War and Peace

he 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, 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
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. Mílka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched
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 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 hallooing—and 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 Mílka behind the ears.

Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.

“I sent Uvárka at dawn to listen,” his bass boomed out after a
minute’s pause. “He says she’s moved them into the Otrádnoe
enclosure. They were howling there.” (This meant that the she-wolf,
about whom they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otrádnoe
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 Uvárka.”

“As you please.”

“Then put off feeding them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Five minutes later Daniel and Uvárka 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 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 Natásha 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. Pétya ran in at the same time.

“You are going?” asked Natásha. “I knew you would! Sónya 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 Natásha and Pétya.
“We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you.”

“You know it is my greatest pleasure,” said Natásha. “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
Pétya.

“But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,” said Nicholas to
Natásha.

“Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,” said Natásha 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.