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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 Gerasim 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, 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 Sukharev 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 Povarskoy, as well as
the barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov
Bridge, were all ablaze.
Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and
from there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he
had long before decided that the deed should 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 Arbat more than four
hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the
Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in
a royal study in the Kremlin, 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 Povarskoy.
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 foot path across a wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy
on one side and the gardens of Prince Gruzinski'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 Nikolievna!" 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.... Aniska, 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 Povarskoy. 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 Nikulins'!"
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 Aniska, 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, Aniska, 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.
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