging some garments from under them.
As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet.
‘Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear
friends... help us, somebody,’ she muttered between her
sobs. ‘My girl... My daughter! My youngest daughter is left
behind. She’s burned! Ooh! Was it for this I nursed you....
Ooh!’
‘Don’t, Mary Nikolievna!’ said her husband to her in
a low voice, evidently only to justify himself before the
stranger. ‘Sister must have taken her, or else where can she
be?’ he added.
‘Monster! Villain!’ shouted the woman angrily, suddenly
ceasing to weep. ‘You have no heart, you don’t feel for your
own child! Another man would have rescued her from the
fire. But this is a monster and neither a man nor a father!
You, honored sir, are a noble man,’ she went on, addressing
Pierre rapidly between her sobs. ‘The fire broke out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out ‘Fire!’ and we
rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were....


1737

This is what we have brought away.... The icons, and my
dowry bed, all the rest is lost. We seized the children. But
not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!...’ and again she began to sob. ‘My
child, my dear one! Burned, burned!’
‘But where was she left?’ asked Pierre.
From the expression of his animated face the woman saw
that this man might help her.
‘Oh, dear sir!’ she cried, seizing him by the legs. ‘My
benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid
girl, show him the way!’ she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing her long teeth.
‘Show me the way, show me, I... I’ll do it,’ gasped Pierre
rapidly.
The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk,
put up her plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet
along the path. Pierre felt as if he had come back to life after
a heavy swoon. He held his head higher, his eyes shone with
the light of life, and with swift steps he followed the maid,
overtook her, and came out on the Povarskoy. The whole
street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues of flame
here and there broke through that cloud. A great number
of people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a French general saying something
to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the maid,
was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but the
French soldiers stopped him.
‘On ne passe pas!’* cried a voice.
*”You can’t pass!
‘This way, uncle,’ cried the girl. ‘We’ll pass through the
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War and Peace

side street, by the Nikulins’!’
Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep
up with her. She ran across the street, turned down a side
street to the left, and, passing three houses, turned into a
yard on the right.
‘It’s here, close by,’ said she and, running across the yard,
opened a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed
out to him a small wooden wing of the house, which was
burning brightly and fiercely. One of its sides had fallen
in, another was on fire, and bright flames issued from the
openings of the windows and from under the roof.
As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and involuntarily stopped.
‘Which is it? Which is your house?’ he asked.
‘Ooh!’ wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. ‘That’s it, that
was our lodging. You’ve burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious little missy! Ooh!’ lamented Aniska, who at
the sight of the fire felt that she too must give expression to
her feelings.
Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that
he involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon
the large house that was as yet burning only at one end,
just below the roof, and around which swarmed a crowd of
Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize what these men,
who were dragging something out, were about; but seeing
before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely
understood that looting was going on there, but he had no
time to dwell on that idea.


1739

The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls
and ceilings, the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited
shouts of the people, and the sight of the swaying smoke,
now gathering into thick black clouds and now soaring up
with glittering sparks, with here and there dense sheaves
of flame (now red and now like golden fish scales creeping
along the walls), and the heat and smoke and rapidity of
motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects of
a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed
from the ideas that had weighed him down. He felt young,
bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side
of the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which
was still standing, when just above his head he heard several
voices shouting and then a cracking sound and the ring of
something heavy falling close beside him.
Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house
some Frenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of
a chest, filled with metal articles. Other French soldiers
standing below went up to the drawer.
‘What does this fellow want?’ shouted one of them referring to Pierre.
‘There’s a child in that house. Haven’t you seen a child?’
cried Pierre.
‘What’s he talking about? Get along!’ said several voices,
and one of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might
want to take from them some of the plate and bronzes that
were in the drawer, moved threateningly toward him.
‘A child?’ shouted a Frenchman from above. ‘I did hear
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something squealing in the garden. Perhaps it’s his brat that
the fellow is looking for. After all, one must be human, you
know...’
‘Where is it? Where?’ said Pierre.
‘There! There!’ shouted the Frenchman at the window,
pointing to the garden at the back of the house. ‘Wait a
bitI’m coming down.’
And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed
fellow with a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did
jump out of a window on the ground floor, and clapping
Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the garden.
‘Hurry up, you others!’ he called out to his comrades. ‘It’s
getting hot.’
When they reached a gravel path behind the house
the Frenchman pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a
round, graveled space where a three-year-old girl in a pink
dress was lying under a seat.
‘There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!’ said
the Frenchman. ‘Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are
all mortal you know!’ and the Frenchman with the spot on
his cheek ran back to his comrades.
Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was
going to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother,
began to yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and
lifted her in his arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little hands to pull Pierre’s hands
away and to bite them with her slobbering mouth. Pierre
was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he


1741

had experienced when touching some nasty little animal.
But he made an effort not to throw the child down and ran
with her to the large house. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aniska,
was no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and
disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child to himself
as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the garden
seeking another way out.

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War and Peace

Chapter XXXIV
Having run through different yards and side streets,
Pierre got back with his little burden to the Gruzinski
garden at the corner of the Povarskoy. He did not at first
recognize the place from which he had set out to look for
the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods
that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian
families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their
belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety
of clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to
find the family of that civil servant in order to restore the
daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre
felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he felt at that moment
more strongly than ever the sense of youth, animation, and
determination that had come on him when he ran to save
the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her
little hands to Pierre’s coat, sat on his arm gazing about her
like some little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally
with a slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that frightened, sickly little face.
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


1743

handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new, clothcovered, 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 Anferovs,’ said an old deacon, addressing a pockmarked peasant woman. ‘Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy!’ he added in his customary bass.
1744

War and Peace

‘The Anferovs? No,’ said the woman. ‘They left in the
morning. That must be either Mary Nikolievna’s or the
Ivanovs’!’
‘He says ‘a woman,’ and Mary Nikolievna is a lady,’ remarked a house serf.
‘Do you know her? She’s thin, with long teeth,’ said
Pierre.
‘That’s Mary Nikolievna! 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


1745

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
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War and Peace

threateningly toward Pierre.
‘Voyons, Pas de betises!’* 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


1747

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 prisonertake 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
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War and Peace

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 Zubov Rampart that was
being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under
strict guard.



1749

BOOK TWELVE: 1812

1750

War and Peace

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 Rumyantsev, the French,
Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich, 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 Marya,
concerned for the welfare of the charitable and educational
institutions under her patronage, had given directions that
they should all be removed to Kazan, 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 givewith 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


1751

be the last to quit Petersburg.
At Anna Pavlovna’s on the twenty-sixth of August, the
very day of the battle of Borodino, 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 Vasili 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 Pavlovna’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
Pavlovna, 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 Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few
days previously, had missed several gatherings of which she
was usually 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’ ill1752

War and Peace

ness 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
Pavlovna’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.’
‘Angina? Oh, that’s a terrible illness!’
‘They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the
angina...’ and the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.
‘The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when
the doctor told him the case was dangerous.’
‘Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting
woman.’
‘You are speaking of the poor countess?’ said Anna Pavlovna, coming up just then. ‘I sent to ask for news, and
hear that she is a little better. Oh, she is certainly the most
charming woman in the world,’ she went on, with a smile
at her own enthusiasm. ‘We belong to different camps, but
that does not prevent my esteeming her as she deserves. She
is very unfortunate!’ added Anna Pavlovna.
Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was
somewhat lifting the veil from the secret of the countess’
malady, an unwary young man ventured to express surprise
that well known doctors had not been called in and that the
countess was being attended by a charlatan who might employ dangerous remedies.
‘Your information maybe better than mine,’ Anna


1753

Pavlovna suddenly and venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, ‘but I know on good authority that this
doctor is a very learned and able man. He is private physician to the Queen of Spain.’
And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to another group where Bilibin was talking
about the Austrians: having wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again and utter one of
his mots.
‘I think it is delightful,’ he said, referring to a diplomatic
note that had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners captured from the French by Wittgenstein, ‘the hero of
Petropol’ as he was then called in Petersburg.
‘What? What’s that?’ asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the mot, which she had heard before.
And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic
dispatch, which he had himself composed.
‘The Emperor returns these Austrian banners,’ said Bilibin, ‘friendly banners gone astray and found on a wrong
path,’ and his brow became smooth again.
‘Charming, charming!’ observed Prince Vasili.
‘The path to Warsaw, perhaps,’ Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him,
understanding what he meant. Prince Hippolyte himself
glanced around with amused surprise. He knew no more
than the others what his words meant. During his diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such
utterances were received as very witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in that way the first words that entered
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War and Peace

his head. ‘It may turn out very well,’ he thought, ‘but if not,
they’ll know how to arrange matters.’ And really, during
the awkward silence that ensued, that insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been waiting
for and wished to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a
finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasili to the table and
bringing him two candles and the manuscript begged him
to begin. Everyone became silent.
‘Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor! ‘ Prince Vasili
sternly declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether anyone had anything to say to the contrary.
But no one said anything. ‘Moscow, our ancient capital, the
New Jerusalem, receives her Christ’he placed a sudden emphasis on the word her‘as a mother receives her zealous sons
into her arms, and through the gathering mists, foreseeing
the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in exultation, ‘Hosanna,
blessed is he that cometh!’’
Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful
voice.
Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those
present appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they
were to blame. Anna Pavlovna whispered the next words
in advance, like an old woman muttering the prayer at
Communion: ‘Let the bold and insolent Goliath...’ she whispered.
Prince Vasili continued.
‘Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of
France encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing
terrors; humble Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall


1755

suddenly smite his head in his blood-thirsty pride. This icon
of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of God and zealous
champion of old of our country’s weal, is offered to Your
Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength prevents
rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I raise
fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the
race of the just, and mercifully fulfill the desires of Your
Majesty.’
‘What force! What a style!’ was uttered in approval both
of reader and of author.
Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna’s guests talked for a long time of the state of the fatherland and offered
various conjectures as to the result of the battle to be fought
in a few days.
‘You will see,’ said Anna Pavlovna, ‘that tomorrow, on
the Emperor’s birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!’

1756

War and Peace

Chapter II
Anna Pavlovna’s presentiment was in fact fulfilled.
Next day during the service at the palace church in honor
of the Emperor’s birthday, Prince Volkonski was called out
of the church and received a dispatch from Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov’s report, written from Tatarinova on the
day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians had not
retreated a step, that the French losses were much heavier
than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the field
of battle before collecting full information. It followed that
there must have been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were rendered to the Creator for His
help and for the victory.
Anna Pavlovna’s presentiment was justified, and all that
morning a joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the victory to have been complete, and some
even spoke of Napoleon’s having been captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new ruler for France.
It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real
strength and completeness amid the conditions of court life
and far from the scene of action. General events involuntarily group themselves around some particular incident.
So now the courtiers’ pleasure was based as much on the
fact that the news had arrived on the Emperor’s birthday
as on the fact of the victory itself. It was like a successfully


1757

arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov’s report
of the Russian losses, among which figured the names of
Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world
this sad side of the affair again involuntarily centered round
a single incident: Kutaysov’s death. Everybody knew him,
the Emperor liked him, and he was young and interesting.
That day everyone met with the words:
‘What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service.
But what a loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!’
‘What did I tell about Kutuzov?’ Prince Vasili now said
with a prophet’s pride. ‘I always said he was the only man
capable of defeating Napoleon.’
But next day no news arrived from the army and the
public mood grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because
of the suffering the suspense occasioned the Emperor.
‘Fancy the Emperor’s position!’ said they, and instead
of extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they
condemned him as the cause of the Emperor’s anxiety.
That day Prince Vasili no longer boasted of his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the commander in chief
was mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if everything
conspired to make Petersburg society anxious and uneasy,
a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been
so agreeable to mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible
attack of angina pectoris, but in intimate circles details were
mentioned of how the private physician of the Queen of
Spain had prescribed small doses of a certain drug to pro1758

War and Peace

duce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by the fact that
the old count suspected her and that her husband to whom
she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied, had suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and
had died in agony before assistance could be rendered her.
It was said that Prince Vasili and the old count had turned
upon the Italian, but the latter had produced such letters
from the unfortunate deceased that they had immediately
let the matter drop.
Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts:
the Emperor’s lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the
death of Helene.
On the third day after Kutuzov’s report a country gentleman arrived from Moscow, and news of the surrender
of Moscow to the French spread through the whole town.
This was terrible! What a position for the Emperor to be in!
Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili during the visits
of condolence paid to him on the occasion of his daughter’s death said of Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised
(it was excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had
said), that it was impossible to expect anything else from a
blind and depraved old man.
‘I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted to such a man.’
As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible
to doubt it, but the next day the following communication
was received from Count Rostopchin:
Prince Kutuzov’s adjutant has brought me a letter in
which he demands police officers to guide the army to the


1759

Ryazan road. He writes that he is regretfully abandoning
Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov’s action decides the fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will shudder to learn of the
abandonment of the city in which her greatness is centered
and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall follow
the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains for me to weep over the fate of my fatherland.
On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince
Volkonski to Kutuzov with the following rescript:
Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of
August I have received no communication from you, yet on
the first of September I received from the commander in
chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad news that you, with
the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your
silence increases my astonishment. I am sending this by
Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from you the
situation of the army and the reasons that have induced you
to take this melancholy decision.

1760

War and Peace

Chapter III
Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the official
announcement of that event. This messenger was Michaud,
a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but who was
quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d’ame,* as he said of
himself.
*Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.
The Emperor at once received this messenger in his
study at the palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before the campaign and who did not know
Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as he wrote) when he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain* with the news
of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient sa
route.*[2]
*Our most gracious sovereign.
*[2] Whose flames illumined his route.
Though the source of M. Michaud’s chagrin must have
been different from that which caused Russians to grieve,
he had such a sad face when shown into the Emperor’s study
that the latter at once asked:
‘Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?’
‘Very sad, sire,’ replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a
sigh. ‘The abandonment of Moscow.’
‘Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a bat

1761

tle?’ asked the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.
Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had
entrusted to him, which was that it had been impossible to
fight before Moscow, and that as the only remaining choice
was between losing the army as well as Moscow, or losing
Moscow alone, the field marshal had to choose the latter.
The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.
‘Has the enemy entered the city?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in
flames,’ replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at
the Emperor he was frightened by what he had done.
The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his
lower lip trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine
blue eyes.
But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as
if blaming himself for his weakness, and raising his head
addressed Michaud in a firm voice:
‘I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence
requires great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself
in all things to His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you
leave the army when it saw my ancient capital abandoned
without a battle? Did you not notice discouragement?..’
Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more,
Michaud also grew calm, but was not immediately ready to
reply to the Emperor’s direct and relevant question which
required a direct answer.
‘Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal
soldier?’ he asked to gain time.
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War and Peace

‘Colonel, I always require it,’ replied the Emperor. ‘Conceal nothing from me, I wish to know absolutely how things
are.’
‘Sire!’ said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible
smile on his lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply,
‘sire, I left the whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without exception in desperate and agonized terror..’
‘How is that?’ the Emperor interrupted him, frowning
sternly. ‘Would misfortune make my Russians lose heart?...
Never!’
Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase
he had prepared.
‘Sire,’ he said, with respectful playfulness, ‘they are only
afraid lest Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart,
should allow yourself to be persuaded to make peace. They
are burning for the combat,’ declared this representative of
the Russian nation, ‘and to prove to Your Majesty by the
sacrifice of their lives how devoted they are...’
‘Ah!’ said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly
gleam in his eyes, he patted Michaud on the shoulder. ‘You
set me at ease, Colonel.’
He bent his head and was silent for some time.
‘Well, then, go back to the army,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full height and addressing Michaud with a
gracious and majestic gesture, ‘and tell our brave men and
all my good subjects wherever you go that when I have not
a soldier left I shall put myself at the head of my beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last resources
of my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies sup

1763

pose,’ said the Emperor growing more and more animated;
‘but should it ever be ordained by Divine Providence,’ he
continued, raising to heaven his fine eyes shining with emotion, ‘that my dynasty should cease to reign on the throne
of my ancestors, then after exhausting all the means at my
command, I shall let my beard grow to here’ (he pointed
halfway down his chest) ‘and go and eat potatoes with the
meanest of my peasants, rather than sign the disgrace of my
country and of my beloved people whose sacrifices I know
how to appreciate.’
Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly turned away as if to hide from Michaud the
tears that rose to his eyes, and went to the further end of his
study. Having stood there a few moments, he strode back to
Michaud and pressed his arm below the elbow with a vigorous movement. The Emperor’s mild and handsome face was
flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.
‘Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here,
perhaps we may recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon
or I,’ said the Emperor, touching his breast. ‘We can no longer both reign together. I have learned to know him, and he
will not deceive me any more...’
And the Emperor paused, with a frown.
When he heard these words and saw the expression of
firm resolution in the Emperor’s eyes, Michaudquoique
etranger, russe de coeur et d’ameat that solemn moment
felt himself enraptured by all that he had heard (as he used
afterwards to say), and gave expression to his own feelings
and those of the Russian people whose representative he
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considered himself to be, in the following words:
‘Sire!’ said he, ‘Your Majesty is at this moment signing
the glory of the nation and the salvation of Europe!’
With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed
him.



1765

Chapter IV
It is natural for us who were not living in those days to
imagine that when half Russia had been conquered and the
inhabitants were ficeing to distant provinces, and one levy
after another was being raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least were solely
engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving their fatherland,
or weeping over its downfall. The tales and descriptions of
that time without exception speak only of the self-sacrifice,
patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of the
Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because
we see only the general historic interest of that time and do
not see all the personal human interests that people had. Yet
in reality those personal interests of the moment so much
transcend the general interests that they always prevent the
public interest from being felt or even noticed. Most of the
people at that time paid no attention to the general progress of events but were guided only by their private interests,
and they were the very people whose activities at that period
were most useful.
Those who tried to understand the general course of
events and to take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism
were the most useless members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they did for the common good
turned out to be useless and foolishlike Pierre’s and Ma1766

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monov’s regiments which looted Russian villages, and the
lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the
wounded, and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk
and of expressing their feelings, who discussed Russia’s
position at the time involuntarily introduced into their conversation either a shade of pretense and falsehood or useless
condemnation and anger directed against people accused
of actions no one could possibly be guilty of. In historic
events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree
of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event
never understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his
efforts are fruitless.
The more closely a man was engaged in the events then
taking place in Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg and in the provinces at a distance from
Moscow, ladies, and gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept
for Russia and its ancient capital and talked of self-sacrifice
and so on; but in the army which retired beyond Moscow
there was little talk or thought of Moscow, and when they
caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be avenged
on the French, but they thought about their next pay, their
next quarters, of Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters.
As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a close and prolonged part in the defense of his
country, but did so casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked at what was going on in Russia
without despair and without dismally racking his brains


1767

over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the state of
Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to
think about it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that
purpose, but that he had heard that the regiments were to
be made up to their full strength, that fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, and that things being so it
was quite likely he might be in command of a regiment in a
couple of years’ time.
As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he
was being sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division,
not only without regret at being prevented from taking part
in the coming battle, but with the greatest pleasurewhich he
did not conceal and which his comrades fully understood.
A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the necessary money and warrants, and having sent
some hussars on in advance, he set out with post horses for
Voronezh.
Only a man who has experienced itthat is, has passed
some months continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and warcan understand the delight Nicholas felt when
he escaped from the region covered by the army’s foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. Whenfree
from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camphe
saw villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen’s
country houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though
seeing all this for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and delighted him were the women, young
and healthy, without a dozen officers making up to each of
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them; women, too, who were pleased and flattered that a
passing officer should joke with them.
In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel
in Voronezh, ordered things he had long been deprived of
in camp, and next day, very clean-shaven and in a full-dress
uniform he had not worn for a long time, went to present
himself to the authorities.
The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an
old man who was evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He received Nicholas brusquely (imagining
this to be characteristically military) and questioned him
with an important air, as if considering the general progress
of affairs and approving and disapproving with full right
to do so. Nicholas was in such good spirits that this merely
amused him.
From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The governor was a brisk little man, very simple and
affable. He indicated the stud farms at which Nicholas might
procure horses, recommended to him a horse dealer in the
town and a landowner fourteen miles out of town who had
the best horses, and promised to assist him in every way.
‘You are Count Ilya Rostov’s son? My wife was a great
friend of your mother’s. We are at home on Thursdaystoday is Thursday, so please come and see us quite informally,’
said the governor, taking leave of him.
Immediately on leaving the governor’s, Nicholas hired
post horses and, taking his squadron quartermaster with
him, drove at a gallop to the landowner, fourteen miles
away, who had the stud. Everything seemed to him pleas

1769

ant and easy during that first part of his stay in Voronezh
and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant state of
mind, everything went well and easily.
The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor,
an old cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some century-old brandy and some old Hungarian
wine, who had a snuggery where he smoked, and who owned
some splendid horses.
In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six thousand rublesto serve, as he said, as samples
of his remounts. After dining and taking rather too much of
the Hungarian wine, Nicholashaving exchanged kisses with
the landowner, with whom he was already on the friendliest
termsgalloped back over abominable roads, in the brightest
frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as to be
in time for the governor’s party.
When he had changed, poured water over his head, and
scented himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor’s rather
late, but with the phrase ‘better late than never’ on his lips.
It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but
everyone knew that Catherine Petrovna would play valses
and the ecossaise on the clavichord and that there would be
dancing, and so everyone had come as to a ball.
Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but
with this difference, that it was livelier in the towns in
consequence of the arrival of many wealthy families from
Moscow, and as in everything that went on in Russia at that
time a special recklessness was noticeable, an ‘in for a penny, in for a poundwho cares?’ spirit, and the inevitable small
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talk, instead of turning on the weather and mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.
The society gathered together at the governor’s was the
best in Voronezh.
There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas’
Moscow acquaintances, but there were no men who could
at all vie with the cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount
officer, the good-natured and well-bred Count Rostov.
Among the men was an Italian prisoner, an officer of the
French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence of that
prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero.
The Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this,
it seemed to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the
same light, and he treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint.
As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and
had uttered the words ‘better late than never’ and heard
them repeated several times by others, people clustered
around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once that
he had entered into his proper position in the provincethat
of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position, and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting stations, at
inns, and in the landowner’s snuggery, maidservants had
been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor’s
party there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible
number of pretty young women, married and unmarried,
impatiently awaiting his notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first day, the people concerned


1771

themselves to get this fine young daredevil of an hussar
married and settled down. Among these was the governor’s
wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative and
called him ‘Nicholas.’
Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and dancing began in which Nicholas still further
captivated the provincial society by his agility. His particularly free manner of dancing even surprised them all.
Nicholas was himself rather surprised at the way he danced
that evening. He had never danced like that in Moscow and
would even have considered such a very free and easy manner improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent
on him to astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to accept as the regular thing in the
capital though new to them in the provinces.
All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed,
plump and pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials. With the naive conviction of young men
in a merry mood that other men’s wives were created for
them, Rostov did not leave the lady’s side and treated her
husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if, without
speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the
lady would get on together. The husband, however, did not
seem to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely
with Rostov. But the latter’s good-natured naivete was so
boundless that sometimes even he involuntarily yielded to
Nicholas’ good humor. Toward the end of the evening, however, as the wife’s face grew more flushed and animated, the
husband’s became more and more melancholy and solemn,
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as though there were but a given amount of animation between them and as the wife’s share increased the husband’s
diminished.



1773

Chapter V
Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair,
bending closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a smile that never left his face.
Jauntily shifting the position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and admiring
his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his legs in
their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the blonde
lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in
Voronezh.
‘Which lady?’
‘A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes’ (Nicholas
looked at his partner) ‘are blue, her mouth coral and ivory;
her figure’ (he glanced at her shoulders) ‘like Diana’s...’
The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what
she was talking about.
‘Ah, Nikita Ivanych!’ cried Nicholas, rising politely, and
as if wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to
tell him of his intention to elope with a blonde lady.
The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The
governor’s good-natured wife came up with a look of disapproval.
‘Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas,’ said she,
pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once understood
that Anna Ignatyevna was a very important person. ‘Come,
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Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?’
‘Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?’
‘Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her
niece how you rescued her... Can you guess?’
‘I rescued such a lot of them!’ said Nicholas.
‘Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?’
‘Not a bit! Please don’t, Aunt!’
‘Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!’
The governor’s wife led him up to a tall and very stout
old lady with a blue headdress, who had just finished her
game of cards with the most important personages of the
town. This was Malvintseva, Princess Mary’s aunt on her
mother’s side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in
Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was standing
settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing
up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who
had won from her.
‘Very pleased, mon cher,’ she then said, holding out her
hand to Nicholas. ‘Pray come and see me.’
After a few words about Princess Mary and her late
father, whom Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas knew of Prince Andrew, who also
was evidently no favorite of hers, the important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation to come to
see her.
Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he
bowed. At the mention of Princess Mary he experienced a
feeling of shyness and even of fear, which he himself did not


1775

understand.
When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished
to return to the dancing, but the governor’s little wife placed
her plump hand on his sleeve and, saying that she wanted
to have a talk with him, led him to her sitting room, from
which those who were there immediately withdrew so as
not to be in her way.
‘Do you know, dear boy,’ began the governor’s wife with a
serious expression on her kind little face, ‘that really would
be the match for you: would you like me to arrange it?’
‘Whom do you mean, Aunt?’ asked Nicholas.
‘I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine
Petrovna speaks of Lily, but I say, nothe princess! Do you
want me to do it? I am sure your mother will be grateful to
me. What a charming girl she is, really! And she is not at all
so plain, either.’
‘Not at all,’ replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. ‘As
befits a soldier, Aunt, I don’t force myself on anyone or refuse anything,’ he said before he had time to consider what
he was saying.
‘Well then, remember, this is not a joke!’
‘Of course not!’
‘Yes, yes,’ the governor’s wife said as if talking to herself.
‘But, my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other, the blonde. One is sorry for the husband,
really...’
‘Oh no, we are good friends with him,’ said Nicholas
in the simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that
a pastime so pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to
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someone else.
‘But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor’s
wife!’ thought Nicholas suddenly at supper. ‘She will really begin to arrange a match... and Soyna...?’ And on taking
leave of the governor’s wife, when she again smilingly said
to him, ‘Well then, remember!’ he drew her aside.
‘But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..’
‘What is it, my dear? Come, let’s sit down here,’ said she.
Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most
intimate thoughts (which he would not have told to his
mother, his sister, or his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards recalled that impulse
to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which had very
important results for him, it seemed to himas it seems to
everyone in such casesthat it was merely some silly whim
that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with
other trifling events, had immense consequences for him
and for all his family.
‘You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an
heiress, but the very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me.’
‘Oh yes, I understand,’ said the governor’s wife.
‘But Princess Bolkonskayathat’s another matter. I will
tell you the truth. In the first place I like her very much,
I feel drawn to her; and then, after I met her under such
circumstancesso strangely, the idea often occurred to me:
‘This is fate.’ Especially if you remember that Mamma had
long been thinking of it; but I had never happened to meet
her before, somehow it had always happened that we did not


1777

meet. And as long as my sister Natasha was engaged to her
brother it was of course out of the question for me to think
of marrying her. And it must needs happen that I should
meet her just when Natasha’s engagement had been broken
off... and then everything... So you see... I never told this to
anyone and never will, only to you.’
The governor’s wife pressed his elbow gratefully.
‘You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to
marry her, and will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-’ said Nicholas incoherently and blushing.
‘My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya
has nothing and you yourself say your Papa’s affairs are in
a very bad way. And what about your mother? It would kill
her, that’s one thing. And what sort of life would it be for
Sonyaif she’s a girl with a heart? Your mother in despair,
and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and Sonya ought to
understand that.’
Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these
arguments.
‘All the same, Aunt, it is impossible,’ he rejoined with a
sigh, after a short pause. ‘Besides, would the princess have
me? And besides, she is now in mourning. How can one
think of it!’
‘But you don’t suppose I’m going to get you married at
once? There is always a right way of doing things,’ replied
the governor’s wife.
‘What a matchmaker you are, Aunt...’ said Nicholas,
kissing her plump little hand.
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Chapter VI
On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov,
Princess Mary had found her nephew there with his tutor,
and a letter from Prince Andrew giving her instructions
how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during
her father’s illness, since his death, and especially since her
meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for
the journey, anxiety about her brother, settling in a new
house, meeting new people, and attending to her nephew’s
education. She was sad. Now, after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more deeply the loss of
her father which was associated in her mind with the ruin
of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the
thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was
worried too about her nephew’s education for which she had
always felt herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul
she felt at peacea peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal dreams and hopes that had been
on the point of awakening within her and were related to
her meeting with Rostov.
The day after her party the governor’s wife came to see
Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt,
remarked that though under present circumstances a for

1779

mal betrothal was, of course, not to be thought of, all the
same the young people might be brought together and could
get to know one another. Malvintseva expressed approval,
and the governor’s wife began to speak of Rostov in Mary’s
presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed
when Princess Mary’s name was mentioned. But Princess
Mary experienced a painful rather than a joyful feelingher
mental tranquillity was destroyed, and desires, doubts, selfreproach, and hopes reawoke.
During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called,
Princess Mary continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she decided not to come to the drawing
room when he called to see her auntthat it would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to receive visitors; then she
thought this would be rude after what he had done for her;
then it occurred to her that her aunt and the governor’s wife
had intentions concerning herself and Rostovtheir looks
and words at times seemed to confirm this suppositionthen
she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could
think this of them: they could not forget that situated as she
was, while still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to her and to her father’s memory.
Assuming that she did go down to see him, Princess Mary
imagined the words he would say to her and what she would
say to him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly cold and then to mean too much. More than anything
she feared lest the confusion she felt might overwhelm her
and betray her as soon as she saw him.
But when on Sunday after church the footman an1780

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nounced in the drawing room that Count Rostov had called,
the princess showed no confusion, only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new and radiant
light.
‘You have met him, Aunt?’ said she in a calm voice, unable herself to understand that she could be outwardly so
calm and natural.
When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped
her eyes for an instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet
her aunt, and then just as Nicholas turned to her she raised
her head and met his look with shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she half rose with a smile of
pleasure, held out her slender, delicate hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time new deep
womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who
was in the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a consummate coquette, she could
not have maneuvered better on meeting a man she wished
to attract.
‘Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has greatly improved without my having noticed it.
And above all, what tact and grace!’ thought Mademoiselle
Bourienne.
Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that
moment, she would have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the change that had taken place in
herself. From the moment she recognized that dear, loved
face, a new life force took possession of her and compelled
her to speak and act apart from her own will. From the time


1781

Rostov entered, her face became suddenly transformed. It
was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted
lantern and the intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides,
that previously seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was
suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking beauty. For
the first time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through
which she had lived appeared on the surface. All her inward
labor, her dissatisfaction with herself, her sufferings, her
strivings after goodness, her meekness, love, and self-sacrificeall this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her delicate
smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.
Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her
whole life. He felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better than, anyone he had met before, and
above all better than himself.
Their conversation was very simple and unimportant.
They spoke of the war, and like everyone else unconsciously
exaggerated their sorrow about it; they spoke of their last
meetingNicholas trying to change the subjectthey talked of
the governor’s kind wife, of Nicholas’ relations, and of Princess Mary’s.
She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she
could speak of Russia’s misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was too near her heart and she neither
could nor would speak lightly of him. Nicholas noticed this,
as he noticed every shade of Princess Mary’s character with
an observation unusual to him, and everything confirmed
his conviction that she was a quite unusual and extraor1782

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dinary being. Nicholas blushed and was confused when
people spoke to him about the princess (as she did when he
was mentioned) and even when he thought of her, but in her
presence he felt quite at ease, and said not at all what he had
prepared, but what, quite appropriately, occurred to him at
the moment.
When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is usual when there are children, turned to Prince
Andrew’s little son, caressing him and asking whether he
would like to be an hussar. He took the boy on his knee,
played with him, and looked round at Princess Mary. With
a softened, happy, timid look she watched the boy she loved
in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also noticed that
look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure and
began to kiss the boy with good natured playfulness.
As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out
into society, and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing
to visit her again; but all the same the governor’s wife went
on with her matchmaking, passing on to Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and vice versa, and
insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary. For this
purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people
at the bishop’s house before Mass.
Though Rostov told the governeor’s wife that he would
not make any declaration to Princess Mary, he promised
to go.
As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that
what everybody considered right was right, so now, after
a short but sincere struggle between his effort to arrange


1783

his life by his own sense of justice, and in obedient submission to circumstances, he chose the latter and yielded to the
power he felt irresistibly carrying him he knew not where.
He knew that after his promise to Sonya it would be what he
deemed base to declare his feelings to Princess Mary. And
he knew that he would never act basely. But he also knew
(or rather felt at the bottom of his heart) that by resigning
himself now to the force of circumstances and to those who
were guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong,
but was doing something very importantmore important
than anything he had ever done in his life.
After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his
life went on externally as before, all his former amusements
lost their charm for him and he often thought about her.
But he never thought about her as he had thought of all the
young ladies without exception whom he had met in society,
nor as he had for a long time, and at one time rapturously,
thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those young
ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is,
as a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the
conditions of married life: a white dressing gown, his wife
at the tea table, his wife’s carriage, little ones, Mamma and
Papa, their relations to her, and so onand these pictures of
the future had given him pleasure. But with Princess Mary,
to whom they were trying to get him engaged, he could
never picture anything of future married life. If he tried,
his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him
afraid.
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Chapter VII
The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and wounded, and the still more terrible news
of the loss of Moscow reached Voronezh in the middle of
September. Princess Mary, having learned of her brother’s
wound only from the Gazette and having no definite news
of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her
again himself) to set off in search of Prince Andrew.
When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and
the abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with
despair, anger, the desire for vengeance, or any feeling of that
kind, but everything in Voronezh suddenly seemed to him
dull and tiresome, and he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The conversations he heard
seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to judge all
these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish
buying the horses, and often became unreasonably angry
with his servant and squadron quartermaster.
A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving,
at which Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for
the Russian victory. He stood a little behind the governor
and held himself with military decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of subjects. When the
service was over the governor’s wife beckoned him to her.


1785

‘Have you seen the princess?’ she asked, indicating with
a movement of her head a lady standing on the opposite
side, beyond the choir.
Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not
so much by the profile he saw under her bonnet as by the
feeling of solicitude, timidity, and pity that immediately
overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed by her
thoughts, was crossing herself for the last time before leaving the church.
Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same
face he had seen before, there was the same general expression of refined, inner, spiritual labor, but now it was quite
differently lit up. There was a pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had occurred before when
she was present, Nicholas went up to her without waiting
to be prompted by the governor’s wife and not asking himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her
here in church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and
sympathized with his whole soul. As soon as she heard his
voice a vivid glow kindled in her face, lighting up both her
sorrow and her joy.
‘There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess,’ said
Rostov. ‘It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich,
were not living, it would have been at once announced in
the Gazette, as he is a colonel.’
The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was
saying, but cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy
on his face.
‘And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound’
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(the Gazette said it was a shell) ‘either proving fatal at once
or being very slight,’ continued Nicholas. ‘We must hope for
the best, and I am sure..’
Princess Mary interrupted him.
‘Oh, that would be so dread...’ she began and, prevented
by agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as graceful as everything she did in his presence and,
looking up at him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.
That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home
to settle some accounts with the horse dealers. When he
had finished that business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed, and for a long time he
paced up and down the room, reflecting on his life, a thing
he rarely did.
Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on
him when he had met her in Smolensk province. His having
encountered her in such exceptional circumstances, and his
mother having at one time mentioned her to him as a good
match, had drawn his particular attention to her. When he
met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him
was not merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been
struck by the peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at
this time. He was, however, preparing to go away and it had
not entered his head to regret that he was thus depriving
himself of chances of meeting her. But that day’s encounter
in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than was desirable for
his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face, that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially the
deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features agi

1787

tated him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could
not bear to see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that
was why he did not like Prince Andrew) and he referred
to it contemptuously as philosophy and dreaminess, but in
Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed the depth
of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an irresistible
attraction.
‘She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!’ he said
to himself. ‘Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry
with Sonya?’ And he involuntarily compared the two: the
lack of spirituality in the one and the abundance of it in the
othera spirituality he himself lacked and therefore valued
most highly. He tried to picture what would happen were
he free. How he would propose to her and how she would
become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt
awed, and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He
had long ago pictured to himself a future with Sonya, and
that was all clear and simple just because it had all been
thought out and he knew all there was in Sonya, but it was
impossible to picture a future with Princess Mary, because
he did not understand her but simply loved her.
Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and
playful in them, but to dream of Princess Mary was always
difficult and a little frightening.
‘How she prayed!’ he thought. ‘It was plain that her whole
soul was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves
mountains, and I am sure her prayer will be answered.
Why don’t I pray for what I want?’ he suddenly thought.
‘What do I want? To be free, released from Sonya... She was
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right,’ he thought, remembering what the governor’s wife
had said: ‘Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying
Sonya. Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties...
muddles, terrible muddles! Besides, I don’t love hernot as
I should. O, God! release me from this dreadful, inextricable position!’ he suddenly began to pray. ‘Yes, prayer can
move mountains, but one must have faith and not pray as
Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn
into sugarand then run out into the yard to see whether it
had done so. No, but I am not praying for trifles now,’ he
thought as he put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his
hands placed himself before the icon. Softened by memories
of Princess Mary he began to pray as he had not done for a
long time. Tears were in his eyes and in his throat when the
door opened and Lavrushka came in with some papers.
‘Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?’
cried Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude.
‘From the governor,’ said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. ‘A
courier has arrived and there’s a letter for you.’
‘Well, all right, thanks. You can go!’
Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his
mother and the other from Sonya. He recognized them by
the handwriting and opened Sonya’s first. He had read only
a few lines when he turned pale and his eyes opened wide
with fear and joy.
‘No, it’s not possible!’ he cried aloud.
Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding
the letter and reading it. He glanced through it, then read
it again, and then again, and standing still in the middle of


1789

the room he raised his shoulders, stretching out his hands,
with his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed. What he had
just been praying for with confidence that God would hear
him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much astonished
as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and
as if the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved
that it had not come from God to whom he had prayed, but
by some ordinary coincidence.
This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite
voluntary letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that
fettered him and from which there had seemed no escape.
She wrote that the last unfortunate eventsthe loss of almost
the whole of the Rostovs’ Moscow propertyand the countess’ repeatedly expressed wish that Nicholas should marry
Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to release
him from his promise and set him completely free.
It would be too painful to me to think that I might be
a cause of sorrow or discord in the family that has been so
good to me (she wrote), and my love has no aim but the
happiness of those I love; so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider
yourself free, and to be assured that, in spite of everything,
no one can love you more than does
Your Sonya
Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from
the countess, described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the fire, and the destruction of all their property. In
this letter the countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew
was among the wounded traveling with them; his state was
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very critical, but the doctor said there was now more hope.
Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.
Next day Nicholas took his mother’s letter and went to
see Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about
what ‘Natasha nursing him’ might mean, but thanks to this
letter Nicholas suddenly became almost as intimate with
the princess as if they were relations.
The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her
journey to Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his
regiment.



1791

Chapter VIII
Sonya’s letter written from Troitsa, which had come as
an answer to Nicholas’ prayer, was prompted by this: the
thought of getting Nicholas married to an heiress occupied
the old countess’ mind more and more. She knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this happening, and Sonya’s
life in the countess’ house had grown harder and harder,
especially after they had received a letter from Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The
countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel
allusions to Sonya.
But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all that was going on, she called Sonya to her and,
instead of reproaching and making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself and repay all that the
family had done for her by breaking off her engagement
with Nicholas.
‘I shall not be at peace till you promise me this.’
Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through
her sobs that she would do anything and was prepared for
anything, but gave no actual promise and could not bring
herself to decide to do what was demanded of her. She must
sacrifice herself for the family that had reared and brought
her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya’s habit. Her
position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could
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War and Peace

she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and
loved doing it. But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she
had been happily conscious that they raised her in her own
esteem and in that of others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more than anything in the
world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing
that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice and
the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she
felt bitterness against those who had been her benefactors
only to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of
Natasha who had never experienced anything of this sort,
had never needed to sacrifice herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was beloved by everybody.
And for the first time Sonya felt that out of her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was beginning to
grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or religion. Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life
of dependence had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the countess in vague general terms,
avoided talking with her and resolved to wait till she should
see Nicholas, not in order to set him free but on the contrary
at that meeting to bind him to her forever.
The bustle and terror of the Rostovs’ last days in Moscow stifled the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She
was glad to find escape from them in practical activity. But
when she heard of Prince Andrew’s presence in their house,
despite her sincere pity for him and for Natasha, she was
seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that God did not
intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that


1793

Natasha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never
ceased to love him. She knew that being thrown together
again under such terrible circumstances they would again
fall in love with one another, and that Nicholas would then
not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would be within
the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror of
what had happened during those last days and during the
first days of their journey, this feeling that Providence was
intervening in her personal affairs cheered Sonya.
At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their
journey for a whole day.
Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew.
The wounded man was much better that day and Natasha
was sitting with him. In the next room sat the count and
countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was
calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the
monastery. Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as
to what Prince Andrew and Natasha were talking about. She
heard the sound of their voices through the door. That door
opened and Natasha came out, looking excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was drawing
back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya
and took her hand.
‘Natasha, what are you about? Come here!’ said the
countess.
Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and advised her to pray for aid to God and His saint.
As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend
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by the hand and went with her into the unoccupied room.
‘Sonya, will he live?’ she asked. ‘Sonya, how happy I am,
and how unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used
to be. If only he lives! He cannot... because... because... of’
and Natasha burst into tears.
‘Yes! I knew it! Thank God!’ murmured Sonya. ‘He will
live.’
Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter’s fear and grief and by her own personal feelings which
she shared with no one. Sobbing, she kissed and comforted
Natasha. ‘If only he lives!’ she thought. Having wept, talked,
and wiped away their tears, the two friends went together to Prince Andrew’s door. Natasha opened it cautiously
and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the
half-open door.
Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows.
His pale face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could see
his regular breathing.
‘O, Natasha!’ Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching
her companion’s arm and stepping back from the door.
‘What? What is it?’ asked Natasha.
‘It’s that, that...’ said Sonya, with a white face and trembling lips.
Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to
the window, not yet understanding what the latter was telling her.
‘You remember,’ said Sonya with a solemn and frightened
expression. ‘You remember when I looked in the mirror for
you... at Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you remember what I


1795

saw?’
‘Yes, yes!’ cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and
vaguely recalling that Sonya had told her something about
Prince Andrew whom she had seen lying down.
‘You remember?’ Sonya went on. ‘I saw it then and told
everybody, you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed,’
said she, making a gesture with her hand and a lifted finger
at each detail, ‘and that he had his eyes closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that his hands were folded,’
she concluded, convincing herself that the details she had
just seen were exactly what she had seen in the mirror.
She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the
first thing that came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed to her now as real as any other recollection.
She not only remembered what she had then saidthat he
turned to look at her and smiled and was covered with
something redbut was firmly convinced that she had then
seen and said that he was covered with a pink quilt and that
his eyes were closed.
‘Yes, yes, it really was pink!’ cried Natasha, who now
thought she too remembered the word pink being used, and
saw in this the most extraordinary and mysterious part of
the prediction.
‘But what does it mean?’ she added meditatively.
‘Oh, I don’t know, it is all so strange,’ replied Sonya,
clutching at her head.
A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha
went to him, but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and
touched, remained at the window thinking about the
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War and Peace

strangeness of what had occurred.
They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the
army, and the countess was writing to her son.
‘Sonya!’ said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as her niece passed, ‘Sonya, won’t you write to Nicholas?’
She spoke in a soft, tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes
that looked over her spectacles Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these words. Those eyes expressed
entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such refusal.
Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down,
kissed her hand.
‘Yes, Mamma, I will write,’ said she.
Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had
occurred that day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment
she had just seen of her vision. Now that she knew that the
renewal of Natasha’s relations with Prince Andrew would
prevent Nicholas from marrying Princess Mary, she was
joyfully conscious of a return of that self-sacrificing spirit
in which she was accustomed to live and loved to live. So
with a joyful consciousness of performing a magnanimous
deedinterrupted several times by the tears that dimmed her
velvety black eyesshe wrote that touching letter the arrival
of which had so amazed Nicholas.



1797

Chapter IX
The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated
him with hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse
to which he was taken. In their attitude toward him could
still be felt both uncertainty as to who he might beperhaps
a very important personand hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with him.
But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre
felt that for the new guardboth officers and menhe was not
as interesting as he had been to his captors; and in fact the
guard of the second day did not recognize in this big, stout
man in a peasant coat the vigorous person who had fought
so desperately with the marauder and the convoy and had
uttered those solemn words about saving a child; they saw
in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and
detained for some reason by order of the Higher Command.
If they noticed anything remarkable about Pierre, it was
only his unabashed, meditative concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck them
as surprisingly good. In spite of this he was placed that day
with the other arrested suspects, as the separate room he
had occupied was required by an officer.
All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the
lowest class and, recognizing him as a gentleman, they all
avoided him, more especially as he spoke French. Pierre felt
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War and Peace

sad at hearing them making fun of him.
That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the
third day he was taken with the others to a house where a
French general with a white mustache sat with two colonels
and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms. With the
precision and definiteness customary in addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, Pierre
like the others was questioned as to who he was, where he
had been, with what object, and so on.
These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left
the essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that
essence’s being revealed, and were designed only to form a
channel through which the judges wished the answers of
the accused to flow so as to lead to the desired result, namely
a conviction. As soon as Pierre began to say anything that
did not fit in with that aim, the channel was removed and
the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, moreover, what the
accused always feel at their trial, perplexity as to why these
questions were put to him. He had a feeling that it was only
out of condescension or a kind of civility that this device of
placing a channel was employed. He knew he was in these
men’s power, that only by force had they brought him there,
that force alone gave them the right to demand answers to
their questions, and that the sole object of that assembly was
to inculpate him. And so, as they had the power and wish to
inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed
unnecessary. It was evident that any answer would lead to
conviction. When asked what he was doing when he was ar

1799

rested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he was
restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the flames.
Why had he fought the marauder? Pierre answered that he
‘was protecting a woman,’ and that ‘to protect a woman who
was being insulted was the duty of every man; that...’ They
interrupted him, for this was not to the point. Why was he
in the yard of a burning house where witnesses had seen
him? He replied that he had gone out to see what was happening in Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had
not asked where he was going, but why he was found near
the fire? Who was he? they asked, repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer. Again he replied that
he could not answer it.
‘Put that down, that’s bad... very bad,’ sternly remarked
the general with the white mustache and red flushed face.
On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.
Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach
house of a merchant’s house near the Crimean bridge. On
his way through the streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke
which seemed to hang over the whole city. Fires were visible
on all sides. He did not then realize the significance of the
burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires with horror.
He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and during that time learned, from the talk of the
French soldiers, that all those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any day from the marshal.
What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn from the soldiers. Evidently for them ‘the marshal’ represented a very
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War and Peace

high and rather mysterious power.
These first days, before the eighth of September when the
prisoners were had up for a second examination, were the
hardest of all for Pierre.



1801

Chapter X
On the eighth of September an officera very important
one judging by the respect the guards showed himentered
the coach house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding a paper in his hand,
and called over all the Russians there, naming Pierre as ‘the
man who does not give his name.’ Glancing indolently and
indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in
charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up before
taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the
Virgin’s Field. It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the
air was unusually pure. The smoke did not hang low as on
the day when Pierre had been taken from the guardhouse
on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure air in
columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose
on all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was
one vast charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces
with only stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and here
and there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre
gazed at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had
known well. Here and there he could see churches that had
not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not destroyed,
gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the belfry
of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Vir1802

War and Peace

gin glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly
clearly. These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and
the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to
be no one to celebrate this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be seen were tattered
and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw the
French.
It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but in place of the Russian order of life that had
been destroyed, Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order had been established over this
ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of the soldiers who,
marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the looks of an
important French official in a carriage and pair driven by a
soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry
sounds of regimental music he heard from the left side of
the field, and felt and realized it especially from the list of
prisoners the French officer had read out when he came that
morning. Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers and
led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they might have forgotten him,
or confused him with the others. But no: the answers he had
given when questioned had come back to him in his designation as ‘the man who does not give his name,’ and under
that appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were
now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance
on their faces that he and all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that they were being taken


1803

to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be an insignificant
chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose action he
did not understand but which was working well.
He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of
the Virgin’s Field, to a large white house with an immense
garden not far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov’s house, where Pierre had often been in other days, and
which, as he learned from the talk of the soldiers, was now
occupied by the marshal, the Duke of Eckmuhl (Davout).
They were taken to the entrance and led into the house
one by one. Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted
through a glass gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were
familiar to him, into a long low study at the door of which
stood an adjutant.
Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the
further end of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but
Davout, evidently consulting a paper that lay before him,
did not look up. Without raising his eyes, he said in a low
voice:
‘Who are you?’
Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a
word. To him Davout was not merely a French general, but
a man notorious for his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as
he sat like a stern schoolmaster who was prepared to wait
awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every instant of delay
might cost him his life; but he did not know what to say.
He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his first
examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he
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War and Peace

had decided what to do, Davout raised his head, pushed his
spectacles back on his forehead, screwed up his eyes, and
looked intently at him.
‘I know that man,’ he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently calculated to frighten Pierre.
The chill that had been running down Pierre’s back now
seized his head as in a vise.
‘You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..’
‘He is a Russian spy,’ Davout interrupted, addressing another general who was present, but whom Pierre had not
noticed.
Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation
in his voice Pierre rapidly began:
‘No, monseigneur,’ he said, suddenly remembering that
Davout was a duke. ‘No, monseigneur, you cannot have
known me. I am a militia officer and have not quitted Moscow.’
‘Your name?’ asked Davout.
‘Bezukhov.’
‘What proof have I that you are not lying?’
‘Monseigneur!’ exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but
in a pleading voice.
Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some
seconds they looked at one another, and that look saved
Pierre. Apart from conditions of war and law, that look
established human relations between the two men. At
that moment an immense number of things passed dimly
through both their minds, and they realized that they were
both children of humanity and were brothers.


1805

At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head
from the papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre was merely a circumstance, and
Davout could have shot him without burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a human
being. He reflected for a moment.
‘How can you show me that you are telling the truth?’
said Davout coldly.
Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his
regiment and the street where the house was.
‘You are not what you say,’ returned Davout.
In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing
proofs of the truth of his statements.
But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported
something to Davout.
Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought,
and began buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had
quite forgotten Pierre.
When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he
jerked his head in Pierre’s direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But where they were to take him
Pierre did not know: back to the coach house or to the place
of execution his companions had pointed out to him as they
crossed the Virgin’s Field.
He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting
another question to Davout.
‘Yes, of course!’ replied Davout, but what this ‘yes’ meant,
Pierre did not know.
Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went,
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War and Peace

whether it was far, or in which direction. His faculties were
quite numbed, he was stupefied, and noticing nothing
around him went on moving his legs as the others did till
they all stopped and he stopped too. The only thought in his
mind at that time was: who was it that had really sentenced
him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first
examined himnot one of them wished to or, evidently, could
have done it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in
so human a way. In another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then the adjutant
had come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had
evidently had no evil intent though he might have refrained
from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing him,
depriving him of lifehim, Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And
Pierre felt that it was no one.
It was a systema concurrence of circumstances.
A system of some sort was killing himPierredepriving
him of life, of everything, annihilating him.



1807

Chapter XI
From Prince Shcherbatov’s house the prisoners were led
straight down the Virgin’s Field, to the left of the nunnery,
as far as a kitchen garden in which a post had been set up.
Beyond that post a fresh pit had been dug in the ground, and
near the post and the pit a large crowd stood in a semicircle.
The crowd consisted of a few Russians and many of Napoleon’s soldiers who were not on dutyGermans, Italians, and
Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of
the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with
red epaulets and high boots and shakos.
The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according
to the list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and
at that sound Pierre felt as if part of his soul had been torn
away. He lost the power of thinking or understanding. He
could only hear and see. And he had only one wishthat the
frightful thing that had to happen should happen quickly.
Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized
them.
The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was
tall and thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a
flat nose. The third was a domestic serf, about forty-five
years old, with grizzled hair and a plump, well-nourished
body. The fourth was a peasant, a very handsome man with
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War and Peace

a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes. The fifth was a
factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen in a loose
coat.
Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them
separately or two at a time. ‘In couples,’ replied the officer
in command in a calm voice. There was a stir in the ranks
of the soldiers and it was evident that they were all hurryingnot as men hurry to do something they understand, but
as people hurry to finish a necessary but unpleasant and incomprehensible task.
A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of
the row of prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian
and in French.
Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the officer’s command took the two convicts
who stood first in the row. The convicts stopped when
they reached the post and, while sacks were being brought,
looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at an approaching huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the
other scratched his back and made a movement of the lips
resembling a smile. With hurried hands the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks over their heads, and bound
them to the post.
Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the
ranks with a firm regular tread and halted eight paces from
the post. Pierre turned away to avoid seeing what was going
to happen. Suddenly a crackling, rolling noise was heard
which seemed to him louder than the most terrific thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the


1809

Frenchmen were doing something near the pit, with pale
faces and trembling hands. Two more prisoners were led up.
In the same way and with similar looks, these two glanced
vainly at the onlookers with only a silent appeal for protection in their eyes, evidently unable to understand or believe
what was going to happen to them. They could not believe
it because they alone knew what their life meant to them,
and so they neither understood nor believed that it could be
taken from them.
Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away;
but again the sound as of a frightful explosion struck his
ear, and at the same moment he saw smoke, blood, and the
pale, scared faces of the Frenchmen who were again doing
something by the post, their trembling hands impeding one
another. Pierre, breathing heavily, looked around as if asking what it meant. The same question was expressed in all
the looks that met his.
On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers
and officers without exception, he read the same dismay,
horror, and conflict that were in his own heart. ‘But who,
after all, is doing this? They are all suffering as I am. Who
then is it? Who?’ flashed for an instant through his mind.
‘Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!’ shouted someone.
The fifth prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led awayalone.
Pierre did not understand that he was saved, that he and the
rest had been brought there only to witness the execution.
With ever-growing horror, and no sense of joy or relief, he
gazed at what was taking place. The fifth man was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment they laid hands on
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War and Peace

him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at Pierre. (Pierre
shuddered and shook himself free.) The lad was unable to
walk. They dragged him along, holding him up under the
arms, and he screamed. When they got him to the post he
grew quiet, as if he suddenly understood something. Whether he understood that screaming was useless or whether he
thought it incredible that men should kill him, at any rate
he took his stand at the post, waiting to be blindfolded like
the others, and like a wounded animal looked around him
with glittering eyes.
Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes.
His curiosity and agitation, like that of the whole crowd,
reached the highest pitch at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man seemed calm; he wrapped his loose cloak
closer and rubbed one bare foot with the other.
When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted
the knot which hurt the back of his head; then when they
propped him against the bloodstained post, he leaned back
and, not being comfortable in that position, straightened
himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned back again more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and did not
miss his slightest movement.
Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports of eight muskets; but try as he would
Pierre could not afterwards remember having heard the
slightest sound of the shots. He only saw how the workman
suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how blood
showed itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under
the weight of the hanging body, and how the workman sat


1811

down, his head hanging unnaturally and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the post. No one hindered him.
Pale, frightened people were doing something around the
workman. The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a thick
mustache trembled as he untied the ropes. The body collapsed. The soldiers dragged it awkwardly from the post and
began pushing it into the pit.
They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who must hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as
possible.
Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was
lying with his knees close up to his head and one shoulder
higher than the other. That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively, but spadefuls of earth were already
being thrown over the whole body. One of the soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and angrily at Pierre to go
back. But Pierre did not understand him and remained near
the post, and no one drove him away.
When the pit had been filled up a command was given.
Pierre was taken back to his place, and the rows of troops
on both sides of the post made a half turn and went past
it at a measured pace. The twenty-four sharpshooters with
discharged muskets, standing in the center of the circle, ran
back to their places as the companies passed by.
Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined
their companies. This one, a young soldier, his face deadly
pale, his shako pushed back, and his musket resting on the
ground, still stood near the pit at the spot from which he
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had fired. He swayed like a drunken man, taking some steps
forward and back to save himself from falling. An old, noncommissioned officer ran out of the ranks and taking him
by the elbow dragged him to his company. The crowd of
Russians and Frenchmen began to disperse. They all went
away silently and with drooping heads.
‘That will teach them to start fires,’ said one of the
Frenchmen.
Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was
a soldier who was trying to find some relief after what had
been done, but was not able to do so. Without finishing what
he had begun to say he made a hopeless movement with his
arm and went away.



1813

Chapter XII
After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest
of the prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.
Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered
with two soldiers and told him that he had been pardoned
and would now go to the barracks for the prisoners of war.
Without understanding what was said to him, Pierre got up
and went with the soldiers. They took him to the upper end
of the field, where there were some sheds built of charred
planks, beams, and battens, and led him into one of them.
In the darkness some twenty different men surrounded
Pierre. He looked at them without understanding who they
were, why they were there, or what they wanted of him. He
heard what they said, but did not understand the meaning
of the words and made no kind of deduction from or application of them. He replied to questions they put to him, but
did not consider who was listening to his replies, nor how
they would understand them. He looked at their faces and
figures, but they all seemed to him equally meaningless.
From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible
murders committed by men who did not wish to commit
them, it was as if the mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made everything appear alive,
had suddenly been wrenched out and everything had col1814

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lapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did
not acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right ordering
of the universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God,
had been destroyed. He had experienced this before, but
never so strongly as now. When similar doubts had assailed
him before, they had been the result of his own wrongdoing,
and at the bottom of his heart he had felt that relief from his
despair and from those doubts was to be found within himself. But now he felt that the universe had crumbled before
his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not
by any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power
to regain faith in the meaning of life.
Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something about him interested them greatly. They
were telling him something and asking him something.
Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he found
himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing and talking on all sides.
‘Well, then, mates... that very prince who...’ some voice at
the other end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis
on the word who.
Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against
the wall, Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed
his eyes. But as soon as he closed them he saw before him
the dreadful face of the factory ladespecially dreadful because of its simplicityand the faces of the murderers, even
more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he opened his
eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around
him.


1815

Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of
whose presence he was first made aware by a strong smell
of perspiration which came from him every time he moved.
This man was doing something to his legs in the darkness,
and though Pierre could not see his face he felt that the man
continually glanced at him. On growing used to the darkness Pierre saw that the man was taking off his leg bands,
and the way he did it aroused Pierre’s interest.
Having unwound the string that tied the band on one
leg, he carefully coiled it up and immediately set to work on
the other leg, glancing up at Pierre. While one hand hung
up the first string the other was already unwinding the band
on the second leg. In this way, having carefully removed the
leg bands by deft circular motions of his arm following one
another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg bands up on
some pegs fixed above his head. Then he took out a knife,
cut something, closed the knife, placed it under the head of
his bed, and, seating himself comfortably, clasped his arms
round his lifted knees and fixed his eyes on Pierre. The latter
was conscious of something pleasant, comforting, and well
rounded in these deft movements, in the man’s well-ordered
arrangements in his corner, and even in his very smell, and
he looked at the man without taking his eyes from him.
‘You’ve seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?’ the little man suddenly said.
And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his
singsong voice that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled
and he felt tears rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving
Pierre no time to betray his confusion, instantly continued
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War and Peace

in the same pleasant tones:
‘Eh, lad, don’t fret!’ said he, in the tender singsong caressing voice old Russian peasant women employ. ‘Don’t
fret, friend‘suffer an hour, live for an age!’ that’s how it is,
my dear fellow. And here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are good men as well
as bad,’ said he, and still speaking, he turned on his knees
with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and went off to
another part of the shed.
‘Eh, you rascal!’ Pierre heard the same kind voice saying
at the other end of the shed. ‘So you’ve come, you rascal? She
remembers... Now, now, that’ll do!’
And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at him, returned to his place and sat down. In his
hands he had something wrapped in a rag.
‘Here, eat a bit, sir,’ said he, resuming his former respectful tone as he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked
potatoes. ‘We had soup for dinner and the potatoes are
grand!’
Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes
seemed extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier
and began to eat.
‘Well, are they all right?’ said the soldier with a smile.
‘You should do like this.’
He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato
into two equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled
some salt on it from the rag, and handed it to Pierre.
‘The potatoes are grand!’ he said once more. ‘Eat some
like that!’


1817

Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted
better.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ said he, ‘but why did they shoot those
poor fellows? The last one was hardly twenty.’
‘Tss, tt...!’ said the little man. ‘Ah, what a sin... what a sin!’
he added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting
ready in his mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on:
‘How was it, sir, that you stayed in Moscow?’
‘I didn’t think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally,’ replied Pierre.
‘And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?’
‘No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there,
and tried me as an incendiary.’
‘Where there’s law there’s injustice,’ put in the little
man.
‘And have you been here long?’ Pierre asked as he
munched the last of the potato.
‘I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in
Moscow.’
‘Why, are you a soldier then?’
‘Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We weren’t told anything. There were some
twenty of us lying there. We had no idea, never guessed at
all.’
‘And do you feel sad here?’ Pierre inquired.
‘How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the
surname is Karataev,’ he added, evidently wishing to make
it easier for Pierre to address him. ‘They call me ‘little falcon’
in the regiment. How is one to help feeling sad? Moscow1818

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she’s the mother of cities. How can one see all this and not
feel sad? But ‘the maggot gnaws the cabbage, yet dies first’;
that’s what the old folks used to tell us,’ he added rapidly.
‘What? What did you say?’ asked Pierre.
‘Who? I?’ said Karataev. ‘I say things happen not as we
plan but as God judges,’ he replied, thinking that he was
repeating what he had said before, and immediately continued:
‘Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house?
So you have abundance, then? And a housewife? And your
old parents, are they still living?’ he asked.
And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that
a suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier’s lips
as he put these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had
no parents, especially that he had no mother.
‘A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but
there’s none as dear as one’s own mother!’ said he. ‘Well,
and have you little ones?’ he went on asking.
Again Pierre’s negative answer seemed to distress him,
and he hastened to add:
‘Never mind! You’re young folks yet, and please God may
still have some. The great thing is to live in harmony...’
‘But it’s all the same now,’ Pierre could not help saying.
‘Ah, my dear fellow!’ rejoined Karataev, ‘never decline a
prison or a beggar’s sack!’
He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently preparing to tell a long story.
‘Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home,’ he began.
‘We had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants


1819

lived well and our house was one to thank God for. When
Father and we went out mowing there were seven of us. We
lived well. We were real peasants. It so happened..’
And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had
gone into someone’s copse to take wood, how he had been
caught by the keeper, had been tried, flogged, and sent to
serve as a soldier.
‘Well, lad,’ and a smile changed the tone of his voice ‘we
thought it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If
it had not been for my sin, my brother would have had to
go as a soldier. But he, my younger brother, had five little
ones, while I, you see, only left a wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a soldier. I come
home on leave and I’ll tell you how it was, I look and see that
they are living better than before. The yard full of cattle, the
women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only
Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, ‘All my children are the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger
gets bitten. But if Platon hadn’t been shaved for a soldier,
Michael would have had to go.’ called us all to him and, will
you believe it, placed us in front of the icons. ‘Michael,’ he
says, ‘come here and bow down to his feet; and you, young
woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also
bow down before him! Do you understand?’ he says. That’s
how it is, dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, ‘that’s not wellthat’s not right!’ Our luck is
like water in a dragnet: you pull at it and it bulges, but when
you’ve drawn it out it’s empty! That’s how it is.’
And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.
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War and Peace

After a short silence he rose.
‘Well, I think you must be sleepy,’ said he, and began rapidly crossing himself and repeating:
‘Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra!
Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra!
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and save us!’ he concluded, then bowed to the ground, got up, sighed, and sat
down again on his heap of straw. ‘That’s the way. Lay me
down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf,’ he
muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.
‘What prayer was that you were saying?’ asked Pierre.
‘Eh?’ murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep.
‘What was I saying? I was praying. Don’t you pray?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Pierre. ‘But what was that you said: Frola
and Lavra?’
‘Well, of course,’ replied Platon quickly, ‘the horses’
saints. One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now
you’ve curled up and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!’
said Karataev, touching the dog that lay at his feet, and
again turning over he fell asleep immediately.
Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere
in the distance outside, and flames were visible through the
cracks of the shed, but inside it was quiet and dark. For a
long time Pierre did not sleep, but lay with eyes open in the
darkness, listening to the regular snoring of Platon who lay
beside him, and he felt that the world that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a new beauty
and on new and unshakable foundations.


1821

Chapter XIII
Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials
were confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed
and where he remained for four weeks.
When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all
seemed misty figures to him except Platon Karataev, who
always remained in his mind a most vivid and precious
memory and the personification of everything Russian,
kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next
morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round, was fully confirmed: Platon’s whole figurein a
French overcoat girdled with a cord, a soldier’s cap, and bast
shoeswas round. His head was quite round, his back, chest,
shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever ready
to embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile
and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.
Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier.
He did not himself know his age and was quite unable to
determine it. But his brilliantly white, strong teeth which
showed in two unbroken semicircles when he laughedas he
often didwere all sound and good, there was not a gray hair
in his beard or on his head, and his whole body gave an
impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and endurance.
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War and Peace

His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant
and musical. But the chief peculiarity of his speech was its
directness and appositeness. It was evident that he never
considered what he had said or was going to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation had an
irresistible persuasiveness.
His physical strength and agility during the first days of
his imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know
what fatigue and sickness meant. Every night before lying
down, he said: ‘Lord, lay me down as a stone and raise me
up as a loaf!’ and every morning on getting up, he said: ‘I lay
down and curled up, I get up and shake myself.’ And indeed
he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he
only had to shake himself, to be ready without a moment’s
delay for some work, just as children are ready to play directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but
not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended
boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversationof which he was fondand songs. He did not
sing like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but
like the birds, evidently giving vent to the sounds in the
same way that one stretches oneself or walks about to get
rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always high-pitched,
mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at
such times was very serious.
Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to
grow, he seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced
upon himeverything military and alien to himselfand had


1823

returned to his former peasant habits.
‘A soldier on leavea shirt outside breeches,’ he would
say.
He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though
he did not complain, and often mentioned that he had not
been flogged once during the whole of his army service.
When he related anything it was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his ‘Christian’ life, as he called
his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which his talk was
full, were for the most part not the coarse and indecent saws
soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken without
a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely
suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.
He would often say the exact opposite of what he had
said on a previous occasion, yet both would be right. He
liked to talk and he talked well, adorning his speech with
terms of endearment and with folk sayings which Pierre
thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk
lay in the fact that the commonest eventssometimes just
such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of themassumed in Karataev’s a character of solemn fitness. He
liked to hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell
of an evening (they were always the same), but most of all
he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile joyfully
when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a
word or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what
he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no attachments,
friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved
and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in
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contact with, particularly with mannot any particular man,
but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog,
his comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor,
but Pierre felt that in spite of Karataev’s affectionate tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave Pierre’s
spiritual life its due) he would not have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in the
same way toward Karataev.
To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most
ordinary soldier. They called him ‘little falcon’ or ‘Platosha,’
chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But
to Pierre he always remained what he had seemed that first
night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of
the spirit of simplicity and truth.
Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his
prayers. When he began to speak he seemed not to know
how he would conclude.
Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words,
would ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall
what he had said a moment before, just as he never could
repeat to Pierre the words of his favorite song: native and
birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He
did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words
apart from their context. Every word and action of his was
the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which
was his life. But his life, as he regarded it, had no meaning
as a separate thing. It had meaning only as part of a whole
of which he was always conscious. His words and actions


1825

flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as
fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand
the value or significance of any word or deed taken separately.

1826

War and Peace

Chapter XIV
When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared
to go there, in spite of her aunt’s efforts to dissuade herand
not merely to go herself but to take her nephew with her.
Whether it were difficult or easy, possible or impossible, she
did not ask and did not want to know: it was her duty not
only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps dying,
but to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so
she prepared to set off. That she had not heard from Prince
Andrew himself, Princess Mary attributed to his being too
weak to write or to his considering the long journey too
hard and too dangerous for her and his son.
In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were the huge family coach in which she had traveled
to Voronezh, a semiopen trap, and a baggage cart. With her
traveled Mademoiselle Bourienne, little Nicholas and his
tutor, her old nurse, three maids, Tikhon, and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to accompany her.
The usual route through Moscow could not be thought
of, and the roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to
take through Lipetsk, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was
very long and, as post horses were not everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the French were
said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.


1827

During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Dessalles, and Princess Mary’s servants were astonished at
her energy and firmness of spirit. She went to bed later and
rose earlier than any of them, and no difficulties daunted
her. Thanks to her activity and energy, which infected her
fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by the end of the
second week.
The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her life. Her love for Rostov no longer tormented
or agitated her. It filled her whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she no longer struggled against
it. Latterly she had become convinced that she loved and
was beloved, though she never said this definitely to herself in words. She had become convinced of it at her last
interview with Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that
her brother was with the Rostovs. Not by a single word had
Nicholas alluded to the fact that Prince Andrew’s relations
with Natasha might, if he recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he knew and thought of this.
Yet in spite of that, his relation to herconsiderate, delicate, and lovingnot only remained unchanged, but it
sometimes seemed to Princess Mary that he was even glad
that the family connection between them allowed him to
express his friendship more freely. She knew that she loved
for the first and only time in her life and felt that she was
beloved, and was happy in regard to it.
But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did
not prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force;
on the contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one side
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made it the more possible for her to give full play to her
feeling for her brother. That feeling was so strong at the moment of leaving Voronezh that those who saw her off, as they
looked at her careworn, despairing face, felt sure she would
fall ill on the journey. But the very difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she took so actively in hand,
saved her for a while from her grief and gave her strength.
As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary
thought only of the journey itself, forgetting its object. But
as she approached Yaroslavl the thought of what might
await her therenot after many days, but that very eveningagain presented itself to her and her agitation increased to
its utmost limit.
The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out
where the Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what
condition Prince Andrew was, when he met the big coach
just entering the town gates was appalled by the terrible
pallor of the princess’ face that looked out at him from the
window.
‘I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are staying at the merchant Bronnikov’s house, in the
Square not far from here, right above the Volga,’ said the
courier.
Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry,
not understanding why he did not reply to what she chiefly
wanted to know: how was her brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.
‘How is the prince?’ she asked.
‘His excellency is staying in the same house with them.’


1829

‘Then he is alive,’ thought Princess Mary, and asked in a
low voice: ‘How is he?’
‘The servants say he is still the same.’
What ‘still the same’ might mean Princess Mary did not
ask, but with an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old
Nicholas, who was sitting in front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her head and did not raise it
again till the heavy coach, rumbling, shaking and swaying,
came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as they were let
down.
The carriage door was opened. On the left there was watera great riverand on the right a porch. There were people
at the entrance: servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait
of black hair, smiling as it seemed to Princess Mary in an
unpleasantly affected way. (This was Sonya.) Princess Mary
ran up the steps. ‘This way, this way!’ said the girl, with the
same artificial smile, and the princess found herself in the
hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came
rapidly to meet her with a look of emotion. This was the
countess. She embraced Princess Mary and kissed her.
‘Mon enfant!’ she muttered, ‘je vous aime et vous connais depuis longtemps.’*
*”My child! I love you and have known you a long time.’
Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this
was the countess and that it was necessary to say something
to her. Hardly knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in French in the same tone as those
that had been addressed to her, and asked: ‘How is he?’
‘The doctor says that he is not in danger,’ said the count1830

War and Peace

ess, but as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her
gesture conveyed a contradiction of her words.
‘Where is he? Can I see himcan I?’ asked the princess.
‘One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this
his son?’ said the countess, turning to little Nicholas who
was coming in with Dessalles. ‘There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh, what a lovely boy!’
The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room,
where Sonya was talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The
countess caressed the boy, and the old count came in and
welcomed the princess. He had changed very much since
Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had been a brisk,
cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful,
bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually looked round as if asking everyone whether he was
doing the right thing. After the destruction of Moscow and
of his property, thrown out of his accustomed groove he
seemed to have lost the sense of his own significance and to
feel that there was no longer a place for him in life.
In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as
possible, and her vexation that at the moment when all she
wanted was to see him they should be trying to entertain
her and pretending to admire her nephew, the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt the necessity
of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things which
she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it
was hard for her she was not vexed with these people.
‘This is my niece,’ said the count, introducing Sonya‘You
don’t know her, Princess?’


1831

Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the
hostile feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed
her. But she felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so far from what was in her own
heart.
‘Where is he?’ she asked again, addressing them all.
‘He is downstairs. Natasha is with him,’ answered Sonya,
flushing. ‘We have sent to ask. I think you must be tired,
Princess.’
Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary’s
eyes. She turned away and was about to ask the countess
again how to go to him, when light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard at the door. The princess
looked round and saw Natasha coming in, almost runningthat Natasha whom she had liked so little at their
meeting in Moscow long since.
But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha’s face before she realized that here was a real comrade in her grief,
and consequently a friend. She ran to meet her, embraced
her, and began to cry on her shoulder.
As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew’s bed, heard of Princess Mary’s arrival, she softly left
his room and hastened to her with those swift steps that had
sounded buoyant to Princess Mary.
There was only one expression on her agitated face when
she ran into the drawing roomthat of loveboundless love for
him, for her, and for all that was near to the man she loved;
and of pity, suffering for others, and passionate desire to
give herself entirely to helping them. It was plain that at that
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War and Peace

moment there was in Natasha’s heart no thought of herself
or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.
Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all
this at the first glance at Natasha’s face, and wept on her
shoulder with sorrowful pleasure.
‘Come, come to him, Mary,’ said Natasha, leading her
into the other room.
Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and
turned to Natasha. She felt that from her she would be able
to understand and learn everything.
‘How...’ she began her question but stopped short.
She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in
words. Natasha’s face eyes would eyes would have to tell her
all more clearly and profoundly.
Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt
whether to say all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that
before those luminous eyes which penetrated into the very
depths of her heart, it was impossible not to tell the whole
truth which she saw. And suddenly, Natasha’s lips twitched,
ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and covering her
face with her hands she burst into sobs.
Princess Mary understood.
But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did
not trust:
‘But how is his wound? What is his general condition?’
‘You, you... will see,’ was all Natasha could say.
They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they
had left off crying and were able to go to him with calm
faces.


1833

‘How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew
worse? When did this happen?’ Princess Mary inquired.
Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from
his feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had passed and the doctor had only been afraid of
gangrene. That danger had also passed. When they reached
Yaroslavl the wound had begun to fester (Natasha knew all
about such things as festering) and the doctor had said that
the festering might take a normal course. Then fever set in,
but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.
‘But two days ago this suddenly happened,’ said Natasha,
struggling with her sobs. ‘I don’t know why, but you will see
what he is like.’
‘Is he weaker? Thinner?’ asked the princess.
‘No, it’s not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is
too good, he cannot, cannot live, because..’

1834

War and Peace

Chapter XV
When Natasha opened Prince Andrew’s door with a familiar movement and let Princess Mary pass into the room
before her, the princess felt the sobs in her throat. Hard as
she had tried to prepare herself, and now tried to remain
tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to look at him
without tears.
The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the
words: ‘two days ago this suddenly happened.’ She understood those words to mean that he had suddenly softened
and that this softening and gentleness were signs of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she already saw
in imagination Andrew’s face as she remembered it in childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely
shown, and which therefore affected her very strongly. She
was sure he would speak soft, tender words to her such as her
father had uttered before his death, and that she would not
be able to bear it and would burst into sobs in his presence.
Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs rose
higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to
make out his features, and then she saw his face and met his
gaze.
He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan,
surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin,


1835

translucently white hand he held a handkerchief, while with
the other he stroked the delicate mustache he had grown,
moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they
entered.
On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary’s
pace suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her
sobs ceased. She suddenly felt guilty and grew timid on
catching the expression of his face and eyes.
‘But in what am I to blame?’ she asked herself. And his
cold, stern look replied: ‘Because you are alive and thinking
of the living, while I..’
In the deep the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there was an almost hostile expression as
he slowly regarded his sister and Natasha.
He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their
wont.
‘How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?’
said he in a voice as calm and aloof as his look.
Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have
struck such horror into Princess Mary’s heart as the tone of
his voice.
‘And have you brought little Nicholas?’ he asked in the
same slow, quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember.
‘How are you now?’ said Princess Mary, herself surprised
at what she was saying.
‘That, my dear, you must ask the doctor,’ he replied, and
again making an evident effort to be affectionate, he said
with his lips only (his words clearly did not correspond to
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his thoughts):
‘Merci, chere amie, d’etre venue.’*
*”Thank you for coming, my dear.’
Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him
wince just perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know
what to say. She now understood what had happened to him
two days before. In his words, his tone, and especially in that
calm, almost antagonistic look could be felt an estrangement
from everything belonging to this world, terrible in one who
is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to understand,
not because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something elsesomething the living did not and
could not understandand which wholly occupied his mind.
‘There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together,’ said he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha.
‘She looks after me all the time.’
Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how
he could say such a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince
Andrew, how could he say that, before her whom he loved
and who loved him? Had he expected to live he could not
have said those words in that offensively cold tone. If he had
not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to
pity her and how could he speak like that in her presence?
The only explanation was that he was indifferent, because
something else, much more important, had been revealed
to him.
The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke off.


1837

‘Mary came by way of Ryazan,’ said Natasha.
Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and only after calling her so in his presence did
Natasha notice it herself.
‘Really?’ he asked.
‘They told her that all Moscow has been burned down,
and that..’
Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain
that he was making an effort to listen, but could not do so.
‘Yes, they say it’s burned,’ he said. ‘It’s a great pity,’ and he
gazed straight before him, absently stroking his mustache
with his fingers.
‘And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?’ Prince Andrew suddenly said, evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to
them. ‘He wrote here that he took a great liking to you,’ he
went on simply and calmly, evidently unable to understand
all the complex significance his words had for living people.
‘If you liked him too, it would be a good thing for you to get
married,’ he added rather more quickly, as if pleased at having found words he had long been seeking.
Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning
for her, except as a proof of how far away he now was from
everything living.
‘Why talk of me?’ she said quietly and glanced at
Natasha.
Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three
were again silent.
‘Andrew, would you like...’ Princess Mary suddenly said
in a trembling voice, ‘would you like to see little Nicholas?
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He is always talking about you!’
Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first
time, but Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with
horror that he did not smile with pleasure or affection for
his son, but with quiet, gentle irony because he thought she
was trying what she believed to be the last means of arousing him.
‘Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?’
When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew’s
room he looked at his father with frightened eyes, but did not
cry, because no one else was crying. Prince Andrew kissed
him and evidently did not know what to say to him.
When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again
went up to her brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain
her tears any longer began to cry.
He looked at her attentively.
‘Is it about Nicholas?’ he asked.
Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.
‘Mary, you know the Gosp...’ but he broke off.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. You mustn’t cry here,’ he said, looking at her
with the same cold expression.
When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that
she was crying at the thought that little Nicholas would be
left without a father. With a great effort he tried to return to
life and to see things from their point of view.
‘Yes, to them it must seem sad!’ he thought. ‘But how simple it is.
‘The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet


1839

your Father feedeth them,’ he said to himself and wished
to say to Princess Mary; ‘but no, they will take it their own
way, they won’t understand! They can’t understand that all
those feelings they prize soall our feelings, all those ideas
that seem so important to us, are unnecessary. We cannot
understand one another,’ and he remained silent.
Prince Andrew’s little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and knew nothing. After that day he lived through
many things, gaining knowledge, observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the faculties he afterwards
acquired, he could not have had a better or more profound
understanding of the meaning of the scene he had witnessed
between his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then.
He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without
crying, went silently up to Natasha who had come out with
him and looked shyly at her with his beautiful, thoughtful
eyes, then his uplifted, rosy upper lip trembled and leaning
his head against her he began to cry.
After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess
Mary, or to Natasha of whom he seemed even fonder than of
his aunt, and clung to them quietly and shyly.
When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully
understood what Natasha’s face had told her. She did not
speak any more to Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She
took turns with her beside his sofa, and did not cry any
more, but prayed continually, turning in soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the dying man
was now so evident.
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War and Peace

Chapter XVI
Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he
felt that he was dying and was already half dead. He was
conscious of an aloofness from everything earthly and a
strange and joyous lightness of existence. Without haste
or agitation he awaited what was coming. That inexorable,
eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which he had
felt continually all his lifewas now near to him and, by the
strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible
and palpable...
Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that terribly tormenting fear of deaththe endbut now
he no longer understood that fear.
He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a
top before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes,
and the sky, and knew that he was face to face with death.
When he came to himself after being wounded and the
flower of eternal, unfettered love had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage of life that had
restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased to think
about it.
During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he
penetrated into the new principle of eternal love revealed
to him, the more he unconsciously detached himself from


1841

earthly life. To love everything and everybody and always
to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not to
live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with
that principle of love, the more he renounced life and the
more completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier whichin the absence of such lovestands between life and death.
When during those first days he remembered that he would
have to die, he said to himself: ‘Well, what of it? So much
the better!’
But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he
had seen her for whom he longed appear before him and,
having pressed her hand to his lips, had shed gentle, happy
tears, love for a particular woman again crept unobserved
into his heart and once more bound him to life. And joyful
and agitating thoughts began to occupy his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station when he had seen
Kuragin, he could not now regain the feeling he then had,
but was tormented by the question whether Kuragin was
alive. And he dared not inquire.
His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what
Natasha referred to when she said: ‘This suddenly happened,’
had occurred two days before Princess Mary arrived. It was
the last spiritual struggle between life and death, in which
death gained the victory. It was the unexpected realization
of the fact that he still valued life as presented to him in the
form of his love for Natasha, and a last, though ultimately
vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.
It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya
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War and Peace

was sitting by the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him.
‘Ah, she has come!’ thought he.
And so it was: in Sonya’s place sat Natasha who had just
come in noiselessly.
Since she had begun looking after him, he had always
experienced this physical consciousness of her nearness.
She was sitting in an armchair placed sideways, screening
the light of the candle from him, and was knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings since Prince Andrew
had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick so well
as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles
clicked lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he
could clearly see the thoughtful profile of her drooping face.
She moved, and the ball rolled off her knees. She started,
glanced round at him, and screening the candle with her
hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact movement,
picked up the ball, and regained her former position.
He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a deep breath after stooping, but refrained from
doing so and breathed cautiously.
At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past,
and he had told her that if he lived he would always thank
God for his wound which had brought them together again,
but after that they never spoke of the future.
‘Can it or can it not be?’ he now thought as he looked at
her and listened to the light click of the steel needles. ‘Can
fate have brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?...


1843

Is it possible that the truth of life has been revealed to me
only to show me that I have spent my life in falsity? I love
her more than anything in the world! But what am I to do if
I love her?’ he thought, and he involuntarily groaned, from
a habit acquired during his sufferings.
On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking,
leaned nearer to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining
eyes, stepped lightly up to him and bent over him.
‘You are not asleep?’
‘No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you
come in. No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity
that you do... that light. I want to weep for joy.’
Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.
‘Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in
the world.’
‘And I!’She turned away for an instant. ‘Why too much?’
she asked.
‘Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in
your soul, your whole soulshall I live? What do you think?’
‘I am sure of it, sure!’ Natasha almost shouted, taking
hold of both his hands with a passionate movement.
He remained silent awhile.
‘How good it would be!’ and taking her hand he kissed
it.
Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered
that this would not do and that he had to be quiet.
‘But you have not slept,’ she said, repressing her joy. ‘Try
to sleep... please!’
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War and Peace

He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to
the candle and sat down again in her former position. Twice
she turned and looked at him, and her eyes met his beaming
at her. She set herself a task on her stocking and resolved not
to turn round till it was finished.
Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not
sleep long and suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold
perspiration.
As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject
that now always occupied his mindabout life and death, and
chiefly about death. He felt himself nearer to it.
‘Love? What is love?’ he thought.
‘Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I
understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is,
everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united
by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.’
These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were
only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were
not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brainspun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He
fell asleep.
He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was
in, but that he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and insignificant people appeared before
him. He talked to them and discussed something trivial.
They were preparing to go away somewhere. Prince Andrew
dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had more
important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising


1845

them by empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these
persons began to disappear and a single question, that of
the closed door, superseded all else. He rose and went to the
door to bolt and lock it. Everything depended on whether
he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and tried to
hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would
not be in time to lock the door though he painfully strained
all his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that
fear was the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just
when he was clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing against
it and forcing its way in. Something not humandeathwas
breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He
seized the door, making a final effort to hold it backto lock it
was no longer possiblebut his efforts were weak and clumsy
and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened
and closed again.
Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman
efforts were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly
opened. It entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrew
died.
But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered
that he was asleep, and at the very instant he died, having
made an effort, he awoke.
‘Yes, it was death! I diedand woke up. Yes, death is an
awakening!’ And all at once it grew light in his soul and
the veil that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as if powers till then
confined within him had been liberated, and that strange
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War and Peace

lightness did not again leave him.
When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the
divan, Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter.
He did not answer and looked at her strangely, not understanding.
That was what had happened to him two days before
Princess Mary’s arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever assumed a malignant character,
but what the doctor said did not interest Natasha, she saw
the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more convincing.
From that day an awakening from life came to Prince
Andrew together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did not seem to him slower
than an awakening from sleep compared to the duration of
a dream.
There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple
way. Both Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave
him, felt this. They did not weep or shudder and during
these last days they themselves felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left them)
but on what reminded them most closely of himhis body.
Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side
of death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of
it did they weep, nor did they ever talk to one another about
him. They felt that they could not express in words what


1847

they understood.
They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly,
deeper and deeper, away from them, and they both knew
that this had to be so and that it was right.
He confessed, and received communion: everyone came
to take leave of him. When they brought his son to him, he
pressed his lips to the boy’s and turned away, not because
he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was all that was
required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy,
he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking
whether there was anything else he should do.
When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving, occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were
present.
‘Is it over?’ said Princess Mary when his body had for
a few minutes lain motionless, growing cold before them.
Natasha went up, looked at the dead eyes, and hastened to
close them. She closed them but did not kiss them, but clung
to that which reminded her most nearly of himhis body.
‘Where has he gone? Where is he now?..’
When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin
on a table, everyone came to take leave of him and they all
wept.
Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for
Natasha and because he was no more. The old count cried
because he felt that before long, he, too, must take the same
terrible step.
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Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own personal grief; they wept with a reverent
and softening emotion which had taken possession of their
souls at the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery
of death that had been accomplished in their presence.



1849

BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812

1850

War and Peace

Chapter I
Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their
completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the multiplicity
and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken
separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first
approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and
says: ‘This is the cause!’ In historical events (where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first and
most primitive approximation to present itself was the will
of the gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the
most prominent positionthe heroes of history. But we need
only penetrate to the essence of any historic eventwhich lies
in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in
itto be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not
control the actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem to be a matter of indifference whether
we understand the meaning of historical events this way or
that; yet there is the same difference between a man who
says that the people of the West moved on the East because
Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened
because it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets
moved round it and those who admitted that they did not
know what upheld the earth, but knew there were laws di

1851

recting its movement and that of the other planets. There
is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the
one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing events,
and some of these laws are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of
these laws is only possible when possible when we have
quite abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of
some one man, just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only when men abandoned
the conception of the fixity of the earth.
The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its
destruction by fire, the most important episode of the war
of 1812 was the movement of the Russian army from the
Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino campthe
so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River.
They ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even
foreign historians, including the French, acknowledge the
genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of that
flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank march
to be the profound conception of some one man who saved
Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to
understand where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is
where there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best position for an army
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after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on the Kaluga
road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning
the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was
a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand
just why they think that this maneuver was calculated to
save Russia and destroy the French; for this flank march,
had it been preceded, accompanied, or followed by other
circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the Russians
and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
army really began to improve from the time of that march,
it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.
That flank march might not only have failed to give any
advantage to the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its destruction. What would have
happened had Moscow not burned down? If Murat had not
lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given
battle as Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have
happened had the French attacked the Russians while they
were marching beyond the Pakhra? What would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had attacked
the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown
when he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the French moved on Petersburg?... In any of
these eventualities the flank march that brought salvation
might have proved disastrous.
The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank
march cannot be attributed to any one man, that no one


1853

ever foresaw it, and that in reality, like the retreat from Fili,
it did not suggest itself to anyone in its entirety, but resultedmoment by moment, step by step, event by eventfrom
an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was
only seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and
belonged to the past.
At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds
of the Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In
proof of this there is the fact that the majority of the council
voted for such a retreat, and above all there is the well-known
conversation after the council, between the commander in
chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief
that the army supplies were for the most part stored along
the Oka in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they
retreated on Nizhni the army would be separated from its
supplies by the broad river Oka, which cannot be crossed
early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural coursea direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. The army
turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer
to its supplies. Subsequently the in activity of the French
(who even lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the
safety of the arsenal at Tula, and especially the advantages
of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
still further south to the Tula road. Having crossed over,
by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the Pakhra, the
Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and
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had no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable
circumstances and the reappearance of French troops who
had for a time lost touch with the Russians, and projects of
giving battle, and above all the abundance of provisions in
Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn still more to the
south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga road and
go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which
those supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it
was decided to abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say
precisely when, or by whom, it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got there, as the result of
innumerable and varying forces, did people begin to assure
themselves that they had desired this movement and long
ago foreseen its result.



1855

Chapter II
The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army,
which had been continually retreating straight back from
the invaders, deviated from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the district
where supplies were abundant.
If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of
genius leading the Russian army, we picture that army
without any leaders, it could not have done anything but
make a return movement toward Moscow, describing an arc
in the direction where most provisions were to be found and
where the country was richest.
That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and
Kaluga roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that direction, and demands were sent from
Petersburg for Kutuzov to take his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a reprimand from
the Emperor for having moved his army along the Ryazan
road, and the Emperor’s letter indicated to him the very position he had already occupied near Kaluga.
Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus
given by the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian armywhen the strength of that impetus was
exhausted and no fresh push was receivedassumed the posi1856

War and Peace

tion natural to it.
Kutuzov’s merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood
the significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the meaning of the French army’s inactivity, he
alone continued to assert that the battle of Borodino had
been a victory, he alonewho as commander in chief might
have been expected to be eager to attackemployed his whole
strength to restrain the Russian army from useless engagements.
The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the
fleeing hunter had left him; but whether he was still alive,
whether he was strong and merely lying low, the hunter did
not know. Suddenly the beast was heard to moan.
The moan of that wounded beast (the French army)
which betrayed its calamitous condition was the sending of
Lauriston to Kutuzov’s camp with overtures for peace.
Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words
that occurred to him, though they were meaningless.
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending
one of my adjutants-general to discuss several interesting
questions with you. I beg your Highness to credit what he
says to you, especially when he expresses the sentiment of
esteem and special regard I have long entertained for your
person. This letter having no other object, I pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and
gracious protection!
NAPOLEON


1857

MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812
Kutuzov replied: ‘I should be cursed by posterity were I
looked on as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is
the present spirit of my nation.’ But he continued to exert all
his powers to restrain his troops from attacking.
During the month that the French troops were pillaging
in Moscow and the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had taken place in the relative
strength of the two armiesboth in spirit and in numberas
a result of which the superiority had passed to the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French
army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change
occurred the need of attacking at once showed itself by
countless signs. These signs were: Lauriston’s mission; the
abundance of provisions at Tarutino; the reports coming in
from all sides of the inactivity and disorder of the French;
the flow of recruits to our regiments; the fine weather; the
long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually
shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to
what the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the
boldness with which our outposts now scouted close up to
the French stationed at Tarutino; the news of easy successes
gained by peasants and guerrilla troops over the French, the
envy aroused by this; the desire for revenge that lay in the
heart of every Russian as long as the French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every soldier’s
mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed
and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a
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War and Peace

substantial change in the relative strength, and an advance
had become inevitable. And at once, as a clock begins to
strike and chime as soon as the minute hand has completed
a full circle, this change was shown by an increased activity,
whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.



1859

Chapter III
The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his
staff, and also by the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the
news of the abandonment of Moscow had been received in
Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole campaign had been
drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance. Though this
plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow was
still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted
as a basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements
arranged from a distance were always difficult to execute.
So fresh instructions were sent for the solution of difficulties
that might be encountered, as well as fresh people who were
to watch Kutuzov’s actions and report upon them.
Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now
reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had
been killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon,
had to be filled. Very serious consideration was given to the
question whether it would be better to put A in B’s place and
B in D’s, or on the contrary to put D in A’s place, and so onas
if anything more than A’s or B’s satisfaction depended on
this.
As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential
representatives of the Emperor, and these transfers, a more
than usually complicated play of parties was going on
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War and Peace

among the staff of the army. A was undermining B, D was
undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and
permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue
was generally the conduct of the war, which all these men
believed they were directing; but this affair of the war went
on independently of them, as it had to go: that is, never in the
way people devised, but flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in the highest spheres did all these
schemes, crossings, and interminglings appear to be a true
reflection of what had to happen.
Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the
second of October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the
battle at Tarutino) Since September 2 Moscow has been in
the hands of the enemy. Your last reports were written on
the twentieth, and during all this time not only has no action
been taken against the enemy or for the relief of the ancient
capital, but according to your last report you have even retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy
detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode’s
reports, I see that an enemy corps of ten thousand men is
moving on the Petersburg road. Another corps of several
thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third has advanced
along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather considerable
detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk. Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In
view of all this information, when the enemy has scattered
his forces in large detachments, and with Napoleon and
his Guards in Moscow, is it possible that the enemy’s forces


1861

confronting you are so considerable as not to allow of your
taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army corps
much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at
least oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the provinces now occupied by the enemy, and
thereby averting danger from Tula and other towns in the
interior. You will be responsible if the enemy is able to direct
a force of any size against Petersburg to threaten this capital
in which it has not been possible to retain many troops; for
with the army entrusted to you, and acting with resolution
and energy, you have ample means to avert this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our offended
country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my
readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in
me, but I and Russia have a right to expect from you all the
zeal, firmness, and success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of the troops you command justify us
in expecting.
But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg,
was dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain the army he commanded from attacking and
a battle had taken place.
On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who
was out scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded hare he made his way far into the forest
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War and Peace

and came upon the left flank of Murat’s army, encamped
there without any precautions. The Cossack laughingly told
his comrades how he had almost fallen into the hands of the
French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his commander.
The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack
officers wished to take advantage of this chance to capture
some horses, but one of the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities, reported the incident
to a general on the staff. The state of things on the staff had
of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had been to see
Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to
use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him
to take the offensive.
‘If I did not know you I should think you did not want
what you are asking for. I need only advise anything and his
Highness is sure to do the opposite,’ replied Bennigsen.
The Cossack’s report, confirmed by horse patrols who
were sent out, was the final proof that events had matured.
The tightly coiled spring was released, the clock began to
whirr and the chimes to play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience, and his knowledge of men,
Kutuzovhaving taken into consideration the Cossack’s report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to the
Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and
the fact that all the generals expressed the same wishcould
no longer check the inevitable movement, and gave the order
to do what he regarded as useless and harmfulgave his approval, that is, to the accomplished fact.


1863

Chapter IV
Bennigsen’s note and the Cossack’s information that the
left flank of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it was necessary to order an attack, and it was
fixed for the fifth of October.
On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed
the dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the further arrangements.
‘All rightall right. I haven’t time just now,’ replied Ermolov,
and left the hut.
The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in
the Austerlitz dispositions, it was writtenthough not in German this time:
‘The First Column will march here and here,’ ‘the Second
Column will march there and there,’ and so on; and on paper, all these columns arrived at their places at the appointed
time and destroyed the enemy. Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions, and as is always
the case, not a single column reached its place at the appointed time.
When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions
had been prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the
Horse Guards, Kutuzov’s orderly, pleased at the importance
of the mission entrusted to him, went to Ermolov’s quarters.
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War and Peace

‘Gone away,’ said Ermolov’s orderly.
The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with
whom Ermolov was often to be found.
‘No, and the general’s out too.’
The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.
‘No, he’s gone out.’
‘If only they don’t make me responsible for this delay!
What a nuisance it is!’ thought the officer, and he rode round
the whole camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past
with some other generals, others said he must have returned
home. The officer searched till six o’clock in the evening without even stopping to eat. Ermolov was nowhere to be found
and no one knew where he was. The officer snatched a little
food at a comrade’s, and rode again to the vanguard to find
Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here he was
told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin’s and that Ermolov was probably there too.
‘But where is it?’
‘Why, there, over at Echkino,’ said a Cossack officer, pointing to a country house in the far distance.
‘What, outside our line?’
‘They’ve put two regiments as outposts, and they’re having such a spree there, it’s awful! Two bands and three sets
of singers!’
The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While
still at a distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a
soldier’s dance song proceeding from the house.
‘In the meadows... in the meadows!’ he heard, accompanied by whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every


1865

now and then by shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise,
but at the same time he was afraid that he would be blamed
for not having executed sooner the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight o’clock. He dismounted
and went up into the porch of a large country house which
had remained intact between the Russian and French forces.
In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling
about with wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside
the windows. The officer was admitted and immediately saw
all the chief generals of the army together, and among them
Ermolov’s big imposing figure. They all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle with flushed and
animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the room a
short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak with much spirit and agility.
‘Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!’
The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at
such a moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have
preferred to wait; but one of the generals espied him and,
hearing what he had come about, informed Ermolov.
Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and,
hearing what the officer had to say, took the papers from him
without a word.
‘You think he went off just by chance?’ said a comrade,
who was on the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse
Guards, referring to Ermolov. ‘It was a trick. It was done on
purpose to get Konovnitsyn into trouble. You’ll see what a
mess there’ll be tomorrow.’
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War and Peace

Chapter V
Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to
be called early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness of having to direct a battle he did
not approve of, got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and a half miles from Tarutino) to the
place where the attacking columns were to meet. He sat in
the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns, and listening
for any sound of firing on the right as an indication that
the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull
autumn morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to
water across the road along which he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his carriage, and
inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged
to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long before then. ‘It may be a mistake,’ thought the old
commander in chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their arms piled and the soldiers, only
partly dressed, eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel.
He sent for an officer. The officer reported that no order to
advance had been received.
‘How! Not rec...’ Kutuzov began, but checked himself
immediately and sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his
caleche, he waited with drooping head and breathing heav

1867

ily, pacing silently up and down. When Eykhen, the officer
of the general staff whom he had summoned, appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer was
to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of
sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell into that state of fury
in which he sometimes used to roll on the ground, and he
fell upon Eykhen, threatening him with his hands, shouting
and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain
Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to
blame, suffered the same fate.
‘What sort of another blackguard are you? I’ll have you
shot! Scoundrels!’ yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving
his arms and reeling.
He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief,
a Serene Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever had in Russia, to be placed in
this positionmade the laughingstock of the whole army!
‘I needn’t have been in such a hurry to pray about today,
or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,’
thought he to himself. ‘When I was a chit of an officer no
one would have dared to mock me so... and now!’ He was in
a state of physical suffering as if from corporal punishment,
and could not avoid expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon began to fail him, and looking
about him, conscious of having said much that was amiss,
he again got into his caleche and drove back in silence.
His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he listened to excuses and self-justifications
1868

War and Peace

(Ermolov did not come to see him till the next day) and to
the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the
movement that had miscarried should be executed next day.
And once more Kutuzov had to consent.



1869

Chapter VI
Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places
in the evening and advanced during the night. It was an
autumn night with dark purple clouds, but no rain. The
ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops advanced
noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery
could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out
loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried
to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some
columns, supposing. they had reached their destination,
halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,
but the majority marched all night and arrived at places
where they evidently should not have been.
Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least
important detachment of all) got to his appointed place at
the right time. This detachment halted at the outskirts of a
forest, on the path leading from the village of Stromilova to
Dmitrovsk.
Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off,
was awakened by a deserter from the French army being
brought to him. This was a Polish sergeant of Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had come over
because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought
long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver
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War and Peace

than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay
them out. He said that Murat was spending the night less
than a mile from where they were, and that if they would let
him have a convoy of a hundred men he would capture him
alive. Count Orlov-Denisov consulted his fellow officers.
The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and everybody advised making the attempt.
After much disputing and arguing, Major-General Grekov
with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the Polish
sergeant.
‘Now, remember,’ said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at parting, ‘if you have been lying I’ll have you hanged
like a dog; but if it’s true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!’
Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air,
mounted and rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into the forest, and Count
Orlov-Denisov, having seen Grekov off, returned, shivering
from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what
he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began
looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns
ought to have begun to appear on an open declivity to his
right. He looked in that direction, but though the columns
would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be
seen. It seemed to the count that things were beginning to
stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.
‘Oh, it is really too late,’ said Count Orlov, looking at the


1871

camp.
As often happens when someone we have trusted is no
longer before our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and
obvious to him that the sergeant was an impostor, that he
had lied, and that the whole Russian attack would be ruined
by the absence of those two regiments, which he would lead
away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!
‘I am sure that rascal was lying,’ said the count.
‘They can still be called back,’ said one of his suite, who
like Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he
looked at the enemy’s camp.
‘Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go
on or not?’
‘Will you have them fetched back?’
‘Fetch them back, fetch them back!’ said Count Orlov
with sudden determination, looking at his watch. ‘It will be
too late. It is quite light.’
And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited
both by the abandoned attempt and by vainly awaiting the
infantry columns that still did not appear, as well as by the
proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
felt the same excitement.
‘Mount!’ he commanded in a whisper. The men took
their places and crossed themselves.... ‘Forward, with God’s
aid!’
‘Hurrah-ah-ah!’ reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies, trailing their lances and advancing one
1872

War and Peace

after another as if poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across
the brook toward the camp.
One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp,
undressed and only just waking up, ran off in all directions,
abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.
Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and around them, they would have
captured Murat and everything there. That was what the
officers desired. But it was impossible to make the Cossacks
budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None
of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and
thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards
and (what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses,
saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt
with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty dividednot
without some shouting and even a little themselvesand it
was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.
The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover
themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.
Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive,
advanced no further.
Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that
‘the First Column will march’ and so on, the infantry of the
belated columns, commanded by Bennigsen and directed
by Toll, had started in due order and, as always happens,
had got somewhere, but not to their appointed places. As
always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;
murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and


1873

finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had
come quite wrong and were late, gave vent to a little abuse,
and at last gave it all up and went forward, simply to get
somewhere. ‘We shall get somewhere or other!’ And they
did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places;
a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late to
be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this
battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside
down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut’s corps in a
wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps
should long before have joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and
vexed by the failure and supposing that someone must be
responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the commander of the
corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying that he
ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of
placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s
surprise and quite contrary to his usual character and said
disagreeable things to Toll.
‘I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die
with my men as well as anybody,’ he said, and advanced
with a single division.
Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this brave
general went straight ahead, leading his men under fire,
without considering in his agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would be of any use or no.
Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he needed
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War and Peace

in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and
other bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for some time quite uselessly.



1875

Chapter VII
Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the
French from the front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that nothing but confusion would come
of this battle undertaken against his will, and as far as was
in his power held the troops back. He did not advance.
He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering suggestions that they should attack.
‘The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don’t
see that we are unable to execute complicated maneuvers,’
said he to Miloradovich who asked permission to advance.
‘We couldn’t take Murat prisoner this morning or get to
the place in time, and nothing can be done now!’ he replied
to someone else.
When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rearwhere according to the reports of the Cossacks there had
previously been nobodythere were now two battalions of
Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov who was behind
him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous
day.
‘You see! They are asking to attack and making plans
of all kinds, but as soon as one gets to business nothing is
ready, and the enemy, forewarned, takes measures accordingly.’
Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hear1876

War and Peace

ing these words. He understood that for him the storm had
blown over, and that Kutuzov would content himself with
that hint.
‘He’s having a little fun at my expense,’ said Ermolov
softly, nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.
Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully remarked:
‘It is not too late yet, your Highnessthe enemy has not
gone awayif you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards
will not so much as see a little smoke.’
Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him
that Murat’s troops were in retreat he ordered an advance,
though at every hundred paces he halted for three quarters
of an hour.
The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov’s
Cossacks had done: the rest of the army merely lost some
hundreds of men uselessly.
In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration, and Bennigsen some diamonds and a
hundred thousand rubles, others also received pleasant
recognitions corresponding to their various grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.
‘That’s how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!’
said the Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino
battle, letting it be understood that some fool there is doing
things all wrong but that we ourselves should not have done
so, just as people speak today. But people who talk like that
either do not know what they are talking about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battleTarutino, Borodino, or


1877

Austerlitztakes place as those who planned it anticipated.
That is an essential condition.
A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man
freer than during a battle, where it is a question of life and
death) influence the course taken by the fight, and that
course never can be known in advance and never coincides
with the direction of any one force.
If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act
on a given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide
with any one of those forces, but will always be a meanwhat
in mechanics is represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.
If in the descriptions given by historians, especially
French ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in
accordance with previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions are false.
The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim
Toll had in viewto lead the troops into action in the order
prescribed by the dispositions; nor that which Count OrlovDenisov may have had in viewto take Murat prisoner; nor
the result of immediately destroying the whole corps, which
Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor the aim of
the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than
he got, and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the Russians of that day desiredto
drive the French out of Russia and destroy their armyit is
quite clear that the battle of Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage of
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War and Peace

the campaign. It would be difficult and even impossible to
imagine any result more opportune than the actual outcome
of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant
losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important
results of the whole campaign were attained: the transition
from retreat to advance, an exposure of the weakness of the
French, and the administration of that shock which Napoleon’s army had only awaited to begin its flight.



1879

Chapter VIII
Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la
Moskowa; there can be no doubt about the victory for the
battlefield remains in the hands of the French. The Russians
retreat and abandon their ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and incalculable wealth,
is in Napoleon’s hands. The Russian army, only half the
strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to
attack for a whole month. Napoleon’s position is most brilliant. He can either fall on the Russian army with double its
strength and destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace,
or in case of a refusal make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, return to Smolensk
or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special genius
would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position
the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and
easy steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot,
to prepare winter clothingof which there was sufficient in
Moscow for the whole armyand methodically to collect the
provisions, of which (according to the French historians)
there were enough in Moscow to supply the whole army for
six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of all geniuses, who
the historians declare had control of the army, took none of
these steps.
He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the con1880

War and Peace

trary he used his power to select the most foolish and
ruinous of all the courses open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow, advancing on
Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring by a more
northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov
afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be
imagined than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting the troops plunder the city; then,
hesitating whether to leave a garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without joining battle,
turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets, again
without attempting to break through and take the road
Kutuzov took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the
devastated Smolensk road. Nothing more stupid than that
could have been devised, or more disastrous for the army,
as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon’s aim been to destroy
his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have devised any series of actions that would so completely have
accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the
Russian army might do.
Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he
destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was
very stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought
his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because he
was very clever and a genius.
In both cases his personal activity, having no more force
than the personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided
with the laws that guided the event.
The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon’s facul

1881

ties as having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because
the results did not justify his actions. He employed all
his ability and strength to do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done previously and as he did
subsequently in 1813. His activity at that time was no less
astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in Austria, and in
Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his genius
was genuine in Egyptwhere forty centuries looked down
upon his grandeurfor his great exploits there are all told us
by Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius
in Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information
from French or German sources, and the incomprehensible
surrender of whole corps without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to recognize his
genius as the only explanation of the war carried on in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his
genius in order to hide our shame. We have paid for the
right to look at the matter plainly and simply, and we will
not abandon that right.
His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of
genius as elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after
plan were issued by him from the time he entered Moscow
till the time he left it. The absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did not disconcert
him. He did not lose sight either of the welfare of his army
or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or of
diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.
1882

War and Peace

Chapter IX
With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately
on his entry into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the movements of the Russian army, sent
army corps out along the different roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful directions about
the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a brilliant plan
for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia.
With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in
rags and did not know how to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and his magnanimity,
and having written a letter to the Emperor Alexander in
which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend and
Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.
Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to
Petersburg to negotiate.
With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires
he gave orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the
scoundrel Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn
down his houses.
With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was
granted a constitution. A municipality was established and


1883

the following announcement issued:
INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!
Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King desires to arrest their course. Terrible
examples have taught you how he punishes disobedience
and crime. Strict measures have been taken to put an end
to disorder and to re-establish public security. A paternal
administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form
your municipality or city government. It will take care of
you, of your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will
be distinguished by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder,
and the mayor of the city will wear a white belt as well. But
when not on duty they will only wear a red ribbon round
the left arm.
The city police is established on its former footing, and
better order already prevails in consequence of its activity.
The government has appointed two commissaries general,
or chiefs of police, and twenty commissaries or captains of
wards have been appointed to the different wards of the city.
You will recognize them by the white ribbon they will wear
on the left arm. Several churches of different denominations
are open, and divine service is performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every day to their
homes. and orders have been given that they should find
in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes.
These are the measures the government has adopted to reestablish order and relieve youp condition. But to achieve
this aim it is necessary that you should add your efforts and
should, if possible, forget the misfortunes you have suffered,
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War and Peace

should entertain the hope of a less cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death awaits those
who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains
of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that
these will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of
whatever nation you may be, re-establish public confidence,
the source of the welfare of a state, live like brothers, render
mutual aid and protection one to another, unite to defeat
the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the military and
civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to flow!
With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed
that all the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude* to obtain provisions for themselves, so that the army
might have its future provided for.
*As looters.
With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to
be brought back and services to be again performed in the
churches.
With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army,
the following was placarded everywhere:
PROCLAMATION!
You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and
workmen whom misfortune has driven from the city, and
you scattered tillers of the soil, still kept out in the fields
by groundless fear, listen! Tranquillity is returning to this
capital and order is being restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from their hiding places on
finding that they are respected. Any violence to them or to


1885

their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among
you his enemy except those who disobey his orders. He
desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your
homes and families. Respond, therefore, to his benevolent
intentions and come to us without fear. Inhabitants, return
with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find means
of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans, return to your work, your houses, your shops, where
the protection of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work. And lastly you too, peasants, come
from the forests where you are hiding in terror, return to
your huts without fear, in full assurance that you will find
protection! Markets are established in the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the products of
the soil. The government has taken the following steps
to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants, husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood
of Moscow may without any danger bring their supplies of
all kinds to two appointed markets, of which one is on the
Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision Market.
(2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices
as seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to
obtain a fair price he will be free to take his goods back to
his village and no one may hinder him under any pretense.
(3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are appointed as
the chief market days and to that end a sufficient number
of troops will be stationed along the highroads on Tuesdays
and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect
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War and Peace

the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants
with their carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on
their return journey. (5) Steps will immediately be taken to
re-establish ordinary trading.
Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are
called on to carry out the paternal intentions of His Majesty
the Emperor and King and to co-operate with him for the
public welfare! Lay your respect and confidence at his feet
and do not delay to unite with us!
With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of
the people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The Emperor rode through the streets to comfort
the inhabitants, and, despite his preoccupation with state
affairs, himself visited the theaters that were established by
his order.
In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned
heads, Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the
words Maison de ma Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining tender filial affection
with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He visited the
Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by
him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then, as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his
soldiers to be paid in forged Russian money which he had
prepared: ‘Raising the use of these means by an act worthy
of himself and of the French army, he let relief be distributed
to those who had been burned out. But as food was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part


1887

enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money
with which to purchase food from outside, and had paper
rubles distributed to them.’
With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being issued to inflict severe punishment for the
nonperformance of military duties and to suppress robbery.

1888

War and Peace

Chapter X
But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and planswhich were not at all worse than others issued in similar
circumstancesdid not affect the essence of the matter but,
like the hands of a clock detached from the mechanism,
swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way without engaging the cogwheels.
With reference to the military sidethe plan of campaignthat work of genius of which Thiers remarks that, ‘His
genius never devised anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable,’ and enters into a polemic with M.
Fain to prove that this work of genius must be referred not
to the fourth but to the fifteenth of Octoberthat plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of touch
with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for
which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil
the Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved
quite useless. The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon’s wish that it should be blown up
when he left Moscowas a child wants the floor on which he
has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian
army, about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced
an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with
the Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to
Thiers it was only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the


1889

skilland apparently the geniusof Murat.
With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon’s arguments
as to his magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and
to Yakovlev (whose chief concern was to obtain a greatcoat
and a conveyance), proved useless; Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their embassage.
With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the
supposed incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.
With regard to administrative matters, the establishment
of a municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of
use to certain people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of preserving order looted Moscow or
saved their own property from being looted.
With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had
so easily been settled by Napoleon’s visit to a mosque, no
results were achieved. Two or three priests who were found
in Moscow did try to carry out Napoleon’s wish, but one
of them was slapped in the face by a French soldier while
conducting service, and a French official reported of another that: ‘The priest whom I found and invited to say Mass
cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors
were again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books
mutilated, and other disorders perpetrated.’
With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There
were no industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the
commissaries who ventured too far out of town with the
proclamation and killed them.
As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people
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War and Peace

and the troops, these did not meet with success either. The
theaters set up in the Kremlin and in Posnyakov’s house
were closed again at once because the actors and actresses
were robbed.
Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The
genuine as well as the false paper money which flooded
Moscow lost its value. The French, collecting booty, cared
only for gold. Not only was the paper money valueless which
Napoleon so graciously distributed to the unfortunate, but
even silver lost its value in relation to gold.
But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness
of the orders given by the authorities at that time was
Napoleon’s attempt to stop the looting and re-establish discipline.
This is what the army authorities were reporting:
‘Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against
it. Order is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade in a lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture
to trade, and they sell stolen goods.’
‘The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged
by soldiers of the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking
from the unfortunate inhabitants hiding in the cellars the
little they have left, even have the ferocity to wound them
with their sabers, as I have repeatedly witnessed.’
‘Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and
pillagingOctober 9.’
‘Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of
thieves in our district who ought to be arrested by a strong
forceOctober 11.’


1891

‘The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the
strict orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards
are continually seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the
Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and today. The
Emperor sees with regret that the picked soldiers appointed
to guard his person, who should set an example of discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break
into the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others
have disgraced themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and have abused and beaten them.’
‘The Grand Marshal of the palace,’ wrote the governor,
‘complains bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to commit nuisances in all the courtyards
and even under the very windows of the Emperor.’
That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling
underfoot the provender which might have saved it from
starvation, disintegrated and perished with each additional
day it remained in Moscow. But it did not go away.
It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk
road, and by the battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle
of Tarutino, unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review,
evoked in him a desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says),
and he issued the order for departure which the whole army
was demanding.
Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his
own personal tresor, but on seeing the baggage trains that
1892

War and Peace

impeded the army, he was (Thiers says) horror-struck. And
yet with his experience of war he did not order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with those
of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed
at the caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding
and remarked that it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions, the sick, and the
wounded.
The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which feels it is perishing and does not know
what it is doing. To study the skillful tactics and aims of
Napoleon and his army from the time it entered Moscow till
it was destroyed is like studying the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded
animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter’s gun,
runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same
thing. The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the
beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter’s gun, reached
him, turned back, and finallylike any wild beastran back
along the most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where
the old scent was familiar.
During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems
to us to have been the leader of all these movementsas the
figurehead of a ship may seem to a savage to guide the vesselacted like a child who, holding a couple of strings inside
a carriage, thinks he is driving it.



1893

Chapter XI
Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went
out of the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to
play with a little blue-gray dog, with a long body and short
bandy legs, that jumped about him. This little dog lived in
their shed, sleeping beside Karataev at night; it sometimes
made excursions into the town but always returned again.
Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to
nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; the
soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and
others called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or any definite color did not
seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail
stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs served it
so well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run
very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use
all four. Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back,
yelping with delight, now bask in the sun with a thoughtful
air of importance, and now frolic about playing with a chip
of wood or a straw.
Pierre’s attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the
only remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier’s
trousers which by Karataev’s advice he tied with string
round the ankles for warmth, and a peasant coat and cap.
Physically he had changed much during this time. He no
1894

War and Peace

longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and
mustache covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of
hair, infested with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The
look of his eyes was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as
never before. The former slackness which had shown itself
even in his eyes was now replaced by an energetic readiness
for action and resistance. His feet were bare.
Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles
and horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across the river, then at the dog who was pretending
to be in earnest about biting him, and then at his bare feet
which he placed with pleasure in various positions, moving
his dirty thick big toes. Every time he looked at his bare feet
a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted across his face.
The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced
and learned during these weeks and this recollection was
pleasant to him.
For some days the weather had been calm and clear with
slight frosts in the morningswhat is called an ‘old wives’
summer.’
In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was
particularly pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the
morning frost still in the air.
On everythingfar and nearlay the magic crystal glitter
seen only at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance, with the village, the church, and the
large white house. The bare trees, the sand, the bricks and
roofs of the houses, the green church spire, and the cor

1895

ners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the
transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of
a half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac
bushes still showing dark green beside the fence. And even
that ruined and befouled housewhich in dull weather was
repulsively uglyseemed quietly beautiful now, in the clear,
motionless brilliance.
A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely
way, a skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth,
came from behind a corner of the shed and approached
Pierre with a friendly wink.
‘What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!’ (Their name for Pierre.)
‘Eh? Just like spring!’
And the corporal leaned against the door and offered
Pierre his pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always
declined it.
‘To be on the march in such weather...’ he began.
Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and
the corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an order about the prisoners that
day. Sokolov, one of the soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was
dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something should
be done about him. The corporal replied that Pierre need
not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the
sick, and that in general everything that could happen had
been foreseen by the authorities.
‘Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to
1896

War and Peace

the captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain when he makes his round, he
will do anything for you.’
(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long
chats with Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)
‘‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day. ‘Monsieur Kiril is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a
Russian seigneur who has had misfortunes, but he is a man.
He knows what’s what.... If he wants anything and asks me,
he won’t get a refusal. When one has studied, you see, one
likes education and well-bred people.’ It is for your sake I
mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been
for you that affair would have ended ill.’
And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went
away. (The affair he had alluded to had happened a few days
beforea fight between the prisoners and the French soldiers,
in which Pierre had succeeded in pacifying his comrades.)
Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre talking to the
corporal immediately asked what the Frenchman had said.
While Pierre was repeating what he had been told about the
army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier
came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked
Pierre whether the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a
shirt to sew was in that shed.
A week before the French had had boot leather and linen
issued to them, which they had given out to the prisoners to
make up into boots and shirts for them.
‘Ready, ready, dear fellow!’ said Karataev, coming out


1897

with a neatly folded shirt.
Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered
shirt as black as soot. His hair was bound round, workman
fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast, and his round face
seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.
‘A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday
and here it is, ready,’ said Platon, smiling and unfolding the
shirt he had sewn.
The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as
if overcoming his hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform
and put on the shirt. He had a long, greasy, flowered silk
waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare body, but no shirt. He
was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on would laugh
at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. None of
the prisoners said a word.
‘See, it fits well!’ Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt
straight.
The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands
through, without raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt
and examined the seams.
‘You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had
no proper tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to
kill a louse,’ said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.
‘It’s good, quite good, thank you,’ said the Frenchman, in
French, ‘but there must be some linen left over.
‘It will fit better still when it sets to your body,’ said
Karataev, still admiring his handiwork. ‘You’ll be nice and
1898

War and Peace

comfortable...’
‘Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?’ said
the Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and gave it to Karataev. ‘But give me the
pieces that are over.’
Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what
the Frenchman was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the Frenchman for the money and
went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman insisted
on having the pieces returned that were left over and asked
Pierre to translate what he said.
‘What does he want the bits for?’ said Karataev. ‘They’d
make fine leg bands for us. Well, never mind.’
And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened
expression, took a small bundle of scraps from inside his
shirt and gave it to the Frenchman without looking at him.
‘Oh dear!’ muttered Karataev and went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then
looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre’s look had told
him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky
voice:
‘Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!’ And handing back the odd bits he turned and went out.
‘There, look at that,’ said Karataev, swaying his head.
‘People said they were not Christians, but they too have
souls. It’s what the old folk used to say: ‘A sweating hand’s
an open hand, a dry hand’s close.’ He’s naked, but yet he’s
given it back.’
Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile look

1899

ing at the pieces.
‘But they’ll make grand leg bands, dear friend,’ he said,
and went back into the shed.

1900

War and Peace

Chapter XII
Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though the French had offered to move him from
the men’s to the officers’ shed, he had stayed in the shed
where he was first put.
In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but
thanks to his physical strength and health, of which he had
till then been unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact
that the privations came so gradually that it was impossible
to say when they began, he endured his position not only
lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the
tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain
to reach. He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed
him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought
it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of
town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoningand
all these quests and experiments had failed him. And now
without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner
harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.
Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the
executions had as it were forever washed away from his


1901

imagination and memory the agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did not now
occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or
Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things were no
business of his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them and therefore could not do so. ‘Russia and
summer weather are not bound together,’ he thought, repeating words of Karataev’s which he found strangely consoling.
His intention of killing Napoleon and his calculations of
the cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now
seemed to him meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should not be
smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing.
What concern was it of his that somewhere or other that
woman was leading the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and especially to him, whether or not they
found out that their prisoner’s name was Count Bezukhov?
He now often remembered his conversation with Prince
Andrew and quite agreed with him, though he understood
Prince Andrew’s thoughts somewhat differently. Prince
Andrew had thought and said that happiness could only be
negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony
as though he was really saying that all desire for positive
happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and never
be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s
needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to
be indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and now for
1902

War and Peace

the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating
when he wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink,
sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth when he was
cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk and
to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needsgood
food, cleanliness, and freedomnow that he was deprived of
all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness;
and the choice of occupation, that is, of his way of lifenow
that that was so restrictedseemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life
destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupationsuch freedom as his wealth,
his education, and his social position had given him in his
own lifeis just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of having
an occupation.
All Pierre’s daydreams now turned on the time when he
would be free. Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life,
he thought and spoke with enthusiasm of that month of
captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong, joyful sensations,
and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.
When on the first day he got up early, went out of the
shed at dawn, and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New
Convent of the Virgin still dark at first, the hoarfrost on
the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the wooded banks
above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance,
when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the noise
of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when


1903

afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun’s rim appeared solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and
crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began
to sparkle in the glad lightPierre felt a new joy and strength
in life such as he had never before known. And this not only
stayed with him during the whole of his imprisonment, but
even grew in strength as the hardships of his position increased.
That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything
was still further strengthened in him by the high opinion his
fellow prisoners formed of him soon after his arrival at the
shed. With his knowledge of languages, the respect shown
him by the French, his simplicity, his readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance of three rubles
a week made to officers); with his strength, which he showed
to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut; his
gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting
still and thinking without doing anything (which seemed to
them incomprehensible), he appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being. The very qualities that had been
a hindrance, if not actually harmful, to him in the world
he had lived inhis strength, his disdain for the comforts of
life, his absent-mindedness and simplicityhere among these
people gave him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt
that their opinion placed responsibilities upon him.

1904

War and Peace

Chapter XIII
The French evacuation began on the night between
the sixth and seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were
dismantled, carts loaded, and troops and baggage trains
started.
At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching
trim, wearing shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks,
and enormous sacks, stood in front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all along
the lines.
In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod,
and only awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov,
pale and thin with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat
in his place barefoot and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly at
his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he
moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much
his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery)
as his fear and grief at being left alone.
Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes
Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots
mended with, went up to the sick man and squatted down
beside him.
‘You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They


1905

have a hospital here. You may be better off than we others,’
said Pierre.
‘O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!’ moaned
the man in a louder voice.
‘I’ll go and ask them again directly,’ said Pierre, rising
and going to the door of the shed.
Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had
offered him a pipe the day before came up to it with two
soldiers. The corporal and soldiers were in marching kit
with knapsacks and shakos that had metal straps, and these
changed their familiar faces.
The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door.
The prisoners had to be counted before being let out.
‘Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...’ Pierre
began.
But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was
the corporal he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the
corporal seem at that moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was
speaking a sharp rattle of drums was suddenly heard from
both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed
became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two
sides drowned the sick man’s groans.
‘There it is!... It again!...’ said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal’s
changed face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and
deafening noise of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled people against their will
to kill their fellow menthat force the effect of which he had
1906

War and Peace

witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to escape
that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those
who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now.
One had to wait and endure. He did not again go to the sick
man, nor turn to look at him, but stood frowning by the
door of the hut.
When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into
the exit, Pierre pushed his way forward and approached that
very captain who as the corporal had assured him was ready
to do anything for him. The captain was also in marching
kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre
had recognized in the corporal’s words and in the roll of
the drums.
‘Pass on, pass on!’ the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.
Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt
would be vain.
‘What now?’ the officer asked with a cold look as if not
recognizing Pierre.
Pierre told him about the sick man.
‘He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!’ said the captain.
‘Pass on, pass on!’ he continued without looking at Pierre.
‘But he is dying,’ Pierre again began.
‘Be so good...’ shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
‘Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...’ rattled the drums, and
Pierre understood that this mysterious force completely
controlled these men and that it was now useless to say any
more.


1907

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers
and told to march in front. There were about thirty officers,
with Pierre among them, and about three hundred men.
The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all
strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They
looked at him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien.
Not far from him walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated,
angry face, who was wearing a Kazan dressing grown tied
round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped
his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown
and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting
and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody
because he thought he was being pushed and that they were
all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
all surprised at something when there was nothing to be
surprised at. Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to
everyone, conjecturing where they were now being taken
and how far they would get that day. An official in felt boots
and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side
to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations as to what had been burned down and
what this or that part of the city was that they could see. A
third officer, who by his accent was a Pole, disputed with the
commissariat officer, arguing that he was mistaken in his
identification of the different wards of Moscow.
‘What are you disputing about?’ said the major angrily.
‘What does it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius?
You see it’s burned down, and there’s an end of it.... What
1908

War and Peace

are you pushing for? Isn’t the road wide enough?’ said he,
turning to a man behind him who was not pushing him at
all.
‘Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?’ the prisoners on one
side and another were heard saying as they gazed on the
charred ruins. ‘All beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the
Kremlin.... Just look! There’s not half of it left. Yes, I told
youthe whole quarter beyond the river, and so it is.’
‘Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?’
said the major.
As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of
the few unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of
prisoners suddenly started to one side and exclamations of
horror and disgust were heard.
‘Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he
is... And smeared with something!’
Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that
evoked these exclamations, and dimly made out something
leaning against the palings surrounding the church. From
the words of his comrades who saw better than he did, he
found that this was the body of a man, set upright against
the palings with its face smeared with soot.
‘Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...’ the convoy guards began cursing and the French
soldiers, with fresh virulence, drove away with their swords
the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at the dead man.



1909

Chapter XIV
Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter
the prisoners marched, followed only by their escort and
the vehicles and wagons belonging to that escort, but when
they reached the supply stores they came among a huge and
closely packed train of artillery mingled with private vehicles.
At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to
get across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines
of moving baggage trains before and behind them. To the
right, where the Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless
rows of troops and carts stretched away into the distance.
These were troops of Beauharnais’ corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and
across the Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.
Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners,
were crossing the Crimean bridge and some were already
debouching into the Kaluga road. But the baggage trains
stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’ train had not
yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kaluga road when
the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the
Great Ordynka Street.
When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps forward, halted, and again moved
on, and from all sides vehicles and men crowded closer
1910

War and Peace

and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking
more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square
where the streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and the prisoners jammed close together
had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all sides,
like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse.
Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with
the roll of the drums.
To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed
onto the wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre
was leaning.
‘What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve loaded goods even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!’
they exclaimed. ‘Just see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind in the cart....
Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by heaven!...
Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded himself
up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they’ve even grabbed
those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks....
Heavens! They’re fighting.’
‘That’s right, hit him on the snouton his snout! Like this,
we shan’t get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why,
that must be Napoleon’s own. See what horses! And the
monograms with a crown! It’s like a portable house.... That
fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see it. Fighting again...
A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either! Yes, I


1911

dare say, that’s the way they’ll let you pass... Just look, there’s
no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
carriagessee how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!’
Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general
curiosity bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and
Pierre, thanks to his stature, saw over the heads of the others
what so attracted their curiosity. In three carriages involved
among the munition carts, closely squeezed together, sat
women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring colors, who
were shouting something in shrill voices.
From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious force nothing had seemed to him
strange or dreadful: neither the corpse smeared with soot
for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an
impression on himas if his soul, making ready for a hard
struggle, refused to receive impressions that might weaken
it.
The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more
carts, soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages,
soldiers, ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and
then women.
Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their
movement.
All these people and horses seemed driven forward by
some invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched
them they all came flowing from the different streets with
one and the same desire to get on quickly; they all jostled
one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white teeth
1912

War and Peace

gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew
from side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck
Pierre that morning on the corporal’s face when the drums
were beating.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding
the escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels
forced his way in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.
They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun began to set. The baggage carts drew
up close together and the men began to prepare for their
night’s rest. They all appeared angry and dissatisfied. For a
long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could be heard
from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran into
one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some
beat the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside,
others fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one
German was badly wounded on the head by a sword.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped
amid fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same feeling of unpleasant awakening
from the hurry and eagerness to push on that had seized
them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know where they were going,
and that much that was painful and difficult awaited them
on this journey.
During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even


1913

worse than they had done at the start. It was here that the
prisoners for the first time received horseflesh for their meat
ration.
From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed
what seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to their former friendly
relations.
This spite increased still more when, on calling over the
roll of prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving
Moscow one Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat
a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from the road,
and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten
to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of
the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s
excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged
behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had crushed
him during the executions, but which be had not felt during his imprisonment, now again controlled his existence.
It was terrible, but he felt that in proportion to the efforts of
that fatal force to crush him, there grew and strengthened
in his soul a power of life independent of it.
He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and
chatted with his comrades.
Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they
had seen in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment
by the French, or of the order to shoot them which had been
announced to them. As if in reaction against the worsen1914

War and Peace

ing of their position they were all particularly animated
and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of their present situation.
The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here
and there in the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread
above the horizon from the rising full moon, and that vast
red ball swayed strangely in the gray haze. It grew light. The
evening was ending, but the night had not yet come. Pierre
got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
campfires to the other side of the road where he had been
told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French
sentinel who ordered him back.
Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an unharnessed cart where there was nobody.
Tucking his legs under him and dropping his head he sat
down on the cold ground by the wheel of the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly
he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter,
so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise to
see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could
mean.
‘Ha-ha-ha!’ laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: ‘The soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut
me up. They hold me captive. What, me? Me? My immortal
soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...’ and he laughed till tears started to his eyes.
A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow


1915

was laughing at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got
up, went farther away from the inquisitive man, and looked
around him.
The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the crackling of campfires and the voices of many
men had grown quiet, the red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light sky hung the full
moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen before,
were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and
the twinkling stars in its faraway depths. ‘And all that is
me, all that is within me, and it is all I!’ thought Pierre. ‘And
they caught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with
planks!’ He smiled, and went and lay down to sleep beside
his companions.

1916

War and Peace

Chapter XV
In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely
dated from Moscow, though Napoleon was already not far
from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga road. Kutuzov replied to
this letter as he had done to the one formerly brought by
Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.
Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov’s
guerrilla detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that
troops of Broussier’s division had been seen at Forminsk
and that being separated from the rest of the French army
they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and officers
again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
memory of the easy victory at Tarutino, urged Kutuzov to
carry out Dorokhov’s suggestion. Kutuzov did not consider
any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which
was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to
attack Broussier.
By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out
to be a most difficult and important one, was entrusted
to Dokhturovthat same modest little Dokhturov whom
no one had described to us as drawing up plans of battles,
dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses on
batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was
spoken of as undecided and undiscerningbut whom we find


1917

commanding wherever the position was most difficult all
through the Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year
1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all were
flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the
rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk with twenty
thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon’s whole
army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly
dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by
the bombardment of the townand Smolensk held out all day
long. At the battle of Borodino, when Bagration was killed
and nine tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and
the full force of the French artillery fire was directed against
it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and undiscerning DokhturovKutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake
he had made by sending someone else there first. And the
quiet little Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became
the greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have
been described to us in verse and prose, but of Dokhturov
scarcely a word has been said.
It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk
and from there to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last
battle with the French was fought and where the obvious
disintegration of the French army began; and we are told of
many geniuses and heroes of that period of the campaign,
but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest
testimony to his merit.
It is natural for a man who does not understand the
1918

War and Peace

workings of a machine to imagine that a shaving that has
fallen into it by chance and is interfering with its action
and tossing about in it is its most important part. The man
who does not understand the construction of the machine
cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders
the working.
On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo,
preparing faithfully to execute the orders he had received,
the whole French army having, in its convulsive movement,
reached Murat’s position apparently in order to give battlesuddenly without any reason turned off to the left onto the
new Kaluga road and began to enter Forminsk, where only
Broussier had been till then. At that time Dokhturov had
under his command, besides Dorokhov’s detachment, the
two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.
On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured.
The prisoner said that the troops that had entered Forminsk
that day were the vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had left Moscow four
days previously. That same evening a house serf who had
come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov’s detachment
reported having sighted the French Guards marching along
the road to Borovsk. From all these reports it was evident
that where they had expected to meet a single division there


1919

was now the whole French army marching from Moscow in
an unexpected directionalong the Kaluga road. Dokhturov
was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear
to him now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to
attack Forminsk. But only Broussier had been there at that
time and now the whole French army was there. Ermolov
wished to act on his own judgment, but Dokhturov insisted
that he must have Kutuzov’s instructions. So it was decided
to send a dispatch to the staff.
For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was
chosen, who was to explain the whole affair by word of
mouth, besides delivering a written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the dispatch and
verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.

1920

War and Peace

Chapter XVI
It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining
for four days. Having changed horses twice and galloped
twenty miles in an hour and a half over a sticky, muddy
road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka after one o’clock
at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down
his reins, he entered a dark passage.
‘The general on duty, quick! It’s very important!’ said he
to someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.
‘He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the
third night he has not slept,’ said the orderly pleadingly in a
whisper. ‘You should wake the captain first.’
‘But this is very important, from General Dokhturov,’
said Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had
found by feeling in the dark.
The orderly had gone in before him and began waking
somebody.
‘Your honor, your honor! A courier.’
‘What? What’s that? From whom?’ came a sleepy voice.
‘From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,’ said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in
the dark who was speaking but guessing by the voice that it
was not Konovnitsyn.


1921

The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
‘I don’t like waking him,’ he said, fumbling for something. ‘He is very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor.’
‘Here is the dispatch,’ said Bolkhovitinov. ‘My orders are
to give it at once to the general on duty.’
‘Wait a moment, I’ll light a candle. You damned rascal,
where do you always hide it?’ said the voice of the man who
was stretching himself, to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn’s adjutant.) ‘I’ve found it, I’ve found it!’
he added.
The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was
fumbling for something on the candlestick.
‘Oh, the nasty beasts!’ said he with disgust.
By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin’s youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of
another man who was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.
When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the
tinder burned up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit
the tallow candle, from the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were running away, and
looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was bespattered all
over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with
his sleeve.
‘Who gave the report?’ inquired Shcherbinin, taking the
envelope.
‘The news is reliable,’ said Bolkhovitinov. ‘Prisoners,
Cossacks, and the scouts all say the same thing.’
‘There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,’ said
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War and Peace

Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap
who lay covered by a greatcoat. ‘Peter Petrovich!’ said he.
(Konovnitsyn did not stir.) ‘To the General Staff!’ he said
with a smile, knowing that those words would be sure to
arouse him.
And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once.
On Konovnitsyn’s handsome, resolute face with cheeks
flushed by fever, there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote from present affairs, but
then he suddenly started and his face assumed its habitual
calm and firm appearance.
‘Well, what is it? From whom?’ he asked immediately but
without hurry, blinking at the light.
While listening to the officer’s report Konovnitsyn broke
the seal and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before
he lowered his legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen
floor and began putting on his boots. Then he took off his
nightcap, combed his hair over his temples, and donned his
cap.
‘Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness.’
Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news
brought was of great importance and that no time must be
lost. He did not consider or ask himself whether the news
was good or bad. That did not interest him. He regarded the
whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his
reason but by something else. There was within him a deep
unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must
only attend to one’s own work. And he did his work, giving


1923

his whole strength to the task.
Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to
have been included merely for propriety’s sake in the list
of the so-called heroes of 1812the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he
had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacity
and information, and like Dokhturov he never made plans
of battle but was always found where the situation was most
difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had
always slept with his door open, giving orders that every
messenger should be allowed to wake him up. In battle he
was always under fire, so that Kutuzov reproved him for it
and feared to send him to the front, and like Dokhturov he
was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter
or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine.
Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frownedpartly from an increased pain in his head
and partly at the unpleasant thought that occurred to him,
of how all that nest of influential men on the staff would be
stirred up by this news, especially Bennigsen, who ever since
Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with Kutuzov; and how
they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
though he knew it could not be helped.
And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the
news, immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in
weary silence, reminded him that they must go to see his
Highness.
1924

War and Peace

Chapter XVII
Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night.
He often fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at
night, lying on his bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.
So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy,
scarred head on his plump hand, with his one eye open,
meditating and peering into the darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor
and had more influence than anyone else on the staff, had
begun to avoid him, Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his troops being obliged to take part
in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the Tarutino
battle and of the day before it, which Kutuzov remembered
with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on others
too.
‘They must understand that we can only lose by taking
the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my champions,’ thought Kutuzov. He knew that an apple should not
be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe,
but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed,
and your teeth are set on edge. Like an experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and wounded
as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded
it, but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still


1925

an undecided question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and
Barthelemi having been sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure that the wound was mortal.
But he needed further proofs and it was necessary to wait.
‘They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait
and we shall see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!’ thought he. ‘What for? Only to distinguish themselves!
As if fighting were fun. They are like children from whom
one can’t get any sensible account of what has happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
that’s not what is needed now.
‘And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me!
It seems to them that when they have thought of two or
three contingencies’ (he remembered the general plan sent
him from Petersburg) ‘they have foreseen everything. But
the contingencies are endless.’
The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov’s
head for a whole month. On the one hand the French had
occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt assured with
all his being that the terrible blow into which he and all the
Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal. But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a
whole month for them and grew more impatient the longer
he waited. Lying on his bed during those sleepless nights
he did just what he reproached those younger generals for
doing. He imagined all sorts of possible contingencies, just
like the younger men, but with this difference, that he saw
thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and
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War and Peace

based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more
contingencies presented themselves. He imagined all sorts
of movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or in sectionsagainst Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank him.
He thought too of the possibility (which he feared most of
all) that Napoleon might fight him with his own weapon
and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined that Napoleon’s army might turn back through Medyn
and Yukhnov, but the one thing he could not foresee was
what happenedthe insane, convulsive stampede of Napoleon’s army during its first eleven days after leaving Moscow:
a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov had not yet
even dared to think ofthe complete extermination of the
French. Dorokhov’s report about Broussier’s division, the
guerrillas’ reports of distress in Napoleon’s army, rumors
of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that the French army was beaten and preparing
for flight. But these were only suppositions, which seemed
important to the younger men but not to Kutuzov. With
his sixty years’ experience he knew what value to attach to
rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to
group all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew how readily in such cases they omit all that
makes for the contrary. And the more he desired it the less
he allowed himself to believe it. This question absorbed all
his mental powers. All else was to him only life’s customary
routine. To such customary routine belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarutino to
Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution of


1927

awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But
the destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was
his heart’s one desire.
On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on
his arm and thinking of that.
There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps
of Toll, Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.
‘Eh, who’s there? Come in, come in! What news?’ the
field marshal called out to them.
While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance of the news.
‘Who brought it?’ asked Kutuzov with a look which,
when the candle was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.
‘There can be no doubt about it, your Highness.’
‘Call him in, call him here.’
Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed
and his big paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize
the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to read in his
face what preoccupied his own mind.
‘Tell me, tell me, friend,’ said he to Bolkhovitinov in his
low, aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped
open on his chest, ‘come nearernearer. What news have you
brought me? Eh? That Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you
sure? Eh?’
Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had been told to report.
‘Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!’ Kutuzov interrupted him.
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War and Peace

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent,
awaiting instructions. Toll was beginning to say something
but Kutuzov checked him. He tried to say something, but
his face suddenly puckered and wrinkled; he waved his arm
at Toll and turned to the opposite side of the room, to the
corner darkened by the icons that hung there.
‘O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer...’ said
he in a tremulous voice with folded hands. ‘Russia is saved.
I thank Thee, O Lord!’ and he wept.



1929

Chapter XVIII
From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all Kutuzov’s activity was directed toward restraining
his troops, by authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing
enemy. Dokhturov went to Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov
lingered with the main army and gave orders for the evacuation of Kalugaa retreat beyond which town seemed to him
quite possible.
Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without
waiting for his retreat fled in the opposite direction.
Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers
at Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as
to what would have happened had Napoleon been in time to
penetrate into the rich southern provinces.
But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him
from advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his way), the historians forget that
nothing could have saved his army, for then already it bore
within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How could that
armywhich had found abundant supplies in Moscow and
had trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them,
and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions instead
of storing themhow could that army recuperate in Kaluga
province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those
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War and Peace

who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property
of consuming what was set ablaze?
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle
of Borodino and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within
itself, as it were, the chemical elements of dissolution.
The members of what had once been an armyNapoleon
himself and all his soldiers fledwithout knowing whither,
each concerned only to make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of which they
were all more or less vaguely conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets,
when the generals pretending to confer together expressed
various opinions, all mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier Mouton who, speaking
last, said what they all felt: that the one thing needful was
to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get
away, there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting
that they must flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in due time. It was
what the French called ‘le hourra de l’Empereur.’
The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon
rode out early in the morning amid the lines of his army
with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the pretext of
inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the
impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for booty fell
in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the


1931

Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him
was the very thing that was destroying the French army, the
booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they
went after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon managed
to escape.
When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the
Emperor himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that
there was nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along
the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old
stomach understood that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright the
Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and
issued ordersas the historians tell usto retreat by the Smolensk road.
That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army
retreated, does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat,
but that the forces which influenced the whole army and
directed it along the Mozhaysk (that is, the Smolensk) road
acted simultaneously on him also.

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War and Peace

Chapter XIX
A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To
be able to go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the end of those thousand miles.
One must have the prospect of a promised land to have the
strength to move.
The promised land for the French during their advance
had been Moscow, during their retreat it was their native
land. But that native land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely necessary to set aside
his final goal and to say to himself: ‘Today I shall get to a
place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and spend the
night,’ and during the first day’s journey that resting place
eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always
magnified in a crowd.
For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road,
the final goaltheir native landwas too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolensk, toward which all their desires
and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass, urged them
on. It was not that they knew that much food and fresh
troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they were told so
(on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because
this alone could give them strength to move on and endure


1933

their present privations. So both those who knew and those
who did not know deceived themselves, and pushed on to
Smolensk as to a promised land.
Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they
had fixed on. Besides the common impulse which bound
the whole crowd of French into one mass and supplied them
with a certain energy, there was another cause binding
them togethertheir great numbers. As with the physical law
of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual human
atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved
like a whole nation.
Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself
up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery;
but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to
Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender
to a company, and though the French availed themselves of
every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to
surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did
not always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded
and swift movement deprived them of that possibility and
rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians
to stop this movement, to which the French were directing
all their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical
disruption of the body could hasten the process of decomposition.
A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There
is a certain limit of time in less than which no amount of
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heat can melt the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat
the more solidified the remaining snow becomes.
Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood
this. When the flight of the French army along the Smolensk
road became well defined, what Konovnitsyn had foreseen
on the night of the eleventh of October began to occur. The
superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves, to cut
off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all
clamored for action.
Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very
limited in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent
an attack.
He could not tell them what we say now: ‘Why fight, why
block the road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What is the use of that, when a
third of their army has melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?’ But drawing from his
aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of
the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,
flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.
Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity
to the French near Vyazma could not resist their desire to
cut off and break up two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov they sent him a blank
sheet of paper in an envelope.
And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our
men attacked, trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments,
we are told, advanced to the attack with music and with


1935

drums beating, and killed and lost thousands of men.
But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the
French army, closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting away, to pursue its fatal path to
Smolensk.

1936

War and Peace

BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812



1937

Chapter I
The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow
that followed it and the flight of the French without further
conflicts, is one of the most instructive phenomena in history.
All historians agree that the external activity of states
and nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed
in wars, and that as a direct result of greater or less success
in war the political strength of states and nations increases
or decreases.
Strange as may be the historical account of how some
king or emperor, having quarreled with another, collects
an army, fights his enemy’s army, gains a victory by killing
three, five, or ten thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the facts of
history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against
another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of
an increase or decrease in the strength of the nationeven
though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an armya hundredth part of a nationshould oblige that whole nation to
submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of
the conquering nation have increased to the detriment of
the defeated. An army has suffered defeat, and at once a
people loses its rights in proportion to the severity of the
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War and Peace

reverse, and if its army suffers a complete defeat the nation
is quite subjugated.
So according to history it has been found from the most
ancient times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon’s
wars serve to confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat
of the Austrian army Austria loses its rights, and the rights
and the strength of France increase. The victories of the
French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy the independent existence of Prussia.
But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow.
Moscow is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is
not Russia that ceases to exist, but the French army of six
hundred thousand, and then Napoleonic France itself. To
strain the facts to fit the rules of history: to say that the field
of battle at Borodino remained in the hands of the Russians,
or that after Moscow there were other battles that destroyed
Napoleon’s army, is impossible.
After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement nor any that were at all serious, yet the
French army ceased to exist. What does this mean? If it
were an example taken from the history of China, we might
say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is the
historians’ usual expedient when anything does not fit their
standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in
which only a small number of troops took part, we might
treat it as an exception; but this event occurred before our
fathers’ eyes, and for them it was a question of the life or
death of their fatherland, and it happened in the greatest of
all known wars.


1939

The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of
Borodino to the expulsion of the French proved that the
winning of a battle does not produce a conquest and is not
even an invariable indication of conquest; it proved that the
force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something
else.
The French historians, describing the condition of the
French army before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in
order in the Grand Army, except the cavalry, the artillery,
and the transportthere was no forage for the horses or the
cattle. That was a misfortune no one could remedy, for the
peasants of the district burned their hay rather than let the
French have it.
The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French
had evacuated Moscow drove in their carts to pillage the
town, and in general personally failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of such
peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for the high
price offered them, but burned it instead.
Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a
duel with rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of
the combatants, feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his life, throws
down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to
hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the
combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest
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War and Peace

means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by
traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of
the case, insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what
confusion and obscurity would result from such an account
of the duel.
The fencer who demanded a contest according to the
rules of fencing was the French army; his opponent who
threw away the rapier and snatched up the cudgel was the
Russian people; those who try to explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have
described the event.
After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did
not follow any previous traditions of war. The burning of
towns and villages, the retreats after battles, the blow dealt
at Borodino and the renewed retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of transports,
and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.
Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the
correct fencing attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel raised above his head, he did
not cease to complain to Kutuzov and to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all
the rulesas if there were any rules for killing people. In spite
of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of
the rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and
they wanted to assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit thrust en prime,


1941

and so onthe cudgel of the people’s war was lifted with all
its menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting
anyone’s tastes or rules and regardless of anything else, it
rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had perished.
And it is well for a people who do notas the French did
in 1813salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to
their magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial,
without asking what rules others have adopted in similar
cases, simply and easily pick up the first cudgel that comes
to hand and strike with it till the feeling of resentment and
revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and
compassion.

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War and Peace

Chapter II
One of the most obvious and advantageous departures
from the so-called laws of war is the action of scattered
groups against men pressed together in a mass. Such action
always occurs in wars that take on a national character. In
such actions, instead of two crowds opposing each other,
the men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by
stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers.
This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain
tribes in the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.
People have called this kind of war ‘guerrilla warfare’
and assume that by so calling it they have explained its
meaning. But such a war does not fit in under any rule and
is directly opposed to a well-known rule of tactics which is
accepted as infallible. That rule says that an attacker should
concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes the strength of an army to be identical with
its numbers. Military science says that the more troops the
greater the strength. Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.*
*Large battalions are always victorious.


1943

For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that
momenta are equal or unequal to each other simply because
the masses involved are equal or unequal.
Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass
and velocity.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product
of its mass and some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact that the size of any army does not coincide
with its strength and that small detachments defeat larger
ones, obscurely admits the existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover itnow in a geometric formation,
now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in
the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these
various meanings to the factor does not yield results which
accord with the historic facts.
Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify the ‘heroes’) of the efficacy of the directions
issued in wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.
That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is
to say, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger
felt by all the men composing an army, quite independently
of whether they are, or are not, fighting under the command
of a genius, in twoor three-line formation, with cudgels or
with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men who want
to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous conditions for fighting.
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War and Peace

The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by
the mass gives the resulting force. To define and express the
significance of this unknown factorthe spirit of an armyis a
problem for science.
This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to
substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under
which that force becomes apparentsuch as the commands
of the general, the equipment employed, and so onmistaking these for the real significance of the factor, and if we
recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being the
greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor, can we hope to
define the unknown.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men,
battalions, or divisions, conquerthat is, kill or take captiveall the others, while themselves losing four, so that on
the one side four and on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and therefore 4x
= 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not give
us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected
historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such
equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which
certain laws should exist and might be discovered.
The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when
attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously
confirms the truth that the strength of an army depends on
its spirit. To lead men forward under fire more discipline


1945

(obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed than
is needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out
of account the spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking contrast to the facts when
some strong rise or fall in the spirit of the troops occurs, as
in all national wars.
The French, retreating in 1812though according to tactics they should have separated into detachments to defend
themselvescongregated into a mass because the spirit of the
army had so fallen that only the mass held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according to tactics
to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up into small
units, because their spirit had so risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without
needing any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and dangers.

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War and Peace

Chapter III
The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the
French into Smolensk.
Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by
the government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders,
and foragers had been destroyed by the Cossacks and the
peasants, who killed them off as instinctively as dogs worry
a stray mad dog to death. Denis Davydov, with his Russian
instinct, was the first to recognize the value of this terrible
cudgel which regardless of the rules of military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit for taking
the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare.
On August 24 Davydov’s first partisan detachment was
formed and then others were recognized. The further the
campaign progressed the more numerous these detachments became.
The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They
gathered the fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from
that withered treethe French armyand sometimes shook
that tree itself. By October, when the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of such companies, of
various sizes and characters. There were some that adopted
all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and
the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse,


1947

and groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which captured
several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and
there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the French.
The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of October. Its first period had passed: when the
partisans themselves, amazed at their own boldness, feared
every minute to be surrounded and captured by the French,
and hid in the forests without unsaddling, hardly daring to
dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the end
of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it
had become clear to all what could be ventured against the
French and what could not. Now only the commanders of
detachments with staffs, and moving according to rules at
a distance from the French, still regarded many things as
impossible. The small bands that had started their activities long before and had already observed the French closely
considered things possible which the commanders of the
big detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks
and peasants who crept in among the French now considered everything possible.
On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars)
was with his group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning he and his party had been on the
move. All day long he had been watching from the forest
that skirted the highroad a large French convoy of cavalry
baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the rest of
the army, whichas was learned from spies and prisonerswas
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War and Peace

moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and Dolokhov (who also led a small party and moved
in Denisov’s vicinity), the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denisov
expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the
commanders of large partiesone a Pole and the other a Germansent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously,
requesting him to join up with their divisions to attack the
convoy.
‘No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,’ said
Denisov on reading these documents, and he wrote to the
German that, despite his heartfelt desire to serve under so
valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command of the
Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same
effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the German.
Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov
intended, without reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that convoy with their own small
forces. On October 22 it was moving from the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the road between
Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests, extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a
mile or more back from it. Through these forests Denisov
and his party rode all day, sometimes keeping well back in
them and sometimes coming to the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning, Cossacks of
Denisov’s party had seized and carried off into the forest


1949

two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck
in the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close
to the road. Since then, and until evening, the party had
the movements of the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo quietly without
alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov who was
to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman’s hut
in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to surprise
the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their heads
from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.
In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the
forest came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted
to report if any fresh columns of French should show themselves.
Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road
in the same way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned that the convoy had fifteen
hundred men. Denisov had two hundred, and Dolokhov
might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers
did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was
what troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a
‘tongue’that is, a man from the enemy column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been made so hastily that the
Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a little
drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops in
that column.
Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of putting the whole column on the alert, so he
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War and Peace

sent Tikhon Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at least one of the French quartermasters
who had been sent on in advance.



1951

Chapter IV
It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both the color of muddy water. At times a sort
of mist descended, and then suddenly heavy slanting rain
came down.
Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which
the rain ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse
with sunken sides. Like his horse, which turned its head and
laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving rain and gazed
anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick
black beard looked angry.
Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov’s fellow worker,
also in felt cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek
Don horse.
*A captain of Cossacks.
Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an
arrow, pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and
with calm self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though
it was impossible to say in what the peculiarity of the horse
and rider lay, yet at first glance at the esaul and Denisov one
saw that the latter was wet and uncomfortable and was a
man mounted on a horse, while looking at the esaul one saw
that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a
man who was one with his horse, a being consequently pos1952

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sessed of twofold strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the
skin and wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted
cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount
with an enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth,
rode a young officer in a blue French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered
French uniform and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the hussar with cold,
red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him with
surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that
morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road
came hussars in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some
in felt cloaks, some in French greatcoats, and some with
horsecloths over their heads. The horses, being drenched
by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay. Their
necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were
all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen
leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying
not to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their
bodies and not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking
in under their seats, their knees, and at the back of their
necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two
wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack
horses that had been hitched on in front, rumbled over the
tree stumps and branches and splashed through the water


1953

that lay in the ruts.
Denisov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track
and bumped his rider’s knee against a tree.
‘Oh, the devil!’ exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he struck his horse three times with his whip,
splashing himself and his comrades with mud.
Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and
also from hunger (none of them had eaten anything since
morning), and yet more because he still had no news from
Dolokhov and the man sent to capture a ‘tongue’ had not
returned.
‘There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today. It’s too risky to attack them by oneself, and if
we put it off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey from under our noses,’ thought
Denisov, continually peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could
see far to the right, Denisov stopped.
‘There’s someone coming,’ said he.
The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.
‘There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,’ said the
esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not
know.
The approaching riders having descended a decline were
no longer visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary gallop and using his leather whip,
rode an officer, disheveled and drenched, whose trousers
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War and Peace

had worked up to above his knees. Behind him, standing in
the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young lad
with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to
Denisov and handed him a sodden envelope.
‘From the general,’ said the officer. ‘Please excuse its not
being quite dry.’
Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
‘There, they kept telling us: ‘It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous,’’ said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov
was reading the dispatch. ‘But Komarov and I’he pointed to the Cossack‘were prepared. We have each of us two
pistols.... But what’s this?’ he asked, noticing the French
drummer boy. ‘A prisoner? You’ve already been in action?
May I speak to him?’
‘Wostov! Petya!’ exclaimed Denisov, having run through
the dispatch. ‘Why didn’t you say who you were?’ and turning with a smile he held out his hand to the lad.
The officer was Petya Rostov.
All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave
with Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officerwithout hinting at their previous acquaintance. But as soon
as Denisov smiled at him Petya brightened up, blushed with
pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been rehearsing,
and began telling him how he had already been in a battle
near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had distinguished
himself there.
‘Well, I am glad to see you,’ Denisov interrupted him,
and his face again assumed its anxious expression.
‘Michael Feoklitych,’ said he to the esaul, ‘this is again


1955

fwom that German, you know. He’he indicated Petya‘is
serving under him.’
And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a repetition of the German general’s demand that
he should join forces with him for an attack on the transport.
‘If we don’t take it tomowwow, he’ll snatch it fwom under
our noses,’ he added.
While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petyaabashed
by Denisov’s cold tone and supposing that it was due to the
condition of his trousersfurtively tried to pull them down
under his greatcoat so that no one should notice it, while
maintaining as martial an air as possible.
‘Will there be any orders, your honor?’ he asked Denisov,
holding his hand at the salute and resuming the game of
adjutant and general for which he had prepared himself, ‘or
shall I remain with your honor?’
‘Orders?’ Denisov repeated thoughtfully. ‘But can you
stay till tomowwow?’
‘Oh, please... May I stay with you?’ cried Petya.
‘But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at
once?’ asked Denisov.
Petya blushed.
‘He gave me no instructions. I think I could?’ he returned, inquiringly.
‘Well, all wight,’ said Denisov.
And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to
the halting place arranged near the watchman’s hut in the
forest, and told the officer on the Kirghiz horse (who per1956

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formed the duties of an adjutant) to go and find out where
Dolokhov was and whether he would come that evening.
Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya
to the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo,
to have a look at the part of the French bivouac they were to
attack next day.
‘Well, old fellow,’ said he to the peasant guide, ‘lead us to
Shamshevo.’
Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some
Cossacks and the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the
left across a ravine to the edge of the forest.



1957

Chapter V
The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and
drops from the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode
silently, following the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes and moving noiselessly
in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves, silently led
them to the edge of the forest.
He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and
advanced to where the screen of trees was less dense. On
reaching a large oak tree that had not yet shed its leaves, he
stopped and beckoned mysteriously to them with his hand.
Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where
the peasant was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a downward slope, lay a field of
spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep ravine, was a small
village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof. In the
village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,
over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill
from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five
hundred yards away, crowds of men could be seen through
the shimmering mist. Their un-Russian shouting at their
horses which were straining uphill with the carts, and their
calls to one another, could be clearly heard.
‘Bwing the prisoner here,’ said Denisov in a low voice,
not taking his eyes off the French.
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A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took
him to Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov
asked him what these and those of them were. The boy,
thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and lifting his
eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but in spite of an
evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers,
merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov turned away from him frowning and addressed the
esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.
Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the
French in the village and along the road, trying not to miss
anything of importance.
‘Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?’
said Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.
‘It is a very suitable spot,’ said the esaul.
‘We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,’ Denisov
continued. ‘They’ll cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up
fwom there with the Cossacks’he pointed to a spot in the
forest beyond the village‘and I with my hussars fwom here.
And at the signal shot..’
‘The hollow is impassablethere’s a swamp there,’ said the
esaul. ‘The horses would sink. We must ride round more to
the left...’
While they were talking in undertones the crack of a
shot sounded from the low ground by the pond, a puff of
white smoke appeared, then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices shouting together
came up from the slope. For a moment Denisov and the es

1959

aul drew back. They were so near that they thought they
were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and
shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the marsh. The
French were evidently firing and shouting at him.
‘Why, that’s our Tikhon,’ said the esaul.
‘So it is! It is!’
‘The wascal!’ said Denisov.
‘He’ll get away!’ said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the
stream, plunged in so that the water splashed in the air,
and, having disappeared for an instant, scrambled out on
all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on. The French who
had been pursuing him stopped.
‘Smart, that!’ said the esaul.
‘What a beast!’ said Denisov with his former look of vexation. ‘What has he been doing all this time?’
‘Who is he?’ asked Petya.
‘He’s our plastun. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov
uttered as if he understood it all, though he really did not
understand anything of it.
Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable
men in their band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near
the river Gzhat. When Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the
beginning of his operations and had as usual summoned the
village elder and asked him what he knew about the French,
the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything
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War and Peace

of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was
to kill the French, and asked if no French had strayed that
way, the elder replied that some ‘more-orderers’ had really
been at their village, but that Tikhon Shcherbaty was the
only man who dealt with such matters. Denisov had Tikhon
called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few
words in the elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and
the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the
fatherland should cherish.
‘We don’t do the French any harm,’ said Tikhon, evidently frightened by Denisov’s words. ‘We only fooled about
with the lads for fun, you know! We killed a score or so of
‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else..’
Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite
forgotten about this peasant, it was reported to him that
Tikhon had attached himself to their party and asked to be
allowed to remain with it. Denisov gave orders to let him
do so.
Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires,
fetching water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed
a great liking and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night
he would go out for booty and always brought back French
clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring in
French captives also. Denisov then relieved him from
drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out
on expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.
Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot,
never lagging behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried rather as a joke), a pike and an ax,


1961

which latter he used as a wolf uses its teeth, with equal case
picking fleas out of its fur or crunching thick bones. Tikhon
with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at arm’s
length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little
pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov’s party he held a peculiar
and exceptional position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be doneto push a cart out of the mud
with one’s shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail,
skin it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty
miles in a dayeverybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.
‘It won’t hurt that devilhe’s as strong as a horse!’ they
said of him.
Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired
a pistol at him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back.
That wound (which Tikhon treated only with internal and
external applications of vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachmentjokes in which Tikhon
readily joined.
‘Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?’ the Cossacks would banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing
and making faces, pretended to be angry and swore at the
French with the funniest curses. The only effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he seldom
brought in prisoners.
He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No
one found more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen, and consequently he was
made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denisov
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War and Peace

overnight to Shamshevo to capture a ‘tongue.’ But whether
because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept through the night, he had crept
by day into some bushes right among the French and, as
Denisov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
them.



1963

Chapter VI
After talking for some time with the esaul about next
day’s attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the
French, he seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov
turned his horse and rode back.
‘Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,’ he said to Petya.
As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped,
peering into the forest. Among the trees a man with long legs
and long, swinging arms, wearing a short jacket, bast shoes,
and a Kazan hat, was approaching with long, light steps. He
had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax stuck in his
girdle. When he espied Denisov he hastily threw something
into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim,
and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed
with self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and
gazed at Denisov as if repressing a laugh.
‘Well, where did you disappear to?’ inquired Denisov.
‘Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,’
answered Tikhon boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.
‘Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass!
Well, why haven’t you taken one?’
‘Oh, I took one all right,’ said Tikhon.
‘Where is he?’
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War and Peace

‘You see, I took him first thing at dawn,’ Tikhon continued, spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their
bast shoes. ‘I took him into the forest. Then I see he’s no
good and think I’ll go and fetch a likelier one.’
‘You see?... What a wogueit’s just as I thought,’ said Denisov to the esaul. ‘Why didn’t you bwing that one?’
‘What was the good of bringing him?’ Tikhon interrupted hastily and angrily‘that one wouldn’t have done for you.
As if I don’t know what sort you want!’
‘What a bwute you are!... Well?’
‘I went for another one,’ Tikhon continued, ‘and I crept
like this through the wood and lay down.’ (He suddenly lay
down on his stomach with a supple movement to show how
he had done it.) ‘One turned up and I grabbed him, like this.’
(He jumped up quickly and lightly.) ‘‘Come along to the colonel,’ I said. He starts yelling, and suddenly there were four
of them. They rushed at me with their little swords. So I
went for them with my ax, this way: ‘What are you up to?’
says I. ‘Christ be with you!’’ shouted Tikhon, waving his
arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.
‘Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels
through the puddles!’ said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.
Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all
refrained from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from
Tikhon’s face to the esaul’s and Denisov’s, unable to make
out what it all meant.
‘Don’t play the fool!’ said Denisov, coughing angrily.
‘Why didn’t you bwing the first one?’


1965

Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head
with the other, then suddenly his whole face expanded into
a beaming, foolish grin, disclosing a gap where he had lost
a tooth (that was why he was called Shcherbatythe gaptoothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a peal of
merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.
‘Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,’ said Tikhon. ‘The clothes on himpoor stuff! How could I bring him?
And so rude, your honor! Why, he says: ‘I’m a general’s son
myself, I won’t go!’ he says.’
‘You are a bwute!’ said Denisov. ‘I wanted to question..’
‘But I questioned him,’ said Tikhon. ‘He said he didn’t
know much. ‘There are a lot of us,’ he says, ‘but all poor
stuffonly soldiers in name,’ he says. ‘Shout loud at them,’ he
says, ‘and you’ll take them all,’’ Tikhon concluded, looking
cheerfully and resolutely into Denisov’s eyes.
‘I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashesthat’ll teach you to
play the fool!’ said Denisov severely.
‘But why are you angry?’ remonstrated Tikhon, ‘just as
if I’d never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark
and I’ll fetch you any of them you wantthree if you like.’
‘Well, let’s go,’ said Denisov, and rode all the way to the
watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.
Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks
laughing with him and at him, about some pair of boots he
had thrown into the bushes.
When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon’s
words and smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He
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looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt a pang in
his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt
it necessary to hold his head higher, to brace himself, and to
question the esaul with an air of importance about tomorrow’s undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the
company in which he found himself.
The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on
the way with the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and
that all was well with him.
Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him,
said: ‘Well, tell me about yourself.’



1967

Chapter VII
Petya, having left his people after their departure from
Moscow, joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a large guerrilla detachment.
From the time he received his commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and taken part in
the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state of
blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual
ecstatic hurry not to miss any chance to do something really
heroic. He was highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time it always seemed
to him that the really heroic exploits were being performed
just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a
hurry to get where he was not.
When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send somebody to Denisov’s detachment,
Petya begged so piteously to be sent that the general could
not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled Petya’s
mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead of riding
by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had
galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French
and had there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade his taking part in any action whatever of
Denisov’s. That was why Petya had blushed and grown
confused when Denisov asked him whether he could stay.
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War and Peace

Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest Petya
had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly
and return at once. But when he saw the French and saw
Tikhon and learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he decided, with the rapidity with which
young people change their views, that the general, whom
he had greatly respected till then, was a rubbishy German,
that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon a hero
too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at
a moment of difficulty.
It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and
the esaul rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be seen, and Cossacks and hussars who
had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and were kindling
glowing fires in a hollow of the forest where the French could
not see the smoke. In the passage of the small watchhouse a
Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some mutton.
In the room three officers of Denisov’s band were converting a door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes,
gave them to be dried, and at once began helping the officers
to fix up the dinner table.
In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread
on it. On the table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread,
roast mutton, and salt.
Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory
mutton with his hands, down which the grease trickled,
Petya was in an ecstatic childish state of love for all men,
and consequently of confidence that others loved him in the
same way.


1969

‘So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?’ said he to
Denisov. ‘It’s all right my staying a day with you?’ And not
waiting for a reply he answered his own question: ‘You see I
was told to find outwell, I am finding out.... Only do let me
into the very... into the chief... I don’t want a reward... But
I want..’
Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing
back his head and flourishing his arms.
‘Into the vewy chief...’ Denisov repeated with a smile.
‘Only, please let me command something, so that I may
really command...’ Petya went on. ‘What would it be to
you?... Oh, you want a knife?’ he said, turning to an officer
who wished to cut himself a piece of mutton.
And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired
it.
‘Please keep it. I have several like it,’ said Petya, blushing. ‘Heavens! I was quite forgetting!’ he suddenly cried. ‘I
have some raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We
have a new sutler and he has such capital things. I bought
ten pounds. I am used to something sweet. Would you like
some?...’ and Petya ran out into the passage to his Cossack
and brought back some bags which contained about five
pounds of raisins. ‘Have some, gentlemen, have some!’
‘You want a coffeepot, don’t you?’ he asked the esaul. ‘I
bought a capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things.
And he’s very honest, that’s the chief thing. I’ll be sure to
send it to you. Or perhaps your flints are giving out, or are
worn outthat happens sometimes, you know. I have brought
some with me, here they are’and he showed a bag‘a hundred
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War and Peace

flints. I bought them very cheap. Please take as many as you
want, or all if you like...’
Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much,
Petya stopped and blushed.
He tried to remember whether he had not done anything
else that was foolish. And running over the events of the day
he remembered the French drummer boy. ‘It’s capital for
us here, but what of him? Where have they put him? Have
they fed him? Haven’t they hurt his feelings?’ he thought.
But having caught himself saying too much about the flints,
he was now afraid to speak out.
‘I might ask,’ he thought, ‘but they’ll say: ‘He’s a boy
himself and so he pities the boy.’ I’ll show them tomorrow
whether I’m a boy. Will it seem odd if I ask?’ Petya thought.
‘Well, never mind!’ and immediately, blushing and looking
anxiously at the officers to see if they appeared ironical, he
said:
‘May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give
him something to eat?... Perhaps..’
‘Yes, he’s a poor little fellow,’ said Denisov, who evidently
saw nothing shameful in this reminder. ‘Call him in. His
name is Vincent Bosse. Have him fetched.’
‘I’ll call him,’ said Petya.
‘Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow,’ Denisov repeated.
Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this.
He slipped in between the officers, came close to Denisov,
and said:
‘Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how


1971

splendid!’
And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.
‘Bosse! Vincent!’ Petya cried, stopping outside the door.
‘Who do you want, sir?’ asked a voice in the darkness.
Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had
been captured that day.
‘Ah, Vesenny?’ said a Cossack.
Vincent, the boy’s name, had already been changed by
the Cossacks into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the
peasants and soldiers. In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched the impression made by the
young lad.
‘He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya! Vesenya!Vesenny!’ laughing voices were heard calling
to one another in the darkness.
‘He’s a smart lad,’ said an hussar standing near Petya.
‘We gave him something to eat a while ago. He was awfully
hungry!’
The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was
heard in the darkness, and the drummer boy came to the
door.
‘Ah, c’est vous!’ said Petya. ‘Voulez-vous manger? N’ayez
pas peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,’* he added shyly and
affectionately, touching the boy’s hand. ‘Entrez, entrez.’*[2]
*”Ah, it’s you! Do you want something to eat? Don’t be
afraid, they won’t hurt you.’
*[2] ‘Come in, come in.’
‘Merci, monsieur,’* said the drummer boy in a trembling
almost childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet
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War and Peace

on the threshold.
*”Thank you, sir.’
There were many things Petya wanted to say to the
drummer boy, but did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then in the darkness he took the
boy’s hand and pressed it.
‘Come in, come in!’ he repeated in a gentle whisper. ‘Oh,
what can I do for him?’ he thought, and opening the door he
let the boy pass in first.
When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a
distance from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay
attention to him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it would seem ridiculous to give
some to the drummer boy.



1973

Chapter VIII
The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya’s attention from
the drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given, and whom he had had dressed in a
Russian coat so that he might be kept with their band and
not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya had heard in
the army many stories of Dolokhov’s extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment
he entered the hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but
braced himself up more and more and held his head high,
that he might not be unworthy even of such company.
Dolokhov’s appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.
Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of
Nicholas the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of
speaking and everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in Moscow had worn a Persian
costume, had now the appearance of a most correct officer of
the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a Guardsman’s
padded coat with an Order of St. George at his buttonhole
and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took off
his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him
about the matter in hand. Denisov told him of the designs
the large detachments had on the transport, of the message
Petya had brought, and his own replies to both generals.
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Then he told him all he knew of the French detachment.
‘That’s so. But we must know what troops they are and
their numbers,’ said Dolokhov. ‘It will be necessary to go
there. We can’t start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I like to work accurately. Here
nowwouldn’t one of these gentlemen like to ride over to the
French camp with me? I have brought a spare uniform.’
‘I, I... I’ll go with you!’ cried Petya.
‘There’s no need for you to go at all,’ said Denisov, addressing Dolokhov, ‘and as for him, I won’t let him go on
any account.’
‘I like that!’ exclaimed Petya. ‘Why shouldn’t I go?’
‘Because it’s useless.’
‘Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall
go, and that’s all. You’ll take me, won’t you?’ he said, turning to Dolokhov.
‘Why not?’ Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing
the face of the French drummer boy. ‘Have you had that
youngster with you long?’ he asked Denisov.
‘He was taken today but he knows nothing. I’m keeping
him with me.’
‘Yes, and where do you put the others?’ inquired Dolokhov.
‘Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them,’
shouted Denisov, suddenly flushing. ‘And I say boldly that
I have not a single man’s life on my conscience. Would it be
difficult for you to send thirty or thwee hundwed men to
town under escort, instead of stainingI speak bluntlystaining the honor of a soldier?’


1975

‘That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this
young count of sixteen,’ said Dolokhov with cold irony, ‘but
it’s time for you to drop it.’
‘Why, I’ve not said anything! I only say that I’ll certainly
go with you,’ said Petya shyly.
‘But for you and me, old fellow, it’s time to drop these
amenities,’ continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular
pleasure in speaking of this subject which irritated Denisov.
‘Now, why have you kept this lad?’ he went on, swaying his
head. ‘Because you are sorry for him! Don’t we know those
‘receipts’ of yours? You send a hundred men away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So isn’t it all
the same not to send them?’
The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.
‘That’s not the point. I’m not going to discuss the matter.
I do not wish to take it on my conscience. You say they’ll
die. All wight. Only not by my fault!’
Dolokhov began laughing.
‘Who has told them not to capture me these twenty
times over? But if they did catch me they’d string me up to
an aspen tree, and with all your chivalry just the same.’ He
paused. ‘However, we must get to work. Tell the Cossack to
fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms in it. Well, are you
coming with me?’ he asked Petya.
‘I? Yes, yes, certainly!’ cried Petya, blushing almost to
tears and glancing at Denisov.
While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what
should be done with prisoners, Petya had once more felt
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awkward and restless; but again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about. ‘If grown-up, distinguished
men think so, it must be necessary and right,’ thought he.
‘But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine that I’ll
obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go
to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!’
And to all Denisov’s persuasions, Petya replied that he
too was accustomed to do everything accurately and not
just anyhow, and that he never considered personal danger.
‘For you’ll admit that if we don’t know for sure how
many of them there are... hundreds of lives may depend on
it, while there are only two of us. Besides, I want to go very
much and certainly will go, so don’t hinder me,’ said he. ‘It
will only make things worse..’



1977

Chapter IX
Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and
Dolokhov rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French camp, and emerging from the forest
in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks accompanying
him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot along the
road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with excitement, rode by his side.
‘If we’re caught, I won’t be taken alive! I have a pistol,’
whispered he.
‘Don’t talk Russian,’ said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper,
and at that very moment they heard through the darkness
the challenge: ‘Qui vive?’* and the click of a musket.
*”Who goes there?’
The blood rushed to Petya’s face and he grasped his pistol.
‘Lanciers du 6-me,’* replied Dolokhov, neither hastening
nor slackening his horse’s pace.
*”Lancers of the 6th Regiment.’
The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.
‘Mot d’ordre.’*
*”Password.’
Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.
‘Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?’* he asked.
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*”Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?’
‘Mot d’ordre,’ repeated the sentinel, barring the way and
not replying.
‘Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le mot d’ordre...’ cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring
up and riding straight at the sentinel. ‘Je vous demande si le
colonel est ici.’*
*”When an officer is making his round, sentinels don’t
ask him for the password.... I am asking you if the colonel
is here.’
And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel,
who had stepped aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a
walk.
Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road,
Dolokhov stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The man, a soldier with a sack over
his shoulder, stopped, came close up to Dolokhov’s horse,
touched it with his hand, and explained simply and in
a friendly way that the commander and the officers were
higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm,
as he called the landowner’s house.
Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French
talk could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned
into the courtyard of the landowner’s house. Having ridden
in, he dismounted and approached a big blazing campfire,
around which sat several men talking noisily. Something
was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge of the fire and a
soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by the fire,
was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.


1979

‘Oh, he’s a hard nut to crack,’ said one of the officers who
was sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.
‘He’ll make them get a move on, those fellows!’ said another, laughing.
Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the
sound of Dolokhov’s and Petya’s steps as they advanced to
the fire leading their horses.
‘Bonjour, messieurs!’* said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.
*”Good day, gentlemen.’
There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond
the fire, and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the
fire, came up to Dolokhov.
‘Is that you, Clement?’ he asked. ‘Where the devil...? But,
noticing his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown,
greeted Dolokhov as a stranger, asking what he could do
for him.
Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying
to overtake their regiment, and addressing the company in
general asked whether they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Petya thought the
officers were beginning to look at him and Dolokhov with
hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were silent.
‘If you were counting on the evening soup, you have
come too late,’ said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.
Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must
push on farther that night.
He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring
the pot and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the
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officer with the long neck. That officer did not take his eyes
from Dolokhov and again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not heard the question, did
not reply, but lighting a short French pipe which he took
from his pocket began asking the officer in how far the road
before them was safe from Cossacks.
‘Those brigands are everywhere,’ replied an officer from
behind the fire.
Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger
only to stragglers such as his companion and himself, ‘but
probably they would not dare to attack large detachments?’
he added inquiringly. No one replied.
‘Well, now he’ll come away,’ Petya thought every moment as he stood by the campfire listening to the talk.
But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had
dropped and began putting direct questions as to how many
men there were in the battalion, how many battalions, and
how many prisoners. Asking about the Russian prisoners
with that detachment, Dolokhov said:
‘A horrid business dragging these corpses about with
one! It would be better to shoot such rabble,’ and burst into
loud laughter, so strange that Petya thought the French
would immediately detect their disguise, and involuntarily
took a step back from the campfire.
No one replied a word to Dolokhov’s laughter, and a
French officer whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in
a greatcoat) rose and whispered something to a companion.
Dolokhov got up and called to the soldier who was holding
their horses.


1981

‘Will they bring our horses or not?’ thought Petya, instinctively drawing nearer to Dolokhov.
The horses were brought.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Dolokhov.
Petya wished to say ‘Good night’ but could not utter a
word. The officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was
a long time mounting his horse which would not stand still,
then he rode out of the yard at a footpace. Petya rode beside
him, longing to look round to see whether or no the French
were running after them, but not daring to.
Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back
across the open country, but through the village. At one
spot he stopped and listened. ‘Do you hear?’ he asked. Petya
recognized the sound of Russian voices and saw the dark
figures of Russian prisoners round their campfires. When
they had descended to the bridge Petya and Dolokhov rode
past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow
where the Cossacks awaited them.
‘Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, ‘at the first shot at daybreak,’’ said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya
seized hold of him.
‘Really!’ he cried, ‘you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how
splendid! How I love you!’
‘All right, all right!’ said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let
go of him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya
was bending toward him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov
kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and vanished into
the darkness.
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War and Peace

Chapter X
Having returned to the watchman’s hut, Petya found
Denisov in the passage. He was awaiting Petya’s return in
a state of agitation, anxiety, and self-reproach for having let
him go.
‘Thank God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, thank God!’ he repeated, listening to Petya’s rapturous account. ‘But, devil take
you, I haven’t slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now
lie down. We can still get a nap before morning.’
‘But... no,’ said Petya, ‘I don’t want to sleep yet. Besides I
know myself, if I fall asleep it’s finished. And then I am used
to not sleeping before a battle.’
He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of
his expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would
happen next day.
Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went
out of doors.
It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but
drops were still falling from the trees. Near the watchman’s
hut the black shapes of the Cossacks’ shanties and of horses
tethered together could be seen. Behind the hut the dark
shapes of the two wagons with their horses beside them
were discernible, and in the hollow the dying campfire
gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep;
here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the


1983

munching of the horses near by, could be heard low voices
which seemed to be whispering.
Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to
the wagons. Someone was snoring under them, and around
them stood saddled horses munching their oats. In the dark
Petya recognized his own horse, which he called ‘Karabakh’
though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it.
‘Well, Karabakh! We’ll do some service tomorrow,’ said
he, sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.
‘Why aren’t you asleep, sir?’ said a Cossack who was sitting under a wagon.
‘No, ah... Likhachevisn’t that your name? Do you know
I have only just come back! We’ve been into the French
camp.’
And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only
of his ride but also of his object, and why he considered it
better to risk his life than to act ‘just anyhow.’
‘Well, you should get some sleep now,’ said the Cossack.
‘No, I am used to this,’ said Petya. ‘I say, aren’t the flints
in your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don’t you
want any? You can have some.’
The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get
a closer look at Petya.
‘Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately,’ said Petya. ‘Some fellows do things just anyhow, without
preparation, and then they’re sorry for it afterwards. I don’t
like that.’
‘Just so,’ said the Cossack.
‘Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you
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sharpen my saber for me? It’s got bl...’ (Petya feared to tell a
lie, and the saber never had been sharpened.) ‘Can you do
it?’
‘Of course I can.’
Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya
heard the warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed
onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.
‘I say! Are the lads asleep?’ asked Petya.
‘Some are, and some aren’tlike us.’
‘Well, and that boy?’
‘Vesenny? Oh, he’s thrown himself down there in the
passage. Fast asleep after his fright. He was that glad!’
After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a
black figure appeared.
‘What are you sharpening?’ asked a man coming up to
the wagon.
‘Why, this gentleman’s saber.’
‘That’s right,’ said the man, whom Petya took to be an
hussar. ‘Was the cup left here?’
‘There, by the wheel!’
The hussar took the cup.
‘It must be daylight soon,’ said he, yawning, and went
away.
Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with
Denisov’s guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road,
sitting on a wagon captured from the French beside which
horses were tethered, that under it Likhachev was sitting


1985

sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark blotch to the
right was the watchman’s hut, and the red blotch below to
the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man
who had come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a
drink; but he neither knew nor waited to know anything of
all this. He was in a fairy kingdom where nothing resembled
reality. The big dark blotch might really be the watchman’s
hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very depths of the
earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be the eye
of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a
wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a
wagon but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he
would have to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go
on falling and never reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just
the Cossack, Likhachev, who was sitting under the wagon,
but it might be the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most
splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of. It might
really have been that the hussar came for water and went
back into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanisheddisappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.
Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was in a fairy kingdom where everything
was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm
like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees
clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if the clouds were passing, and a clear
black sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed as if the black
spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed to be rising
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War and Peace

high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low that
one could touch it with one’s hand.
Petya’s eyes began to close and he swayed a little.
The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The
horses neighed and jostled one another. Someone snored.
‘Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg...’ hissed the saber against
the whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious
orchestra playing some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn.
Petya was as musical as Natasha and more so than Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about it, and
so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed
to him particularly fresh and attractive. The music became
more and more audible. The melody grew and passed from
one instrument to another. And what was played was a
fuguethough Petya had not the least conception of what a
fugue is. Each instrumentnow resembling a violin and now
a horn, but better and clearer than violin or hornplayed its
own part, and before it had finished the melody merged
with another instrument that began almost the same air,
and then with a third and a fourth; and they all blended into
one and again became separate and again blended, now into
solemn church music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.
‘Ohwhy, that was in a dream!’ Petya said to himself, as he
lurched forward. ‘It’s in my ears. But perhaps it’s music of
my own. Well, go on, my music! Now!..’
He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance, sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated,
blended, and again all mingled into the same sweet and sol

1987

emn hymn. ‘Oh, this is delightful! As much as I like and as
I like!’ said Petya to himself. He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.
‘Now softly, softly die away!’ and the sounds obeyed
him. ‘Now fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!’
And from an unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. ‘Now voices join in!’ ordered Petya. And at
first from afar he heard men’s voices and then women’s. The
voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and Petya
listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy.
With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song,
the drip from the trees, and the hissing of the saber, ‘Ozhegzheg-zheg...’ and again the horses jostled one another and
neighed, not disturbing the choir but joining in it.
Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted
that there was no one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev’s kindly voice.
‘It’s ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half
with it!’
Petya woke up.
‘It’s getting light, it’s really getting light!’ he exclaimed.
The horses that had previously been invisible could now
be seen to their very tails, and a watery light showed itself
through the bare branches. Petya shook himself, jumped
up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it to Likhachev;
then he flourished the saber, tested it, and sheathed it. The
Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening their
saddle girths.
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‘And here’s the commander,’ said Likhachev.
Denisov came out of the watchman’s hut and, having
called Petya, gave orders to get ready.



1989

Chapter XI
The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies.
Denisov stood by the watchman’s hut giving final orders.
The infantry of the detachment passed along the road and
quickly disappeared amid the trees in the mist of early dawn,
hundreds of feet splashing through the mud. The esaul gave
some orders to his men. Petya held his horse by the bridle,
impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face, having
been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were
particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and
his whole body pulsed rhythmically.
‘Well, is ev’wything weady?’ asked Denisov. ‘Bwing the
horses.’
The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the
Cossack because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved
him, and mounted. Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His
horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but Petya leaped
quickly into the saddle unconscious of his own weight and,
turning to look at the hussars starting in the darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.
‘Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission!
Please... for God’s sake...!’ said he.
Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya’s very existence.
He turned to glance at him.
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‘I ask one thing of you,’ he said sternly, ‘to obey me and
not shove yourself forward anywhere.’
He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence
all the way. When they had come to the edge of the forest
it was noticeably growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the esaul and the Cossacks rode past
Petya and Denisov. When they had all ridden by, Denisov
touched his horse and rode down the hill. Slipping onto
their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with their
riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter
and lighter, but the mist still hid distant objects. Having
reached the valley, Denisov looked back and nodded to a
Cossack beside him.
‘The signal!’ said he.
The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an
instant the tramp of horses galloping forward was heard,
shouts came from various sides, and then more shots.
At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya
lashed his horse and loosening his rein galloped forward,
not heeding Denisov who shouted at him. It seemed to
Petya that at the moment the shot was fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge. Cossacks
were galloping along the road in front of him. On the bridge
he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he
galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen,
were running from right to left across the road. One of them
fell in the mud under his horse’s feet.
Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with some

1991

thing. From the midst of that crowd terrible screams arose.
Petya galloped up, and the first thing he saw was the pale
face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman, clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.
‘Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!’ shouted Petya, and giving rein
to his excited horse he galloped forward along the village
street.
He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged Russian prisoners, who had come running
from both sides of the road, were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking Frenchman, in a blue
overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red face, had been
defending himself against the hussars. When Petya galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. ‘Too late again!’
flashed through Petya’s mind and he galloped on to the
place from which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots
came from the yard of the landowner’s house he had visited
the night before with Dolokhov. The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden thickly
overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks
who crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a
pale-greenish tint, shouting to his men. ‘Go round! Wait for
the infantry!’ he exclaimed as Petya rode up to him.
‘Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!’ shouted Petya, and without
pausing a moment galloped to the place whence came the
sounds of firing and where the smoke was thickest.
A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past,
while others plashed against something. The Cossacks
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and Dolokhov galloped after Petya into the gateway of the
courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the French
threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to meet
the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the
pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead
of holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly
and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his
saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was
smoldering in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and
Petya fell heavily on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw
that his arms and legs jerked rapidly though his head was
quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.
After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out
of the house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and
announced that they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted
and went up to Petya, who lay motionless with outstretched
arms.
‘Done for!’ he said with a frown, and went to the gate to
meet Denisov who was riding toward him.
‘Killed?’ cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the
unmistakably lifeless attitudevery familiar to himin which
Petya’s body was lying.
‘Done for!’ repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these
words afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the
prisoners, who were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. ‘We won’t take them!’ he called out to Denisov.
Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with trembling hands turned toward himself the
bloodstained, mud-bespattered face which had already


1993

gone white.
‘I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take
them all!’ he recalled Petya’s words. And the Cossacks
looked round in surprise at the sound, like the yelp of a
dog, with which Denisov turned away, walked to the wattle
fence, and seized hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and
Dolokhov was Pierre Bezukhov.

1994

War and Peace

Chapter XII
During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh
orders had been issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners among whom was Pierre.
On the twenty-second of October that party was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it
had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that
had traveled the first stages with them had been captured
by Cossacks, the other half had gone on ahead. Not one of
those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in front of
the prisoners was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first
days was now replaced by Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners
came a cavalry baggage train.
From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till
then moved in three columns, went on as a single group.
The symptoms of disorder that Pierre had noticed at their
first halting place after leaving Moscow had now reached
the utmost limit.
The road along which they moved was bordered on both
sides by dead horses; ragged men who had fallen behind
from various regiments continually changed about, now
joining the moving column, now again lagging behind it.
Several times during the march false alarms had been


1995

given and the soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one another, but
had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for their
causeless panic.
These three groups traveling togetherthe cavalry stores,
the convoy of prisoners, and Junot’s baggage trainstill constituted a separate and united whole, though each of the
groups was rapidly melting away.
Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a
hundred and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been captured or left behind. Some of
Junot’s wagons also had been captured or abandoned. Three
wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers from Davout’s corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned
that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train
than to the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a
German soldier, had been shot by the marshal’s own order
because a silver spoon belonging to the marshal had been
found in his possession.
The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of
the three hundred and thirty men who had set out from
Moscow fewer than a hundred now remained. The prisoners
were more burdensome to the escort than even the cavalry
saddles or Junot’s baggage. They understood that the saddles and Junot’s spoon might be of some use, but that cold
and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally
cold and hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on
the road (in which case the order was to shoot them) was
not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the escort,
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as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were
in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and
so rendering their own plight still worse, treated them with
particular moroseness and severity.
At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after
locking the prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their
own stores, several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under
the wall and ran away, but were recaptured by the French
and shot.
The arrangement adopted when they started, that the
officer prisoners should be kept separate from the rest,
had long since been abandoned. All who could walk went
together, and after the third stage Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
Karataev for its master.
On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again
fell ill with the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in
Moscow, and as he grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away
from him. Pierre did not know why, but since Karataev had
begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to go near
him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with
which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places,
and when he smelled the odor emanating from him which
was now stronger than before, Pierre moved farther away
and did not think about him.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not
with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that
man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him,
in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all un

1997

happiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.
And now during these last three weeks of the march he had
learned still another new, consolatory truththat nothing
in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no
condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so
there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack
freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their
limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered
as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with
one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and
that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered
just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that were
covered with soreshis footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wifeof
his own free will as it had seemed to himhe had been no
more free than now when they locked him up at night in a
stable. Of all that he himself subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst was
the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of
the gunpowder they used instead of salt was even pleasant;
there was no great cold, it was always warm walking in the
daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at
first hard to bear was his feet.
After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined
his feet by the campfire, thought it would be impossible to
walk on them; but when everybody got up he went along,
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limping, and, when he had warmed up, walked without
feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more terrible
to look at than before. However, he did not look at them
now, but thought of other things.
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in
man and the saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to another, which is like the safety valve
of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to blow off when
the pressure exceeds a certain limit.
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged behind, though more than a hundred
perished in that way. He did not think of Karataev who
grew weaker every day and evidently would soon have to
share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The
harder his position became and the more terrible the future,
the more independent of that position in which he found
himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.



1999

Chapter XIII
At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was
going uphill along the muddy, slippery road, looking at
his feet and at the roughness of the way. Occasionally he
glanced at the familiar crowd around him and then again
at his feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar and
his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran merrily along
the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and
self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along on
three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark
at the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier
and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the
flesh of different animalsfrom men to horsesin various stages of decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the
passing men the dog could eat all it wanted.
It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if
at any moment it might cease and the sky clear, but after a
short break it began raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water, which ran along
the ruts in streams.
Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting
his steps in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers.
Mentally addressing the rain, he repeated: ‘Now then, now
then, go on! Pelt harder!’
It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but
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far down and deep within him his soul was occupied with
something important and comforting. This something was
a most subtle spiritual deduction from a conversation with
Karataev the day before.
At their yesterday’s halting place, feeling chilly by a dying campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one,
which was burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered uphead and allwith his greatcoat as if it were
a vestment, telling the soldiers in his effective and pleasant
though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew. It was already
past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually free of
his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the
fire and heard Platon’s voice enfeebled by illness, and saw
his pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful
prick at his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened
him and he wished to go away, but there was no other fire,
and Pierre sat down, trying not to look at Platon.
‘Well, how are you?’ he asked.
‘How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won’t grant
us death,’ replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he
had begun.
‘And so, brother,’ he continued, with a smile on his pale
emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, ‘
you see, brother..’
Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev
had told it to him alone some half-dozen times and always
with a specially joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre
now listened to that tale as to something new, and the quiet
rapture Karataev evidently felt as he told it communicated


2001

itself also to Pierre. The story was of an old merchant who
lived a good and God-fearing life with his family, and who
went once to the Nizhni fair with a companiona rich merchant.
Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and
next morning his companion was found robbed and with
his throat cut. A bloodstained knife was found under the
old merchant’s pillow. He was tried, knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, ‘all in due form’ as Karataev put
it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.
‘And so, brother’ (it was at this point that Pierre came
up), ‘ten years or more passed by. The old man was living
as a convict, submitting as he should and doing no wrong.
Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man among
them. And they began telling what each was suffering for,
and how they had sinned against God. One told how he had
taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house
on fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had
done nothing. So they asked the old man: ‘What are you being punished for, Daddy?’‘I, my dear brothers,’ said he, ‘am
being punished for my own and other men’s sins. But I have
not killed anyone or taken anything that was not mine, but
have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my
dear brothers, and had much property. ‘And he went on to
tell them all about it in due order. ‘I don’t grieve for myself,’
he says, ‘God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry
for my old wife and the children,’ and the old man began to
weep. Now it happened that in the group was the very man
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who had killed the other merchant. ‘Where did it happen,
Daddy?’ he said. ‘When, and in what month?’ He asked all
about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes up to the
old man like this, and falls down at his feet! ‘You are perishing because of me, Daddy,’ he says. ‘It’s quite true, lads,
that this man,’ he says, ‘is being tortured innocently and for
nothing! I,’ he says, ‘did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,’ he
says, ‘for Christ’s sake!’’
Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the
fire, and he drew the logs together.
‘And the old man said, ‘God will forgive you, we are all
sinners in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,’ and he wept
bitter tears. Well, and what do you think, dear friends?’
Karataev continued, his face brightening more and more
with a rapturous smile as if what he now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his story:
‘What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed
to the authorities. ‘I have taken six lives,’ he says (he was a
great sinner), ‘but what I am most sorry for is this old man.
Don’t let him suffer because of me.’ So he confessed and it
was all written down and the papers sent off in due form.
The place was a long way off, and while they were judging,
what with one thing and another, filling in the papers all
in due formthe authorities I meantime passed. The affair
reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar’s decree came: to
set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had
been awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for
the old man. ‘Where is the old man who has been suffering


2003

innocently and in vain? A paper has come from the Tsar!’
so they began looking for him,’ here Karataev’s lower jaw
trembled, ‘but God had already forgiven himhe was dead!
That’s how it was, dear fellows!’ Karataev concluded and sat
for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile.
And Pierre’s soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the
story itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up Karataev’s face as he told it, and the
mystic significance of that joy.

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Chapter XIV
‘A vos places!’* suddenly cried a voice.
*”To your places.’
A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of
something joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the prisoners. From all sides came
shouts of command, and from the left came smartly dressed
cavalrymen on good horses, passing the prisoners at a trot.
The expression on all faces showed the tension people feel at
the approach of those in authority. The prisoners thronged
together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed
up.
‘The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!’
and hardly had the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage
drawn by six gray horses rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse
of a man in a three-cornered hat with a tranquil look on his
handsome, plump, white face. It was one of the marshals.
His eye fell on Pierre’s large and striking figure, and in the
expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre
thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that
sympathy.
The general in charge of the stores galloped after the
carriage with a red and frightened face, whipping up his
skinny horse. Several officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their faces all looked excited


2005

and worried.
‘What did he say? What did he say?’ Pierre heard them
ask.
While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he
had not yet seen that morning. He sat in his short overcoat
leaning against a birch tree. On his face, besides the look of
joyful emotion it had worn yesterday while telling the tale
of the merchant who suffered innocently, there was now an
expression of quiet solemnity.
Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes
now filled with tears, evidently wishing him to come near
that he might say something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself. He made as if he did not notice that
look and moved hastily away.
When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked
round. Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his
head. Pierre did not look round again but went limping up
the hill.
From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the
sound of a shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment
he remembered that he had not yet finished reckoning up
how many stages still remained to Smolenska calculation
he had begun before the marshal went by. And he again
started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one
of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both
looked pale, and in the expression on their facesone of them
glanced timidly at Pierrethere was something resembling
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what he had seen on the face of the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and remembered that,
two days before, that man had burned his shirt while drying
it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.
Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog
began to howl. ‘What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?’
thought Pierre.
His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him,
avoided looking back at the place where the shot had been
fired and the dog was howling, just as Pierre did, but there
was a set look on all their faces.



2007

Chapter XV
The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal’s baggage train
stopped at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate
some roast horseflesh, lay down with his back to the fire,
and immediately fell asleep. He again slept as he had done
at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.
Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or another, gave expression to his thoughts, and
even to the same thoughts that had been expressed in his
dream at Mozhaysk.
‘Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and
moves and that movement is God. And while there is life
there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to
love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love
this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent sufferings.’
‘Karataev!’ came to Pierre’s mind.
And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly old man who had given him geography lessons
in Switzerland. ‘Wait a bit,’ said the old man, and showed
Pierre a globe. This globe was alivea vibrating ball without
fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed
places, sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out
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and occupy as much space as possible, but others striving
to do the same compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and
sometimes merged with it.
‘That is life,’ said the old teacher.
‘How simple and clear it is,’ thought Pierre. ‘How is it I
did not know it before?’
‘God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as
to reflect Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges,
disappears from the surface, sinks to the depths, and again
emerges. There now, Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?’ said the teacher.
‘Do you understand, damn you?’ shouted a voice, and
Pierre woke up.
He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just
pushed a Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His
sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy, hairy, red hands with
their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His brown
morose face with frowning brows was clearly visible by the
glow of the charcoal.
‘It’s all the same to him,’ he muttered, turning quickly to
a soldier who stood behind him. ‘Brigand! Get away!’
And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre,
who turned away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner,
the Russian soldier the Frenchman had pushed away, was
sitting near the fire patting something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray dog, sitting
beside the soldier, wagging its tail.
‘Ah, he’s come?’ said Pierre. ‘And Plat-’ he began, but did


2009

not finish.
Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories
awoke in his fancyof the look Platon had given him as he
sat under the tree, of the shot heard from that spot, of the
dog’s howl, of the guilty faces of the two Frenchmen as
they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and
of Karataev’s absence at this haltand he was on the point of
realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind
of a summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish
lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion from
them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country
in summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of
the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into water so that it
closed over his head.
Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and
rapid firing. French soldiers were running past him.
‘The Cossacks!’ one of them shouted, and a moment later
a crowd of Russians surrounded Pierre.
For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. All around he heard his comrades sobbing
with joy.
‘Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!’ old soldiers exclaimed,
weeping, as they embraced Cossacks and hussars.
The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners;
one offered them clothes, another boots, and a third bread.
Pierre sobbed as he sat among them and could not utter a
word. He hugged the first soldier who approached him, and
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kissed him, weeping.
Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a
crowd of disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited
by all that had happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed Dolokhov who gently switched his
boots with his whip and watched them with cold glassy eyes
that boded no good, they became silent. On the opposite
side stood Dolokhov’s Cossack, counting the prisoners and
marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.
‘How many?’ Dolokhov asked the Cossack.
‘The second hundred,’ replied the Cossack.
‘Filez, filez!’* Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this
expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of
the prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.
*”Get along, get along!’
Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya
Rostov to a hole that had been dug in the garden.



2011

Chapter XVI
After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts
began, the flight of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men freezing, or roasting themselves to
death at the campfires, while carriages with people dressed
in furs continued to drive past, carrying away the property
that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings, and dukes; but
the process of the flight and disintegration of the French
army went on essentially as before.
From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventythree thousand men not reckoning the Guards (who did
nothing during the whole war but pillage) was reduced to
thirty-six thousand, though not more than five thousand
had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding
terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The French army melted away and perished at the
same rate from Moscow to Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and from the Berezina
to Vilnaindependently of the greater or lesser intensity of
the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army
instead of moving in three columns huddled together into
one mass, and so went on to the end. Berthier wrote to his
Emperor (we know how far commanding officers allow
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War and Peace

dition of an army) and this is what he said:
I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition
of the various corps I have had occasion to observe during
different stages of the last two or three days’ march. They
are almost disbanded. Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of their regiments, the others go
off by themselves in different directions hoping to find food
and escape discipline. In general they regard Smolensk as
the place where they hope to recover. During the last few
days many of the men have been seen to throw away their
cartridges and their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty’s
service demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk and should first of all be freed from ineffectives, such
as dismounted cavalry, unnecessary baggage, and artillery
material that is no longer in proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out with hunger and fatigue,
need these supplies as well as a few days’ rest. Many have
died last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This state of
things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear
that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no
longer be under control in case of an engagement.
November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.
After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them
a promised land, the French, searching for food, killed one
another, sacked their own stores, and when everything had
been plundered fled farther.
They all went without knowing whither or why they were
going. Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no


2013

one issued any orders to him. But still he and those about
him retained their old habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day; called one another sire, mon
cousin, prince d’Eckmuhl, roi de Naples, and so on. But
these orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in
them was acted upon for they could not be carried out, and
though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or
Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who
had done much evil for which they had now to pay. And
though they pretended to be concerned about the army,
each was thinking only of himself and of how to get away
quickly and save himself.

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Chapter XVII
The movements of the Russian and French armies during
the campaign from Moscow back to the Niemen were like
those in a game of Russian blindman’s bluff, in which two
players are blindfolded and one of them occasionally rings a
little bell to inform the catcher of his whereabouts. First he
rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into a tight place he
runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to escape
runs straight into his opponent’s arms.
At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga
road, Napoleon’s armies made their presence known, but
later when they reached the Smolensk road they ran holding
the clapper of their bell tightand often thinking they were
escaping ran right into the Russians.
Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit and the consequent exhaustion of the horses,
the chief means of approximately ascertaining the enemy’s
positionby cavalry scoutingwas not available. Besides, as a
result of the frequent and rapid change of position by each
army, even what information was obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one day that the enemy
had been in a certain position the day before, by the third
day when something could have been done, that army was
already two days’ march farther on and in quite another position.


2015

One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk
there were several different roads available for the French,
and one would have thought that during their stay of four
days they might have learned where the enemy was, might
have arranged some more advantageous plan and undertaken something new. But after a four days’ halt the mob,
with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the
beaten track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the
oldthe worstroad, through Krasnoe and Orsha.
Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the
French separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the
Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The Russian army,
expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond
the Dnieperwhich was the only reasonable thing for him
to dothemselves turned to the right and came out onto the
highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of blindman’s
buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy
unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped
short from the sudden fright, but then they resumed their
flight, abandoning their comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate portions of the French
armyfirst Murat’s (the vice-king’s), then Davout’s, and then
Ney’sran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian army. They
abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,
their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the
Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.
Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of Smolensk which were in nobody’s way,
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because despite the unfortunate plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor against which
they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of ten
thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one
thousand men left, having abandoned all the rest and all his
cannon, and having crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth
at a wooded spot.
From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna,
still playing at blindman’s buff with the pursuing army. At
the Berezina they again became disorganized, many were
drowned and many surrendered, but those who got across
the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a fur coat
and, having seated himself in a sleigh, galloped on alone,
abandoning his companions. The others who could do so
drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender
or die.



2017

Chapter XVIII
This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during
which they did all they could to destroy themselves. From
the time they turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their
leader fled from the army, none of the movements of the
crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the historians, who
attributed the actions of the mass to the will of one man,
would have found it impossible to make the story of the
retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have
been written by the historians about this campaign, and
everywhere are described Napoleon’s arrangements, the
maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army,
as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.
The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free
road into a well-supplied district and the parallel road
was open to him along which Kutuzov afterwards pursued
himthis unnecessary retreat along a devastated roadis explained to us as being due to profound considerations.
Similarly profound considerations are given for his retreat
from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle and take personal command, and to have walked
about with a birch stick and said:
‘J’ai assez fait l’empereur; il est temps de faire le general,’*
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but nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning
to its fate the scattered fragments of the army he left behind.
*”I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act
the general.’
Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,
especially of Neya greatness of soul consisting in this: that
he made his way by night around through the forest and
across the Dnieper and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men.
And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor
from his heroic army is presented to us by the historians
as something great and characteristic of genius. Even that
final running away, described in ordinary language as the
lowest depth of baseness which every child is taught to be
ashamed ofeven that act finds justification in the historians’
language.
When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads
of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are
clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just,
the historians produce a saving conception of ‘greatness.’
‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the standards of right and
wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no
atrocity for which a ‘great’ man can be blamed.
‘C’est grand!’* say the historians, and there no longer
exists either good or evil but only ‘grand’ and ‘not grand.’
Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic,
in their conception, of some special animals called ‘heroes.’
And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leav

2019

ing to perish those who were not merely his comrades but
were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que
c’est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.
*”It is great.’
*[2] That it is great.
‘Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au
ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,’* said he. And the whole world for
fifty years has been repeating: ‘Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le
Grand!’ Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
*”From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.’
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is
merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable
meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by
Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there
is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are
absent.

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War and Peace

Chapter XIX
What Russian, reading the account of the last part of
the campaign of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret, dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who
has not asked himself how it is that the French were not all
captured or destroyed when our three armies surrounded
them in superior numbers, when the disordered French,
hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as
the historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the
French, to cut them off, and capture them all?
How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the French had given battle at Borodino,
did not achieve its purpose when it had surrounded the
French on three sides and when its aim was to capture them?
Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when
we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not
beat them? How could that happen?
History (or what is called by that name) replying to these
questions says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov, and this man and that man, did not
execute such and such maneuvers...
But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why
if they were guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan
were they not tried and punished? But even if we admitted
that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and others were the cause of the


2021

Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krasnoe and
at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior forces), the
French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not
captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.
The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian
military historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an
attack) is unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain
the troops from attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.
Why was the Russian armywhich with inferior forces had
withstood the enemy in full strength at Borodinodefeated
at Krasnoe and the Berezina by the disorganized crowds of
the French when it was numerically superior?
If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and
capturing Napoleon and his marshalsand that aim was not
merely frustrated but all attempts to attain it were most
shamefully baffledthen this last period of the campaign is
quite rightly considered by the French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
historians.
The Russian military historians in so far as they submit
to claims of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of
their lyrical rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth,
must reluctantly admit that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for Napoleon and defeats for
Kutuzov.
But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that
such a conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of
French victories brought the French complete destruction,
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while the series of Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the liberation of their country.
The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the
historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects,
and so forth, have attributed to this last period of the war
of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of cutting off
and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.
There never was or could have been such an aim, for it
would have been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.
It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon’s
disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible
speed, that is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing various operations
on the French who were running away as fast as they possibly could?
Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose whole energy was directed to flight.
Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one’s
own troops in order to destroy the French army, which
without external interference was destroying itself at such a
rate that, though its path was not blocked, it could not carry
across the frontier more than it actually did in December,
namely a hundredth part of the original army.
Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take
captive the Emperor, kings, and dukeswhose capture would
have been in the highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of the time (Joseph de


2023

Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless would
have been the wish to capture army corps of the French,
when our own army had melted away to half before reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed
to convoy the corps of prisoners, and when our men were
not always getting full rations and the prisoners already
taken were perishing of hunger.
All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of his garden a cow that had
trampled down the beds he had planted, should run to the
gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said
in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew up
this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the
trampled beds.
But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his
army would have been senseless, it was impossible.
It was impossible first becauseas experience shows that
a three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never
coincides with the plansthe probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction on time at
an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to
impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great
distances do not yield the desired results.
Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the
momentum with which Napoleon’s army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than the Russians possessed
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would have been required.
Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term ‘to
cut off’ has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but
not an army. To cut off an armyto bar its roadis quite impossible, for there is always plenty of room to avoid capture
and there is the night when nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince themselves by the example of
Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only possible to capture
prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one’s hand. Men can
only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the
rules of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the
French troops quite rightly did not consider that this suited
them, since death by hunger and cold awaited them in flight
or captivity alike.
Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never
since the world began has a war been fought under such
conditions as those that obtained in 1812, and the Russian
army in its pursuit of the French strained its strength to the
utmost and could not have done more without destroying
itself.
During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is
a number equal to the population of a large provincial town.
Half the men fell out of the army without a battle.
And it is of this period of the campaignwhen the army
lacked boots and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions
and without vodka, and was camping out at night for
months in the snow with fifteen degrees of frost, when there


2025

were only seven or eight hours of daylight and the rest was
night in which the influence of discipline cannot be maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but
for months, where they were every moment fighting death
from hunger and cold, when half the army perished in a
single monthit is of this period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich should have made a flank
march to such and such a place, Tormasov to another place,
and Chichagov should have crossed (more than knee-deep
in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so ‘routed’ and
‘cut off’ the French and so on and so on.
The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and
should have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not to blame because other Russians,
sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should do what
was impossible.
All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between the facts and the historical accounts only
arises because the historians dealing with the matter have
written the history of the beautiful words and sentiments of
various generals, and not the history of the events.
To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do their surmises and the rewards this or that
general received; but the question of those fifty thousand
men who were left in hospitals and in graves does not even
interest them, for it does not come within the range of their
investigation.
Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and
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general plans and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a direct part in the
events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble easily
and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.
The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in the imaginations of a dozen people. It could
not exist because it was senseless and unattainable.
The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as
the French ran away, and so it was only necessary not to
stop their flight. Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla
warfare which was destroying the French, and thirdly by
the fact that a large Russian army was following the French,
ready to use its strength in case their movement stopped.
The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running
animal. And the experienced driver knew it was better to
hold the whip raised as a menace than to strike the running
animal on the head.



2027

BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 13

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War and Peace

Chapter I
When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:
substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes.
But when it is a beloved and intimate human being that is
dying, besides this horror at the extinction of life there is a
severance, a spiritual wound, which like a physical wound is
sometimes fatal and sometimes heals, but always aches and
shrinks at any external irritating touch.
After Prince Andrew’s death Natasha and Princess Mary
alike felt this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing cloud of death that overhung them, they
dared not look life in the face. They carefully guarded their
open wounds from any rough and painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street, a summons to
dinner, the maid’s inquiry what dress to prepare, or worse
still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an
insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern
and dreadful choir that still resounded in their imagination,
and hindered their gazing into those mysterious limitless
vistas that for an instant had opened out before them.
Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and pain. They spoke little even to one another, and
when they did it was of very unimportant matters.
Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the


2029

possibility of a future seemed to them to insult his memory.
Still more carefully did they avoid anything relating to him
who was dead. It seemed to them that what they had lived
through and experienced could not be expressed in words,
and that any reference to the details of his life infringed the
majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been accomplished before their eyes.
Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything that might lead up to the subjectthis
halting on all sides at the boundary of what they might not
mentionbrought before their minds with still greater purity
and clearness what they were both feeling.
But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure
and complete joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute
and independent arbiter of her own fate and guardian and
instructor of her nephew, was the first to be called back to
life from that realm of sorrow in which she had dwelt for
the first fortnight. She received letters from her relations to
which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas
had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych
came to Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs
and with advice and suggestions that they should return to
Moscow to the house on the Vozdvizhenka Street, which
had remained uninjured and needed only slight repairs.
Life did not stand still and it was necessary to live. Hard
as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and
sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone,
yet the cares of life demanded her attention and she invol2030

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untarily yielded to them. She went through the accounts
with Alpatych, conferred with Dessalles about her nephew,
and gave orders and made preparations for the journey to
Moscow.
Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess
Mary began making preparations for departure, held aloof
from her too.
Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with
her to Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer,
for they saw their daughter losing strength every day and
thought that a change of scene and the advice of Moscow
doctors would be good for her.
‘I am not going anywhere,’ Natasha replied when this was
proposed to her. ‘Do please just leave me alone!’ And she
ran out of the room, with difficulty refraining from tears of
vexation and irritation rather than of sorrow.
After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone
in her grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room
by herself, sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of
the sofa, tearing and twisting something with her slender
nervous fingers and gazing intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This solitude exhausted and
tormented her but she was in absolute need of it. As soon
as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position
and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting impatiently for the intruder to go.
She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that on whichwith a terrible questioning too great for
her strengthher spiritual gaze was fixed.


2031

One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and
thin, dressed in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a knot, was crouched feet and all in the
corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and smoothing out
the end of her sash while she looked at a corner of the door.
She was gazing in the direction in which he had goneto
the other side of life. And that other side of life, of which she
had never before thought and which had formerly seemed to
her so far away and improbable, was now nearer and more
akin and more comprehensible than this side of life, where
everything was either emptiness and desolation or suffering
and indignity.
She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could
not imagine him otherwise than as he had been here. She
now saw him again as he had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa,
and at Yaroslavl.
She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and
her own, and sometimes devised other words they might
have spoken.
There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak,
leaning his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his shoulders raised. His lips are firmly
closed, his eyes glitter, and a wrinkle comes and goes on his
pale forehead. One of his legs twitches just perceptibly, but
rapidly. Natasha knows that he is struggling with terrible
pain. ‘What is that pain like? Why does he have that pain?
What does he feel? How does it hurt him?’ thought Natasha.
He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to
speak seriously:
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‘One thing would be terrible,’ said he: ‘to bind oneself
forever to a suffering man. It would be continual torture.’
And he looked searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to think what she would say. She
said: ‘This can’t go onit won’t. You will get wellquite well.’
She now saw him from the commencement of that scene
and relived what she had then felt. She recalled his long sad
and severe look at those words and understood the meaning
of the rebuke and despair in that protracted gaze.
‘I agreed,’ Natasha now said to herself, ‘that it would be
dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only
because it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it would be dreadful for
me. He then still wished to live and feared death. And I said
it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I meant.
I thought quite differently. Had I said what I thought, I
should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared
with what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he
know that? No, he did not and never will know it. And now
it will never, never be possible to put it right.’ And now he
again seemed to be saying the same words to her, only in her
imagination Natasha this time gave him a different answer.
She stopped him and said: ‘Terrible for you, but not for me!
You know that for me there is nothing in life but you, and to
suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me,’ and he took
her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she
said other tender and loving words which she might have


2033

said then but only spoke now: ‘I love thee!... thee! I love,
love...’ she said, convulsively pressing her hands and setting
her teeth with a desperate effort...
She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to
whom she was saying this. Again everything was shrouded
in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a strained frown she
peered toward the world where he was. And now, now it
seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at the
instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck
painfully on her ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the
room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look on her
face and showing no concern for her mistress.
‘Come to your Papa at once, please!’ said she with a
strange, excited look. ‘A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich...
a letter,’ she finished with a sob.

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War and Peace

Chapter II
Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha
was feeling a special estrangement from the members of her
own family. All of themher father, mother, and Sonyawere
so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace, that all their
words and feelings seemed an insult to the world in which
she had been living of late, and she felt not merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha’s words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but
did not grasp them.
‘What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to
them? They just live their own old, quiet, and commonplace
life,’ thought Natasha.
As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly
coming out of her mother’s room. His face was puckered up
and wet with tears. He had evidently run out of that room
to give vent to the sobs that were choking him. When he saw
Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.
‘Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling...’ and weeping like
a child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he
almost fell into it, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through
Natasha’s whole being. Terrible anguish struck her heart,
she felt a dreadful ache as if something was being torn in

2035

side her and she were dying. But the pain was immediately
followed by a feeling of release from the oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. The sight
of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that she
heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and her own grief.
She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm,
pointing to her mother’s door. Princess Mary, pale and
with quivering chin, came out from that room and taking
Natasha by the arm said something to her. Natasha neither
saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing
at the door for an instant as if struggling with herself, and
then ran to her mother.
The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and
awkward position, stretching out and beating her head
against the wall. Sonya and the maids were holding her
arms.
‘Natasha! Natasha!...’ cried the countess. ‘It’s not true...
it’s not true... He’s lying... Natasha!’ she shrieked, pushing
those around her away. ‘Go away, all of you; it’s not true!
Killed!... ha, ha, ha!... It’s not true!’
Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her
mother, embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised
her, turned her face toward herself, and clung to her.
‘Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy,’
she kept on whispering, not pausing an instant.
She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly
with her, demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened
and tore open her mother’s dress.
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‘My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!...’ she whispered incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and
feeling her own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling
her nose and cheeks.
The countess pressed her daughter’s hand, closed her
eyes, and became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up
with unaccustomed swiftness, glanced vacantly around her,
and seeing Natasha began to press her daughter’s head with
all her strength. Then she turned toward her daughter’s face
which was wincing with pain and gazed long at it.
‘Natasha, you love me?’ she said in a soft trustful whisper. ‘Natasha, you would not deceive me? You’ll tell me the
whole truth?’
Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her
look there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.
‘My darling Mummy!’ she repeated, straining all the
power of her love to find some way of taking on herself the
excess of grief that crushed her mother.
And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother,
refusing to believe that she could live when her beloved boy
was killed in the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a
world of delirium.
Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that
night, nor the next day and night. She did not sleep and
did not leave her mother. Her persevering and patient love
seemed completely to surround the countess every moment,
not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.
During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a


2037

few minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her
chair and closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was sitting up in bed
and speaking softly.
‘How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won’t you
have some tea?’ Natasha went up to her. ‘You have improved
in looks and grown more manly,’ continued the countess,
taking her daughter’s hand.
‘Mamma! What are you saying..’
‘Natasha, he is no more, no more!’
And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep
for the first time.

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War and Peace

Chapter III
Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the
count tried to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that
she alone was able to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natasha remained constantly
at her mother’s side, sleeping on a lounge chair in her room,
making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed
her mother.
The mother’s wounded spirit could not could not heal.
Petya’s death had torn from her half her life. When the news
of Petya’s death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous
woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no interest in life. But the same blow
that almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored
Natasha to life.
A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual
body is like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem,
just as a deep wound may heal and its edges join, physical
and spiritual wounds alike can yet heal completely only as
the result of a vital force from within.
Natasha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her
life was ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly
showed her that the essence of lifelovewas still active within
her. Love awoke and so did life.


2039

Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary and
Natasha together; this new sorrow brought them still closer
to one another. Princess Mary put off her departure, and for
three weeks looked after Natasha as if she had been a sick
child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom had
strained Natasha’s physical strength.
One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever,
Princess Mary took her to her own room and made her
lie down on the bed. Natasha lay down, but when Princess
Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she called
her back.
‘I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.’
‘You are tiredtry to sleep.’
‘No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me.’
‘She is much better. She spoke so well today,’ said Princess Mary.
Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the
room scanned Princess Mary’s face.
‘Is she like him?’ thought Natasha. ‘Yes, like and yet not
like. But she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown.
And she loves me. What is in her heart? All that is good. But
how? What is her mind like? What does she think about
me? Yes, she is splendid!’
‘Mary,’ she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s hand
to herself, ‘Mary, you mustn’t think me wicked. No? Mary
darling, how I love you! Let us be quite, quite friends.’
And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and
hands, making Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this
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demonstration of her feelings.
From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as
exists only between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha. They were continually kissing and
saying tender things to one another and spent most of their
time together. When one went out the other became restless
and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself
when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up
between them; an exclusive feeling of life being possible
only in each other’s presence.
Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after
they were already in bed they would begin talking and go
on till morning. They spoke most of what was long past.
Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her mother, her
father, and her daydreams; and Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly turned away from
that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess
Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She
did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation
to her own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys,
but she understood and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess Mary, listening
to Natasha’s tales of childhood and early youth, there also
opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life:
belief in life and its enjoyment.
Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to


2041

lower (as they thought) their exalted feelings by words; but
this silence about him had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being conscious of it.
Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak
that they all talked about her health, and this pleased her.
But sometimes she was suddenly overcome by fear not only
of death but of sickness, weakness, and loss of good looks,
and involuntarily she examined her bare arm carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her drawn
and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed
to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.
One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out
of breath. Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason
for going down, and then, testing her strength, ran upstairs
again, observing the result.
Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she called againthough she could hear Dunyasha
comingcalled her in the deep chest tones in which she had
been wont to sing, sing, and listened attentively to herself.
She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed
to her impenetrable, delicate young shoots of grass were
already sprouting, which taking root would so cover with
their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it
would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had
begun to heal from within.
At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow,
and the count insisted on Natasha’s going with her to consult the doctors.
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Chapter IV
After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had
been unable to hold back his troops in their anxiety to
overwhelm and cut off the enemy and so on, the farther
movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians who
pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing
the French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke down, and the information received of the
movements of the French was never reliable.
The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this
continuous marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day
that they could not go any faster.
To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army
it is only necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact
that, while not losing more than five thousand killed and
wounded after Tarutino and less than a hundred prisoners,
the Russian army which left that place a hundred thousand
strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty thousand.
The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army as the flight of the French was to theirs.
The only difference was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction as hung over
the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind
in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind were


2043

among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of
Napoleon’s army was the rapidity of its movement, and a
convincing proof of this is the corresponding decrease of
the Russian army.
Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to
check the movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian army generals, directed his whole
activity here, as he had done at Tarutino and Vyazma, to
hastening it on while easing the movement of our army.
But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous
diminution of the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another reason for slackening
the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutuzov. The aim
of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road
the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our
troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to
cover. Only by following at some distance could one cut
across the zigzag path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of
the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only
reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To that end
Kutuzov’s activity was directed during the whole campaign
from Moscow to Vilnanot casually or intermittently but so
consistently that he never once deviated from it.
Kutuzov felt and knewnot by reasoning or science but
with the whole of his Russian beingwhat every Russian soldier felt: that the French were beaten, that the enemy was
flying and must be driven out; but at the same time he like
the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march, the
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rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of the
year.
But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the
Russian army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to
astonish somebody, and for some reason to capture a king
or a dukeit seemed that nowwhen any battle must be horrible and senselesswas the very time to fight and conquer
somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when
one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to
be made with those soldiersill-shod, insufficiently clad, and
half starvedwho within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their number, and who at the best
if the flight continued would have to go a greater distance
than they had already traversed, before they reached the
frontier.
This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to
overthrow, and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on the French army.
So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one
of the three French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen thousand men. Despite all
Kutuzov’s efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to
preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of
French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe
for three days.
Toll wrote a disposition: ‘The first column will march
to so and so,’ etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg
fired from a hill over the French crowds that were running


2045

past, and demanded reinforcements which did not arrive.
The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as best
they could, and continued their flight.
Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the commissariat affairs of his detachment,
and could never be found when he was wantedthat chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he styled himselfwho was
fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding
their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was
ordered to do.
*Knight without fear and without reproach.
‘I give you that column, lads,’ he said, riding up to the
troops and pointing out the French to the cavalry.
And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could scarcely move, trotted with much effort to
the column presented to themthat is to say, to a crowd of
Frenchmen stark with cold, frost-bitten, and starvingand
the column that had been presented to them threw down its
arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to do.
At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners,
several hundred cannon, and a stick called a ‘marshal’s
staff,’ and disputed as to who had distinguished himself and
were pleased with their achievementthough they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at least a marshal or
a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.
These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind
tools of the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered
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themselves heroes and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable deed. They blamed Kutuzov
and said that from the very beginning of the campaign he
had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought
nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance
from the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there,
that at Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning
that Napoleon was there he had quite lost his head, and that
it was probable that he had an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
Not only did his contempories, carried away by their
passions, talk in this way, but posterity and history have
acclaimed Napoleon as grand, while Kutuzov is described
by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak old courtier, and
by Russians as something indefinitea sort of puppet useful
only because he had a Russian name.



2047

Chapter V
In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a
history recently written by order of the Highest Authorities
it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court liar, frightened
of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian army of the
glory of complete victory over the French.*
*History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
Krasnoe, by Bogdanovich.
Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom
the Russian mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare
and always solitary individuals who, discerning the will of
Providence, submit their personal will to it. The hatred and
contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning the
higher laws.
For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleonthat most insignificant tool of history who never
anywhere, even in exile, showed human dignityNapoleon
is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is grand. But
Kutuzovthe man who from the beginning to the end of his
activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed from
Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in
history of self-sacrifice and a present conciousness of the
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future importance of what was happeningKutuzov seems
to them something indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year 1812 they always seem a little
ashamed.
And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose activity was so unswervingly directed to a single
aim; and it would be difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the will of the whole people.
Still more difficult would it be to find an instance in history
of the aim of an historical personage being so completely
accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov’s efforts were directed in 1812.
Kutuzov never talked of ‘forty centuries looking down
from the Pyramids,’ of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what he intended to accomplish or had
accomplished; in general he said nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the simplest and most
ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most ordinary
things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested
with generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried to prove anything to him. When Count
Rostopchin at the Yauza bridge galloped up to Kutuzov
with personal reproaches for having caused the destruction
of Moscow, and said: ‘How was it you promised not to abandon Moscow without a battle?’ Kutuzov replied: ‘And I shall
not abandon Moscow without a battle,’ though Moscow was
then already abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him
from the Emperor, said that Ermolov ought to be appointed


2049

chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied: ‘Yes, I was just saying
so myself,’ though a moment before he had said quite the
contrary. What did it matter to himwho then alone amid
a senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was happeningwhat did it matter to him
whether Rostopchin attributed the calamities of Moscow to
him or to himself? Still less could it matter to him who was
appointed chief of the artillery.
Not merely in these cases but continually did that old
manwho by experience of life had reached the conviction
that thoughts and the words serving as their expression
are not what move peopleuse quite meaningless words that
happened to enter his head.
But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent
with the single aim toward which he moved throughout the
whole war. Obviously in spite of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real thoughts with
the bitter conviction that he would not be understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his
disagreement with those about him began, he alone said
that the battle of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this
both verbally and in his dispatches and reports up to the
time of his death. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is
not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s proposal of
peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that
all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy
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must be offered ‘a golden bridge”; that neither the Tarutino,
the Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that
we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that
he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.
And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to
Arakcheev to please the Emperor, he aloneincurring thereby the Emperor’s displeasuresaid in Vilna that to carry the
war beyond the frontier is useless and harmful.
Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the
meaning of the events. His actionswithout the smallest deviationwere all directed to one and the same threefold end:
(1) to brace all his strength for conflict with the French, (2)
to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people and of
our army.
This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was ‘Patience
and Time,’ this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at
Borodino, investing the preparations for it with unparalleled
solemnity. This Kutuzov who before the battle of Austerlitz
began said that it would be lost, he alone, in contradiction
to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodino was a
victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was
lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire
after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during
the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless
then, should not be fought, and that a new war should not
be begun nor the frontiers of Russia crossed.
It is easy now to understand the significance of these
eventsif only we abstain from attributing to the activity of


2051

the mass aims that existed only in the heads of a dozen individualsfor the events and results now lie before us.
But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the
general opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people’s view of the events that in all his activity he was never
once untrue to it?
The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating
the meaning of the events then occuring lay in the national
feeling which he possessed in full purity and strength.
Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this
feeling caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary
to the Tsar’s wish, to select himan old man in disfavorto be
their representative in the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human pedestal from which
he, the commander in chief, devoted all his powers not to
slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity
on them.
That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure
could not be cast in the false mold of a European herothe
supposed ruler of menthat history has invented.
To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own
conception of greatness.

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Chapter VI
The fifth of November was the first day of what is called
the battle of Krasnoe. Toward eveningafter much disputing
and many mistakes made by generals who did not go to their
proper places, and after adjutants had been sent about with
counterorderswhen it had become plain that the enemy was
everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither
his headquarters had that day been transferred.
The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on
his plump little white horse, followed by an enormous suite
of discontented generals who whispered among themselves
behind his back. All along the road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with
talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been
able to get hold of, were standing in the road beside a long
row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the
commander in chief the buzz of talk ceased and all eyes
were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white cap with a red
band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One
of the generals was reporting to him where the guns and
prisoners had been captured.


2053

Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what
the general was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he gazed attentively and fixedly at these
prisoners, who presented a specially wretched appearance.
Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses and
cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and festering eyes.
One group of the French stood close to the road, and
two of them, one of whom had his face covered with sores,
were tearing a piece of raw flesh with their hands. There was
something horrible and bestial in the fleeting glance they
threw at the riders and in the malevolent expression with
which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the soldier with the sores
immediately turned away and went on with what he was
doing.
Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers.
He puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively
swayed his head. At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the shoulder, saying
something to him in a friendly manner, and Kutuzov with
the same expression on his face again swayed his head.
‘What were you saying?’ he asked the general, who
continuing his report directed the commander in chief’s attention to some standards captured from the French and
standing in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment.
‘Ah, the standards!’ said Kutuzov, evidently detaching
himself with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied
him.
He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were
looking at him from all sides awaiting a word from him.
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He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment,
sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers carrying the standards to advance and
surround the commander in chief with them. Kutuzov was
silent for a few seconds and then, submitting with evident
reluctance to the duty imposed by his position, raised his
head and began to speak. A throng of officers surrounded
him. He looked attentively around at the circle of officers,
recognizing several of them.
‘I thank you all!’ he said, addressing the soldiers and then
again the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words were distinctly heard. ‘I thank you all for your
hard and faithful service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you forever.’
He paused and looked around.
‘Lower its head, lower it!’ he said to a soldier who had
accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhensk standards. ‘Lower, lower, that’s it.
Hurrah lads!’ he added, addressing the men with a rapid
movement of his chin.
‘Hur-r-rah!’ roared thousands of voices.
While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up
with a mild and apparently ironic gleam.
‘You see, brothers...’ said he when the shouts had ceased...
and all at once his voice and the expression of his face
changed. It was no longer the commander in chief speaking
but an ordinary old man who wanted to tell his comrades
something very important.


2055

There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the
ranks of the soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was going to say.
‘You see, brothers, I know it’s hard for you, but it can’t
be helped! Bear up; it won’t be for long now! We’ll see our
visitors off and then we’ll rest. The Tsar won’t forget your
service. It is hard for you, but still you are at home while
theyyou see what they have come to,’ said he, pointing to the
prisoners. ‘Worse off than our poorest beggars. While they
were strong we didn’t spare ourselves, but now we may even
pity them. They are human beings too. Isn’t it so, lads?’
He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed upon him he read sympathy with what he had
said. His face grew brighter and brighter with an old man’s
mild smile, which drew the corners of his lips and eyes into
a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed his
head as if in perplexity.
‘But after all who asked them here? Serves them right,
the bloody bastards!’ he cried, suddenly lifting his head.
And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the
first time during the whole campaign, and left the broken
ranks of the soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting ‘Hurrah!’
Kutuzov’s words were hardly understood by the troops.
No one could have repeated the field marshal’s address,
begun solemnly and then changing into an old man’s simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that speech, the
feeling of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe
and consciousness of the justice of our cause, exactly ex2056

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pressed by that old man’s good-natured expletives, was not
merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and
found expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts.
Afterwards when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov
asking whether he wished his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently
greatly moved.



2057

Chapter VII
When the troops reached their night’s halting place on
the eighth of November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already growing dusk. All day it had been calm
and frosty with occasional lightly falling snow and toward
evening it began to clear. Through the falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost grew
keener.
An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three
thousand strong but now numbered only nine hundred
was one of the first to arrive that night at its halting placea
village on the highroad. The quartermasters who met the
regiment announced that all the huts were full of sick and
dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.
There was only one hut available for the regimental commander.
The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed
through the village and stacked its arms in front of the last
huts.
Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its lair and its food. One part of it dispersed
and waded knee-deep through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village, and immediately the sound
of axes and swords, the crashing of branches, and merry
voices could be heard from there. Another section amid
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the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in
a group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and
feeding the horses. A third section scattered through the
village arranging quarters for the staff officers, carrying out
the French corpses that were in the huts, and dragging away
boards, dry wood, and thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve for shelter.
Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down
the high wattle wall of a shed, the roof of which had already
been removed.
‘Now then, all togethershove!’ cried the voices, and the
huge surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking
with frost, was seen swaying in the gloom of the night. The
lower stakes cracked more and more and at last the wall fell,
and with it the men who had been pushing it. Loud, coarse
laughter and joyous shouts ensued.
‘Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That’s
it... Where are you shoving to?’
‘Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a
song!’
All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note
died away, twenty voices roared out at once: ‘Oo-oo-oo-oo!
That’s it. All together! Heave away, boys!...’ but despite their
united efforts the wattle hardly moved, and in the silence
that followed the heavy breathing of the men was audible.
‘Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are!
Lend a hand... will you? You may want us one of these
days.’


2059

Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on
their way into the village joined the haulers, and the wattle
wall, which was about thirty-five feet long an seven feet high,
moved forward along the village street, swaying, pressing
upon and cutting the shoulders of the gasping men.
‘Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There
now..’
Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.
‘What are you up to?’ suddenly came the authoritative
voice of a sergeant major who came upon the men who were
hauling their burden. ‘There are gentry here; the general
himself is in that hut, and you foul-mouthed devils, you
brutes, I’ll give it to you!’ shouted he, hitting the first man
who came in his way a swinging blow on the back. ‘Can’t
you make less noise?’
The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck
groaned and wiped his face, which had been scratched till it
bled by his falling against the wattle.
‘There, how that devil hits out! He’s made my face all
bloody,’ said he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant
major had passed on.
‘Don’t you like it?’ said a laughing voice, and moderating
their tones the men moved forward.
When they were out of the village they began talking
again as loud as before, interlarding their talk with the same
aimless expletives.
In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers
had gathered and were in animated talk over their tea about
the events of the day and the maneuvers suggested for to2060

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morrow. It was proposed to make a flank march to the left,
cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture him.
By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to
its place the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for
cooking, the wood crackled, the snow was melting, and
black shadows of soldiers flitted to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been trodden down.
Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything
was done without any orders being given. Stores of wood
were brought for the night, shelters were rigged up for the
officers, caldrons were being boiled, and muskets and accouterments put in order.
The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by the Eighth Company as a shelter from the north,
propped up by musket rests, and a campfire was built before
it. They beat the tattoo, called the roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for the nightsome repairing their
footgear, some smoking pipes, and some stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.



2061

Chapter VIII
One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched conditions the Russian soldiers were in at
that timelacking warm boots and sheepskin coats, without
a roof over their heads, in the snow with eighteen degrees
of frost, and without even full rations (the commissariat did
not always keep up with the troops)they would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.
On the contrary, the army had never under the best material conditions presented a more cheerful and animated
aspect. This was because all who began to grow depressed
or who lost strength were sifted out of the army day by day.
All the physically or morally weak had long since been left
behind and only the flower of the armyphysically and mentallyremained.
More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth
Company than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were
sitting with them and their campfire blazed brighter than
others. For leave to sit by their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel.
‘Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch?
Are you lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more
wood!’ shouted a red-haired and red-faced man, screwing
up his eyes and blinking because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. ‘And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch some
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wood!’ said he to another soldier.
This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being robust he ordered about those weaker than
himself. The soldier they called ‘Jackdaw,’ a thin little fellow
with a sharp nose, rose obediently and was about to go but
at that instant there came into the light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier carrying a load of
wood.
‘Bring it herethat’s fine!’
They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew
at it with their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their
greatcoats, making the flames hiss and crackle. The men
drew nearer and lit their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood, setting his arms akimbo,
began stamping his cold feet rapidly and deftly on the spot
where he stood.
‘Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It’s well that I’m a
musketeer...’ he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.
‘Look out, your soles will fly off!’ shouted the red-haired
man, noticing that the sole of the dancer’s boot was hanging
loose. ‘What a fellow you are for dancing!’
The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather,
and threw it on the fire.
‘Right enough, friend,’ said he, and, having sat down,
took out of his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and
wrapped it round his foot. ‘It’s the steam that spoils them,’
he added, stretching out his feet toward the fire.
‘They’ll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when


2063

we’ve finished hammering them, we’re to receive double
kits!’
‘And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after
all, it seems,’ said one sergeant major.
‘I’ve had an eye on him this long while,’ said the other.
‘Well, he’s a poor sort of soldier..’
‘But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday.’
‘Yes, it’s all very well, but when a man’s feet are frozen
how can he walk?’
‘Eh? Don’t talk nonsense!’ said a sergeant major.
‘Do you want to be doing the same?’ said an old soldier,
turning reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.
‘Well, you know,’ said the sharp-nosed man they called
Jackdaw in a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at
the other side of the fire, ‘a plump man gets thin, but for a
thin one it’s death. Take me, now! I’ve got no strength left,’
he added, with sudden resolution turning to the sergeant
major. ‘Tell them to send me to hospital; I’m aching all over;
anyway I shan’t be able to keep up.’
‘That’ll do, that’ll do!’ replied the sergeant major quietly.
The soldier said no more and the talk went on.
‘What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the
fact is that not one of them had what you might call real
boots on,’ said a soldier, starting a new theme. ‘They were
no more than make-believes.’
‘The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing
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the hut for the colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to
see them, boys,’ put in the dancer. ‘As they turned them over
one seemed still alive and, would you believe it, he jabbered
something in their lingo.’
‘But they’re a clean folk, lads,’ the first man went on; ‘he
was whiteas white as birchbarkand some of them are such
fine fellows, you might think they were nobles.’
‘Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there.’
‘But they don’t understand our talk at all,’ said the dancer with a puzzled smile. ‘I asked him whose subject he was,
and he jabbered in his own way. A queer lot!’
‘But it’s strange, friends,’ continued the man who had
wondered at their whiteness, ‘the peasants at Mozhaysk
were saying that when they began burying the deadwhere
the battle was you knowwell, those dead had been lying
there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, ‘they lie as
white as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a puff of
powder smoke.’’
‘Was it from the cold?’ asked someone.
‘You’re a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was
hot. If it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted
either. ‘But,’ he says, ‘go up to ours and they are all rotten
and maggoty. So,’ he says, ‘we tie our faces up with kerchiefs
and turn our heads away as we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,’ he says, ‘are white as paper and not so
much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.’’
All were silent.
‘It must be from their food,’ said the sergeant major.


2065

‘They used to gobble the same food as the gentry.’
No one contradicted him.
‘That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said
the men were all called up from ten villages around and
they carted for twenty days and still didn’t finish carting
the dead away. And as for the wolves, he says..’
‘That was a real battle,’ said an old soldier. ‘It’s the only
one worth remembering; but since that... it’s only been tormenting folk.’
‘And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we
ran at them and, my word, they didn’t let us get near before they just threw down their muskets and went on their
knees. ‘Pardon!’ they say. That’s only one case. They say Platov took ‘Poleon himself twice. But he didn’t know the right
charm. He catches him and catches himno good! He turns
into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there’s no way
of killing him either.’
‘You’re a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at
you!’
‘Liar, indeed! It’s the real truth.’
‘If he fell into my hands, when I’d caught him I’d bury
him in the ground with an aspen stake to fix him down.
What a lot of men he’s ruined!’
‘Well, anyhow we’re going to end it. He won’t come here
again,’ remarked the old soldier, yawning.
The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling
down to sleep.
‘Look at the stars. It’s wonderful how they shine! You
would think the women had spread out their linen,’ said one
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of the men, gazing with admiration at the Milky Way.
‘That’s a sign of a good harvest next year.’
‘We shall want some more wood.’
‘You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That’s
queer.’
‘O Lord!’
‘What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look
how he’s sprawling!’
In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who
had fallen asleep could be heard. Others turned over and
warmed themselves, now and again exchanging a few
words. From a campfire a hundred paces off came a sound
of general, merry laughter.
‘Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!’ said
one of the soldiers, and what a lot of them there are!’
One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.
‘They’re having such fun,’ said he, coming back. ‘Two
Frenchies have turned up. One’s quite frozen and the other’s
an awful swaggerer. He’s singing songs...’
‘Oh, I’ll go across and have a look...’
And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.



2067

Chapter IX
The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge
of the forest. A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the
midst of the snow, lighting up the branches of trees heavy
with hoarfrost.
About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the
snow of the forest, and the crackling of dry branches.
‘A bear, lads,’ said one of the men.
They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest
into the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human
figures clinging to one another.
These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the
forest. They came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering something
in a language our soldiers did not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an officer’s hat and seemed quite
exhausted. On approaching the fire he had been going to
sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy soldier with a
shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He raised his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The
soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on
the ground for the sick man, and brought some buckwheat
porridge and vodka for both of them.
The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man
with his head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.
When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his
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bowl of porridge he suddenly became unnaturally merry
and chattered incessantly to the soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and resting his head
on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking at the
Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally he
emitted a long-drawn groan and then again became silent.
Morel, pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be
warmed. A Russian officer who had come up to the fire sent
to ask his colonel whether he would not take a French officer
into his hut to warm him, and when the messenger returned
and said that the colonel wished the officer to be brought to
him, Ramballe was told to go. He rose and tried to walk, but
staggered and would have fallen had not a soldier standing
by held him up.
‘You won’t do it again, eh?’ said one of the soldiers, winking and turning mockingly to Ramballe.
‘Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you area real
peasant!’ came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.
They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed
arms of two soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe
put his arms around their necks while they carried him and
began wailing plaintively:
‘Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are
men! Oh, my brave, kind friends,’ and he leaned his head
against the shoulder of one of the men like a child.
Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire,
surrounded by the soldiers.


2069

Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and
streaming eyes, was wearing a woman’s cloak and had
a shawl tied woman fashion round his head over his cap.
He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song in a
hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the nearest
soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they watched
him.
‘Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I’ll soon pick
it up. How is it?’ said the mana singer and a wagwhom Morel was embracing.
‘Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!’ sang Morel,
winking. ‘Ce diable a quatre...’*
*”Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That
rowdy devil.’
‘Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!’ repeated the soldier, flourishing his arm and really catching the tune.
‘Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!’ rose their rough, joyous laughter
from all sides.
Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.
‘Well, go on, go on!’
‘Qui
eut
le
triple
talent,
De boire, de battre, Et d’etre un vert galant.’*
*Who had a triple talent
For drinking, for fighting,
And for being a gallant old boy...
‘It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!’
‘Ke...’ Zaletaev, brought out with effort: ‘ke-e-e-e,’ he
drawled, laboriously pursing his lips, ‘le-trip-ta-la-de-bude-ba, e de-tra-va-ga-la ‘ he sang.
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‘Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want
some more to eat?’
‘Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled
up after starving.’
They gave him some more porridge and Morel with
a laugh set to work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they watched him. The older men, who
thought it undignified to amuse themselves with such nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side of the fire, but one
would occasionally raise himself on an elbow and glance at
Morel with a smile.
‘They are men too,’ said one of them as he wrapped
himself up in his coat. ‘Even wormwood grows on its own
root.’
‘O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That
means a hard frost...’
They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one
was looking at them, began to disport themselves in the
dark sky: now flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling,
they were busy whispering something gladsome and mysterious to one another.



2071

Chapter X
The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a
mathematical progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has been written was only one
intermediate stage in its destruction, and not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been and
still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this
is only because at the broken bridge across that river the
calamities their army had been previously enduring were
suddenly concentrated at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory, and on the Russian side
merely because in Petersburgfar from the seat of wara plan
(again one of Pfuel’s) had been devised to catch Napoleon
in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured
himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina
that destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the
crossing were much less disastrous to the Frenchin guns
and men lostthan Krasnoe had been, as the figures show.
The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies
in the fact that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans for cutting off the enemy’s retreat and
the soundness of the only possible line of actionthe one Kutuzov and the general mass of the army demandednamely,
simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd fled at a
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continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and
it was impossible to block its path. This was shown not so
much by the arrangements it made for crossing as by what
took place at the bridges. When the bridges broke down,
unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with
children who were with the French transport, allcarried on
by vis inertiaepressed forward into boats and into the icecovered water and did not, surrender.
That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives
and of pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained
with their own people each might hope for help from his
fellows and the definite place he held among them. But
those who surrendered, while remaining in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share in the
necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed
of the fact that half the prisonerswith whom the Russians
did not know what to doperished of cold and hunger despite
their captors’ desire to save them; they felt that it could not
be otherwise. The most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the Frenchand even the Frenchmen
in the Russian servicecould do nothing for the prisoners.
The French perished from the conditions to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to take bread
and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to
give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or
guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did
that, but they were exceptions.
Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front


2073

there was hope. Their ships had been burned, there was
no salvation save in collective flight, and on that the whole
strength of the French was concentrated.
The farther they fled the more wretched became the
plight of the remnant, especially after the Berezina, on
which (in consequence of the Petersburg plan) special hopes
had been placed by the Russians, and the keener grew the
passions of the Russian commanders, blamed one another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and
more strongly expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of
course expressed in a respectful form, making it impossible
for him to ask wherein he was to blame. They did not talk
seriously to him; when reporting to him or asking for his
sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead
him at every turn.
Because they could not understand him all these people assumed that it was useless to talk to the old man; that
he would never grasp the profundity of their plans, that he
would answer with his phrases (which they thought were
mere phrases) about a ‘golden bridge,’ about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd of tatterdemalions,
and so forth. They had heard all that before. And all he saidthat it was necessary to await provisions, or that the men
had no bootswas so simple, while what they proposed was
so complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was
old and stupid and that they, though not in power, were
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commanders of genius.
After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral
and Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this
and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Only once,
after the affair of the Berezina, did he get angry and write
to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the Emperor) the
following letter:
‘On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of
this, and there await further commands and appointments
from His Imperial Majesty.’
But after Bennigsen’s departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken
part in the beginning of the campaign but had subsequently
been removed from the army by Kutuzov. Now having come
to the army, he informed Kutuzov of the Emperor’s displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the slowness of
their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army personally in a few days’ time.
The old man, experienced in court as well as in military
affairsthis same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen
commander in chief against the sovereign’s wishes and who
had removed the Grand Duke and heirapparent from the
armywho on his own authority and contrary to the Emperor’s will had decided on the abandonment of Moscow,
now realized at once that his day was over, that his part was
played, and that the power he was supposed to hold was no
longer his. And he understood this not merely from the at

2075

titude of the court. He saw on the one hand that the military
business in which he had played his part was ended and felt
that his mission was accomplished; and at the same time he
began to be conscious of the physical weariness of his aged
body and of the necessity of physical rest.
On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilnahis ‘dear Vilna’ as he called it. Twice during his career
Kutuzov had been governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town,
which had not been injured, he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of which he had so
long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the cares
of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed
around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to
which he had formerly been accustomed, as if all that was
taking place and all that had still to be done in the realm of
history did not concern him at all.
Chichagov, one of the most zealous ‘cutters-off’ and
‘breakers-up,’ who had first wanted to effect a diversion in
Greece and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where
he was sent: Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which
he spoke to the Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to
be under an obligation to him because when he was sent to
make peace with Turkey in 1811 independently of Kutuzov,
and found that peace had already been concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing that peace
was really Kutuzov’s; this Chichagov was the first to meet
Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under
his arm, he handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys
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of the town. The contemptuously respectful attitude of the
younger men to the old man in his dotage was expressed in
the highest degree by the behavior of Chichagov, who knew
of the accusations that were being directed against Kutuzov.
When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally
mentioned that the vehicles packed with china that had
been captured from him at Borisov had been recovered and
would be restored to him.
‘You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of....
On the contrary, I can supply you with everything even if
you want to give dinner parties,’ warmly replied Chichagov,
who tried by every word he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov to be animated by the
same desire.
Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle
penetrating smile: ‘I meant merely to say what I said.’
Contrary to the Emperor’s wish Kutuzov detained the
greater part of the army at Vilna. Those about him said
that he became extraordinarily slack and physically feeble
during his stay in that town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to his generals, and while awaiting
the Emperor’s arrival led a dissipated life.
Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with
his suiteCount Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and
othersthe Emperor reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in
his traveling sleigh drove straight to the castle. In spite of
the severe frost some hundred generals and staff officers in
full parade uniform stood in front of the castle, as well as a


2077

guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.
A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a
troyka with three foam-flecked horses, shouted ‘Coming!’
and Konovnitsyn rushed into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall porter’s little lodge.
A minute later the old man’s large stout figure in fulldress uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf
drawn round his stomach, waddled out into the porch.
He put on his hat with its peaks to the sides and, holding
his gloves in his hand and walking with an effort sideways
down the steps to the level of the street, took in his hand the
report he had prepared for the Emperor.
There was running to and fro and whispering; another
troyka furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh in which the figures of the Emperor and
Volkonski could already be descried.
From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt
himself all over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up and, at the very moment when the
Emperor, having alighted from the sleigh, lifted his eyes
to him, handed him the report and began speaking in his
smooth, ingratiating voice.
The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from
head to foot, frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to the old man, extended his arms
and embraced him. And this embrace too, owing to a longstanding impression related to his innermost feelings, had
its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.
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The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard,
and again pressing the old man’s hand went with him into
the castle.
When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and
at the mistakes made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions for a future campaign abroad.
Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
Emperor’s commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years
before settled on his face now.
When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered
head was crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling
gait, he was arrested by someone’s voice saying:
‘Your Serene Highness!’
Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into
the eyes of Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a
silver salver on which lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed
not to understand what was expected of him.
Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible
smile flashed across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the object that lay on the salver. It was the
Order of St. George of the First Class.



2079

Chapter XI
Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which
the Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received
the Order of St. George of the First Class and the Emperor
showed him the highest honors, but everyone knew of the
imperial dissatisfaction with him. The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set that example,
but everybody understood that the old man was blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming
to a custom of Catherine’s day, ordered the standards that
had been captured to be lowered at the Emperor’s feet on
his entering the ballroom, the Emperor made a wry face
and muttered something in which some people caught the
words, ‘the old comedian.’
The Emperor’s displeasure with Kutuzov was specially
increased at Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could
not or would not understand the importance of the coming
campaign.
When on the following morning the Emperor said to the
officers assembled about him: ‘You have not only saved Russia, you have saved Europe!’ they all understood that the
war was not ended.
Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed
his opinion that no fresh war could improve the position or
add to the glory of Russia, but could only spoil and lower the
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glorious position that Russia had gained. He tried to prove
to the Emperor the impossibility of levying fresh troops,
spoke of the hardships already endured by the people, of the
possibility of failure and so forth.
This being the field marshal’s frame of mind he was naturally regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the
impending war.
To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the
natural method was to do what had been done with him at
Austerlitz and with Barclay at the beginning of the Russian
campaignto transfer the authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under the commander
in chief’s feet without upsetting the old man by informing
him of the change.
With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its real strength removed and transferred to the
Emperor. Toll, Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh
appointments. Everyone spoke loudly of the field marshal’s
great weakness and failing health.
His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away
and given to another. And in fact his health was poor.
So naturally, simply, and graduallyjust as he had come
from Turkey to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the
militia, and then to the army when he was needed therenow
when his part was played out, Kutuzov’s place was taken by
a new and necessary performer.
The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to every Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European,
significance.


2081

The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a movement of peoples from east to west, and for
this fresh war another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing from Kutuzov’s and animated by
different motives.
Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the
peoples from east to west and for the refixing of national
frontiers as Kutuzov had been for the salvation and glory
of Russia.
Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance
of power, or Napoleon meant. He could not understand it.
For the representative of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia had been liberated and
raised to the summit of her glory, there was nothing left to
do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the representative of
the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.

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Chapter XII
As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects
of the physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until after they were over. After his liberation he reached
Orel, and on the third day there, when preparing to go to
Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up for three months. He had what
the doctors termed ‘bilious fever.’ But despite the fact that the
doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to
drink, he recovered.
Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre’s mind by all
that happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy
and now snowy, internal physical distress, and pains in his
feet and side. He remembered a general impression of the
misfortunes and sufferings of people and of being worried
by the curiosity of officers and generals who questioned him,
he also remembered his difficulty in procuring a conveyance
and horses, and above all he remembered his incapacity to
think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue he had
seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned
that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino
for more than a month had recently died in the Rostovs’
house at Yaroslavl, and Denisov who told him this news also
mentioned Helene’s death, supposing that Pierre had heard
of it long before. All this at the time seemed merely strange to


2083

Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its significance. Just then he
was only anxious to get away as quickly as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some peaceful
refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over
all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel
he immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty
and Vaska, who had come from Moscow; and also his cousin
the eldest princess, who had been living on his estate at Elets
and hearing of his rescue and illness had come to look after
him.
It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre
lost the impressions he had become accustomed to during the
last few months and got used to the idea that no one would
oblige him to go anywhere tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he would be sure to get
his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long time in his dreams
he still saw himself in the conditions of captivity. In the same
way little by little he came to understand the news he had
been told after his rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew,
the death of his wife, and the destruction of the French.
A joyous feeling of freedomthat complete inalienable freedom natural to man which he had first experienced at the
first halt outside Moscowfilled Pierre’s soul during his convalescence. He was surprised to find that this inner freedom,
which was independent of external conditions, now had as it
were an additional setting of external liberty. He was alone
in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one demanded
anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted:
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the thought of his wife which had been a continual torment
to him was no longer there, since she was no more.
‘Oh, how good! How splendid!’ said he to himself when a
cleanly laid table was moved up to him with savory beef tea,
or when he lay down for the night on a soft clean bed, or when
he remembered that the French had gone and that his wife
was no more. ‘Oh, how good, how splendid!’
And by old habit he asked himself the question: ‘Well, and
what then? What am I going to do?’ And he immediately gave
himself the answer: ‘Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!’
The very question that had formerly tormented him, the
thing he had continually sought to findthe aim of lifeno longer existed for him now. That search for the aim of life had
not merely disappeared temporarilyhe felt that it no longer
existed for him and could not present itself again. And this
very absence of an aim gave him the complete, joyous sense
of freedom which constituted his happiness at this time.
He could not see an aim, for he now had faithnot faith
in any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an everliving, ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in
aims he set himself. That search for an aim had been simply a
search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learned
not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his nurse
had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In
his captivity he had learned that in Karataev God was greater,
more infinite and unfathomable than in the Architect of the
Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a man
who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds
what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over


2085

the heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.
In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must
exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near
and comprehensible he had only what was limited, petty,
commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped himself with
a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where petty
worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him
great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And
such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy,
and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments
of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same
pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he
had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and thereforeto see it and enjoy its contemplationhe
naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till
now gazed over men’s heads, and gladly regarded the everchanging, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life
around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and
happy he became. That dreadful question, ‘What for?’ which
had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, ‘What for?’ a simple answer
was now always ready in his soul: ‘Because there is a God,
that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man’s
head.’

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Chapter XIII
In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he was just what he used to be. As before he was
absent-minded and seemed occupied not with what was
before his eyes but with something special of his own. The
difference between his former and present self was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said
to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly
seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was said to him and still did not see
what was before his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely
perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what was before
him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing
and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people
had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of
life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others,
shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they
were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his
presence.
Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when
he talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried
away in conversation and knew how to listen so that people
readily told him their most intimate secrets.
The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been


2087

particularly hostile to him since she had felt herself under
obligations to him after the old count’s death, now after
staying a short time in Orelwhere she had come intending
to show Pierre that in spite of his ingratitude she considered
it her duty to nurse himfelt to her surprise and vexation
that she had become fond of him. Pierre did not in any way
seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest. Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference
and irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with
others and had shown him only the combative side of her
nature; but now he seemed to be trying to understand the
most intimate places of her heart, and, mistrustfully at first
but afterwards gratefully, she let him see the hidden, kindly
sides of her character.
The most cunning man could not have crept into her
confidence more successfully, evoking memories of the best
times of her youth and showing sympathy with them. Yet
Pierre’s cunning consisted simply in finding pleasure in
drawing out the human qualities of the embittered, hard,
and (in her own way) proud princess.
‘Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under
the influence of bad people but of people such as myself,’
thought she.
His servants tooTerenty and Vaskain their own way
noticed the change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had become much ‘simpler.’ Terenty, when
he had helped him undress and wished him good night, often lingered with his master’s boots in his hands and clothes
over his arm, to see whether he would not start a talk. And
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Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally kept
him there.
‘Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?’ he would
ask.
And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of
Moscow, and of the old count, and would stand for a long
time holding the clothes and talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre’s stories, and then would go out into the hall
with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master and affection for him.
The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every
day, though he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a
man whose every moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with Pierre telling him his favorite
anecdotes and his observations on the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the ladies.
‘It’s a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
provincials,’ he would say.
There were several prisoners from the French army in
Orel, and the doctor brought one of them, a young Italian,
to see Pierre.
This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to
make fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.
The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to
see Pierre, talk with him, tell him about his past, his life at
home, and his love, and pour out to him his indignation
against the French and especially against Napoleon.
‘If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to
fight such a nation,’ he said to Pierre. ‘You, who have suf

2089

fered so from the French, do not even feel animosity toward
them.’
Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian
merely by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a
pleasure in so doing.
During the last days of Pierre’s stay in Orel his old Masonic acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced
him to the lodge in 1807, came to see him. Willarski was
married to a Russian heiress who had a large estate in Orel
province, and he occupied a temporary post in the commissariat department in that town.
Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though
they had never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship and intimacy that people who meet in a
desert generally express for one another. Willarski felt dull
in Orel and was pleased to meet a man of his own circle and,
as he supposed, of similar interests.
But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre
had lagged much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself, into apathy and egotism.
‘You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow,’ he said.
But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it
had been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him
every day. To Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to think that he had been like that
himself but a short time before.
Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with
his family affairs, his wife’s affairs, and his official duties.
He regarded all these occupations as hindrances to life, and
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considered that they were all contemptible because their
aim was the welfare of himself and his family. Military,
administrative, political, and Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre, without trying to
change the other’s views and without condemning him, but
with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to
him, was interested in this strange though very familiar
phenomenon.
There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all the
people he now met, which gained for him the general good
will. This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of
changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition
of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing
things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and irritate
Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and
the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and
sometimes complete contradiction, between men’s opinions
and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased
him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile.
In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly
all pecuniary questions, especially requests for money to
which, as an extremely wealthy man, he was very exposed,
produced in him a state of hopeless agitation and perplexity. ‘To give or not to give?’ he had asked himself. ‘I have it
and he needs it. But someone else needs it still more. Who
needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?’ In


2091

the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these
surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had
anything to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state
of perplexity with regard to every question concerning his
property, when one person advised one thing and another
something else.
Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either
doubt or perplexity about these questions. There was now
within him a judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should not be done.
He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but
now he felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be
done. The first time he had recourse to his new judge was
when a French prisoner, a colonel, came to him and, after
talking a great deal about his exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre should give him
four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre
refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to
appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that
he refused the colonel’s demand he made up his mind that
he must have recourse to artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept some money of which he
was evidently in need. A further proof to Pierre of his own
more settled outlook on practical matters was furnished by
his decision with regard to his wife’s debts and to the rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.
His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him his diminished income. The burning of
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Moscow had cost him, according to the head steward’s calculation, about two million rubles.
To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave
him an estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be diminished but would even be increased
if he refused to pay his wife’s debts which he was under no
obligation to meet, and did not rebuild his Moscow house
and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had cost
him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.
‘Yes, of course that’s true,’ said Pierre with a cheerful
smile. ‘I don’t need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much richer.’
But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave
him an account of the state of things there, and spoke of
the estimate an architect had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses, speaking of this as of a
settled matter. About the same time he received letters from
Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances speaking
of his wife’s debts. And Pierre decided that the steward’s
proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that
he must go to Petersburg and settle his wife’s affairs and
must rebuild in Moscow. Why this was necessary he did not
know, but he knew for certain that it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he felt it must
be done.
Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel
together.
During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel
Pierre had experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life;


2093

but when during his journey he found himself in the open
world and saw hundreds of new faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt like a schoolboy
on holiday. Everyonethe stagecoach driver, the post-house
overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villageshad a
new significance for him. The presence and remarks of Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty
of Russia and its backwardness compared with Europe only
heightened Pierre’s pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary strength and vitalitythe
strength which in that vast space amid the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique people.
He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree
with himan apparent agreement being the simplest way to
avoid discussions that could lead to nothingand he smiled
joyfully as he listened to him.

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Chapter XIV
It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose
heap has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap
dragging bits of rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to
the heap, or why they jostle, overtake one another, and fight,
and it would be equally difficult to explain what caused the
Russians after the departure of the French to throng to the
place that had formerly been Moscow. But when we watch
the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and
immense number of the delving insects prove that despite
the destruction of the heap, something indestructible,
which though intangible is the real strength of the colony,
still exists; and similarly, though in Moscow in the month
of October there was no government no churches, shrines,
riches, or housesit was still the Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet
powerful and indestructible.
The motives of those who thronged from all sides to
Moscow after it had been cleared of the enemy were most
diverse and personal, and at first for the most part savage
and brutal. One motive only they all had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to apply
their activities there.
Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on.


2095

By the autumn of 1813 the number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in 1812.
The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks
of Wintzingerode’s detachment, peasants from the adjacent
villages, and residents who had fled from Moscow and had
been hiding in its vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered it in their turn. They
continued what the French had begun. Trains of peasant
carts came to Moscow to carry off to the villages what had
been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets. The
Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and
the householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it to their own, pretending that it was their
property.
But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a
third contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering
became more and more difficult and assumed more definite
forms.
The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the
organizations of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship, with luxury, and governmental
and religious institutions. These forms were lifeless but
still existed. There were bazaars, shops, warehouses, market stalls, granariesfor the most part still stocked with
goodsand there were factories and workshops, palaces and
wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer the
French remained the more these forms of town life perished, until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless
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scene of plunder.
The more the plundering by the French continued, the
more both the wealth of Moscow and the strength of its
plunderers was destroyed. But plundering by the Russians,
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


2097

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


2099

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


2101

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 believes
that there is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers
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and... yours.’
Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and
again addressed Princess Mary, asking about his friend’s
last days.
Pierre’s confusion had now almost vanished, but at the
same time he felt that his freedom had also completely gone.
He felt that there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment mattered more to him than that of all
the rest of the world. As he spoke now he was considering
what impression his words would make on Natasha. He did
not purposely say things to please her, but whatever he was
saying he regarded from her standpoint.
Princess Maryreluctantly as is usual in such casesbegan telling of the condition in which she had found Prince
Andrew. But Pierre’s face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager restless expression, gradually compelled
her to go into details which she feared to recall for her own
sake.
‘Yes, yes, and so...? ‘ Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her with his whole body and eagerly listened to her
story. ‘Yes, yes... so he grew tranquil and softened? With all
his soul he had always sought one thingto be perfectly goodso he could not be afraid of death. The faults he hadif he had
anywere not of his making. So he did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again,’ he added, suddenly turning
to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of tears.
Natasha’s face twitched. She frowned and lowered her
eyes for a moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to


2105

speak or not.
‘Yes, that was happiness,’ she then said in her quiet voice
with its deep chest notes. ‘For me it certainly was happiness.’ She paused. ‘And he... he... he said he was wishing for
it at the very moment I entered the room...’
Natasha’s voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped
hands on her knees, and then controlling herself with an
evident effort lifted her head and began to speak rapidly.
‘We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I
did not dare to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me
he was traveling with us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I wanted was to see him and be
with him,’ she said, trembling, and breathing quickly.
And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell
what she had never yet mentioned to anyoneall she had
lived through during those three weeks of their journey and
life at Yaroslavl.
Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed
upon her full of tears. As he listened he did not think of
Prince Andrew, nor of death, nor of what she was telling.
He listened to her and felt only pity for her, for what she was
suffering now while she was speaking.
Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her
tears, sat beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the
story of those last days of her brother’s and Natasha’s love.
Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful
tale.
She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never
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finish. Several times she repeated the same thing twice.
Dessalles’ voice was heard outside the door asking
whether little Nicholas might come in to say good night.
‘Well, that’s alleverything,’ said Natasha.
She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran
to the door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head
against it, and rushed from the room with a moan either of
pain or sorrow.
Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did not understand why he suddenly felt all
alone in the world.
Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his attention to her nephew who had entered the room.
At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas’
face, which resembled his father’s, affected Pierre so much
that when he had kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out
his handkerchief, and went to the window. He wished to
take leave of Princess Mary, but she would not let him go.
‘No, Natasha and I sometimes don’t go to sleep till after
two, so please don’t go. I will order supper. Go downstairs,
we will come immediately.’
Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: ‘This
is the first time she has talked of him like that.’



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Chapter XVII
Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room;
a few minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary
entered with Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe
and grave expression had again settled on her face. They all
three of them now experienced that feeling of awkwardness
which usually follows after a serious and heartfelt talk. It
is impossible to go back to the same conversation, to talk
of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to speak is there
and silence seems like affectation. They went silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up
again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess
Mary. They had evidently both formed the same resolution;
the eyes of both shone with satisfaction and a confession
that besides sorrow life also has joy.
‘Do you take vodka, Count?’ asked Princess Mary, and
those words suddenly banished the shadows of the past.
‘Now tell us about yourself,’ said she. ‘One hears such improbable wonders about you.’
‘Yes,’ replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to him. ‘They even tell me wonders I myself never
dreamed of! Mary Abramovna invited me to her house and
kept telling me what had happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also instructed me how I
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ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have noticed
that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about
myself.’
Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.
‘We have been told,’ Princess Mary interrupted her, ‘that
you lost two millions in Moscow. Is that true?’
‘But I am three times as rich as before,’ returned Pierre.
Though the position was now altered by his decision to
pay his wife’s debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still
maintained that he had become three times as rich as before.
‘What I have certainly gained is freedom,’ he began seriously, but did not continue, noticing that this theme was
too egotistic.
‘And are you building?’
‘Yes. Savelich says I must!’
‘Tell me, you did not know of the countess’ death when
you decided to remain in Moscow?’ asked Princess Mary
and immediately blushed, noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed to his words a
meaning he had perhaps not intended.
‘No,’ answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning Princess Mary had given to his words. ‘I
heard of it in Orel and you cannot imagine how it shocked
me. We were not an exemplary couple,’ he added quickly,
glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face curiosity as
to how he would speak of his wife, ‘but her death shocked
me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both


2109

in fault, and one’s own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no longer alive. And then such a
death... without friends and without consolation! I am very,
very sorry for her,’ he concluded, and was pleased to notice
a look of glad approval on Natasha’s face.
‘Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor,’ said
Princess Mary.
Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time
tried not to look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance
her way again her face was cold, stern, and he fancied even
contemptuous.
‘And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we
have been told?’ said Princess Mary.
Pierre laughed.
‘No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being
taken prisoner means being Napoleon’s guest. Not only did
I never see him but I heard nothing about himI was in much
lower company!’
Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak
about his captivity was gradually led on to do so.
‘But it’s true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?’ Natasha asked with a slight smile. ‘I guessed it then
when we met at the Sukharev tower, do you remember?’
Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by Princess Mary’s questions and especially by
Natasha’s into giving a detailed account of his adventures.
At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now
customary with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he came to describe the horrors and
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sufferings he had witnessed he was unconsciously carried
away and began speaking with the suppressed emotion of a
man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
has lived through.
Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre
and now at Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only
Pierre and his goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow,
the expression of her face constantly changing with the
narrative, watched Pierre with an attention that never wanderedevidently herself experiencing all that he described.
Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what
he wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not
only what he said but also what he wished to, but could not,
express in words. The account Pierre gave of the incident
with the child and the woman for protecting whom he was
arrested was this: ‘It was an awful sightchildren abandoned,
some in the flames... One was snatched out before my eyes...
and there were women who had their things snatched off
and their earrings torn out...’ he flushed and grew confused.
‘Then a patrol arrived and all the menall those who were not
looting, that iswere arrested, and I among them.’
‘I am sure you’re not telling us everything; I am sure you
did something...’ said Natasha and pausing added, ‘something fine?’
Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he
wanted to pass over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not omit anything.
Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this


2111

time he had risen from the table and was pacing the room,
Natasha following him with her eyes. Then he added:
‘No, you can’t understand what I learned from that illiterate manthat simple fellow.’
‘Yes, yes, go on!’ said Natasha. ‘Where is he?’
‘They killed him almost before my eyes.’
And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to
tell of the last days of their retreat, of Karataev’s illness and
his death.
He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled
them. He now, as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had
gone through. Now that he was telling it all to Natasha he
experienced that pleasure which a man has when women
listen to himnot clever women who when listening either
try to remember what they hear to enrich their minds and
when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt
it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute
their own clever comments prepared in their little mental
workshopbut the pleasure given by real women gifted with
a capacity to select and absorb the very best a man shows
of himself. Natasha without knowing it was all attention:
she did not lose a word, no single quiver in Pierre’s voice,
no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and took it
straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of
all Pierre’s mental travail.
Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized
with him, but she now saw something else that absorbed all
her attention. She saw the possibility of love and happiness
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between Natasha and Pierre, and the first thought of this
filled her heart with gladness.
It was three o’clock in the morning. The footmen came in
with sad and stern faces to change the candles, but no one
noticed them.
Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at
him intently with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as
if trying to understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre in shamefaced and happy confusion
glanced occasionally at her, and tried to think what to say
next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess Mary was silent.
It occurred to none of them that it was three o’clock and
time to go to bed.
‘People speak of misfortunes and sufferings,’ remarked
Pierre, ‘but if at this moment I were asked: ‘Would you rather be what you were before you were taken prisoner, or go
through all this again?’ then for heaven’s sake let me again
have captivity and horseflesh! We imagine that when we are
thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then
that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is
happiness. There is much, much before us. I say this to you,’
he added, turning to Natasha.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, answering something quite different.
‘I too should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning.’
Pierre looked intently at her.
‘Yes, and nothing more.’ said Natasha.
‘It’s not true, not true!’ cried Pierre. ‘I am not to blame
for being alive and wishing to livenor you either.’


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Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with
her hands, and began to cry.
‘What is it, Natasha?’ said Princess Mary.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ She smiled at Pierre through her
tears. ‘Good night! It is time for bed.’
Pierre rose and took his leave.
Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked of what Pierre had told them. Princess
Mary did not express her opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha
speak of him.
‘Well, good night, Mary!’ said Natasha. ‘Do you know,
I am often afraid that by not speaking of him’ (she meant
Prince Andrew) ‘for fear of not doing justice to our feelings,
we forget him.’
Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged
the justice of Natasha’s remark, but she did not express
agreement in words.
‘Is it possible to forget?’ said she.
‘It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was
hard and painful, but good, very good!’ said Natasha. ‘I am
sure he really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all
right?’ she added, suddenly blushing.
‘To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!’ said
Princess Mary.
‘Do you know, Mary...’ Natasha suddenly said with a
mischievous smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on
her face for a long time, ‘he has somehow grown so clean,
smooth, and freshas if he had just come out of a Russian bath;
do you understand? Out of a moral bath. Isn’t it true?’
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‘Yes,’ replied Princess Mary. ‘He has greatly improved.’
‘With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well,
just as if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used
to..’
‘I understand why he’ (Prince Andrew) ‘liked no one so
much as him,’ said Princess Mary.
‘Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are
friends when they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike himin everything.’
‘Yes, but he’s wonderful.’
‘Well, good night,’ said Natasha.
And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time
on her face as if it had been forgotten there.



2115

Chapter XVIII
It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night.
He paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts
on a difficult problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and wincing, and now smiling happily.
He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of
their love, at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that feeling. It was already six in the morning
and he still paced up and down the room.
‘Well, what’s to be done if it cannot be avoided? What’s
to be done? Evidently it has to be so,’ said he to himself, and
hastily undressing he got into bed, happy and agitated but
free from hesitation or indecision.
‘Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must
do everything that she and I may be man and wife,’ he told
himself.
A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday,
Savelich came to ask him about packing for the journey.
‘What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there
in Petersburg?’ he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. ‘Oh, yes, long ago before this happened I did for some
reason mean to go to Petersburg,’ he reflected. ‘Why? But
perhaps I shall go. What a good fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything,’ he thought,
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looking at Savelich’s old face, ‘and what a pleasant smile he
has!’
‘Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?’ Pierre asked him.
‘What’s the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We
lived under the late countthe kingdom of heaven be his!and
we have lived under you too, without ever being wronged.’
‘And your children?’
‘The children will live just the same. With such masters
one can live.’
‘But what about my heirs?’ said Pierre. ‘Supposing I
suddenly marry... it might happen,’ he added with an involuntary smile.
‘If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a
good thing.’
‘How easy he thinks it,’ thought Pierre. ‘He doesn’t know
how terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late...
it is terrible!’
‘So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?’
asked Savelich.
‘No, I’ll put it off for a bit. I’ll tell you later. You must
forgive the trouble I have put you to,’ said Pierre, and seeing Savelich smile, he thought: ‘But how strange it is that
he should not know that now there is no Petersburg for me,
and that that must be settled first of all! But probably he
knows it well enough and is only pretending. Shall I have a
talk with him and see what he thinks?’ Pierre reflected. ‘No,
another time.’
At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he


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had been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there
met‘Whom do you think? Natasha Rostova!’
The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary
in that than if he had seen Anna Semenovna.
‘Do you know her?’ asked Pierre.
‘I have seen the princess,’ she replied. ‘I heard that they
were arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would
be a very good thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined.’
‘No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?’
‘I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great
pity.’
‘No, she either doesn’t understand or is pretending,’
thought Pierre. ‘Better not say anything to her either.’
The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre’s
journey.
‘How kind they all are,’ thought Pierre. ‘What is surprising is that they should trouble about these things now when
it can no longer be of interest to them. And all for me!’
On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him to send a representative to the Faceted Palace
to recover things that were to be returned to their owners
that day.
‘And this man too,’ thought Pierre, looking into the face
of the Chief of Police. ‘What a fine, good-looking officer
and how kind. Fancy bothering about such trifies now! And
they actually say he is not honest and takes bribes. What
nonsense! Besides, why shouldn’t he take bribes? That’s the
way he was brought up, and everybody does it. But what a
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kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at me.’
Pierre went to Princess Mary’s to dinner.
As he drove through the streets past the houses that
had been burned down, he was surprised by the beauty of
those ruins. The picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and
tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters of the town,
stretching out and concealing one another, reminded him
of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he met and
their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new
houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers,
all looked at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to
say: ‘Ah, there he is! Let’s see what will come of it!’
At the entrance to Princess Mary’s house Pierre felt
doubtful whether he had really been there the night before
and really seen Natasha and talked to her. ‘Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find no one there.’ But he
had hardly entered the room before he felt her presence with
his whole being by the loss of his sense of freedom. She was
in the same black dress with soft folds and her hair was done
the same way as the day before, yet she was quite different.
Had she been like this when he entered the day before he
could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.
She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince Andrew’s fiancee. A bright questioning
light shone in her eyes, and on her face was a friendly and
strangely roguish expression.
Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole
evening there, but Princess Mary was going to vespers and
Pierre left the house with her.


2119

Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently
glad to see their visitor and though all Pierre’s interest was
now centered in that house, by the evening they had talked
over everything and the conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly broke off. He stayed so
long that Princess Mary and Natasha exchanged glances,
evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre noticed this
but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat on
because he simply could not get up and take his leave.
Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and
complaining of a headache began to say good night.
‘So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘No, I am not going,’ Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised
tone and as though offended. ‘Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrowbut I won’t say good-by yet. I will call round in case
you have any commissions for me,’ said he, standing before
Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking his departure.
Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary
on the other hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and intently at him with her deep,
radiant eyes. The weariness she had plainly shown before
had now quite passed off. With a deep and long-drawn sigh
she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.
When Natasha left the room Pierre’s confusion and awkwardness immediately vanished and were replaced by eager
excitement. He quickly moved an armchair toward Princess
Mary.
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‘Yes, I wanted to tell you,’ said he, answering her look as
if she had spoken. ‘Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can
I hope? Princess, my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know
I am not worthy of her, I know it’s impossible to speak of it
now. But I want to be a brother to her. No, not that, I don’t,
I can’t..’
He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.
‘Well,’ he went on with an evident effort at self-control
and coherence. ‘I don’t know when I began to love her, but
I have loved her and her alone all my life, and I love her
so that I cannot imagine life without her. I cannot propose
to her at present, but the thought that perhaps she might
someday be my wife and that I may be missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell me, can I hope? Tell me
what I am to do, dear princess!’ he added after a pause, and
touched her hand as she did not reply.
‘I am thinking of what you have told me,’ answered Princess Mary. ‘This is what I will say. You are right that to speak
to her of love at present..’
Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to
speak of love was impossible, but she stopped because she
had seen by the sudden change in Natasha two days before
that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre spoke of his
love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.
‘To speak to her now wouldn’t do,’ said the princess all
the same.
‘But what am I to do?
‘Leave it to me,’ said Princess Mary. ‘I know..’
Pierre was looking into Princess Mary’s eyes.


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‘Well?... Well?...’ he said.
‘I know that she loves... will love you,’ Princess Mary corrected herself.
Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and
with a frightened expression seized Princess Mary’s hand.
‘What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You
think...?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Princess Mary with a smile. ‘Write
to her parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I
wish it to happen and my heart tells me it will.’
‘No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be.... How
happy I am! No, it can’t be!’ Pierre kept saying as he kissed
Princess Mary’s hands.
‘Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to
you,’ she said.
‘To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I’ll go. But I may
come again tomorrow?’
Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less
animated than she had been the day before; but that day as
he looked at her Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing
and that neither he nor she existed any longer, that nothing
existed but happiness. ‘Is it possible? No, it can’t be,’ he told
himself at every look, gesture, and word that filled his soul
with joy.
When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand,
he could not help holding it a little longer in his own.
‘Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this
treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me
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as I am to myself?... No, that’s impossible!..’
‘Good-by, Count,’ she said aloud. ‘I shall look forward
very much to your return,’ she added in a whisper.
And these simple words, her look, and the expression on
her face which accompanied them, formed for two months
the subject of inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and
happy meditations for Pierre. ‘‘I shall look forward very
much to your return....’ Yes, yes, how did she say it? Yes, ‘I
shall look forward very much to your return.’ Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!’ said
Pierre to himself.



2123

Chapter XIX
There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now at all like what
had troubled it during his courtship of Helene.
He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of
shame the words he had spoken, or say: ‘Oh, why did I not
say that?’ and, ‘Whatever made me say ‘Je vous aime’?’ On
the contrary, he now repeated in imagination every word
that he or Natasha had spoken and pictured every detail
of her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add
anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There was
now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what
he had undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible
doubt sometimes crossed his mind: ‘Wasn’t it all a dream?
Isn’t Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and
self-confident? I believe all thisand suddenly Princess Mary
will tell her, and she will be sure to smile and say: ‘How
strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn’t he know that
he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something altogether
different and higher.’’
That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not
now make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so
inconceivable that if only he could attain it, it would be the
end of all things. Everything ended with that.
A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought
himself incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of
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lifenot for him alone but for the whole worldseemed to him
centered in his love and the possibility of being loved by
her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
one thing onlyhis future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to
him that other people were all as pleased as he was himself
and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be
busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw
allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met
by his significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to
express a secret understanding between him and them. And
when he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his whole heart and felt a desire
somehow to explain to them that all that occupied them was
a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.
When it was suggested to him that he should enter the
civil service, or when the war or any general political affairs
were discussed on the assumption that everybody’s welfare
depended on this or that issue of events, he would listen
with a mild and pitying smile and surprise people by his
strange comments. But at this time he saw everybodyboth
those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning
of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates
who evidently did not understand itin the bright light of the
emotion that shone within himself, and at once without any
effort saw in everyone he met everything that was good and
worthy of being loved.
When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead
wife, her memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that
she had not known the bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili,


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who having obtained a new post and some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a
pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.
Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All the views he formed of men and circumstances at
this time remained true for him always. He not only did not
renounce them subsequently, but when he was in doubt or
inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had held at
this time of his madness and they always proved correct.
‘I may have appeared strange and queer then,’ he thought,
‘but I was not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was
then wiser and had more insight than at any other time,
and understood all that is worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy.’
Pierre’s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to
do, to discover personal attributes which he termed ‘good
qualities’ in people before loving them; his heart was now
overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause
he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.
CHAPTER XX
After Pierre’s departure that first evening, when Natasha
had said to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: ‘He
looks just, yes, just as if he had come out of a Russian bathin
a short coat and with his hair cropped,’ something hidden and unknown to herself, but irrepressible, awoke in
Natasha’s soul.
Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly
altered. To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to the surface and demanded satisfaction. From
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that evening she seemed to have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer complained of her position, did
not say a word about the past, and no longer feared to make
happy plans for the future. She spoke little of Pierre, but
when Princess Mary mentioned him a long-extinguished
light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips curved with
a strange smile.
The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised
Princess Mary; but when she understood its meaning it
grieved her. ‘Can she have loved my brother so little as to
be able to forget him so soon?’ she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she was with Natasha she was
not vexed with her and did not reproach her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so evidently
irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence
Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her
even in her heart.
Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new
feeling that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no
longer sad, but bright and cheerful.
When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.
‘He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?’ she repeated.
And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to
beg forgiveness for her joy settled on Natasha’s face.
‘I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell
me.’
Understandable and touching as the look with which
Natasha gazed at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry


2127

as she was to see her agitation, these words pained her for a
moment. She remembered her brother and his love.
‘But what’s to be done? She can’t help it,’ thought the
princess.
And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all
that Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha was astounded.
‘To Petersburg!’ she repeated as if unable to understand.
But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary’s
face she guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly
began to cry.
‘Mary,’ said she, ‘tell me what I should do! I am afraid of
being bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...’
‘You love him?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Natasha.
‘Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake,’
said Princess Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha’s joy.
‘It won’t be just yetsomeday. Think what fun it will be
when I am his wife and you marry Nicholas!’
‘Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us
talk about you.’
They were silent awhile.
‘But why go to Petersburg?’ Natasha suddenly asked, and
hastily replied to her own question. ‘But no, no, he must...
Yes, Mary, He must...’

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FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 20



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Chapter I
Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had subsided within its shores and seemed
to have become calm. But the mysterious forces that move
humanity (mysterious because the laws of their motion are
unknown to us) continued to operate.
Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as
the flow of time. Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation and dissolution of kingdoms
and displacement of peoples was in course of preparation.
The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from
shore to shore as previously. It was seething in its depths.
Historic figures were not borne by the waves from one
shore to another as before. They now seemed to rotate on
one spot. The historical figures at the head of armies, who
formerly reflected the movement of the masses by ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless
movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws,
and treaties.
The historians call this activity of the historical figures
‘the reaction.’
In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical personages who, in their opinion, caused what they
describe as the reaction. All the well-known people of that
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period, from Alexander and Napoleon to Madame de Stael,
Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass
before their stern judgment seat and are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to progress or
to reaction.
According to their accounts a reaction took place at that
time in Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I,
the same man who according to them was the chief cause
of the liberal movement at the commencement of his reign,
being the savior of Russia.
There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist to learned historian, who does not throw his
little stone at Alexander for things he did wrong at this period of his reign.
‘He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In
this case he did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning of his reign and during 1812, but
acted badly by giving a constitution to Poland, forming
the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev, favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and
Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the
active army and disbanding the Semenov regiment.’
It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the historians address to him, based on their
knowledge of what is good for humanity.
What do these reproaches mean?
Do not the very actions for which the historians praise
Alexander I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his
reign, his struggle with Napoleon, the firmness he dis

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played in 1812 and the campaign of 1813) flow from the
same sourcesthe circumstances of his birth, education, and
lifethat made his personality what it was and from which
the actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance,
the restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later)
also flowed?
In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?
It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I, standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human
power with the blinding light of history focused upon him;
a character exposed to those strongest of all influences:
the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception inseparable from
power; a character who at every moment of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in Europe; and not
a fictitious but a live character who like every man had his
personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness,
beauty, and truththat this characterthough not lacking in
virtue (the historians do not accuse him of that)had not the
same conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago
as a present-day professor who from his youth upwards has
been occupied with learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes from them.
But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I
was mistaken in his view of what was good for the people,
we must inevitably assume that the historian who judges
Alexander will also after the lapse of some time turn out
to be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity.
This assumption is all the more natural and inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that every
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year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good
for mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten
years later seems bad, and vice versa. And what is more, we
find at one and the same time quite contradictory views as
to what is bad and what is good in history: some people regard giving a constitution to Poland and forming the Holy
Alliance as praiseworthy in Alexander, while others regard
it as blameworthy.
The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be
called useful or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what
it was useful or harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it does not agree with his limited
understanding of what is good. Whether the preservation
of my father’s house in Moscow, or the glory of the Russian
arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia,
or the balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European culture called ‘progress’ appear to me to be good or
bad, I must admit that besides these things the action of
every historic character has other more general purposes
inaccessible to me.
But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all contradictions and possesses an unchanging
standard of good and bad by which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander could have done
everything differently; let us say that with guidance from
those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate
aim of the movement of humanity, he might have arranged
matters according to the program his present accusers


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would have given himof nationality, freedom, equality, and
progress (these, I think, cover the ground). Let us assume
that this program was possible and had then been formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then
have become of the activity of all those who opposed the
tendency that then prevailed in the governmentan activity
that in the opinion of the historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would not have existed: there would
have been no life, there would have been nothing.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the
possibility of life is destroyed.

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Chapter II
If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to the attainment of certain endsthe greatness of
Russia or of France, the balance of power in Europe, the
diffusion of the ideas of the Revolution general progress
or anything elsethen it is impossible to explain the facts of
history without introducing the conceptions of chance and
genius.
If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the
nineteenth century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been accomplished without all the
preceding wars and without the invasion. If the aim wag
the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If
the aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press
could have accomplished that much better than warfare. If
the aim was the progress of civilization, it is easy to see that
there are other ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.
Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?
Because it happened so! ‘Chance created the situation;
genius utilized it,’ says history.
But what is chance? What is genius?
The words chance and genius do not denote any really
existing thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words


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only denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I think that I
cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about
chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of
ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of genius.
To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice
as fat as the others must seem to be a genius. And it must
appear an astonishing conjunction of genius with a whole
series of extraordinary chances that this ram, who instead
of getting into the general fold every evening goes into a
special enclosure where there are oatsthat this very ram,
swelling with fat, is killed for meat.
But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that
happens to them happens solely for the attainment of their
sheepish aims; they need only admit that what happens to
them may also have purposes beyond their ken, and they
will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not
know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least
know that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions of chance
or genius.
Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate
purpose to be beyond our ken, may we discern the sequence
of experiences in the lives of historic characters and perceive
the cause of the effect they produce (incommensurable with
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ordinary human capabilities), and then the words chance
and genius become superfluous.
We need only confess that we do not know the purpose
of the European convulsions and that we know only the
factsthat is, the murders, first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain, and in Russiaand that
the movements from the west to the east and from the east
to the west form the essence and purpose of these events,
and not only shall we have no need to see exceptional ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be
unable to consider them to be anything but like other men,
and we shall not be obliged to have recourse to chance for
an explanation of those small events which made these people what they were, but it will be clear that all those small
events were inevitable.
By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate
purpose, we shall clearly perceive that just as one cannot
imagine a blossom or seed for any single plant better suited
to it than those it produces, so it is impossible to imagine
any two people more completely adapted down to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than Napoleon
and Alexander with all their antecedents.



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Chapter III
The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of the beginning of the nineteenth century lies
in the movement of the mass of the European peoples from
west to east and afterwards from east to west. The commencement of that movement was the movement from west
to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to make their
warlike movement to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they
should form themselves into a military group of a size able
to endure a collision with the warlike military group of the
east, (2) that they should abandon all established traditions
and customs, and (3) that during their military movement
they should have at their head a man who could justify to
himself and to them the deceptions, robberies, and murders
which would have to be committed during that movement.
And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately large group was destroyed, as well as the old habits
and traditions, and step by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new customs and traditions, and a man
was produced who would stand at the head of the coming
movement and bear the responsibility for all that had to be
done.
A man without convictions, without habits, without
traditions, without a name, and not even a Frenchman,
emergesby what seem the strangest chancesfrom among all
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the seething French parties, and without joining any one of
them is borne forward to a prominent position.
The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods,
and the dazzling and self-confident limitations of this man
raise him to the head of the army. The brilliant qualities of the
soldiers of the army sent to Italy, his opponents’ reluctance
to fight, and his own childish audacity and self-confidence
secure him military fame. Innumerable so called chances
accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he
falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His
attempts to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he
is not received into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During the war
in Italy he is several times on the verge of destruction and
each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armiesjust those
which might have destroyed his prestigedo not appear upon
the scene till he is no longer there.
On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a process of dissolution in which all those who are in
it are inevitably wiped out and destroyed. And by chance
an escape from this dangerous position presents itself in
the form of an aimless and senseless expedition to Africa.
Again so-called chance accompanies him. Impregnable
Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes
are crowned with success. The enemy’s fleet, which subsequently did not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army
to elude it. In Africa a whole series of outrages are commit

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ted against the almost unarmed inhabitants. And the men
who commit these crimes, especially their leader, assure
themselves that this is admirable, this is gloryit resembles
Caesar and Alexander the Great and is therefore good.
This ideal of glory and grandeurwhich consists not
merely in considering nothing wrong that one does but in
priding oneself on every crime one commits, ascribing to
it an incomprehensible supernatural significancethat ideal,
destined to guide this man and his associates, had scope for
its development in Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The
plague does not touch him. The cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash,
uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa, leaving
his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again
the enemy’s fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated
by the crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches
Paris, the dissolution of the republican government, which
a year earlier might have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there now as a newcomer free
from party entanglements can only serve to exalt himand
though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for his new
role.
He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties snatched at him and demanded his participation.
He alonewith his ideal of glory and grandeur developed
in Italy and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness
in crime and frankness in lyinghe alone could justify what
had to be done.
He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost
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apart from his will and despite his indecision, his lack of
a plan, and all his mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy
that aims at seizing power and the conspiracy is crowned
with success.
He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm
he wishes to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends
to fall into a swoon and says senseless things that should
have ruined him. But the once proud and shrewd rulers of
France, feeling that their part is played out, are even more
bewildered than he, and do not say the words they should
have said to destroy him and retain their power.
Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all
men as if by agreement co-operate to confirm that power.
Chance forms the characters of the rulers of France, who
submit to him; chance forms the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government; chance contrives a plot
against him which not only fails to harm him but confirms
his power. Chance puts the Duc d’Enghien in his hands and
unexpectedly causes him to kill himthereby convincing the
mob more forcibly than in any other way that he had the
right, since he had the might. Chance contrives that though
he directs all his efforts to prepare an expedition against
England (which would inevitably have ruined him) he never
carries out that intention, but unexpectedly falls upon Mack
and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle. Chance
and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance
all men, not only the French but all Europeexcept England
which does not take part in the events about to happendespite their former horror and detestation of his crimes, now


2141

recognize his authority, the title he has given himself, and
his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent and
reasonable to them all.
As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming
movement, the western forces push toward the east several
times in 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1809, gaining strength and
growing. In 1811 the group of people that had formed in
France unites into one group with the peoples of Central
Europe. The strength of the justification of the man who
stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory
period this man had formed relations with all the crowned
heads of Europe. The discredited rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal
of glory and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia
sends his wife to seek the great man’s mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that this man receives a
daughter the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the guardian
of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the
aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who
prepares himself for the accomplishment of his role, so
much as all those round him who prepare him to take on
himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and
has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he
commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not
at once represented as a great deed. The most suitable fete
the Germans can devise for him is a celebration of Jena and
Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are his ancestors, his
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brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law. Everything
is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and to
prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so
too are the forces.
The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goalMoscow. That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier
losses than the opposing armies had suffered in the former
war from Austerlitz to Wagram. But suddenly instead of
those chances and that genius which hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of successes to
the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of inverse
chances occurfrom the cold in his head at Borodino to the
sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frostsand instead
of genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.
The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are now not for Napoleon but always against him.
A countermovement is then accomplished from east
to west with a remarkable resemblance to the preceding
movement from west to east. Attempted drives from east
to westsimilar to the contrary movements of 1805, 1807,
and 1809precede the great westward movement; there is the
same coalescence into a group of enormous dimensions; the
same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing
rapidity as the goal is approached.
Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no
longer of any account; all his actions are evidently pitiful


2143

and mean, but again an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause of their
sufferings. Deprived of power and authority, his crimes and
his craft exposed, he should have appeared to them what
he appeared ten years previously and one year lateran outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives
this. His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year later was considered an outlawed brigand is
sent to an island two days’ sail from France, which for some
reason is presented to him as his dominion, and guards are
given to him and millions of money are paid him.

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Chapter IV
The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal
channels. The waves of the great movement abate, and on
the calm surface eddies are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have caused the floods
to abate.
But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed.
The diplomatists think that their disagreements are the
cause of this fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate
war between their sovereigns; the position seems to them
insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising does not come
from the quarter they expect. It rises again from the same
point as beforeParis. The last backwash of the movement
from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the
apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the
military movement of that period of history.
The man who had devastated France returns to France
alone, without any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any
guard might arrest him, but by strange chance no one does
so and all rapturously greet the man they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.
This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.
That act is performed.
The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and
wash off his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any


2145

more.
And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful
comedy to himself in solitude on his island, justifying his
actions by intrigues and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole world what it was
that people had mistaken for strength as long as an unseen
hand directed his actions.
The manager having brought the drama to a close and
stripped the actor shows him to us.
‘See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that
it was not he but I who moved you?’
But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people understood this.
Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life
of Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from east to west.
What was needed for him who, overshadowing others,
stood at the head of that movement from east to west?
What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy
with European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled
by petty interests; a moral superiority over those sovereigns
of the day who co-operated with him; a mild and attractive
personality; and a personal grievance against Napoleon.
And all this was found in Alexander I; all this had been
prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life: his
education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.
During the national war he was inactive because he was
not needed. But as soon as the necessity for a general Eu2146

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ropean war presented itself he appeared in his place at the
given moment and, uniting the nations of Europe, led them
to the goal.
The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander
possesses all possible power. How does he use it?
Alexander Ithe pacifier of Europe, the man who from
his early years had striven only for his people’s welfare, the
originator of the liberal innovations in his fatherlandnow
that he seemed to possess the utmost power and therefore
to have the possibility of bringing about the welfare of his
peoplesat the time when Napoleon in exile was drawing up
childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made
mankind happy had he retained powerAlexander I, having
fulfilled his mission and feeling the hand of God upon him,
suddenly recognizes the insignificance of that supposed
power, turns away from it, and gives it into the hands of
contemptible men whom he despises, saying only:
‘Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am
a man like the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think
of my soul and of God.’
As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete
in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too
immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has
within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a
general purpose incomprehensible to man.
A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child
is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people.
A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower
and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A bee

2147

keeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry
it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey. Another
beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely
says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees
and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race.
A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a
male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this
the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the
migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work,
and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the
ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the
second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery
of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of
the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the
purpose of historic characters and nations.

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Chapter V
Natasha’s wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in
1813, was the last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov died that same year and, as always
happens, after the father’s death the family group broke up.
The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow
and the flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha’s
despair, Petya’s death, and the old countess’ grief fell blow
after blow on the old count’s head. He seemed to be unable
to understand the meaning of all these events, and bowed
his old head in a spiritual sense as if expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed now
frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated
and enterprising.
The arrangements for Natasha’s marriage occupied
him for a while. He ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful, but his cheerfulness was
not infectious as it used to be: on the contrary it evoked the
compassion of those who knew and liked him.
When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet
and began to complain of depression. A few days later he
fell ill and took to his bed. He realized from the first that
he would not get up again, despite the doctor’s encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in an armchair by
his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave him his


2149

medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his
last day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for having dissipated their propertythat being the
chief fault of which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he quietly died; and next day a throng
of acquaintances who came to pay their last respects to the
deceased filled the house rented by the Rostovs. All these
acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at his
house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a
common feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves: ‘Well, whatever he may have been he was a
most worthy man. You don’t meet such men nowadays....
And which of us has not weaknesses of his own?’
It was just when the count’s affairs had become so involved that it was impossible to say what would happen if he
lived another year that he unexpectedly died.
Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the
news of his father’s death reached him. He at once resigned
his commission, and without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went to Moscow. The state of
the count’s affairs became quite obvious a month after his
death, surprising everyone by the immense total of small
debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The
debts amounted to double the value of the property.
Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his
father’s memory, which he held sacred, and therefore would
not hear of refusing and accepted the inheritance together
with the obligation to pay the debts.
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The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by
a vague but powerful influence exerted on them while he
lived by the count’s careless good nature, all proceeded to
enforce their claims at once. As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get paid first, and
those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given them
as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.
Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those
who had seemed to pity the old manthe cause of their losses
(if they were losses)now remorselessly pursued the young
heir who had voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of contracting them.
Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate
was sold by auction for half its value, and half the debts still
remained unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles
offered him by his brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts
he regarded as genuinely due for value received. And to
avoid being imprisoned for the remainder, as the creditors
threatened, he re-entered the government service.
He could not rejoin the army where he would have been
made colonel at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung
to him as her one hold on life; and so despite his reluctant
to remain in Moscow among people who had known him
before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the uniform
of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and
Sonya to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.
Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time
and had no clear idea of Nicholas’ circumstances. Having


2151

borrowed money from his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried
to hide his wretched condition from him. His position was
the more difficult because with his salary of twelve hundred
rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their
poverty. The countess could not conceive of life without the
luxurious conditions she had been used to from childhood
and, unable to realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage (which they did not keep) to send
for a friend, now some expensive article of food for herself,
or wine for her son, or money to buy a present as a surprise
for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.
Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put
up with her whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their poverty from the old countess. Nicholas
felt himself irredeemably indebted to Sonya for all she was
doing for his mother and greatly admired her patience and
devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.
He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and because there was nothing to reproach her with.
She had all that people are valued for, but little that could
have made him love her. He felt that the more he valued her
the less he loved her. He had taken her at her word when
she wrote giving him his freedom and now behaved as if all
that had passed between them had been long forgotten and
could never in any case be renewed.
Nicholas’ position became worse and worse. The idea of
putting something aside out of his salary proved a dream.
Not only did he not save anything, but to comply with his
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mother’s demands he even incurred some small debts. He
could see no way out of this situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested to him by his
female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way
outhis mother’s deathnever entered his head. He wished
for nothing and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart
experienced a gloomy and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his position. He tried to avoid his old
acquaintances with their commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all distraction and recreation,
and even at home did nothing but play cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke one pipe
after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure
his position.



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Chapter VI
At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From reports current in town she learned how the
Rostovs were situated, and how ‘the son has sacrificed himself for his mother,’ as people were saying.
‘I never expected anything else of him,’ said Princess
Mary to herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him.
Remembering her friendly relations with all the Rostovs
which had made her almost a member of the family, she
thought it her duty to go to see them. But remembering her
relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on
them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.
Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess’ room
could only be reached through his. But instead of being
greeted with pleasure as she had expected, at his first glance
at her his face assumed a cold, stiff, proud expression she
had not seen on it before. He inquired about her health, led
the way to his mother, and having sat there for five minutes
left the room.
When the princess came out of the countess’ room Nicholas met her again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness
accompanied her to the anteroom. To her remarks about his
mother’s health he made no reply. ‘What’s that to you? Leave
me in peace,’ his looks seemed to say.
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‘Why does she come prowling here? What does she want?
I can’t bear these ladies and all these civilities!’ said he aloud
in Sonya’s presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the princess’ carriage had disappeared.
‘Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?’ cried Sonya,
hardly able to conceal her delight. ‘She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!’
Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the
princess any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke
of her several times a day.
She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on
her, expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became
ill-humored when she began to talk about her.
Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of
the princess, but his silence irritated her.
‘She is a very admirable and excellent young woman,’
said she, ‘and you must go and call on her. You would at
least be seeing somebody, and I think it must be dull for you
only seeing us.’
‘But I don’t in the least want to, Mamma.’
‘You used to want to, and now you don’t. Really I don’t
understand you, my dear. One day you are dull, and the
next you refuse to see anyone.’
‘But I never said I was dull.’
‘Why, you said yourself you don’t want even to see her.
She is a very admirable young woman and you always liked
her, but now suddenly you have got some notion or other in
your head. You hide everything from me.’
‘Not at all, Mamma.’


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‘If I were asking you to do something disagreeable nowbut I only ask you to return a call. One would think mere
politeness required it.... Well, I have asked you, and now I
won’t interfere any more since you have secrets from your
mother.’
‘Well, then, I’ll go if you wish it.’
‘It doesn’t matter to me. I only wish it for your sake.’
Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards
for a patience, trying to divert his mother’s attention to another topic.
The same conversation was repeated next day and the
day after, and the day after that.
After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly
reception by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself
that she had been right in not wishing to be the first to call.
‘I expected nothing else,’ she told herself, calling her
pride to her aid. ‘I have nothing to do with him and I only
wanted to see the old lady, who was always kind to me and
to whom I am under many obligations.’
But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a
feeling akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of
her visit. Though she had firmly resolved not to call on the
Rostovs again and to forget the whole matter, she felt herself
all the time in an awkward position. And when she asked
herself what distressed her, she had to admit that it was her
relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not express
his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed something, and until she could discover what that something
was, she felt that she could not be at ease.
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One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom
attending to her nephew’s lessons, she was informed that
Rostov had called. With a firm resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she sent for Mademoiselle
Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.
Her first glance at Nicholas’ face told her that he had only
come to fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain the tone in which he addressed her.
They spoke of the countess’ health, of their mutual
friends, of the latest war news, and when the ten minutes
required by propriety had elapsed after which a visitor may
rise, Nicholas got up to say good-by.
With Mademoiselle Bourienne’s help the princess had
maintained the conversation very well, but at the very last
moment, just when he rose, she was so tired of talking of
what did not interest her, and her mind was so full of the
question why she alone was granted so little happiness in
life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing that he
had risen.
Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to
notice her abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle
Bourienne and then again looked at the princess. She still
sat motionless with a look of suffering on her gentle face. He
suddenly felt sorry for her and was vaguely conscious that
he might be the cause of the sadness her face expressed. He
wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
think of nothing to say.
‘Good-by, Princess!’ said he.


2157

She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said as if waking up. ‘Are
you going already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the
cushion for the countess!’
‘Wait a moment, I’ll fetch it,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she left the room.
They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.
‘Yes, Princess,’ said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, ‘it
doesn’t seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo,
but how much water has flowed since then! In what distress
we all seemed to be then, yet I would give much to bring
back that time... but there’s no bringing it back.’
Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own
luminous ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to
fathom the hidden meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.
‘Yes, yes,’ said she, ‘but you have no reason to regret the
past, Count. As I understand your present life, I think you
will always recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills it now..’
‘I cannot accept your praise,’ he interrupted her hurriedly. ‘On the contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this
is not at all an interesting or cheerful subject.’
His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the princess had caught a glimpse of the man
she had known and loved, and it was to him that she now
spoke.
‘I thought you would allow me to tell you this,’ she said.
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‘I had come so near to you... and to all your family that I
thought you would not consider my sympathy misplaced,
but I was mistaken,’ and suddenly her voice trembled. ‘I
don’t know why,’ she continued, recovering herself, ‘but you
used to be different, and..’
‘There are a thousand reasons why,’ laying special emphasis on the why. ‘Thank you, Princess,’ he added softly.
‘Sometimes it is hard.’
‘So that’s why! That’s why!’ a voice whispered in Princess
Mary’s soul. ‘No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank
look, not only that handsome exterior, that I loved in him.
I divined his noble, resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too,’ she
said to herself. ‘Yes, he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes,
that’s the only reason.... Yes, were it not for that...’ And remembering his former tenderness, and looking now at his
kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause of
his coldness.
‘But why, Count, why?’ she almost cried, unconsciously
moving closer to him. ‘Why? Tell me. You must tell me!’
He was silent.
‘I don’t understand your why, Count,’ she continued, ‘but
it’s hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to
deprive me of our former friendship. And that hurts me.’
There were tears in her eyes and in her voice. ‘I have had so
little happiness in life that every loss is hard for me to bear....
Excuse me, good-by!’ and suddenly she began to cry and
was hurrying from the room.
‘Princess, for God’s sake!’ he exclaimed, trying to stop
her. ‘Princess!’


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She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one another’s eyesand what had seemed impossible
and remote suddenly became possible, inevitable, and very
near.

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Chapter VII
In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary
and moved to Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.
Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts
without selling any of his wife’s property, and having received a small inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid
his debt to Pierre as well.
In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his
affairs that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald
Hills and was negotiating to buy back Otradnoethat being
his pet dream.
Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so
devoted to it that it became his favorite and almost his sole
occupation. Nicholas was a plain farmer: he did not like
innovations, especially the English ones then coming into
vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products,
and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a
hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He
always had before his mind’s eye the estate as a whole and
not any particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was
not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor
manures, nor special plows, but that most important agent
by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made


2161

effectivethe peasant laborer. When Nicholas first began
farming and began to understand its different branches,
it was the serf who especially attracted his attention. The
peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a judge of
farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,
trying to understand their aims and what they considered
good and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give
orders while in reality learning from them their methods,
their manner of speech, and their judgment of what was
good and bad. Only when he had understood the peasants’
tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their language,
to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin
to them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to
perform toward them the duties demanded of him. And
Nicholas’ management produced very brilliant results.
Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the estates he at once unerringly appointed as
bailiff, village elder, and delegate, the very men the serfs
would themselves have chosen had they had the right to
choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the
debit and credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how
many cattle the peasants had and increased the number by
all possible means. He kept the peasant families together in
the largest groups possible, not allowing the family groups
to divide into separate households. He was hard alike on the
lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled from the commune.
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ants’ hay and corn as of his own, and few landowners had
their crops sown and harvested so early and so well, or got
so good a return, as did Nicholas.
He disliked having anything to do with the domestic
serfsthe ‘drones’ as he called themand everyone said he
spoiled them by his laxity. When a decision had to be taken
regarding a domestic serf, especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in
the house; but when it was possible to have a domestic serf
conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without the
least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with
the peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them all with very few exceptions.
He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to make things easy for or reward anyone,
merely because he felt inclined to do so. He could not have
said by what standard he judged what he should or should
not do, but the standard was quite firm and definite in his
own mind.
Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he would say: ‘What can one do with our Russian
peasants?’ and imagined that he could not bear them.
Yet he loved ‘our Russian peasants’ and their way of life
with his whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated the one way and manner of farming
which produced good results.
Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband’s and regretted that she could not share it; but she
could not understand the joys and vexations he derived


2163

from that world, to her so remote and alien. She could not
understand why he was so particularly animated and happy
when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the whole
morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned
from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her.
She did not understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the farming of the thrifty and well-to-do
peasant Matthew Ermishin, who with his family had carted
corn all night; or of the fact that his (Nicholas’) sheaves were
already stacked before anyone else had his harvest in. She
did not understand why he stepped out from the window
to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked
so joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry
and thirsty shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind
carried away a threatening cloud during the hay harvest he
would return from the barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and gentian in his hair
and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say: ‘Well, one more
day and my grain and the peasants’ will all be under cover.’
Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready to anticipate her wishes, should become almost
desperate when she brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed to her to be excused
some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should obstinately
refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what was
not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he
loved passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.
Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke
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of the good work he was doing for his serfs, he would be
vexed and reply: ‘Not in the least; it never entered my head
and I wouldn’t do that for their good! That’s all poetry and
old wives’ talkall that doing good to one’s neighbor! What
I want is that our children should not have to go begging.
I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that’s all.
And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That’s all
about it!’ said he, clenching his vigorous fist. ‘And fairness,
of course,’ he added, ‘for if the peasant is naked and hungry
and has only one miserable horse, he can do no good either
for himself or for me.’
And all Nicholas did was fruitfulprobably just because he
refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to
others for virtue’s sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs
from neighboring estates came to beg him to buy them, and
long after his death the memory of his administration was
devoutly preserved among the serfs. ‘He was a master... the
peasants’ affairs first and then his own. Of course he was
not to be trifled with eitherin a word, he was a real master!’



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One matter connected with his management sometimes
worried Nicholas, and that was his quick temper together
with his old hussar habit of making free use of his fists. At
first he saw nothing reprehensible in this, but in the second
year of his marriage his view of that form of punishment suddenly changed.
Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a man who had succeeded to the post when Dron
died and who was accused of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the porch to question him,
and immediately after the elder had given a few replies the
sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch
Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low
over her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her
what he had been doing that morning. Among other things
he spoke of the Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned
red and then pale, but continued to sit with head bowed and
lips compressed and gave her husband no reply.
‘Such an insolent scoundrel!’ he cried, growing hot again at
the mere recollection of him. ‘If he had told me he was drunk
and did not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?’ he
suddenly asked.
Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but
hastily looked down again and her lips puckered.
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‘Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?’
The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved
when she was in tears. She never cried from pain or vexation,
but always from sorrow or pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm.
The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer
restrain herself and began to cry.
‘Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you...
Nicholas!’ and she covered her face with her hands.
Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side,
and paced up and down the room. He understood what she
was weeping about, but could not in his heart at once agree
with her that what he had regarded from childhood as quite
an everyday event was wrong. ‘Is it just sentimentality, old
wives’ tales, or is she right?’ he asked himself. Before he had
solved that point he glanced again at her face filled with love
and pain, and he suddenly realized that she was right and
that he had long been sinning against himself.
‘Mary,’ he said softly, going up to her, ‘it will never happen
again; I give you my word. Never,’ he repeated in a trembling
voice like a boy asking for forgiveness.
The tears flowed faster still from the countess’ eyes. She
took his hand and kissed it.
‘Nicholas, when when did you break your cameo?’ she
asked to change the subject, looking at his finger on which he
wore a ring with a cameo of Laocoon’s head.
‘Todayit was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don’t remind me
of it!’ and again he flushed. ‘I give you my word of honor it
shan’t occur again, and let this always be a reminder to me,’


2167

and he pointed to the broken ring.
After that, when in discussions with his village elders or
stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to
clench, Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger
and would drop his eyes before the man who was making
him angry. But he did forget himself once or twice within a
twelvemonth, and then he would go and confess to his wife,
and would again promise that this should really be the very
last time.
‘Mary, you must despise me!’ he would say. ‘I deserve it.’
‘You should go, go away at once, if you don’t feel strong
enough to control yourself,’ she would reply sadly, trying to
comfort her husband.
Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected
but not liked. He did not concern himself with the interests
of his own class, and consequently some thought him proud
and others thought him stupid. The whole summer, from
spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with the work on his
farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same
business like seriousnessleaving home for a month, or even
two, with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or
spent his time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on these he spent a certain sum every year. He
was collecting, as he said, a serious library, and he made it
a rule to read through all the books he bought. He would sit
in his study with a grave air, readinga task he first imposed
upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards became a habit
affording him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter, except
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for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home
making himself one with his family and entering into all the
details of his children’s relations with their mother. The harmony between him and his wife grew closer and closer and
he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her.
From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house.
Before that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and Sonya, blaming himself and commending
her. He had asked Princess Mary to be gentle and kind to his
cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her
wealth had influenced Nicholas’ choice. She could not find
fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her, but
often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.
Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya
and about her own injustice toward her.
‘You know,’ said Natasha, ‘you have read the Gospels a
great dealthere is a passage in them that just fits Sonya.’
‘What?’ asked Countess Mary, surprised.
‘‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath
not shall be taken away.’ You remember? She is one that hath
not; why, I don’t know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don’t
know, but from her is taken away, and everything has been
taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always
had a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She
is a sterile flower, you knowlike some strawberry blossoms.
Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she
doesn’t feel it as you or I would.’


2169

Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in
the Gospel must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with Natasha’s explanation. It really seemed
that Sonya did not feel her position trying, and had grown
quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower. She seemed to be
fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a whole.
Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to
the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled
the children, was always ready to render the small services for
which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted
from her with insufficient gratitude.
The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though
not on the same scale as under the old prince.
The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances,
were more than simple. The immense house on the old stone
foundations was of wood, plastered only inside. It had bare
deal floors and was furnished with very simple hard sofas,
armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious
and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs’ and Bolkonskis’ relations
sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens
of servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a
year, on the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many
as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day or two. The
rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and
suppers, provided out of the produce of the estate.
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Chapter IX
It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820.
Natasha had been staying at her brother’s with her husband
and children since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three weeks as he said, but
had remained there nearly seven weeks and was expected
back every minute.
Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the retired General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the
Rostovs this fifth of December.
On the sixth, which was his name day when the house
would be full of visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to
exchange his Tartar tunic for a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to the new church he
had built, and then receive visitors who would come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the
elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled
to spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined
the bailiff’s accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his wife’s nephew, wrote two business letters, and
walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general
drunkenness to be expected on the morrow because it was
a great saint’s day, he returned to dinner, and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at the long


2171

table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household
had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother’s
old lady companion Belova, his wife, their three children
with their governess and tutor, his wife’s nephew with his
tutor, Sonya, Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their
governess, and old Michael Ivanovich, the late prince’s architect, who was living on in retirement at Bald Hills.
Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When
her husband took his place she concluded, from the rapid
manner in which after taking up his table napkin he pushed
back the tumbler and wineglass standing before him, that
he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when he
came in to dinner straight from the farmespecially before
the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and
when she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited
till he had had his soup and then began to talk to him and
make him admit that there was no cause for his ill-humor.
But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that he should
be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy.
She asked him where he had been. He replied. She again
inquired whether everything was going well on the farm.
Her unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he
replied hastily.
‘Then I’m not mistaken,’ thought Countess Mary. ‘Why
is he cross with me?’ She concluded from his tone that he
was vexed with her and wished to end the conversation. She
knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but could not refrain
from asking some more questions.
Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon be2172

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came general and lively, and she did not talk to her husband.
When they left the table and went as usual to thank the old
countess, Countess Mary held out her hand and kissed her
husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.
‘You always have such strange fancies! I didn’t even think
of being angry,’ he replied.
But the word always seemed to her to imply: ‘Yes, I am
angry but I won’t tell you why.’
Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even
Sonya and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have
liked them to disagree, could find nothing to reproach them
with; but even they had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after they had been happiest
together, they suddenly had a feeling of estrangement and
hostility, which occurred most frequently during Countess
Mary’s pregnancies, and this was such a time.
‘Well, messieurs et mesdames,’ said Nicholas loudly and
with apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary
that he did it on purpose to vex her), ‘I have been on my feet
since six this morning. Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so
today I’ll go and rest.’
And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and lay down on the sofa.
‘That’s always the way,’ thought Countess Mary. ‘He
talks to everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive
to him, especially when I am in this condition.’ She looked
down at her expanded figure and in the glass at her pale,
sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked larger
than ever.


2173

And everything annoyed herDenisov’s shouting and
laughter, Natasha’s talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.
Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found
for feeling irritated.
Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of what they were saying, she softly left the
room and went to the nursery.
The children were playing at ‘going to Moscow’ in a carriage made of chairs and invited her to go with them. She
sat down and played with them a little, but the thought of
her husband and his unreasonable crossness worried her.
She got up and, walking on tiptoe with difficulty, went to
the small sitting room.
‘Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with
him,’ she said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice
him.
‘Mary, dear, I think he is asleephe was so tired,’ said Sonya, meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to
Countess Mary that she crossed her path everywhere). ‘Andrew may wake him.’
Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that Sonya was right, and for that very reason
flushed and with evident difficulty refrained from saying
something harsh. She made no reply, but to avoid obeying
Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
to the door. Sonya went away by another door. From the
room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his
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even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to
his wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth
handsome forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as
she had so often seen it in the stillness of the night when
he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat.
And at that moment little Andrew shouted from outside
the door: ‘Papa! Mamma’s standing here!’ Countess Mary
turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew
silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess
Mary. She knew how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then
through the door she heard Nicholas clearing his throat
again and stirring, and his voice said crossly:
‘I can’t get a moment’s peace.... Mary, is that you? Why
did you bring him here?’
‘I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..’
Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary
moved away from the door and took the boy back to the
nursery. Five minutes later little black-eyed three-year-old
Natasha, her father’s pet, having learned from her brother
that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room,
ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed
little girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the
sofa with energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having
examined the position of her father, who was asleep with
his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the hand which
lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a tender smile on
his face.
‘Natasha, Natasha!’ came Countess Mary’s frightened
whisper from the door. ‘Papa wants to sleep.’


2175

‘No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep,’ said little Natasha
with conviction. ‘He’s laughing.’
Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in
his arms.
‘Come in, Mary,’ he said to his wife.
She went in and sat down by her husband.
‘I did not notice him following me,’ she said timidly. ‘I
just looked in.’
Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at
his wife and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm
around her and kissed her hair.
‘May I kiss Mamma?’ he asked Natasha.
Natasha smiled bashfully.
‘Again!’ she commanded, pointing with a peremptory
gesture to the spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
‘I don’t know why you think I am cross,’ said Nicholas,
replying to the question he knew was in his wife’s mind.
‘You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when
you are like that. It always seems to me... ‘
‘Mary, don’t talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself!’ he said gaily.
‘It seems to be that you can’t love me, that I am so plain...
always... and now... in this cond..’
‘Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears,
it’s love that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and
women of that kind who are loved for their beauty. But do I
love my wife? I don’t love her, but... I don’t know how to put
it. Without you, or when something comes between us like
this, I seem lost and can’t do anything. Now do I love my
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finger? I don’t love it, but just try to cut it off!
‘I’m not like that myself, but I understand. So you’re not
angry with me?’
‘Awfully angry!’ he said, smiling and getting up. And
smoothing his hair he began to pace the room.
‘Do you know, Mary, what I’ve been thinking?’ he began,
immediately thinking aloud in his wife’s presence now that
they had made it up.
He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did
not care. A thought had occurred to him and so it belonged
to her also. And he told her of his intention to persuade
Pierre to stay with them till spring.
Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some
remark, and in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts
were about the children.
‘You can see the woman in her already,’ she said in
French, pointing to little Natasha. ‘You reproach us women
with being illogical. Here is our logic. I say: ‘Papa wants to
sleep!’ but she says, ‘No, he’s laughing.’ And she was right,’
said Countess Mary with a happy smile.
‘Yes, yes.’ And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his
strong hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held
her by the legs, and paced the room with her. There was an
expression of carefree happiness on the faces of both father
and daughter.
‘But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of
this one,’ his wife whispered in French.
‘Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..’
At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley


2177

and footsteps in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had
arrived.
‘Somebody has come.’
‘I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see,’ said Countess
Mary and left the room.
In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little
daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took
the laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed
her to his heart. His capers reminded him of dancing, and
looking at the child’s round happy little face he thought of
what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her
into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
‘It is he, it is he, Nicholas!’ said Countess Mary, re-entering the room a few minutes later. ‘Now our Natasha has
come to life. You should have seen her ecstasy, and how he
caught it for having stayed away so long. Well, come along
now, quick, quick! It’s time you two were parted,’ she added,
looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to her father.
Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
‘I should never, never have believed that one could be so
happy,’ she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but
at the same time she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a
quiet sadness as though she felt, through her happiness, that
there is another sort of happiness unattainable in this life
and of which she involuntarily thought at that instant.

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Chapter X
Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in
1820 already had three daughters besides a son for whom
she had longed and whom she was now nursing. She had
grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively
Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and
had a calm, soft, and serene expression. In her face there
was none of the ever-glowing animation that had formerly
burned there and constituted its charm. Now her face and
body were of all that one saw, and her soul was not visible
at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and
fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face
now. That happened only when, as was the case that day, her
husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or
when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she
never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined
was jealous of Prince Andrew’s memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce her to sing, a
practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At the
rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome,
fully developed body she was even more attractive than in
former days.
Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived
in Moscow, in Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow,


2179

or with her mother, that is to say, in Nicholas’ house. The
young Countess Bezukhova was not often seen in society,
and those who met her there were not pleased with her and
found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha
liked solitudeshe did not know whether she liked it or not,
she even thought that she did notbut with her pregnancies,
her confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband’s life, she had demands
on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing
society. All who had known Natasha before her marriage
wondered at the change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had
realized that all Natasha’s outbursts had been due to her
need of children and a husbandas she herself had once exclaimed at Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnestand
her mother was now surprised at the surprise expressed by
those who had never understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that Natasha would make an
exemplary wife and mother.
‘Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all bounds,’ said the countess, ‘so that it even becomes
absurd.’
Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by
clever folk, especially by the French, which says that a girl
should not let herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be even more careful of
her appearance than when she was unmarried, and should
fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became
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doned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an
unusually powerful part. She gave it up just because it was
so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or with her toilet, or to show herself
to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in
contradiction to all those rules. She felt that the allurements
instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had
from the first moment given herself up entirelythat is, with
her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him.
She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained
by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by
something elseindefinite but firm as the bond between her
own body and soul.
To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and
sing romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have
seemed as strange as to adorn herself to attract herself. To
adorn herself for others might perhaps have been agreeableshe did not knowbut she had no time at all for it. The
chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress,
or to choosing her words was that she really had no time to
spare for these things.
We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it may be, and
that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one’s entire attention is devoted to it.
The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha’s attention
was her family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep


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so that he should belong entirely to her and to the home, and
the children whom she had to bear, bring into the world,
nurse, and bring up.
And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only
but with her whole soul, her whole being, into the subject
that absorbed her, the larger did that subject grow and the
weaker and more inadequate did her powers appear, so that
she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet was
unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.
There were then as now conversations and discussions
about women’s rights, the relations of husband and wife and
their freedom and rights, though these themes were not yet
termed questions as they are now; but these topics were not
merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively did not understand them.
These questions, then as now, existed only for those who
see nothing in marriage but the pleasure married people get
from one another, that is, only the beginnings of marriage
and not its whole significance, which lies in the family.
Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like
the question of how to get the greatest gratification from
one’s dinner, did not then and do not now exist for those for
whom the purpose of a dinner is the nourishment it affords;
and the purpose of marriage is the family.
If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man
who eats two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his purpose, for his stomach will
not digest the two dinners.
If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who
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wishes to have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain
much pleasure, but in that case will not have a family.
If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose
of marriage is the family, the whole question resolves itself
into not eating more than one can digest, and not having
more wives or husbands than are needed for the familythat
is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed a husband. A
husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she
not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as
all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and family, she could not imagine and saw no interest
in imagining how it would be if things were different.
Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized
the more the society of her relativesCountess Mary, and her
brother, her mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of
those to whom she could come striding disheveled from the
nursery in her dressing gown, and with joyful face show a
yellow instead of a green stain on baby’s napkin, and from
whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect that
baby was much better.
To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way
she dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her
jealousyshe was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of
every woman, pretty or plainwere habitual subjects of jest
to those about her. The general opinion was that Pierre was
under his wife’s thumb, which was really true. From the
very first days of their married life Natasha had announced
her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife’s view,
to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life


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belonged to her and to the family. His wife’s demands astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted
to them.
Pierre’s subjection consisted in the fact that he not only
dared not flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to,
any other woman; did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money a whim, and did not dare
absent himself for any length of time, except on businessin
which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which she
did not in the least understand but to which she attributed
great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had
the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family
exactly as he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the
position of a slave to her husband, and the whole household
went on tiptoe when he was occupiedthat is, was reading or
writing in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality for
anything to get just what he liked done always. He had only
to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and run to
fulfill it.
The entire household was governed according to Pierre’s
supposed orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried
to guess. Their way of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natasha’s occupations, the children’s
upbringing, were all selected not merely with regard to
Pierre’s expressed wishes, but to what Natasha from the
thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his wishes
to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite
correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind
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she would fight him with his own weapons.
Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after
the birth of their first child who was delicate, when they
had to change the wet nurse three times and Natasha fell
ill from despair, Pierre one day told her of Rousseau’s view,
with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite
the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her
husband himselfwho were all vigorously opposed to her
nursing her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injuriousshe insisted on having her own way, and
after that nursed all her babies herself.
It very often happened that in a moment of irritation
husband and wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards
Pierre to his surprise and delight would find in his wife’s
ideas and actions the very thought against which she had
argued, but divested of everything superfluous that in the
excitement of the dispute he had added when expressing his
opinion.
After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and
firm consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt
this because he saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt
the good and bad within himself inextricably mingled and
overlapping. But only what was really good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was rejected.
And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a
direct and mysterious reflection.



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Chapter XI
Two months previously when Pierre was already staying
with the Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come to Petersburg to confer on some
important questions that were being discussed there by a
society of which Pierre was one of the principal founders.
On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s
letters) Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel his absence very acutely.
She attributed immense importance to all her husband’s
intellectual and abstract interests though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance
to him in such matters. To Pierre’s timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to
fix a definite date for his return. He was given four weeks’
leave of absence.
Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than
a fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of
alarm, depression, and irritability.
Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, had arrived during
that fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a person once dear. A dull,
dejected look, random replies, and talk about the nursery
was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.
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Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially
when her mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in
their efforts to console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.
‘It’s all nonsense, all rubbishthose discussions which lead
to nothing and all those idiotic societies!’ Natasha declared
of the very affairs in the immense importance of which she
firmly believed.
And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only
boy. No one else could tell her anything so comforting or
so reasonable as this little three-month-old creature when
he lay at her breast and she was conscious of the movement
of his lips and the snuffling of his little nose. That creature
said: ‘You are angry, you are jealous, you would like to pay
him out, you are afraidbut here am I! And I am he...’ and
that was unanswerable. It was more than true.
During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the
baby for comfort so often, and fussed over him so much,
that she overfed him and he fell ill. She was terrified by his
illness, and yet that was just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her husband more
easily.
She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s sleigh
was heard at the front door, and the old nurseknowing how
to please her mistressentered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming face.
‘Has he come?’ Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid
to move lest she should rouse the dozing baby.
‘He’s come, ma’am,’ whispered the nurse.


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The blood rushed to Natasha’s face and her feet involuntarily moved, but she could not jump up and run out. The
baby again opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘You’re here?’
he seemed to be saying, and again lazily smacked his lips.
Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him
a little, handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps
toward the door. But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for having in her joy left the child
too soon, and she glanced round. The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of his cot.
‘Go, ma’am! Don’t worry, go!’ she whispered, smiling,
with the kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse
and her mistress.
Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing
room with his pipe, now for the first time recognized the
old Natasha. A flood of brilliant, joyful light poured from
her transfigured face.
‘He’s come!’ she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov
felt that he too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not
much care for, had returned.
On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a
fur coat unwinding his scarf. ‘It’s he! It’s really he! He has
come!’ she said to herself, and rushing at him embraced
him, pressed his head to her breast, and then pushed him
back and gazed at his ruddy, happy face, covered with hoarfrost. ‘Yes, it is he, happy and contented..’
Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense
she had experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that
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had lit up her face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed
Pierre with a torrent of reproaches and angry words.
‘Yes, it’s all very well for you. You are pleased, you’ve had
a good time.... But what about me? You might at least have
shown consideration for the children. I am nursing and my
milk was spoiled.... Petya was at death’s door. But you were
enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying..’
Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have
come sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and
would blow over in a minute or two; above all he knew that
he himself was bright and happy. He wanted to smile but
dared not even think of doing so. He made a piteous, frightened face and bent down.
‘I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?’
‘All right now. Come along! I wonder you’re not ashamed!
If only you could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!’
‘You are well?’
‘Come, come!’ she said, not letting go of his arm. And
they went to their rooms.
When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he
was in the nursery holding his baby son, who was again
awake, on his huge right palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby’s broad face with its
toothless open mouth. The storm was long since over and
there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha’s face as she
gazed tenderly at her husband and child.
‘And have you talked everything well over with Prince
Theodore?’ she asked.


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‘Yes, capitally.’
‘You see, he holds it up.’ (She meant the baby’s head.) ‘But
how he did frighten me... You’ve seen the princess? Is it true
she’s in love with that..’
‘Yes, just fancy..’
At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in.
Pierre with the baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and
replied to their inquiries. But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby with the little
cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all his attention.
‘How sweet!’ said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the baby. ‘Now, Nicholas,’ she added, turning to
her husband, ‘I can’t understand how it is you don’t see the
charm of these delicious marvels.’
‘I don’t and can’t,’ replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the
baby. ‘A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!’
‘And yet he’s such an affectionate father,’ said Countess
Mary, vindicating her husband, ‘but only after they are a
year old or so..’
‘Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly,’ said Natasha. ‘He
says his hand is just made for a baby’s seat. Just look!’
‘Only not for this...’ Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a
laugh, and shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.

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Chapter XII
As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills
several perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one
harmonious whole, though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every event, joyful
or sad, that took place in that house was important to all
these worlds, but each had its own special reasons to rejoice
or grieve over that occurrence independently of the others.
For instance, Pierre’s return was a joyful and important
event and they all felt it to be so.
The servantsthe most reliable judges of their masters because they judge not by their conversation or expressions of
feeling but by their acts and way of lifewere glad of Pierre’s
return because they knew that when he was there Count
Nicholas would cease going every day attend to the estate,
and would would be in better spirits and temper, and also
because they would all receive handsome presents for the
holidays.
The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre’s
return because no one else drew them into the social life of
the household as he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only piece) to which, as he said, all
possible dances could be danced, and they felt sure he had
brought presents for them all.
Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and


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intelligent, with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes,
was delighted because Uncle Pierre as he called him was
the object of his rapturous and passionate affection. No one
had instilled into him this love for Pierre whom he saw only
occasionally. Countess Mary who had brought him up had
done her utmost to make him love her husband as she loved
him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him
with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored.
He did not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George
like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and
kind like Pierre. In Pierre’s presence his face always shone
with pleasure and he flushed and was breathless when
Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by himself,
recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had
said. Pierre’s past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of
which young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture
from some words he had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon Karataev (of whom he had heard
from Pierre), his love for Natasha (of whom the lad was also
particularly fond), and especially Pierre’s friendship with
the father whom Nicholas could not rememberall this made
Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.
From broken remarks about Natasha and his father,
from the emotion with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent tenderness with which
Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just beginning
to guess what love is, derived the notion that his father had
loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his friend. But
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the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him
a divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never
thought without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and
rapture. So the boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.
The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to
enliven and unite any company he was in.
The grown-up members of the family, not to mention
his wife, were pleased to have back a friend whose presence
made life run more smoothly and peacefully.
The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought
them, and especially that Natasha would now be herself
again.
Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds
and made haste to satisfy all their expectations.
Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men,
Pierre, with the aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought
everything, not forgetting his motherand brother-in-law’s
commissions, nor the dress material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early days of his
marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should
expect him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious
annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But
in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha
asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for
others only when he himself had offered to undertake them,
he now found an unexpected and childlike pleasure in this
purchase of presents for everyone in the house, and never
forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha’s censure it was


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only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her
other defects (as most people thought them, but which to
Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself,
she now added stinginess.
From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on
a footing entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his
surprise that he spent only half as much as before, and that
his affairswhich had been in disorder of late, chiefly because
of his first wife’s debtshad begun to improve.
Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most
expensive luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any
moment, was no longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt
that his way of life had now been settled once for all till
death and that to change it was not in his power, and so that
way of life proved economical.
With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.
‘What do you think of this?’ said he, unrolling a piece of
stuff like a shopman.
Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest
daughter on her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from
her husband to the things he showed her.
‘That’s for Belova? Excellent!’ She felt the quality of the
material. ‘It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?’
Pierre told her the price.
‘Too dear!’ Natasha remarked. ‘How pleased the children
will be and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me
this,’ she added, unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls, of a kind then just
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coming into fashion.
‘Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it,’ returned Pierre.
‘When am I to wear it?’ and Natasha stuck it in her coil
of hair. ‘When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they
will be fashionable again by then. Well, let’s go now.’
And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery
and then to the old countess’ rooms.
The countess was sitting with her companion Belova,
playing grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha
came into the drawing room with parcels under their
arms.
The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and
wore a cap with a frill that surrounded her face. Her face
had shriveled, her upper lip had sunk in, and her eyes were
dim.
After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid
succession, she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in
this world and left without aim or object for her existence.
She ate, drank, slept, or kept awake, but did not live. Life
gave her no new impressions. She wanted nothing from life
but tranquillity, and that tranquillity only death could give
her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is,
to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young
children and very old people was particularly evident in
her. Her life had no external aimsonly a need to exercise her
various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to
eat, sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger,
and so on, merely because she had a stomach, a brain, mus

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cles, nerves, and a liver. She did these things not under any
external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do, when
behind the purpose for which they strive that of exercising
their functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because
she physically needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She
cried as a child does, because her nose had to be cleared,
and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim was
for her evidently merely a pretext.
Thus in the morningespecially if she had eaten anything
rich the day beforeshe felt a need of being angry and would
choose as the handiest pretext Belova’s deafness.
She would begin to say something to her in a low tone
from the other end of the room.
‘It seems a little warmer today, my dear,’ she would murmur.
And when Belova replied: ‘Oh yes, they’ve come,’ she
would mutter angrily: ‘O Lord! How stupid and deaf she
is!’
Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem
too dry or too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these
fits of irritability her face would grow yellow, and her maids
knew by infallible symptoms when Belova would again be
deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess’ face yellow. Just as
she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to
exercise her still-existing faculty of thinkingand the pretext
for that was a game of patience. When she needed to cry,
the deceased count would be the pretext. When she wanted
to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext
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would be Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed
exercise, which was usually toward seven o’clock when she
had had an after-dinner rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same stories over and over
again to the same audience.
The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole
household though no one ever spoke of it, and they all
made every possible effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a
rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between Nicholas,
Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the common understanding of her condition expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said
that she had played her part in life, that what they now saw
was not her whole self, that we must all become like her, and
that they were glad to yield to her, to restrain themselves
for this once precious being formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. ‘Memento mori,’ said
these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and the little children failed to understand this and
avoided her.



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Chapter XIII
When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the
countess was in one of her customary states in which she
needed the mental exertion of playing patience, and sothough by force of habit she greeted him with the words
she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
absence: ‘High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting for you. Well, thank God!’ and received her
presents with another customary remark: ‘It’s not the gift
that’s precious, my dear, but that you give it to me, an old
woman...’yet it was evident that she was not pleased by
Pierre’s arrival at that moment when it diverted her attention from the unfinished game.
She finished her game of patience and only then examined
the presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid
workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with
the count’s portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by
a miniaturist in Petersburg. The countess had long wished
for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she
glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention
chiefly to the box for cards.
‘Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up,’ said she
as she always did. ‘But best of all you have brought yourself backfor I never saw anything like it, you ought to give
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your wife a scolding! What are we to do with her? She is like
a mad woman when you are away. Doesn’t see anything,
doesn’t remember anything,’ she went on, repeating her
usual phrases. ‘Look, Anna Timofeevna,’ she added to her
companion, ‘see what a box for cards my son has brought
us!’
Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her
dress material.
Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and
Denisov had much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old countessnot that anything was hidden
from her, but because she had dropped so far behindhand in
many things that had they begun to converse in her presence
they would have had to answer inopportune questions and
to repeat what they had already told her many times: that
so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she
would again be unable to rememberyet they sat at tea round
the samovar in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre
answered the countess’ questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexeevna had sent
greetings and still thought of them, and other matters that
interested no one and to which she herself was indifferent.
Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable, continued all through teatime. All the grown-up
members of the family were assembled near the round tea
table at which Sonya presided beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had had tea and their
voices were audible from the next room. At tea all sat in
their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small


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table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray
borzoi bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray
face and large black eyes that seemed more prominent than
ever, lay on the armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly
hair, mustache, and whiskers had turned half gray, sat beside
countess Mary with his general’s tunic unbuttoned; Pierre
sat between his wife and the old countess. He spoke of what
he knew might interest the old lady and that she could understand. He told her of external social events and of the
people who had formed the circle of her contemporaries
and had once been a real, living, and distinct group, but
who were now for the most part scattered about the world
and like herself were garnering the last ears of the harvests
they had sown in earlier years. But to the old countess those
contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious and
real society. Natasha saw by Pierre’s animation that his visit
had been interesting and that he had much to tell them but
dare not say it before the old countess. Denisov, not being a
member of the family, did not understand Pierre’s caution
and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them about
what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then about
Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice
Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things,
but Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the
health of Prince Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.
‘Well, and all this idiocyGossner and Tatawinova?’ Denisov asked. ‘Is that weally still going on?’
‘Going on?’ Pierre exclaimed. ‘Why more than ever! The
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Bible Society is the whole government now!’
‘What is that, mon cher ami?’ asked the countess, who
had finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry after her meal. ‘What are you saying about the
government? I don’t understand.’
‘Well, you know, Maman,’ Nicholas interposed, knowing
how to translate things into his mother’s language, ‘Prince
Alexander Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence, they say.’
‘Arakcheev and Golitsyn,’ incautiously remarked Pierre,
‘are now the whole government! And what a government!
They see treason everywhere and are afraid of everything.’
‘Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a
most estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna’s,’ said the countess in an offended tone; and still more
offended that they all remained silent, she went on: ‘Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel Society! Well, and what
harm is there in that?’ and she rose (everybody else got up
too) and with a severe expression sailed back to her table in
the sitting room.
The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the
sounds of the children’s voices and laughter from the next
room. Evidently some jolly excitement was going on there.
‘Finished, finished!’ little Natasha’s gleeful yell rose
above them all.
Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he never lost sight of) and smiled happily.
‘That’s delightful music!’ said he.
‘It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stock

2201

ing,’ said Countess Mary.
‘Oh, I’ll go and see,’ said Pierre, jumping up. ‘You know,’
he added, stopping at the door, ‘why I’m especially fond of
that music? It is always the first thing that tells me all is
well. When I was driving here today, the nearer I got to the
house the more anxious I grew. As I entered the anteroom I
heard Andrusha’s peals of laughter and that meant that all
was well.’
‘I know! I know that feeling,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I mustn’t
go therethose stockings are to be a surprise for me.’
Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew still louder.
‘Come, Anna Makarovna,’ Pierre’s voice was heard saying, ‘come here into the middle of the room and at the word
of command, ‘One, two,’ and when I say ‘three’... You stand
here, and you in my armswell now! One, two!...’ said Pierre,
and a silence followed: ‘three!’ and a rapturously breathless cry of children’s voices filled the room. ‘Two, two!’ they
shouted.
This meant two stockings, which by a secret process
known only to herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the
same time on the same needles, and which, when they were
ready, she always triumphantly drew, one out of the other,
in the children’s presence.

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War and Peace

Chapter XIV
Soon after this the children came in to say good night.
They kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made
their bows, and they went out. Only young Nicholas and
his tutor remained. Dessalles whispered to the boy to come
downstairs.
‘No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me
stay,’ replied Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.
‘Ma tante, please let me stay,’ said he, going up to his
aunt.
His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy.
Countess Mary glanced at him and turned to Pierre.
‘When you are here he can’t tear himself away,’ she said.
‘I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles.
Good night!’ said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned to young Nicholas with a smile. ‘You and
I haven’t seen anything of one another yet... How like he is
growing, Mary!’ he added, addressing Countess Mary.
‘Like my father?’ asked the boy, flushing crimson and
looking up at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.
Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat
down doing woolwork; Natasha did not take her eyes off her
husband. Nicholas and Denisov rose, asked for their pipes,
smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sonyawho sat wea

2203

ry but resolute at the samovarand questioned Pierre. The
curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed
in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering
something to himself, and evidently experiencing a new
and powerful emotion as he turned his curly head, with his
thin neck exposed by his turn-down collar, toward the place
where Pierre sat.
The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip
about those in power, in which most people see the chief
interest of home politics. Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own disappointments in the
service, heard with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and
sharp comments on what Pierre told them.
‘One used to have to be a Germannow one must dance
with Tatawinova and Madame Kwudener, and wead
Ecka’tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they should let that
fine fellow Bonaparte losehe’d knock all this nonsense out
of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment to a fellow like that Schwa’tz!’ he cried.
Nicholas, though free from Denisov’s readiness to find
fault with everything, also thought that discussion of the
government was a very serious and weighty matter, and
the fact that A had been appointed Minister of This and B
Governor General of That, and that the Emperor had said
so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed to him very
important. And so he thought it necessary to take an interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions
put by these two kept the conversation from changing its
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ordinary character of gossip about the higher government
circles.
But Natasha, knowing all her husband’s ways and ideas,
saw that he had long been wishing but had been unable to
divert the conversation to another channel and express his
own deeply felt idea for the sake of which he had gone to
Petersburg to consult with his new friend Prince Theodore,
and she helped him by asking how his affairs with Prince
Theodore had gone.
‘What was it about?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Always the same thing,’ said Pierre, looking round at his
listeners. ‘Everybody sees that things are going so badly that
they cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of
all decent men to counteract it as far as they can.’
‘What can decent men do?’ Nicholas inquired, frowning
slightly. ‘What can be done?’
‘Why, this..’
‘Come into my study,’ said Nicholas.
Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse
her baby, now heard the nurse calling her and went to the
nursery. Countess Mary followed her. The men went into
the study and little Nicholas Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the writing table in a
shady corner by the window.
‘Well, what would you do?’ asked Denisov.
‘Always some fantastic schemes,’ said Nicholas.
‘Why this,’ began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the
room, sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: ‘the position in Petersburg is this: the Emperor does


2205

not look into anything. He has abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism’ (Pierre could not tolerate mysticism
in anyone now). ‘He seeks only for peace, and only these
people sans foi ni loi* can give it himpeople who recklessly
hack at and strangle everythingMagnitski, Arakcheev, and
tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after
your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the more readily your object might be
attained,’ he said to Nicholas.
*Without faith or law.
‘Well, what does that lead up to?’ said Nicholas.
‘Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law
courts, in the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the people are tortured, enlightenment
is suppressed. All that is young and honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on. Everything is strained
to such a degree that it will certainly break,’ said Pierre (as
those who examine the actions of any government have always said since governments began). ‘I told them just one
thing in Petersburg.’
‘Told whom?’
‘Well, you know whom,’ said Pierre, with a meaning
glance from under his brows. ‘Prince Theodore and all
those. To encourage culture and philanthropy is all very
well of course. The aim is excellent but in the present circumstances something else is needed.’
At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his
nephew. His face darkened and he went up to the boy.
‘Why are you here?’
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‘Why? Let him be,’ said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the
arm and continuing. ‘That is not enough, I told them.
Something else is needed. When you stand expecting the
overstrained string to snap at any moment, when everyone
is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, as many as possible
must join hands as closely as they can to withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is being
enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another
by honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over
to that camp. No independent men, such as you or I, are
left. What I say is widen the scope of our society, let the mot
d’ordre be not virtue alone but independence and action as
well!’
Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up
an armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing
discontentedly and frowning more and more.
‘But action with what aim?’ he cried. ‘And what position
will you adopt toward the government?’
‘Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be
secret if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to government, but it is a society of true conservativesa
society of gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is
only to prevent some Pugachev or other from killing my
children and yours, and Arakcheev from sending me off to
some Military Settlement. We join hands only for the public
welfare and the general safety.’
‘Yes, but it’s a secret society and therefore a hostile and
harmful one which can only cause harm.’
‘Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe’ (they


2207

did not then venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) ‘do any harm? The Tugendbund is an alliance of
virtue: it is love, mutual help... it is what Christ preached
on the Cross.’
Natasha, who had come in during the conversation,
looked joyfully at her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased herthat did not even interest her, for it
seemed to her that was all extremely simple and that she
had known it a long time (it seemed so to her because she
knew that it sprang from Pierre’s whole soul), but it was his
animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.
The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turndown collarwhom everyone had forgottengazed at Pierre
with even greater and more rapturous joy. Every word of
Pierre’s burned into his heart, and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke the sealing wax
and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle’s table.
‘It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing.’
‘No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the
sausage eaters, but I don’t understand it and can’t even pwonounce it,’ interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice.
‘I agwee that evewything here is wotten and howwible, but
the Tugendbund I don’t understand. If we’re not satisfied,
let us have a bunt of our own. That’s all wight. Je suis vot’e
homme!’*
*”I’m your man.’
Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas
knitted his brows still more and began proving to Pierre
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that there was no prospect of any great change and that
all the danger he spoke of existed only in his imagination.
Pierre maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties
were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas felt himself
cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him
stronger than reason, of the justice of his opinion.
‘I will tell you this,’ he said, rising and trying with nervously twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but
finally abandoning the attempt. ‘I can’t prove it to you. You
say that everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is
coming: I don’t see it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional matter, and to that I reply: ‘You are
my best friend, as you know, but if you formed a secret society and began working against the governmentbe it what
it mayI know it is my duty to obey the government. And if
Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you and
cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should
do it.’ And you may argue about that as you like!’
An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was
the first to speak, defending her husband and attacking her
brother. Her defense was weak and inapt but she attained
her object. The conversation was resumed, and no longer in
the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas’ last remark.
When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas
Bolkonski went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.
‘Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he
agree with you?’ he asked.


2209

And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, and powerful process of thought and feeling
must have been going on in this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said he regretted that the
lad should have heard him. He had, however, to give him
an answer.
‘Yes, I think so,’ he said reluctantly, and left the study.
The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time
to notice what he had done to the things on the table. He
flushed and went up to Nicholas.
‘Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally,’ he said,
pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.
Nicholas started angrily.
‘All right, all right,’ he said, throwing the bits under the
table.
And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty,
he turned away from the boy.
‘You ought not to have been here at all,’ he said.

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War and Peace

Chapter XV
The conversation at supper was not about politics or
societies, but turned on the subject Nicholas liked bestrecollections of 1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was
particularly agreeable and amusing about them. The family
separated on the most friendly terms.
After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study
and given instructions to the steward who had been waiting
for him, went to the bedroom in his dressing gown, where
he found his wife still at her table, writing.
‘What are you writing, Mary?’ Nicholas asked.
Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she
was writing would not be understood or approved by her
husband.
She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from
him, but at the same time was glad he had surprised her at
it and that she would now have to tell him.
‘A diary, Nicholas,’ she replied, handing him a blue exercise book filled with her firm, bold writing.
‘A diary?’ Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he
took up the book.
It was in French.
December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy)
woke up he did not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise
sent for me. He was naughty and obstinate. I tried threats,


2211

but he only grew angrier. Then I took the matter in hand: I
left him alone and began with nurse’s help to get the other
children up, telling him that I did not love him. For a long
time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped out of
bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not
calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled
him most was that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the
evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began crying
piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by
tenderness.
‘What is a ‘ticket’?’ Nicholas inquired.
‘I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening,
showing how they have behaved.’
Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing
at him, and continued to turn over the pages and read. In
the diary was set down everything in the children’s lives
that seemed noteworthy to their mother as showing their
characters or suggesting general reflections on educational methods. They were for the most part quite insignificant
trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the father either, now that he read this diary about his children for the
first time.
Under the date ‘5’ was entered:
Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have
no pudding. He had none, but looked so unhappily and
greedily at the others while they were eating! I think that
punishment by depriving children of sweets only develops
their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.
Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The
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radiant eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve
or disapprove of her diary? There could be no doubt not
only of his approval but also of his admiration for his wife.
Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought
Nicholas, or even done at all, but this untiring, continual
spiritual effort of which the sole aim was the children’s moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas been able to analyze
his feelings he would have found that his steady, tender, and
proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of wonder at her
spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost beyond his
reach, in which she had her being.
He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own insignificance beside her in the spiritual
world, and rejoiced all the more that she with such a soul
not only belonged to him but was part of himself.
‘I quite, quite approve, my dearest!’ said he with a significant look, and after a short pause he added: ‘And I behaved
badly today. You weren’t in the study. We began disputingPierre and Iand I lost my temper. But he is impossible: such
a child! I don’t know what would become of him if Natasha
didn’t keep him in hand.... Have you any idea why he went
to Petersburg? They have formed..’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Countess Mary. ‘Natasha told me.’
‘Well, then, you know,’ Nicholas went on, growing hot
at the mere recollection of their discussion, ‘he wanted to
convince me that it is every honest man’s duty to go against
the government, and that the oath of allegiance and duty... I
am sorry you weren’t there. They all fell on meDenisov and
Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she rules over him! And


2213

yet there need only be a discussion and she has no words
of her own but only repeats his sayings...’ added Nicholas,
yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to
judge those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what
he was saying about Natasha could have been applied word
for word to himself in relation to his wife.
‘Yes, I have noticed that,’ said Countess Mary.
‘When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he started proving goodness knows what! A pity
you were not therewhat would you have said?’
‘As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so.
Pierre says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of
course he is right there,’ said Countess Mary, ‘but he forgets
that we have other duties nearer to us, duties indicated to
us by God Himself, and that though we might expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children.’
‘Yes, that’s it! That’s just what I said to him,’ put in Nicholas, who fancied he really had said it. ‘But they insisted on
their own view: love of one’s neighbor and Christianityand
all this in the presence of young Nicholas, who had gone
into my study and broke all my things.’
‘Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about
little Nicholas,’ said Countess Mary. ‘He is such an exceptional boy. I am afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we
all have children and relations while he has no one. He is
constantly alone with his thoughts.’
‘Well, I don’t think you need reproach yourself on his account. All that the fondest mother could do for her son you
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have done and are doing for him, and of course I am glad
of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This evening he listened to
Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancyas we were going in to
supper I looked and he had broken everything on my table
to bits, and he told me of it himself at once! I never knew
him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!’ repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but
was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.
‘Still, I am not the same as his own mother,’ said Countess Mary. ‘I feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A
wonderful boy, but I am dreadfully afraid for him. It would
be good for him to have companions.’
‘Well it won’t be for long. Next summer I’ll take him to
Petersburg,’ said Nicholas. ‘Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and always will be,’ he continued, returning to the talk in
the study which had evidently disturbed him. ‘Well, what
business is it of mine what goes on therewhether Arakcheev
is bad, and all that? What business was it of mine when I
married and was so deep in debt that I was threatened with
prison, and had a mother who could not see or understand
it? And then there are you and the children and our affairs.
Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to
comfort my mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as I was.’
Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live
by bread alone and that he attached too much importance
to these matters. But she knew she must not say this and
that it would be useless to do so. She only took his hand and


2215

kissed it. He took this as a sign of approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few minutes’ reflection
continued to think aloud.
‘You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych’ (this was his
overseer) ‘came back from the Tambov estate and told me
they are already offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest.’
And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the
possibility of repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: ‘Another ten years of life and I shall leave the children...
in an excellent position.’
Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood
all that he told her. She knew that when he thought aloud
in this way he would sometimes ask her what he had been
saying, and be vexed if he noticed that she had been thinking about something else. But she had to force herself to
attend, for what he was saying did not interest her at all.
She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this
man who would never understand all that she understood,
and this seemed to make her love for him still stronger and
added a touch of passionate tenderness. Besides this feeling
which absorbed her altogether and hindered her from following the details of her husband’s plans, thoughts that had
no connection with what he was saying flitted through her
mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband’s account
of the boy’s agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her
forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive character
recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew
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she thought also of her own children. She did not compare
them with him, but compared her feeling for them with her
feeling for him, and felt with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for young Nicholas.
Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose
from the difference in their ages, but she felt herself to
blame toward him and promised in her heart to do better
and to accomplish the impossiblein this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and all her neighbors, as
Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary’s soul always strove
toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, and could
therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the lofty,
secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on
her face. Nicholas gazed at her. ‘O God! What will become
of us if she dies, as I always fear when her face is like that?’
thought he, and placing himself before the icon he began to
say his evening prayers.



2217

Chapter XVI
Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as
only a husband and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity, understanding and expressing
each other’s thoughts in ways contrary to all rules of logic,
without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in a quite
peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of talk with
her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something
being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking
argumentatively and calmly and she, led on by his example,
began to do the same, she knew that they were on the verge
of a quarrel.
From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up
to him with wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his
head pressed it to her bosom, saying: ‘Now you are all mine,
mine! You won’t escape!’from that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic and contrary
to them because quite different subjects were talked about
at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of
many topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on
the contrary was the surest sign that they fully understood
one another.
Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning,
and contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream,
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so in this intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the
words themselves were not consecutive and clear but only
the feeling that prompted them.
Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother’s life and doings, of how she had suffered and lacked life during his own
absence, and of how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and
how Mary was in every way better than herself. In saying
this Natasha was sincere in acknowledging Mary’s superiority, but at the same time by saying it she made a demand
on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her to Mary
and to all other women, and that now, especially after having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so
afresh.
Pierre, answering Natasha’s words, told her how intolerable it had been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls
in Petersburg.
‘I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies,’ he said.
‘It was simply dull. Besides, I was very busy.’
Natasha looked intently at him and went on:
‘Mary is so splendid,’ she said. ‘How she understands
children! It is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mitya was naughty..’
‘How like his father he is,’ Pierre interjected.
Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya’s likeness to
Nicholas: the recollection of his dispute with his brotherin-law was unpleasant and he wanted to know what Natasha
thought of it.
‘Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not generally accepted. But I understand that you


2219

value what opens up a fresh line,’ said she, repeating words
Pierre had once uttered.
‘No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are an amusementalmost a pastime,’ said Pierre. ‘For
instance, he is collecting a library and has made it a rule
not to buy a new book till he has read what he had already
boughtSismondi and Rousseau and Montesquieu,’ he added
with a smile. ‘You know how much I...’ he began to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to
show that this was unnecessary.
‘So you say ideas are an amusement to him...’
‘Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in
Petersburg I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken
up by a thought, all else is mere amusement.’
‘Ah, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you met the children,’ said Natasha. ‘Which was most delighted? Lisa, I’m
sure.’
‘Yes,’ Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his
mind. ‘Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can’t help
it. Besides, when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this to you)
that the whole affair would go to pieces without meeveryone was pulling his own way. But I succeeded in uniting
them all; and then my idea is so clear and simple. You see, I
don’t say that we ought to oppose this and that. We may be
mistaken. What I say is: ‘Join hands, you who love the right,
and let there be but one bannerthat of active virtue.’ Prince
Sergey is a fine fellow and clever.’
Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of
Pierre’s idea, but one thing disconcerted her. ‘Can a man
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War and Peace

so important and necessary to society be also my husband?
How did this happen?’ She wished to express this doubt to
him. ‘Now who could decide whether he is really cleverer
than all the others?’ she asked herself, and passed in review
all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what he
had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon Karataev.
‘Do you know what I am thinking about?’ she asked.
‘About Platon Karataev. Would he have approved of you
now, do you think?’
Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood his wife’s line of thought.
‘Platon Karataev?’ he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely trying to imagine Karataev’s opinion on the
subject. ‘He would not have understood... yet perhaps he
would.’
‘I love you awfully!’ Natasha suddenly said. ‘Awfully, awfully!’
‘No, he would not have approved,’ said Pierre, after reflection. ‘What he would have approved of is our family life.
He was always so anxious to find seemliness, happiness,
and peace in everything, and I should have been proud to
let him see us. There nowyou talk of my absence, but you
wouldn’t believe what a special feeling I have for you after
a separation...’
‘Yes, I should think...’ Natasha began.
‘No, it’s not that. I never leave off loving you. And one
couldn’t love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of
course-’ he did not finish because their eyes meeting said


2221

the rest.
‘What nonsense it is,’ Natasha suddenly exclaimed,
‘about honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at
first! On the contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did
not go away! Do you remember how we quarreled? And it
was always my fault. Always mine. And what we quarreled
aboutI don’t even remember!’
‘Always about the same thing,’ said Pierre with a smile.
‘Jealo..’
‘Don’t say it! I can’t bear it!’ Natasha cried, and her eyes
glittered coldly and vindictively. ‘Did you see her?’ she added, after a pause.
‘No, and if I had I shouldn’t have recognized her.’
They were silent for a while.
‘Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study
I was looking at you,’ Natasha began, evidently anxious to
disperse the cloud that had come over them. ‘You are as like
him as two peaslike the boy.’ (She meant her little son.) ‘Oh,
it’s time to go to him.... The milk’s come.... But I’m sorry to
leave you.’
They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one another at the same time they both began to
speak. Pierre began with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm,
Natasha with a quiet, happy smile. Having interrupted one
another they both stopped to let the other continue.
‘No. What did you say? Go on, go on.’
‘No, you go on, I was talking nonsense,’ said Natasha.
Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to
his complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At
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that moment it seemed to him that he was chosen to give
a new direction to the whole of Russian society and to the
whole world.
‘I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are
always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people
are united and constitute a power, then honest folk must do
the same. Now that’s simple enough.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what were you going to say?’
‘I? Only nonsense.’
‘But all the same?’
‘Oh nothing, only a trifle,’ said Natasha, smilingly still
more brightly. ‘I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today
nurse was coming to take him from me, and he laughed,
shut his eyes, and clung to me. I’m sure he thought he was
hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now he’s crying. Well, goodby!’ and she left the room.
Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski’s
bedroom a little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was
afraid of the dark and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four pillows and his Roman nose
emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring. Little Nicholas, who
had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat up in bed and
gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked
from a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle
Pierre, wearing helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge army. The army was made up of
white slanting lines that filled the air like the cobwebs that
float about in autumn and which Dessalles called les fils de


2223

la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to those
threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along
lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the threads that moved them began to slacken and
become entangled and it grew difficult to move. And Uncle
Nicholas stood before them in a stern and threatening attitude.
‘Have you done this?’ he said, pointing to some broken
sealing wax and pens. ‘I loved you, but I have orders from
Arakcheev and will kill the first of you who moves forward.’
Little Nicholas turned to look at Pierre but Pierre was no
longer there. In his place was his fatherPrince Andrewand
his father had neither shape nor form, but he existed, and
when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with love:
he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father
caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer
and nearer to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he
awoke.
‘My father!’ he thought. (Though there were two good
portraits of Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human form.) ‘My father has been
with me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius
Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort
of thing happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And
I will learn. But someday I shall have finished learning, and
then I will do something. I only pray God that something
may happen to me such as happened to Plutarch’s men, and
I will act as they did. I will do better. Everyone shall know
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me, love me, and be delighted with me!’ And suddenly his
bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.
‘Are you ill?’ he heard Dessalles’ voice asking.
‘No,’ answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.
‘He is good and kind and I am fond of him!’ he thought of
Dessalles. ‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he
is! And my father? Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be satisfied...’



2225

SECOND EPILOGUE

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Chapter I
History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize
and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity
or even of a single nation, appears impossible.
The ancient historians all employed one and the same
method to describe and seize the apparently elusivethe life
of a people. They described the activity of individuals who
ruled the people, and regarded the activity of those men as
representing the activity of the whole nation.
The question: how did individuals make nations act as
they wished and by what was the will of these individuals
themselves guided? the ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of a chosen
man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish ends that were predestined.
For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in
the direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.
Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
It would seem that having rejected the belief of the
ancients in man’s subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations are led, modern history
should study not the manifestations of power but the causes
that produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still
follows them in practice.


2227

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by the will of God, modern history has given
us either heroes endowed with extraordinary, superhuman
capacities, or simply men of very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the
former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or
Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has
postulated its own aimsthe welfare of the French, German,
or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare
and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly
portion of a large continent.
Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients
without replacing them by a new conception, and the logic
of the situation has obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine authority of the kings and the
‘fate’ of the ancients, to reach the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided by individual
men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.
At the basis of the works of all the modern historians
from Gibbon to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of their outlooks, lie those
two old, unavoidable assumptions.
In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one
historian considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another includes also orators,
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learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets). Secondly,
it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being
led is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the
greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization
of a small corner of the world called Europe.
In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and
is expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east.
Several times it moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward. In 1812 it reaches its
extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting
to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle
Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point
of the first movement in the westParisand subsides.
During that twenty-year period an immense number of
fields were left untilled, houses were burned, trade changed
its direction, millions of men migrated, were impoverished,
or were enriched, and millions of Christian men professing
the law of love of their fellows slew one another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What
made those people burn houses and slay their fellow men?
What were the causes of these events? What force made
men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.
For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the science of history, whose aim is to enable
nations and humanity to know themselves.


2229

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it
would have said that God, to reward or punish his people,
gave Napoleon power and directed his will to the fulfillment
of the divine ends, and that reply, would have been clear and
complete. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in it there
would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of
that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.
But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does
not admit the conception of the ancients as to the direct
participation of the Deity in human affairs, and therefore
history ought to give other answers.
Modern history replying to these questions says: you
want to know what this movement means, what caused it,
and what force produced these events? Then listen:
‘Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man;
he had such and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His descendants were weak
men and they too ruled France badly. And they had such
and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover,
certain men wrote some books at that time. At the end of
the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men in
Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal.
This caused people all over France to begin to slash at and
drown one another. They killed the king and many other
people. At that time there was in France a man of geniusNapoleon. He conquered everybody everywherethat is, he
killed many people because he was a great genius. And for
some reason he went to kill Africans, and killed them so
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well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned
to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all
obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out
to kill people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he
killed a great many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and therefore
fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends
with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began
killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander,
helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces advanced
against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent
him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of
Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years
before and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw
and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the
laughingstock both of the French and the Allies, began to
reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old Guards,
renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone
else and thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in
Vienna and by these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and monarchs
nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering


2231

their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had
been hating him, immediately all submitted to him. But the
Allied monarchs were angry at this and went to fight the
French once more. And they defeated the genius Napoleon
and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him to the
island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on
that rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in
Europe a reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again
all began to oppress their subjects.’
It would be a mistake to think that this is ironica caricature of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very
mild expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting
the questions, which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories of separate states to the
writers of general histories and the new histories of the culture of that period.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from
the fact that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the
movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first questionin the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be
incomprehensibleis: what is the power that moves peoples?
To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud,
or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it,
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but it is not what was asked. All that would be interesting
if we recognized a divine power based on itself and always
consistently directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such a power,
and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es,
and authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing
between these men and the movement of the nations.
If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should be explained in what this new force
consists, for the whole interest of history lies precisely in
that force.
History seems to assume that this force is self-evident
and known to everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone reading many historical works
cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously
understood by the historians themselves, is really quite well
known to everybody.



2233

Chapter II
What force moves the nations?
Biographical historians and historians of separate nations understand this force as a power inherent in heroes
and rulers. In their narration events occur solely by the will
of a Napoleon, and Alexander, or in general of the persons
they describe. The answers given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes events to happen
are satisfactory only as long as there is but one historian
to each event. As soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the
replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force
is understood by them all not only differently but often in
quite contradictory ways. One historian says that an event
was produced by Napoleon’s power, another that it was produced by Alexander’s, a third that it was due to the power of
some other person. Besides this, historians of that kind contradict each other even in their statement as to the force on
which the authority of some particular person was based.
Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon’s power was based
on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was
based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the
historians of this class, by mutually destroying one another’s positions, destroy the understanding of the force which
produces events, and furnish no reply to history’s essential
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question.
Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations
seem to recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians’ view of the force which produces events. They do not
recognize it as a power inherent in heroes and rulers, but as
the resultant of a multiplicity of variously directed forces.
In describing a war or the subjugation of a people, a general
historian looks for the cause of the event not in the power of
one man, but in the interaction of many persons connected
with the event.
According to this view the power of historical personages, represented as the product of many forces, can no longer,
it would seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces
events. Yet in most cases universal historians still employ
the conception of power as a force that itself produces events,
and treat it as their cause. In their exposition, an historic
character is first the product of his time, and his power only
the resultant of various forces, and then his power is itself a
force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and others, for
instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of the
Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another
plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they
do not like were simply the product of Napoleon’s misdirected will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in
their development by Napoleon’s caprice. The ideas of the
Revolution and the general temper of the age produced Napoleon’s power. But Napoleon’s power suppressed the ideas
of the Revolution and the general temper of the age.
This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only


2235

does it occur at every step, but the universal historians’ accounts are all made up of a chain of such contradictions.
This contradiction occurs because after entering the field of
analysis the universal historians stop halfway.
To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant force, the sum of the components must equal the
resultant. This condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to explain the resultant forces they
are obliged to admit, in addition to the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the resultant
action.
Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813
or the restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these
events were produced by the will of Alexander. But the
universal historian Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the
specialist historian, tries to prove that the campaign of
1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons were due to other
things beside Alexander’s willsuch as the activity of Stein,
Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes
Alexander’s power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand, and the restbut the sum of the components, that
is, the interactions of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame
de Stael, and the others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of millions of Frenchmen
submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand, Madame
de Stael, and others spoke certain words to one another only
affected their mutual relations but does not account for the
submission of millions. And therefore to explain how from
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these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people resultedthat is, how component forces equal to one A
gave a resultant equal to a thousand times Athe historian
is again obliged to fall back on powerthe force he had deniedand to recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is,
he has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just what the universal historians do, and
consequently they not only contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.
Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say,
according to whether they want rain or fine weather: ‘The
wind has blown the clouds away,’ or, ‘The wind has brought
up the clouds.’ And in the same way the universal historians
sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes,
when they want to prove something else, say that power
produces events.
A third class of historiansthe so-called historians of
culturefollowing the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces
producing eventsagain take that force to be something quite
different. They see it in what is called culturein mental activity.
The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard
to their progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for
if historical events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one another in such and such ways,
why not explain them by the fact that such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of


2237

indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these
historians select the indication of intellectual activity and
say that this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove that the cause of events lies in intellectual
activity, only by a great stretch can one admit that there
is any connection between intellectual activity and the
movement of peoples, and in no case can one admit that intellectual activity controls people’s actions, for that view is
not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders of the
French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting
from the preaching of love.
But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised
arguments with which these histories are filledadmitting
that nations are governed by some undefined force called an
ideahistory’s essential question still remains unanswered,
and to the former power of monarchs and to the influence
of advisers and other people introduced by the universal
historians, another, newer forcethe ideais added, the connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is
possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so
events occurred; with some effort one may even conceive
that Napoleon together with other influences was the cause
of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat social, had the effect
of making Frenchmen begin to drown one another cannot
be understood without an explanation of the causal nexus
of this new force with the event.
Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live
contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some con2238

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nection between the intellectual activity of men and their
historical movements, just as such a connection may be
found between the movements of humanity and commerce,
handicraft, gardening, or anything else you please. But why
intellectual activity is considered by the historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole historical
movement is hard to understand. Only the following considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion:
(1) that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and agreeable for them to think that the activity of their
class supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity,
just as a similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders,
agriculturists, and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is
merely because traders and soldiers do not write history),
and (2) that spiritual activity, enlightenment, civilization,
culture, ideas, are all indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still
less definite meaning, and which can therefore be readily
introduced into any theory.
But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of
this kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for
something) the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and more to approximate, are significant
from the fact that after seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and political doctrines
as causes of events, as soon as they have to describe an
actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an
exercise of powerand say plainly that that was the result of


2239

Napoleon’s will. Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves, and show that the new
force they have devised does not account for what happens
in history, and that history can only be explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not recognize.

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Chapter III
A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: ‘What moves it?’
A peasant says the devil moves it. Another man says the
locomotive moves because its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in the smoke which
the wind carries away.
The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. To refute him someone would have to prove to
him that there is no devil, or another peasant would have
to explain to him that it is not the devil but a German, who
moves the locomotive. Only then, as a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong. But the man
who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to
go on and explain further why the wheels go round; and till
he has reached the ultimate cause of the movement of the
locomotive in the pressure of steam in the boiler, he has no
right to stop in his search for the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by the smoke that is
carried back has noticed that the wheels do not supply an
explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to him
and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.
The only conception that can explain the movement of
the locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the
movement observed.


2241

The only conception that can explain the movement of
the peoples is that of some force commensurate with the
whole movement of the peoples.
Yet to supply this conception various historians take
forces of different kinds, all of which are incommensurate
with the movement observed. Some see it as a force directly
inherent in heroes, as the peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force resulting from several other forces,
like the movement of the wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that is blown away.
So long as histories are written of separate individuals,
whether Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not
the histories of all, absolutely all those who take part in an
event, it is quite impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception of a force compelling men to
direct their activity toward a certain end. And the only such
conception known to historians is that of power.
This conception is the one handle by means of which the
material of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt
with, and anyone who breaks that handle off, as Buckle did,
without finding some other method of treating historical
material, merely deprives himself of the one possible way
of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception of power
as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated by the universal historians and historians of culture
themselves, for they professedly reject that conception but
inevitably have recourse to it at every step.
In dealing with humanity’s inquiry, the science of history up to now is like money in circulationpaper money and
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coin. The biographies and special national histories are like
paper money. They can be used and can circulate and fulfill
their purpose without harm to anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the security behind
them. You need only forget to ask how the will of heroes
produces events, and such histories as Thiers’ will be interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge
of poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money
arise either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets
made or because people try to exchange it for gold, so also
doubts concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too many of them are written or because in his
simplicity of heart someone inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?that is, wants to exchange the current paper
money for the real gold of actual comprehension.
The writers of universal histories and of the history of
culture are like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to substitute for it money made of metal
that has not the specific gravity of gold. It may indeed make
jingling coin, but will do no more than that. Paper money
may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is deceived by tokens
of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. As gold
is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange but
also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only
when they can reply to history’s essential question: what is
power? The universal historians give contradictory replies
to that question, while the historians of culture evade it and
answer something quite different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among a group of people who


2243

agree to accept them as gold, or among those who do not
know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians of culture, not answering humanity’s essential question,
serve as currency for some purposes of their own, only in
universities and among the mass of readers who have a taste
for what they call ‘serious reading.’

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Chapter IV
Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to
the divine subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen
man and the subjection of that man’s will to the Deity, history cannot without contradictions take a single step till it
has chosen one of two things: either a return to the former
belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation of the meaning of the force
producing historical events and termed ‘power.’
A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by
power.
Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war.
We are so accustomed to that idea and have become so used
to it that the question: why did six hundred thousand men
go to fight when Napoleon uttered certain words, seems to
us senseless. He had the power and so what he ordered was
done.
This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit
that, it becomes essential to determine what is this power of
one man over others.
It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man
over a weak onea domination based on the application or
threat of physical force, like the power of Hercules; nor can


2245

it be based on the effect of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say that the leading figures
in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a special
strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot
be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to
mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely, history shows us that neither a
Louis XI nor a Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the contrary
were generally morally weaker than any of the millions they
ruled over.
If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in
the moral qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for elsewherein the relation to the people of the
man who wields the power.
And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence, that exchange bank of history which offers to
exchange history’s understanding of power for true gold.
Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by
expressed or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.
In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how a state and power might be arranged were
it possible for all that to be arranged, it is all very clear; but
when applied to history that definition of power needs explanation.
The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power
as the ancients regarded firenamely, as something existing
absolutely. But for history, the state and power are merely
phenomena, just as for modern physics fire is not an ele2246

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ment but a phenomenon.
From this fundamental difference between the view held
by history and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that
jurisprudence can tell minutely how in its opinion power
should be constituted and what powerexisting immutably
outside timeis, but to history’s questions about the meaning
of the mutations of power in time it can answer nothing.
If power be the collective will of the people transferred to
their ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the
people? If not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when he was taken prisoner at Boulogne,
and why, later on, were those criminals whom he arrested?
Do palace revolutionsin which sometimes only two or
three people take parttransfer the will of the people to a new
ruler? In international relations, is the will of the people also
transferred to their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was
the will of the Russian people transferred to Napoleon in
1809, when our army in alliance with the French went to
fight the Austrians?
To these questions three answers are possible:
Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have
chosen, and that therefore every emergence of a new power,
every struggle against the power once appointed, should be
absolutely regarded as an infringement of the real power;
or (2) that the will of the people is transferred to the rulers
conditionally, under definite and known conditions, and to
show that all limitations, conflicts, and even destructions


2247

of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers of the
conditions under which their power was entrusted to them;
or (3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers
conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and
indefinite, and that the appearance of several authorities,
their struggles and their falls, result solely from the greater
or lesser fulfillment by the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people is transferred from
some people to others.
And these are the three ways in which the historians do
explain the relation of the people to their rulers.
Some historiansthose biographical and specialist historians already referred toin their simplicity failing to
understand the question of the meaning of power, seem
to consider that the collective will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical persons, and therefore
when describing some single state they assume that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and that
any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation
of powermere violence.
Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods
of history, has the inconveniencein application to complex
and stormy periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise simultaneously and struggle with one
anotherthat a Legitimist historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory, and Bonaparte were
mere infringers of the true power, while a Republican and a
Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention and the
other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the
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others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations
furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory
can only satisfy young children.
Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set
of historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation
of the will of the people to their rulers, and that historical
leaders have power only conditionally on carrying out the
program that the will of the people has by tacit agreement
prescribed to them. But what this program consists in these
historians do not say, or if they do they continually contradict one another.
Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation’s progress, looks for these conditions in the
greatness, wealth, freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of
France or some other country. But not to mention the historians’ contradictions as to the nature of this programor even
admitting that some one general program of these conditions existsthe facts of history almost always contradict that
theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted
consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the
people, how is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end
their reigns tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are
executed by their people? To this question historians reply
that Louis XIV’s activity, contrary to the program, reacted
on Louis XVI. But why did it not react on Louis XIV or
on Louis XVwhy should it react just on Louis XVI? And
what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions
there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this
view explain why for several centuries the collective will is


2249

not withdrawn from certain rulers and their heirs, and then
suddenly during a period of fifty years is transferred to the
Convention, to the Directory, to Napoleon, to Alexander,
to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to Charles X, to Louis
Philippe, to a Republican government, and to Napoleon III.
When explaining these rapid transfers of the people’s will
from from one individual to another, especially in view of
international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are
not normal delegations of the people’s will but are accidents
dependent on cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the
weakness of a diplomatist, a ruler, or a party leader. So that
the greater part of the events of historycivil wars, revolutions, and conquestsare presented by these historians not
as the results of free transferences of the people’s will, but
as results of the ill-directed will of one or more individuals,
that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so these
historians also see and admit historical events which are exceptions to the theory.
These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed
that some plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that all that grows does so by sprouting
into two leaves, and that the palm, the mushroom, and even
the oak, which blossom into full growth and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.
Historians of the third class assume that the will of the
people is transferred to historic personages conditionally,
but that the conditions are unknown to us. They say that
historical personages have power only because they fulfill
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the will of the people which has been delegated to them.
But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in
the historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have those leaders?
The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of
the people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity
of the people.
But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the leaders serves as an expression of the people’s will
or only some part of it. If the whole activity of the leaders
serves as the expression of the people’s will, as some historians suppose, then all the details of the court scandals
contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or a Catherine
serve to express the life of the nation, which is evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the activity of
an historical leader which serves to express the people’s life,
as other so-called ‘philosophical’ historians believe, then to
determine which side of the activity of a leader expresses
the nation’s life, we have first of all to know in what the nation’s life consists.
Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some
most obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which
can cover all conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of humanity’s movement. The most
usual generalizations adopted by almost all the historians
are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress, civilization,
and culture. Postulating some generalization as the goal of
the movement of humanity, the historians study the men of
whom the greatest number of monuments have remained:


2251

kings, ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and
journalists, to the extent to which in their opinion these
persons have promoted or hindered that abstraction. But as
it is in no way proved that the aim of humanity does consist
in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or civilization, and as
the connection of the people with the rulers and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption
that the collective will of the people is always transferred
to the men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions who migrate, burn houses, abandon
agriculture, and destroy one another never is expressed in
the account of the activity of some dozen people who did
not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow
creatures.
History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the
peoples of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and
their drive eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV,
XV, and XVI, their mistresses and ministers, and by the
lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais, and
others?
Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character
of Ivan the Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?
Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained by the life and activity of the Godfreys and
the Louis-es and their ladies? For us that movement of the
peoples from west to east, without leaders, with a crowd of
vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit, remains incompre2252

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hensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the cessation of
that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the Crusadethe deliverance of Jerusalemhad been clearly defined by
historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for
the unknown cause which had previously impelled them to
go no longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers can evidently not cover the life of the peoples.
And the history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers has
remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers, but
the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has
remained unknown.
Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us the life of the peoples.
The history of culture explains to us the impulses and
conditions of life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We
learn that Luther had a hot temper and said such and such
things; we learn that Rousseau was suspicious and wrote
such and such books; but we do not learn why after the
Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why
during the French Revolution they guillotined one another.
If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the
newest historians, we shall have the history of monarchs
and writers, but not the history of the life of the peoples.



2253

Chapter V
The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a
few men, for the connection between those men and the nations has not been found. The theory that this connection is
based on the transference of the collective will of a people to
certain historical personages is an hypothesis unconfirmed
by the experience of history.
The theory of the transference of the collective will of
the people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in
the domain of jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as soon as revolutions,
conquests, or civil wars occurthat is, as soon as history beginsthat theory explains nothing.
The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of
transference of the people’s will cannot be verified, for it
never occurred.
Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head
of affairs, the theory can always say that such and such a
person took the lead because the collective will was transferred to him.
The replies this theory gives to historical questions are
like the replies of a man who, watching the movements of a
herd of cattle and paying no attention to the varying quality
of the pasturage in different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute the direction the herd
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takes to what animal happens to be at its head.
‘The herd goes in that direction because the animal in
front leads it and the collective will of all the other animals
is vested in that leader.’ This is what historians of the first
class saythose who assume the unconditional transference
of the people’s will.
‘If the animals leading the herd change, this happens
because the collective will of all the animals is transferred
from one leader to another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them in the direction selected by the
whole herd.’ Such is the reply historians who assume that
the collective will of the people is delegated to rulers under
conditions which they regard as known. (With this method
of observation it often happens that the observer, influenced
by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as leaders
who, owing to the people’s change of direction, are no longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.)
‘If the animals in front are continually changing and
the direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this
is because in order to follow a given direction the animals
transfer their will to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the movements of the herd we must
watch the movements of all the prominent animals moving
on all sides of the herd.’ So say the third class of historians
who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to journalists, as the expression of their age.
The theory of the transference of the will of the people to
historic persons is merely a paraphrasea restatement of the
question in other words.


2255

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the collective will of the people transferred to
one person. Under what condition is the will of the people
delegated to one person? On condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That is, power is power:
in other words, power is a word the meaning of which we
do not understand.
If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning, then having subjected to criticism the
explanation of ‘power’ that juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is merely a word and has
no real existence. But to understand phenomena man has,
besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies
his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not
merely a word but an actually existing phenomenon.
Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective activity of men can do without the conception of power,
the existence of power is proved both by history and by observing contemporary events.
Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear,
by whose will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree and the French go to Mexico. The
King of Prussia and Bismarck issue decrees and an army
enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and an army
enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French
submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever
event occurs it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have decreed it.
The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowl2256

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edging divine intervention in human affairs, want to see the
cause of events in the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that supposition is not confirmed
either by reason or by experience.
On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a
man’s willhis wordsare only part of the general activity expressed in an event, as for instance in a war or a revolution,
and so without assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural forcea miracleone cannot admit that words can be the
immediate cause of the movements of millions of men. On
the other hand, even if we admitted that words could be
the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the
will of historical personages does not in most cases produce
any effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and sometimes the very opposite of what they order
occurs.
Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of
humanity we cannot regard ‘power’ as the cause of events.
Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the
relation that exists between the expression of someone’s will
and the execution of that will by others.
To explain the conditions of that relationship we must
first establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to man and not to the Deity.
If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as
ancient history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity
is not controlled by an event. But speaking of commands
that are the expression of the will of men acting in time


2257

and in relation to one another, to explain the connection of
commands with events we must restore: (1) the condition
of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in time
both of the events and of the person who commands, and
(2) the inevitability of the connection between the person
commanding and those who execute his command.

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Chapter VI
Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time, can relate to a whole series of events occurring
over a period of years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can by His sole will determine the
direction of humanity’s movement; but man acts in time
and himself takes part in what occurs.
Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we
see that no command can be executed without some preceding order having been given rendering the execution of
the last command possible.
No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole series of occurrences; but each command follows
from another, and never refers to a whole series of events
but always to one moment only of an event.
When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies
to go to war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a
whole series of consecutive commands dependent one on
another. Napoleon could not have commanded an invasion
of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered such and such
papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg;
tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army,
the fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so onmillions of
commands, which formed a whole series corresponding to a
series of events which brought the French armies into Rus

2259

sia.
If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an invasion of England and expended on no other
undertaking so much time and effort, and yet during his
whole reign never once attempted to execute that design
but undertook an expedition into Russia, with which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a conviction
he repeatedly expressed)this came about because his commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first
case, but did so correspond in the latter.
For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that
a man should order what can be executed. But to know what
can and what cannot be executed is impossible, not only in
the case of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in which millions
participated, but even in the simplest event, for in either
case millions of obstacles may arise to prevent its execution.
Every order executed is always one of an immense number
unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with the
course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones
get linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a series of events, and are executed.
Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes it is due to the fact that when the
event has taken place and out of thousands of others those
few commands which were consistent with that event have
been executed, we forget about the others that were not
executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the
chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact
that in the historical accounts a whole series of innumer2260

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able, diverse, and petty events, such for instance as all those
which led the French armies to Russia, is generalized into
one event in accord with the result produced by that series
of events, and corresponding with this generalization the
whole series of commands is also generalized into a single
expression of will.
We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In reality in all Napoleon’s activity we never find
anything resembling an expression of that wish, but find
a series of orders, or expressions of his will, very variously
and indefinitely directed. Amid a long series of unexecuted
orders of Napoleon’s one series, for the campaign of 1812,
was carried outnot because those orders differed in any way
from the other, unexecuted orders but because they coincided with the course of events that led the French army
into Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes
out not because the color was laid on from this side or in
that way, but because it was laid on from all sides over the
figure cut in the stencil.
So that examining the relation in time of the commands
to the events, we find that a command can never be the
cause of the event, but that a certain definite dependence
exists between the two.
To understand in what this dependence consists it is
necessary to reinstate another omitted condition of every
command proceeding not from the Deity but from a man,
which is, that the man who gives the command himself
takes part in
This relation of the commander to those he commands


2261

is just what is called power. This relation consists in the following:
For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in which regardless of the difference of the aims
set for the common action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the same.
Men uniting in these combinations always assume such
relations toward one another that the larger number take
a more direct share, and the smaller number a less direct
share, in the collective action for which they have combined.
Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one of the most striking and definite examples
is an army.
Every army is composed of lower grades of the servicethe
rank and fileof whom there are always the greatest number;
of the next higher military rankcorporals and noncommissioned officers of whom there are fewer, and of still-higher
officers of whom there are still fewer, and so on to the highest
military command which is concentrated in one person.
A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone, of which the base with the largest diameter
consists of the rank and file; the next higher and smaller
section of the cone consists of the next higher grades of the
army, and so on to the apex, the point of which will represent the commander in chief.
The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower
section of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does
the stabbing, hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always
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receives orders for these actions from men above him; he
himself never gives an order. The noncommissioned officers
(of whom there are fewer) perform the action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give commands.
An officer still less often acts directly himself, but commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but
command the troops, indicates the objective, and hardly
ever uses a weapon himself. The commander in chief never
takes direct part in the action itself, but only gives general
orders concerning the movement of the mass of the troops.
A similar relation of people to one another is seen in every combination of men for common activityin agriculture,
trade, and every administration.
And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the
ranks and positions in any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to the highest, we see a law by
which men, to take associated action, combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in performing
the action the less they can command and the more numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them
there are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the
man at the top, who takes the least direct share in the action
and directs his activity chiefly to commanding.
This relation of the men who command to those they
command is what constitutes the essence of the conception
called power.
Having restored the condition of time under which all


2263

events occur, find that a command is executed only when
it is related to a corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of relation between those who
command and those who execute, we find that by the very
nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
directed to commanding.

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Chapter VII
When an event is taking place people express their opinions and wishes about it, and as the event results from the
collective activity of many people, some one of the opinions
or wishes expressed is sure to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions expressed is fulfilled, that
opinion gets connected with the event as a command preceding it.
Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion
as to how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it
happens that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it.
There we have command and power in their primary form.
The man who worked most with his hands could not think
so much about what he was doing, or reflect on or command what would result from the common activity; while
the man who commanded more would evidently work less
with his hands on account of his greater verbal activity.
When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a common aim there is a yet sharper division of those
who, because their activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part in the direct work.
When a man works alone he always has a certain set of
reflections which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his present activity, and guide him in planning
his future actions. Just the same is done by a concourse of


2265

people, allowing those who do not take a direct part in the
activity to devise considerations, justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.
For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and kill one another. And corresponding to
the event its justification appears in people’s belief that this
was necessary for the welfare of France, for liberty, and for
equality. People ceased to kill one another, and this event
was accompanied by its justification in the necessity for a
centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and so on.
Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,
and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of England, and so on. History
shows us that these justifications of the events have no common sense and are all contradictory, as in the case of killing
a man as the result of recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for the humiliation of England.
But these justifications have a very necessary significance
in their own day.
These justifications release those who produce the events
from moral responsibility. These temporary aims are like
the broom fixed in front of a locomotive to clear the snow
from the rails in front: they clear men’s moral responsibilities from their path.
Without such justification there would be no reply to the
simplest question that presents itself when examining each
historical event. How is it that millions of men commit collective crimesmake war, commit murder, and so on?
With the present complex forms of political and social
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life in Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed,
or ordered by monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is there any collective action which
cannot find its justification in political unity, in patriotism,
in the balance of power, or in civilization? So that every
event that occurs inevitably coincides with some expressed
wish and, receiving a justification, presents itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.
In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves
it cuts will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on
board the ship the movement of those waves will be the only
perceptible motion.
Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that flow and comparing it with the movement of
the ship do we convince ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement of the ship, and that we
were led into error by the fact that we ourselves were imperceptibly moving.
We see the same if we watch moment by moment the
movement of historical characters (that is, re-establish
the inevitable condition of all that occursthe continuity of
movement in time) and do not lose sight of the essential
connection of historical persons with the masses.
When the ship moves in one direction there is one and
the same wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave
ahead of it also turns frequently. But wherever it may turn
there always will be the wave anticipating its movement.
Whatever happens it always appears that just that event
was foreseen and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the


2267

rush of water which neither directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a distance seems to us not
merely to move of itself but to govern the ship’s movement
also.
Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons which, as commands, were related to events,
historians have assumed that the events depended on those
commands. But examining the events themselves and the
connection in which the historical persons stood to the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent
on events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that,
however many commands were issued, the event does not
take place unless there are other causes for it, but as soon as
an event occursbe it what it maythen out of all the continually expressed wishes of different people some will always
be found which by their meaning and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.
Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and
positively to these two essential questions of history:
(1) What is power?
(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?
(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in which the more this person expresses opinions,
predictions, and justifications of the collective action that is
performed, the less is his participation in that action.
(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor
by intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the
two as historians have supposed, but by the activity of all
the people who participate in the events, and who always
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combine in such a way that those taking the largest direct
share in the event take on themselves the least responsibility and vice versa.
Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;
physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the
moral activity is inconceivable without the physical, the
cause of the event is neither in the one nor in the other but
in the union of the two.
Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to the phenomena we are examining.
In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinitythat final limit to which in every domain of thought man’s reason
arrives if it is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat produces electricity. Atoms attract each
other and atoms repel one another.
Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of
atoms, we cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is
so because it is inconceivable otherwise, because it must be
so and that it is a law. The same applies to historical events.
Why war and revolution occur we do not know. We only
know that to produce the one or the other action, people
combine in a certain formation in which they all take part,
and we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in other words that it is a law.



2269

Chapter VIII
If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment of this simple and obvious law would suffice
and we should have finished our argument. But the law of
history relates to man. A particle of matter cannot tell us
that it does not feel the law of attraction or repulsion and
that that law is untrue, but man, who is the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not subject to
the law.
The presence of the problem of man’s free will, though
unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.
All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily
encountered this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the false path historical science has
followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of that question.
If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man
could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.
If in a thousand years even one man in a million could
act freely, that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single
free act of that man’s in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy the possibility of the existence of
any laws for the whole of humanity.
If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free
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will cannot exist, for then man’s will is subject to that law.
In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which
from most ancient times has occupied the best human
minds and from most ancient times has been presented in
its whole tremendous significance.
The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from whatever point of viewtheological, historical,
ethical, or philosophicwe find a general law of necessity to
which he (like all that exists) is subject. But regarding him
from within ourselves as what we are conscious of, we feel
ourselves to be free.
This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite
apart from and independent of reason. Through his reason
man observes himself, but only through consciousness does
he know himself.
Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of reason is conceivable.
To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man
must first of all be conscious of himself as living. A man is
only conscious of himself as a living being by the fact that
he wills, that is, is conscious of his volition. But his willwhich forms the essence of his lifeman recognizes (and can
but recognize) as free.
If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed by one and the same law (whether he observes the
necessity of taking food, using his brain, or anything else)
he cannot recognize this never-varying direction of his will
otherwise than as a limitation of it. Were it not free it could
not be limited. A man’s will seems to him to be limited just


2271

because he is not conscious of it except as free.
You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my
hand and let it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical
reply is an irrefutable demonstration of freedom.
That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not
subject to reason.
If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and
independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject
to reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection
does not exist and is inconceivable.
A series of experiments and arguments proves to every
man that he, as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man submits to them and never resists the
laws of gravity or impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same series of experiments
and arguments proves to him that the complete freedom of
which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that his
every action depends on his organization, his character, and
the motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the
deductions of these experiments and arguments. Having
learned from experiment and argument that a stone falls
downwards, a man indubitably believes this and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled.
But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to
laws, he does not and cannot believe this.
However often experiment and reasoning may show
a man that under the same conditions and with the same
character he will do the same thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the same character he
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approaches for the thousandth time the action that always
ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as
before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every
man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine
two different courses of action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which
constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life.
He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable
to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single
moment.
He could not live, because all man’s efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth
and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination,
strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and
vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.
A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except
as deprived of life.
If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a
senseless contradiction like the possibility of performing
two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is
not subject to reason.
This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all
thinkers and felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which no conception of man is possible


2273

constitutes the other side of the question.
Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and
all-seeing God. What is sin, the conception of which arises
from the consciousness of man’s freedom? That is a question for theology.
The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws
expressed in statistics. What is man’s responsibility to society, the conception of which results from the conception of
freedom? That is a question for jurisprudence.
Man’s actions proceed from his innate character and the
motives acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and wrong in actions that follows from the
consciousness of freedom? That is a question for ethics.
Man in connection with the general life of humanity
appears subject to laws which determine that life. But the
same man apart from that connection appears to free. How
should the past life of nations and of humanity be regardedas the result of the free, or as the result of the constrained,
activity of man? That is a question for history.
Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of
knowledgethanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of printed matterhas the question of the
freedom of will been put on a level on which the question
itself cannot exist. In our time the majority of so-called advanced peoplethat is, the crowd of ignoramuseshave taken
the work of the naturalists who deal with one side of the
question for a solution of the whole problem.
They say and write and print that the soul and freedom
do not exist, for the life of man is expressed by muscular
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movements and muscular movements are conditioned by
the activity of the nerves; the soul and free will do not exist
because at an unknown period of time we sprang from the
apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that thousands of
years ago that same law of necessity which with such ardor
they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative
zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions
and all the thinkers, but has never been denied. They do
not see that the role of the natural sciences in this matter is
merely to serve as an instrument for the illumination of one
side of it. For the fact that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are merely secretions of the brain,
and that man following the general law may have developed
from lower animals at some unknown period of time, only
explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands of
years ago by all the religious and philosophic theoriesthat
from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law
of necessity; but it does not advance by a hair’s breadth the
solution of the question, which has another, opposite, side,
based on the consciousness of freedom.
If men descended from the apes at an unknown period
of time, that is as comprehensible as that they were made
from a handful of earth at a certain period of time (in the
first case the unknown quantity is the time, in the second
case it is the origin); and the question of how man’s consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or
an ape, we can observe only the muscular nervous activity,


2275

but in man we observe consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.
The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can
solve this question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side
of the walls of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief superintendent of the work, should in an
access of zeal plaster over the windows, icons, woodwork,
and still unbuttressed walls, and should be delighted that
from their point of view as plasterers, everything is now so
smooth and regular.

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Chapter IX
For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability, history has this advantage over other branches of
knowledge in which the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not refer to the essence of man’s free
will but its manifestation in the past and under certain conditions.
In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences as experimental science stands to abstract science.
The subject for history is not man’s will itself but our presentation of it.
And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by
the incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not
exist as it does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History
surveys a presentation of man’s life in which the union of
these two contradictions has already taken place.
In actual life each historic event, each human action, is
very clearly and definitely understood without any sense of
contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly
free and partly compulsory.
To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are
combined and what constitutes the essence of these two
conceptions, the philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that taken by other sciences. Instead
of first defining the conceptions of freedom and inevitabil

2277

ity in themselves, and then ranging the phenomena of life
under those definitions, history should deduce a definition
of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves
from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is
cognizant and that always appear dependent on these two
elements.
Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of
an individual we may consider, we always regard it as the
result partly of man’s free will and partly of the law of inevitability.
Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and
the incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of someone’s action an hour ago in choosing one
direction out of several for his walk, we are unconscious of
any contradiction. The degree of freedom and inevitability
governing the actions of these people is clearly defined for
us.
Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to differences in the point of view from which we
regard the event, but every human action appears to us as
a certain combination of freedom and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure of freedom
and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we
perceive, and the more inevitability the less freedom.
The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and
increases according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but their relation is always one of inverse
proportion.
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A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns
him; or a hungry mother exhausted by feeding her baby,
who steals some food; or a man trained to discipline who on
duty at the word of command kills a defenseless manseem
less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these
people were placed, and more free to one who does not know
that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was
hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed a murder twenty years ago and
has since lived peaceably and harmlessly in society seems
less guilty and his action more due to the law of inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty years
have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it
was committed. And in the same way every action of an
insane, intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less free
and more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and seems more free
and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In all these
cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished
and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or increased, according to the point of view from
which the action is regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the smaller the conception of freedom
and vice versa.
Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of
jurisprudence, and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity and freedom.
All cases without exception in which our conception of


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freedom and necessity is increased and diminished depend
on three considerations:
(1) The relation to the external world of the man who
commits the deeds.
(2) His relation to time.
(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.
The first consideration is the clearness of our perception
of the man’s relation to the external world and the greater or
lesser clearness of our understanding of the definite position
occupied by the man in relation to everything coexisting
with him. This is what makes it evident that a drowning
man is less free and more subject to necessity than one
standing on dry ground, and that makes the actions of a
man closely connected with others in a thickly populated
district, or of one bound by family, official, or business duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity
than those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.
If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to
everything around him, each action of his seems to us free.
But if we see his relation to anything around him, if we see
his connection with anything whateverwith a man who
speaks to him, a book he reads, the work on which he is
engaged, even with the air he breathes or the light that falls
on the things about himwe see that each of these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some
side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the more our conception of his freedom diminishes
and the more our conception of the necessity that weighs
on him increases.
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The second consideration is the more or less evident time
relation of the man to the world and the clearness of our
perception of the place the man’s action occupies in time.
That is the ground which makes the fall of the first man,
resulting in the production of the human race, appear evidently less free than a man’s entry into marriage today. It is
the reason why the life and activity of people who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot seem
to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences
of which are still unknown to me.
The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of
time between the performance of the action and our judgment of it.
If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the same circumstances as those I am in now, my
action appears to me undoubtedly free. But if I examine an
act performed a month ago, then being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if that act had not
been committed much that resulted from itgood, agreeable,
and even essentialwould not have taken place. If I reflect on
an action still more remote, ten years ago or more, then the
consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I find
it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not been performed. The farther I go back in memory,
or what is the same thing the farther I go forward in my
judgment, the more doubtful becomes my belief in the freedom of my action.
In history we find a very similar progress of conviction


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concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs
of humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing of all the known participants, but with
a more remote event we already see its inevitable results
which prevent our considering anything else possible. And
the farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary do they appear.
The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the
result of the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still seem to us, though already questionably,
to be the outcome of their heroes’ will. But in the Crusades
we already see an event occupying its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern
history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades
that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not
enter anyone’s head today to suppose that the renovation of
the European world depended on Attila’s caprice. The farther back in history the object of our observation lies, the
more doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the
event become and the more manifest the law of inevitability.
The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that endless chain of causation inevitably demanded
by reason, in which each phenomenon comprehended, and
therefore man’s every action, must have its definite place as
a result of what has gone before and as a cause of what will
follow.
The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psy2282

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chological, and historical laws deduced by observation and
by which man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the physiological, psychological, and historical causes
of the action, and the simpler the action we are observing
and the less complex the character and mind of the man in
question, the more subject to inevitability and the less free
do our actions and those of others appear.
When we do not at all understand the cause of an action,
whether a crime, a good action, or even one that is simply
nonmoral, we ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In
the case of a crime we most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we rate
its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we recognize in
it more individuality, originality, and independence. But if
even one of the innumerable causes of the act is known to us
we recognize a certain element of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment
of the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among
male factors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice
of a father or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of
a reward, is more comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less deserving of sympathy and
less the result of free will. The founder of a sect or party,
or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by
what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large
range of examples, if our observation is constantly directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people’s
actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion


2283

and less free the more correctly we connect the effects with
the causes. If we examined simple actions and had a vast
number of such actions under observation, our conception
of their inevitability would be still greater. The dishonest
conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the misconduct of a
woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard’s relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to
us less free the better we understand their cause. If the man
whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage of
mental development, like a child, a madman, or a simpletonthen, knowing the causes of the act and the simplicity
of the character and intelligence in question, we see so large
an element of necessity and so little free will that as soon
as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell
the result.
On these three considerations alone is based the conception of irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating
circumstances admitted by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less according to our greater or
lesser knowledge of the circumstances in which the man
was placed whose action is being judged, and according to
the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of the action and its investigation, and according to the
greater or lesser understanding of the causes that led to the
action.

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Chapter X
Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually diminishes or increases according to the greater or
lesser connection with the external world, the greater or
lesser remoteness of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation to which we contemplate a
man’s life.
So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the external world is well known, where the time
between the action and its examination is great, and where
the causes of the action are most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability and a minimum of
free will. If we examine a man little dependent on external
conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and
the causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the
conception of a minimum of inevitability and a maximum
of freedom.
In neither casehowever we may change our point of view,
however plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the external world, however inaccessible
it may be to us, however long or short the period of time,
however intelligible or incomprehensible the causes of the
action may becan we ever conceive either complete freedom
or complete necessity.
(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be ex

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empt from the influence of the external world, we never get
a conception of freedom in space. Every human action is
inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his
own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action seems to
me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm
in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in
which there was least obstruction to that action either from
things around me or from the construction of my own
body. I chose one out of all the possible directions because
in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action to be free
it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To
conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside
space, which is evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment
to the time of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine an action committed a second
ago I must still recognize it as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was committed. Can
I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: could I have abstained
from lifting my arm at the moment that has already passed?
To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next moment.
But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I
could not detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same
as the arm I now refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which
I lifted it the same that now surrounds me. The moment in
which the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at
that moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not
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lift my arm a moment later does not prove that I could have
abstained from lifting it then. And since I could make only
one movement at that single moment of time, it could not
have been any other. To imagine it as free, it is necessary to
imagine it in the present, on the boundary between the past
and the futurethat is, outside time, which is impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the
causes may be increased, we never reach a conception of
complete freedom, that is, an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of the expression of will in
any action, our own or another’s, the first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for without
a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to
perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish
to perform an action without a cause is the cause of my action.
But even ifimagining a man quite exempt from all influences, examining only his momentary action in the present,
unevoked by any causewe were to admit so infinitely small
a remainder of inevitability as equaled zero, we should
even then not have arrived at the conception of complete
freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by the external
world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,
is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never imagine the action of a
man quite devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law
of inevitability.
(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space in which man is situated, that knowledge


2287

can never be complete, for the number of those conditions
is as infinite as the infinity of space. And therefore so long
as not all the conditions influencing men are defined, there
is no complete inevitability but a certain measure of freedom remains.
(2) However we may prolong the period of time between
the action we are examining and the judgment upon it, that
period will be finite, while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never be absolute inevitability.
(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of
any action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is
endless, and so again we never reach absolute inevitability.
But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given
caseas for instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe,
or an idiotcomplete absence of freedom, by so doing we
should destroy the very conception of man in the case we
are examining, for as soon as there is no freedom there is
also no man. And so the conception of the action of a man
subject solely to the law of inevitability without any element
of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a man’s
completely free action.
And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject
to the law of inevitability without any freedom, we must
assume the knowledge of an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of time, and an infinite series
of causes.
To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the
law of inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond
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space, beyond time, and free from dependence on cause.
In the first case, if inevitability were possible without
freedom we should have reached a definition of inevitability
by the laws of inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.
In the second case, if freedom were possible without
inevitability we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, and cause, which by the fact of its
being unconditioned and unlimited would be nothing, or
mere content without form.
We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals
of which man’s whole outlook on the universe is constructedthe incomprehensible essence of life, and the laws
defining that essence.
Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that
give it visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time is infinite motion without a moment of rest
and is unthinkable otherwise. (3) The connection between
cause and effect has no beginning and can have no end.
Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is
but me, consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing
time by the fixed moment of the present in which alone I
am conscious of myself as living, consequently I am outside
time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself to be the cause
of every manifestation of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.
Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in
man’s consciousness. Inevitability without content is man’s


2289

reason in its three forms.
Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.
Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related
to one another as form to content, do we get the mutually
exclusive and separately incomprehensible conceptions of
freedom and inevitability.
Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of
man’s life.
Apart from these two concepts which in their union
mutually define one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.
All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain
relation of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness
to the laws of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is only a
certain relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of
the essence of life to the laws of reason.
The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not
conscious of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia,
electricity, animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of
the force of life in man and we call that freedom.
But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in
itself but felt by every man, is understood by us only to the
extent to which we know the laws of inevitability to which
it is subject (from the first knowledge that all bodies have
weight, up to Newton’s law), so too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which everyone is conscious,
is intelligible to us only in as far as we know the laws of in2290

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evitability to which it is subject (from the fact that every
man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and historic laws).
All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life
under the laws of reason.
Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man
is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no
way differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,
electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from
one another in that they are differently defined by reason.
Just so the force of man’s free will is distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the definition
reason gives it. Freedom, apart from necessity, that is, apart
from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from
gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow;
for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of
life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the
heavenly bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat
and electricity, or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force,
forms the content of astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany,
zoology, and so on, just in the same way does the force of
free will form the content of history. But just as the subject
of every science is the manifestation of this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the subject
of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free
will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence
on cause forms the subject of history, while free will itself is
the subject of metaphysics.


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In the experimental sciences what we know we call the
laws of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital
force. Vital force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know of the essence of
life.
So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for
history only an expression for the unknown remainder of
what we know about the laws of human life.

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Chapter XI
History examines the manifestations of man’s free will
in connection with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, it defines this freedom by the laws of
reason, and so history is a science only in so far as this free
will is defined by those laws.
The recognition of man’s free will as something capable of influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to
laws, is the same for history as the recognition of a free force
moving the heavenly bodies would be for astronomy.
That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is
even a single body moving freely, then the laws of Kepler
and Newton are negatived and no conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists. If any single
action is due to free will, then not a single historical law can
exist, nor any conception of historical events.
For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills,
one end of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other
end of which a consciousness of man’s will in the present
moves in space, time, and dependence on cause.
The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes,
the more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover
and define those laws is the problem of history.
From the standpoint from which the science of history


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now regards its subject on the path it now follows, seeking
the causes of events in man’s freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is impossible, for however man’s free will
may be restricted, as soon as we recognize it as a force not
subject to law, the existence of law becomes impossible.
Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal, that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity,
can we convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of
the causes, and then instead of seeking causes, history will
take the discovery of laws as its problem.
The search for these laws has long been begun and the
new methods of thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously with the self-destruction
toward whichever dissecting and dissecting the causes of
phenomenathe old method of history is moving.
All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of
sciences, abandons the process of analysis and enters on the
new process of the integration of unknown, infinitely small,
quantities. Abandoning the conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property common to all unknown,
infinitely small, elements.
In another form but along the same path of reflection
the other sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity he did not say that the sun or the
earth had a property of attraction; he said that all bodies
from the largest to the smallest have the property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the question of the
cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed the prop2294

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erty common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the
infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences:
leaving aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the same path. And if history has for its object
the study of the movement of the nations and of humanity
and not the narration of episodes in the lives of individuals,
it too, setting aside the conception of cause, should seek the
laws common to all the inseparably interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.



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Chapter XII
From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and
proved, the mere recognition of the fact that it was not the
sun but the earth that moves sufficed to destroy the whole
cosmography of the ancients. By disproving that law it
might have been possible to retain the old conception of
the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it
would seem impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic
worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.
From the time the first person said and proved that the
number of births or of crimes is subject to mathematical
laws, and that this or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic conditions,
and that certain relations of population to soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had
been built were destroyed in their essence.
By refuting these new laws the former view of history
might have been retained; but without refuting them it
would seem impossible to continue studying historic events
as the results of man’s free will. For if a certain mode of
government was established or certain migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic,
ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of
those individuals who appear to us to have established that
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mode of government or occasioned the migrations can no
longer be regarded as the cause.
And yet the former history continues to be studied side
by side with the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology, and geology, which directly
contradict its assumptions.
The struggle between the old views and the new was long
and stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the old views and accused the new
of violating revelation. But when truth conquered, theology
established itself just as firmly on the new foundation.
Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between the old and the new conception of history,
and theology in the same way stands on guard for the old
view, and accuses the new view of subverting revelation.
In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle
provokes passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is
fear and regret for the loss of the whole edifice constructed
through the ages, on the other is the passion for destruction.
To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it
would destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the
defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire
for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed
religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon
against religion.
Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of


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inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good
and evil, and all the institutions of state and church that
have been built up on those conceptions.
So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of
the law of inevitability today use that law as a weapon against
religion, though the law of inevitability in history, like the
law of Copernicus in astronomy, far from destroying, even
strengthens the foundation on which the institutions of
state and church are erected.
As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question
of history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on
the recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute,
serving as the measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy
it was the immovability of the earth, in history it is the independence of personalityfree will.
As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the
motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and of the motion of the planets,
so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of
personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s
own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: ‘It
is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but
by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while
by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at
laws,’ so also in history the new view says: ‘It is true that we
are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our
free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we
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arrive at laws.’
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize
a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly
necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to
recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.