Book Eleven: 1812 - Chapter XXXIII

by Leo Tolstoy

　　On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching,the clothes in which he had slept without undressing feltuncomfortable on his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness ofsomething shameful he had done the day before. That something shamefulwas his yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe.

　　It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out ofdoors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with anengraved stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, heremembered where he was and what lay before him that very day.

　　"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make hisentry 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 togo out. But it then occurred to him for the first time that hecertainly could not carry the weapon in his hand through thestreets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol even under hiswide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under hisarm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time toreload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, thoughwhen planning his design he had more than once come to theconclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had beento try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aimconsisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himselfthat he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he couldto achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in agreen sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with thepistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.

　　Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on hishead, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise ormeeting the captain, and passed out into the street.

　　The conflagration, at which he had looked with so muchindifference the evening before, had greatly increased during thenight. Moscow was on fire in several places. The buildings in CarriageRow, across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as thebarges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the DorogomilovBridge, were all ablaze.

　　Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and fromthere to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had longbefore decided that the deed should should be done. The gates ofmost of the houses were locked and the shutters up. The streets andlanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell ofburning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid faces,and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walkingin the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the Frenchlooked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness,and the strange morose look of suffering in his face and whole figure,the Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out towhat class he could belong. The French followed him withastonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all theother Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paidno attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, whowere explaining something to some Russians who did not understandthem, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.

　　Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinelstanding beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when theshout was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man'smusket as he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass onthe other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of whatwent on around him. He carried his resolution within himself in terrorand haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after theprevious night's experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he wasnot destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even hadhe not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could notnow have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more thanfour hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to theKremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royalstudy in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as tomeasures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to preventlooting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not knowthis; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and wastortured- as those are who obstinately undertake a task that isimpossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of itsincompatibility with their natures- by the fear of weakening at thedecisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.

　　Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way byinstinct and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to thePovarskoy.

　　As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser-he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flamerose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in thestreets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt thatsomething unusual was happening around him, did not realize that hewas approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across awide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens ofPrince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard thedesperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as ifawakening from a dream and lifted his head.

　　By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts ofhousehold goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, andtrunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longeryoung, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak andcap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering something, waschoking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirtyshort frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look ofstupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boyof about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidentlynot his own, was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefootedmaid was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-coloredplait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. Thewoman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undressuniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers andshowing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forwardover his temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks,which were placed one on another, and was dragging some garmentsfrom under them.

　　As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at hisfeet.

　　"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends...help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... Mydaughter! 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 musthave taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.

　　"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing toweep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Anotherman would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster andneither a man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," shewent on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire brokeout alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and werushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This iswhat we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all therest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! OLord!..." 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 manmight help her.

　　"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "Mybenefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, showhim the way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth andstill 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 herplait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierrefelt as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held hishead higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swiftsteps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on thePovarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tonguesof flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number ofpeople crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of thestreet stood a French general saying something to those around him.Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where thegeneral 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 sidestreet, by the Nikulins'!"

　　Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up withher. 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, openeda gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a smallwooden wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. Oneof its sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flamesissued from the openings of the windows and from under the roof.

　　As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot airand involuntarily stopped.

　　"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.

　　"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that wasour lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, myprecious little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight ofthe fire felt that she too must give expression to her feelings.

　　Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that heinvoluntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large housethat was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, andaround which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did notrealize what these men, who were dragging something out, were about;but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saberand trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood thatlooting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.

　　The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings,the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of thepeople, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thickblack clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with hereand there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fishscales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke andrapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effectsof a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him becauseat the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideasthat had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, andresolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about todash into that part of it which was still standing, when just abovehis head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking soundand the ring of something heavy falling close beside him.

　　Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house someFrenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled withmetal articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to thedrawer.

　　"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring toPierre.

　　"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" criedPierre.

　　"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and oneof the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to takefrom them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, movedthreateningly toward him.

　　"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear somethingsquealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow islooking 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 thegarden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit- I'm coming down."

　　And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow witha spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a windowon the ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran withhim into the garden.

　　"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's gettinghot."

　　When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchmanpulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled spacewhere 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 theFrenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal youknow!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to hiscomrades.

　　Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was goingto take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly,scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother, began toyell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in hisarms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her littlehands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobberingmouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as hehad experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made aneffort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the largehouse. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he hadcome; the maid, Aniska, was no longer there, and Pierre with a feelingof pity and disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child tohimself as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the gardenseeking another way out.