Bab Bab 262 · 第262章

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 Gerásim 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, the dagger

will do,” he said to himself, though when planning his design he had

more than once come to the conclusion that the chief 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 Súkharev 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 Povarskóy, as well as the barges on the Moskvá

River and the timber yards by the Dorogomílov Bridge, were all ablaze.

Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskóy and from there

to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbát, where he had long before

decided that the deed 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 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 Arbát more than four hours previously on his

way from the Dorogomílov suburb to the Krémlin, and was now sitting in

a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Krémlin, 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 tortured—as those are who obstinately

undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its

difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures—by 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 Povarskóy.

As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser—he

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 footpath across a

wide-open space adjoining the Povarskóy on one side and the gardens

of Prince Gruzínski’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

overcoat 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 Nikoláevna!” 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.... 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.... Aníska, 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 Povarskóy. 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 side street,

by the Nikúlins’!”

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 Aníska, 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.

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 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 bit—I’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 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, Aníska, 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.