War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [565]
The count got up first and with a loud sigh began crossing himself before the icon. They all did the same. Then the count began to embrace Mavra Kuzminishna and Vassilyich, who were to remain in Moscow, and, while they tried to take hold of his hand and kissed his shoulder, he patted them lightly on the back, murmuring something vague and tenderly soothing. The countess went to the icon room, and Sonya found her there, kneeling before the few remaining icons that hung here and there on the wall. (The icons most precious for the family’s past they brought with them.)
On the porch and in the courtyard, the servants who were leaving, armed by Petya with daggers and swords, their trousers tucked into their boots, and tightly girded with belts and sashes, were saying good-bye to those who were staying.
As is usual during a departure, many things were forgotten or wrongly packed, and for some time two liveried postilions stood on either side of the open door and steps of the carriage, ready to help the countess in, while maids ran about with pillows and bundles from the house to the carriages, the caleche, the britzka, and back.
“They eternally forget everything!” said the countess. “Why, you know I can’t sit like that.” And Dunyasha, clenching her teeth and not replying, with an expression of reproach on her face, rushed into the carriage to rearrange the seat.
“Ah, these folk!” said the count, shaking his head.
The old coachman Efim, who was the only one with whom the countess would venture to ride, sitting high up on the box, did not even turn to look at what was happening behind him. He knew with his thirty years of experience that it would be a while before they told him “Godspeed!” and that once they had told him, they would stop him twice more and send for things they had forgotten, and after that would stop him once again, and the countess herself would stick her head out and beg him in Christ’s name to drive more carefully on the descents. He knew it and therefore waited for what was to come more patiently than his horses (especially the chestnut on the left, Sokol, who pawed the ground and champed at the bit). At last everybody was seated, the steps were folded and flipped back into the carriage, the door banged shut, the strongbox was sent for, the countess leaned out and said what she ought. Then Efim slowly took off his hat and began crossing himself. The postilion and all the servants did the same.
“Godspeed!” said Efim, putting on his hat. “Whip ’em up!” The postilion started the horses. The right trace horse lunged into the collar, the high springs creaked, and the body rocked. A footman jumped up on the box in motion. The carriage jolted as it drove out of the courtyard onto the bumpy pavement, the other equipages jolted in the same way, and the train started up the street. Everyone in the carriages, the caleche, and the britzka crossed themselves before the church across the street. Those staying in Moscow walked on both sides of the equipages, seeing them off.
Natasha had rarely experienced such a joyful feeling as she experienced now, sitting in the carriage next to the countess and gazing at the walls slowly moving past her of alarmed, abandoned Moscow. She occasionally leaned out of the carriage window and looked up and down the long train of wounded that preceded them. Almost at the head of it she could see the closed top of Prince Andrei’s caleche. She did not know who was in it, and each time she looked over the extent of her train, she sought that caleche with her eyes. She knew it was at the head of them all.
From Nikitskaya, from Presnia, from Podnovinsky Boulevard, several trains like the Rostovs’ came together in Kudrino, and now two lines of carriages drove down Sadovaya.
Driving around the Sukhareva tower, Natasha, who was curiously and quickly studying the people driving and walking by, suddenly cried out with joyful surprise:
“Good heavens! Mama, Sonya, look, it’s him!”
“Who? Who?”
“Look, for God’s