War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [441]
“Which is he? Which is he?” Petya asked all around in a tearful voice, but no one answered him; they were all too carried away, and Petya, having selected one of these four persons, whom he could not make out clearly because of the tears of joy that welled up in his eyes, concentrated all his rapture on him, though he was not the sovereign, shouted “Hurrah!” in a frantic voice, and decided that tomorrow, whatever it might cost him, he would be in the military.
The crowd ran after the sovereign, accompanied him to the palace, and began to disperse. It was already late, Petya had eaten nothing, he was streaming with sweat; but he would not go home, and together with the diminished but still quite large crowd, stood before the palace, looking through the palace windows while the sovereign dined, expecting something further, and equally envious both of the dignitaries who drove up to the entrance, to the sovereign’s dinner, and of the palace footmen who served at the table and flitted past the windows.
At dinner with the sovereign, Valuev said, glancing out the window:
“The people still hope to see Your Majesty.”
The dinner was already over, the sovereign stood up and, finishing a biscuit, went out to the balcony. The people, with Petya among them, rushed to the balcony.
“Angel! Father! Hurrah! Dearest!…” cried the people and Petya, and again peasant women and a few men of the weaker sort, including Petya, wept with happiness. A rather large piece of the biscuit that the sovereign was holding broke off, fell onto the railing of the balcony, and from there to the ground. A cabby in a jerkin, who was standing closest of all, rushed to this piece of biscuit and snatched it up. Some people in the crowd rushed to the cabby. Noticing that, the sovereign asked for a plate of biscuits to be brought and began tossing biscuits from the balcony.34 Petya’s eyes became bloodshot, the danger of being crushed aroused him still more, he rushed for the biscuits. He did not know why, but it was necessary to take a biscuit from the tsar’s hands, and necessary not to give it up. He rushed and tripped up a little old woman who was trying to catch a biscuit. But the little old woman did not consider herself defeated, though she was lying on the ground (she tried to catch a biscuit, but kept missing). Petya knocked her arm aside with his knee, snatched a biscuit, and, as if afraid to be late, again shouted “Hurrah!” in a voice now grown hoarse.
The sovereign went in, and after that the greater part of the people began to disperse.
“See, I said to keep waiting—and I was right,” people said joyfully from various sides.
Happy as Petya was, he still felt sad to go home and know that all the pleasure of that day was over. From the Kremlin Petya did not go home, but to his friend Obolensky, who was also fifteen and who also wanted to join a regiment. Returning home, he announced resolutely and firmly that, if they would not let him, he would run away. And the next day Count Ilya Andreich, though not yet quite giving in, went to find out how he could arrange to set Petya up in some less dangerous place.
XXII
On the fifteenth, in the morning, the third day after that, a countless number of carriages stood by the Slobodsky palace.35
The great halls were filled. In the first were noblemen in uniforms, in the second merchants with medals, in beards and dark blue kaftans. In the hall of the Assembly of the Nobility there was noise and movement. The most important dignitaries sat on high-backed chairs around a large table under a portrait of the sovereign; but the majority walked about the room.
All the nobility, the same ones Pierre saw every day, now in the club, now in their homes, were in uniforms, some of Catherine’s time, some of Paul’s, some in new ones of Alexander’s time, some in generic noblemen’s uniforms, and this general