War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [329]
Nikolai dismounted and stood by the hounds with Natasha and Petya, who joined him, waiting for news of how the matter would end. The hunter who had been fighting left the edge of the woods with the fox strapped to his saddle and rode over to his young master. He took off his hat while still some distance away and tried to speak respectfully; but he was pale, breathless, and his face was angry. He had a black eye, but he probably did not know it.
“What was that about?” asked Nikolai.
“Why, as if he’s going to hunt out from under our hounds! It was my mouse-gray bitch that caught it. Go on, take it to court! He grabs hold of the fox! I whacked him with it. You want it, it’s strapped on here. And how would you like a bit of this?” said the hunter, pointing to his dagger and probably imagining that he was still talking to his enemy.
Nikolai, not responding to the hunter, asked his sister and Petya to wait for him and rode to the place where Ilagin’s hostile hunt stood.
The victorious hunter rode into the crowd of hunters and there, surrounded by curious sympathizers, told of his exploit.
The thing was that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had had a quarrel and a lawsuit, used to hunt in places that customarily belonged to the Rostovs, and now as if on purpose had sent his men to the reserve where the Rostovs were hunting and had allowed his hunter to take the quarry hunted down by the Rostovs’ hounds.
Nikolai had never seen Ilagin, but, as usual, knowing no middle way in his opinions and feelings, judging by the rumors of this landowner’s violence and willfulness, hated him with all his heart and considered him his bitterest enemy. He was now riding to him in angry agitation, firmly gripping his whip and fully prepared for the most resolute and dangerous actions against his enemy.
He had barely ridden out beyond the projecting arm of the forest when he saw a fat gentleman in a visored beaver cap coming towards him on a beautiful black horse, accompanied by two grooms.
Instead of an enemy, Nikolai found in Ilagin a respectable, courteous gentleman, especially desirous of making the young count’s acquaintance. Riding up to Rostov, Ilagin raised his beaver cap and said that he very much regretted what had happened, said that he would order the hunter punished for allowing himself to hunt from under another man’s dogs, asked to make the count’s acquaintance, and offered him his own hunting spots.
Natasha, fearing that her brother would do something terrible in his agitation, followed not far behind him. Seeing the enemies greet each other amicably, she rode up to them. Ilagin raised his beaver cap still higher before Natasha and, smiling pleasantly, said that the countess represented Diana5 both in her passion for hunting and in her beauty, of which he had heard so much.
To smooth over his hunter’s offense, Ilagin insistently invited Rostov to come to his upland, which was less than a mile away, which he kept for himself, and which, according to him, was all strewn with hares. Nikolai accepted, and the hunt, having doubled in size, moved on.
To reach Ilagin’s upland, they had to go across the fields. The hunters spread out. The gentry rode together. The uncle, Rostov, and Ilagin kept glancing at each other’s dogs on the sly, trying to keep the others from noticing, and sought worriedly among those dogs for rivals to their own.
Rostov was especially struck by the beauty of a small, purebred, red-spotted bitch in Ilagin’s pack, slender, but with muscles of steel, narrow pincers (muzzle), and prominent black eyes. He had heard about the swiftness of Ilagin’s dogs and in this beautiful bitch saw a rival to his Milka.
In the middle of a sedate conversation about that year’s harvest, begun by Ilagin, Nikolai pointed to his red-spotted bitch.
“That’s a good bitch you’ve got!” he said in a casual tone. “Swift-footed?”
“This one? Yes, she’s a good dog, a catcher,” Ilagin said in an indifferent voice of his red-spotted Yerza, for whom he had given his neighbor three families of house