 War and Peace. Book 11, Chapter 33. Red for LibriVox.org by Philippa Brody On the 3rd 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 Rambard. 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 then it 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 white 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 the green sheath which he had bought at the Sukhorev 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, a 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 and carriage-row across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoi, as well as the barges on the Moskva River and the Timbiards by the Dorogomiliov fridge were all ablaze. Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoi and from there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, 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 of 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 heightened 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, like 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 taste, 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. The Napoleon had passed the hour but more than four hours previously on his way from the Barogomilion suburb to the Kremlin and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in the 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 Bavarskoi. 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 Bavarskoi on one side and the gardens of Prince Grosinski'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. Feather beds, a Samava, icons and trunks. On the ground beside the trunk sat a thin woman no longer young with long prominent upper teeth and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman swaying too 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 stupor faction 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-coloured plat 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. Oh, was it for this I nursed you? Oh, don't marry Nicolaevna, 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 honoured, sir, 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, 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. Oh, oh 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. Anis could go, you horrid girl. Show him the way. She cried to her maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing her long teeth. Show me the way. Show me. I, I'll do it. Guessed Pierre rapidly. The dirty maid servant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her flat, side, 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 pavaskoi. 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 le passe-bas! cried a voice. You can't pass. This way, uncle, cried the girl, will pass through the side streets by the Nicolins. 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. Oh! wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. That's it! That was our lodging. You've burnt to death our treasure, Katie, my precious little Missy. Oh! lamented Anisca, 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 up on 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 realise what these men, who were dragging something out, were about, but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt sabre 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 dinner 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 at 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? Que de long? 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 towards him. A child shouted a Frenchman from above. I did hear something squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his breath 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. Goodbye, Fatty. We must be human. We are all mortal, you know. And the Frenchman with a spot on his cheek ran back to his comrades. Brattleous with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger, the sickly, scruffulous 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, Anisca, 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. End of Chapter 33. Recording by Philippe Brody, laspeculad.blogspot.com. War and Peace. Book 11, Chapter 34. Read for LibriVox.org. By Philippe Brody. Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back with his little bird into the Grisinski Garden at the corner of the Povarskoye. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian families who had taken refuge here from the fire, with their belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth, animation and determination that had come on him when he ran to save the child. She had now become quiet, and clinging with her little hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that frightened, sickly little face. He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new, cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched black eyebrows, an extraordinarily soft, bright colour of her long, beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the crowd on the open's face, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate, exotic plant thrown out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless, large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she was aware of her beauty, and fearful because of it. Her face struck Pierre, and hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding those he sought, he stopped and looked about him. With a child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him. Have you lost any one, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it? They asked him. Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether any one knew where she had gone. Why, that must be the Anphorob's, said an old deacon, addressing a pockmarked peasant woman. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy! He added in his customary base. The Anphorob's? No, said the woman. They're left in the morning. That must be either Mary Nikolievna or the Ivanov's. He says a woman, and Mary Nikolievna is a lady, remarked her house-surf. Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth, said Pierre. That's Mary Nikolievna. They went inside the garden when these wolves swooped down, said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers. Oh, Lord have mercy! added the deacon. Go over that way. They're there. It's she. She kept on lamenting and crying, continued the woman. It's she. Here, this way. But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers, who had gone up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied around the waist with a rope. He had a knight kept on his head, and his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large, torn, hessian boots. The little bare-footed Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs, and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl, and with his hands in his pocket stood staring at her, motionless and silent. Here, take the child, said Pierre preemptorily, and hurried to the woman, handing the little girl to her. Give her back to them! Give her back!" He almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family. The old man was already sitting bare-foot. The little Frenchman had secured his second boot, and was slapping one boot against the other. The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs. But Pierre caught but a glimpse of this. His whole attention was directed to the Frenchman in the frieze gown, who meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to side, had drawn nearer to the young woman, and taking his hands from his pockets, had seized her by the neck. The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the soldier was doing to her. While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly, "'Let that woman alone!' exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside. The soldier fell, got up, and ran away, but his comrade, throwing down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly towards Pierre. "'Voyant, pas de bêtise!' he cried. "'Look here, no nonsense!' Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing, and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman, and before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted patrol of French oolans appeared from round the corner. The oolans came up at a truck to Pierre, and the Frenchmen, and surrounded them. Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only remembered beating someone and being beaten, and finally feeling that his hands were bound, and that a crowd of French soldiers stood around him and were searching him. "'Noutenant, he has a dagger,' were the first words Pierre understood. "'Ah, a weapon,' said the officer, and turned to the barefooted soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "'All right, you can tell all about it at the Côte-Muchel.' Then he turned to Pierre. "'Do you speak French?' Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes, and did not reply. His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something in a whisper, and four oolans left the ranks and placed themselves on both sides of Pierre. "'Do you speak French?' the officer asked again, keeping at a distance from Pierre. Called the interpreter, a little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops. "'He does not look like a common man,' said the interpreter, after a searching look at Pierre. "'Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary,' remarked the officer, and asked him who he is,' he added. "'Who are you?' asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "'You must answer the chief.' "'I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner. Take me,' Pierre suddenly replied in French. "'Ah, ah,' muttered the officer with a frown. "'We're then much.' A crowd had collected round the oolans. Near as to Pierre stood the pockmarked peasant woman with a little girl, and when the patrol started she moved forward. "'Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?' said she. "'And the little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not theirs?' said the woman. "'What does that woman want?' asked the officer. Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight of the little girl he had saved. "'What does she want?' he murmured. "'She is bringing me my daughter whom I have just saved from the flames,' said he. "'Good-bye.' And without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers. The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various streets of Moscow by J. Snell's order to put a stop to the pillage, and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general opinion which had that day originated among the higher French officers, were the cause of the confrugations. After marching through a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects, a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant and a house-surf, beside several looters, but of all of these various suspected characters Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all. When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the Zubov rampart that was being used as a guard house, Pierre was placed apart under strict guard.