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By Root 3967 0

the sky, and the young moon shone, covered from time to time by the smoke. On the descent to the Dnieper, the wagons of Alpatych and the innkeeper’s wife, moving slowly amidst the lines of soldiers and other vehicles, had to stop. Not far from the intersection at which the wagons stopped, in a lane, a house and some shops were burning. The fire was already going out. The flames died down and were lost in black smoke, then suddenly flared up brightly, lighting up with a strange distinctness the faces of the crowding people standing at the intersection. Before the fire the black figures of people flitted; talking and shouting could be heard through the ceaseless crackling of the flames. Alpatych, getting out of the wagon, saw that the way would not soon be free, and turned into the lane to look at the fire. Soldiers constantly darted up and down past the fire, and Alpatych saw two soldiers, and with them some man in a frieze overcoat, drag burning beams out of the fire and across the street to a neighboring yard, while others carried armfuls of straw.

Alpatych went up to a large crowd of people standing in front of a tall barn that was burning at full blaze. The walls were all on fire, the back wall fell, the plank roof was caving in, the beams were in flames. The crowd was apparently waiting for the roof to fall. Alpatych also waited for that.

“Alpatych!” someone’s familiar voice called to the old man.

“Your Excellency, dearest,” replied Alpatych, instantly recognizing the voice of his young prince.

Prince Andrei, in a cloak, astride a black horse, was standing behind the crowd and looking at Alpatych.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Your…Your Excellency,” Alpatych said and burst into sobs…“Your…Your…and are we lost, then? Your father…”

“What are you doing here?” Prince Andrei repeated.

The flames flared up brightly just then, and lit up for Alpatych his young master’s pale and exhausted face. Alpatych told him how he had been sent and how he had barely been able to leave.

“So, Your Excellency, are we lost?” he asked again.

Prince Andrei, without answering, took out a notebook and, raising his knee, began to pencil something on a torn-out page. He was writing to his sister:

Smolensk is being surrendered. Bald Hills will be occupied by the enemy within a week. Leave for Moscow at once. Reply to me the moment you leave; send a messenger to Usvyazh.

Having written the note and handed it to Alpatych, he told him how to arrange the departure of the prince, the princess, and his son with his tutor, and how and where to reply to him at once. Before he had time to finish these orders, a mounted staff officer, accompanied by his suite, rode up to him.

“Are you a colonel?” the officer cried with a German accent in a voice familiar to Prince Andrei. “Houses are set on fire in your presence, and you stand there? What does this mean? You will answer for it,” cried Berg, who was now assistant to the chief of staff of the left flank of the infantry of the first army—a quite agreeable and visible post, as Berg put it.

Prince Andrei looked at him and, without replying, went on addressing Alpatych:

“Tell them that I will wait for a reply until the tenth, and if I don’t know by the tenth that everyone is gone, I’ll have to drop everything and come to Bald Hills myself.”

“I said it, Prince,” said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrei, “only because I must carry out orders, because I always carry them out precisely…Excuse me, please,” Berg apologized for something.

Something cracked in the fire. The fire subsided for a moment; black clouds of smoke poured from under the roof. Something cracked still more fearfully in the flames, and something enormous collapsed.

“Hoo-hoo-hoo!” roared the crowd, seconding the collapsed ceiling of the barn, from which came a smell of pancakes produced by the burning grain. The flames flared up and illuminated the animatedly joyful and worn-out faces of the people who stood around the fire.

The man in the frieze overcoat, raising his arm, cried:

“That’s grand! Went right up! That’s really