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On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre
ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early
in the morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition
in a corner Boris had given up to him.
Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had
already left the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows
and his groom was shaking him.
"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!"
he kept repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the
shoulder without looking at him, having apparently lost hope of
getting him to wake up.
"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked,
waking up.
"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged
soldier. "All the gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene
Highness himself rode past long ago."
Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all
was bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting
forth from behind a cloud that had concealed it, was shining,
with rays still half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the
street opposite, on the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the
walls of the houses, on the windows, the fence, and on Pierre's
horses standing before the hut. The roar of guns sounded more
distinct outside. An adjutant accompanied by a Cossack passed
by at a sharp trot.
"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.
Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went
down the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field
of battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled
there, members of the staff could be heard conversing in French,
and Kutuzov's gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible,
his gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through
a field glass down the highroad before him.
Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene
before him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he
had admired from that spot the day before, but now the whole place
was full of troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns,
and the slanting rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the
left behind Pierre, cast upon it through the clear morning air
penetrating streaks of rosy, golden tinted light and long dark
shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity of the panorama
seemed carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green color;
its undulating outline was silhouetted against the horizon and
was pierced beyond Valuevo by the Smolensk highroad crowded with
troops. Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed
with copses. There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front
and to the right and left. All this was vivid, majestic, and unexpected;
but what impressed Pierre most of all was the view of the battlefield
itself, of Borodino and the hollows on both sides of the Kolocha.
Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially
to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls
into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve,
and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and
magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns
mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through
that mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing
back like lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the
bayonets of the troops crowded together by the riverbanks and
in Borodino. A white church could be seen through the mist, and
here and there the roofs of huts in Borodino as well as dense
masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and ordnance. And
all this moved, or seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread
out over the whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow
near Borodino, so along the entire line outside and above it and
especially in the woods and fields to the left, in the valleys
and on the summits of the high ground, clouds of powder smoke
seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now singly, now
several at a time, some translucent, others dense, which, swelling,
growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the whole expanse.
These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of sound
of the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.
"Puff!"- suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke
was seen merging from violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!"
came the report a second later.
"Puff! puff!"- and two clouds arose pushing one
another and blending together; and "boom, boom!" came
the sounds confirming what the eye had seen.
Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen
as a round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons
of smoke floating to one side, and- "puff" (with a pause)-
"puff, puff!" three and then four more appeared and
then from each, with the same interval- "boom- boom, boom!"
came the fine, firm, precise sounds in reply. It seemed as if
those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes stood still while
woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran past them. From the
left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were
continually appearing followed by their solemn reports, while
nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the muskets
small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had their
little echoes in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!"
came the frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and
feeble in comparison with the reports of the cannon.
Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets,
that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov
and his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others.
They were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as
it seemed to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were
now shining with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed
the day before and had fully understood after his talk with Prince
Andrew.
"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!"
Kutuzov was saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking
his eye from the battlefield.
Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on
his way down the knoll.
"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly
in reply to one of the staff who asked where he was going.
"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and
followed the general.
The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre
went to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which
was the quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and
turning out his toes pressed his heels against its sides and,
feeling that his spectacles were slipping off but unable to let
go of the mane and reins, he galloped after the general, causing
the staff officers to smile as they watched him from the knoll.
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