War and Peace

hen Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchín’s broadsheets
that had been brought that day.

The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchín 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 scoundrel 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 Vyázma, 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
Chigírin 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 shuffling 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 Ivánovna told me today
how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly does them
credit! And the people too are quite mutinous—they 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 information 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 Rostopchín 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 Ivánovna 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 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
Rostóvs remained, but he did not go to see them.

To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsóvo
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 Rostopchín 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 Kutúzov 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 Vorontsóvo, as he was passing the Bolótnoe Place
Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lóbnoe Place, stopped and got out
of his trap. A French cook accused 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 crowd—officials, burghers, shopkeepers,
peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses—was so eagerly centered on
what was passing in Lóbnoe 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 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
Lubyánka Street.

“To the Governor’s, as you ordered,” answered the coachman.

“Fool! Idiot!” shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman—a 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
Lóbnoe 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 Evstáfey—his head coachman who
knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow—that
he would leave that night for the army at Mozháysk, and that his saddle
horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day,
so on Evstáfey’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 Perkhúshkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
evening. (This was the battle of Shevárdino.) He was told that there in
Perkhúshkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer
his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching
Mozháysk.

Every house in Mozháysk 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 Mozháysk 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 Slobóda Palace during the Emperor’s visit—a
sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing
something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that
constitutes men’s happiness—the comforts of life, wealth, even
life itself—is 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.