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By Root 3534 0

dozens of village women talking together, wielding battledores, and rinsing their laundry, Prince Andrei noticed that there was no one at the pond, and a little raft, torn free, half sunk in the water, was floating in the middle of it. Prince Andrei rode up to the watch box. There was no one by the stone gates of the entrance, and the door was open. The footpaths of the garden were already overgrown, and calves and horses wandered over the English park. Prince Andrei rode up to the conservatory: there was broken glass, some of the trees in tubs were overturned, and some were dry. He called out for Taras, the gardener. No one replied. Having ridden around the conservatory to the outdoor beds, he saw that the carved wooden fence was all broken and plums had been pulled off with their branches. An old peasant (Prince Andrei used to see him by the gates in his childhood) was sitting on a little green bench plaiting a bast shoe.

He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrei ride up. He was sitting on the bench on which the old prince had liked to sit, and beside him strips of bast were hanging on the branches of a broken and withered magnolia.

Prince Andrei rode up to the house. Several lindens in the old garden had been cut down, a piebald mare with a foal was walking right in front of the house between the rosebushes. The shutters were closed. One window on the ground floor was open. A serf boy, seeing Prince Andrei, ran into the house.

Alpatych, having sent the family away, had remained alone at Bald Hills; he was at home reading The Lives of the Saints. Learning of Prince Andrei’s arrival, he came out of the house with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning himself up, hastily went to the prince and, without saying anything, wept, kissing Prince Andrei on the knee.

Then he turned away, vexed at his own weakness, and began to report on the state of things. Everything valuable and costly had been transported to Bogucharovo. The grain, up to eight hundred bushels, had also been taken there; the hay and this year’s spring crops, remarkable according to Alpatych, had been mowed while still green and taken—by the troops. The peasants were devastated, some had also left for Bogucharovo, a small number had remained.

Prince Andrei, not hearing him out, asked when his father and sister had left, meaning when they had left for Moscow. Alpatych, assuming he had been asked about their departure for Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh, and again expanded on details of the estate management, asking for orders.

“Shall I let the troops have oats on receipt? We still have nearly five thousand bushels left,” asked Alpatych.

“What answer can I give him?” thought Prince Andrei, looking at the old man’s bald head shining in the sun and reading in the expression of his face that he understood how inappropriate his questions were, but that he had asked them just to stifle his own grief.

“Yes, let them,” he said.

“If you’ve been pleased to notice disorders in the garden,” said Alpatych, “it was impossible to prevent them: three regiments passed through and spent the night, dragoons in particular. I wrote down the rank and name of the commander so as to present a petition.”

“Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay if the enemy takes it?” Prince Andrei asked him.

Alpatych, turning his face towards Prince Andrei, looked at him; and suddenly, in a solemn gesture, he raised his arm aloft.

“He is my protector, let His will be done!” he said.

A crowd of peasants and servants walked through the meadow with uncovered heads, approaching Prince Andrei.

“Well, good-bye!” said Prince Andrei, leaning down to Alpatych. “Go away yourself, take whatever you can with you, and tell the people to leave for Ryazan or the estate outside Moscow.” Alpatych pressed himself to his leg and burst into sobs. Prince Andrei carefully removed him and, spurring his horse, galloped down the avenue.

By the outside beds the old man still sat as indifferently as a fly on the face of a dead loved one, tapping the bast shoe on its last, and two