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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
hat- a present from the prince- and 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 Alpatych liked
to have them. His satellites- the senior clerk, a countinghouse
clerk, a scullery maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy,
the coachman, and various domestic serfs- were 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 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.
"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 carting- it 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 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 hanged- the 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 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 instructions- here..." 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 threatened
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!..."
"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 Thursday- sold 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, 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 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,
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 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 fires-
the smoke and even the flames of which could be seen in the failing
twilight- and 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
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 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."
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
diffused 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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