War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [568]
Gerasim cautiously peeked into the study several times and saw Pierre sitting in the same position. More than two hours went by. Gerasim allowed himself to make some noise by the door so as to attract Pierre’s attention. Pierre did not hear him.
“Do you wish me to dismiss the cabby?”
“Ah, yes,” said Pierre, coming to his senses and hastening to stand up. “Listen,” he said, taking Gerasim by the button of his frock coat and looking down on the old man with shining, moist, rapturous eyes. “Listen, do you know that there will be a battle tomorrow?…”
“There’s been talk of it,” replied Gerasim.
“I ask you to tell no one who I am. And to do what I tell you…”
“Yes, sir,” said Gerasim. “Do you wish to be served some food?”
“No, but I need something else. I need peasant clothes and a pistol,” said Pierre, suddenly blushing.
“Yes, sir,” said Gerasim, after a moment’s thought.
All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study, pacing restlessly, as Gerasim could hear, from one corner to the other, talking to himself, and he spent the night on a bed made up for him there.
Gerasim, with the habit of a servant who had seen all sorts of strange things in his life, accepted Pierre’s moving in without surprise and seemed pleased that he had someone to serve. That same evening, without even asking himself what they were needed for, he obtained a kaftan and hat for Pierre and promised to get the requested pistol the next day. That evening Makar Alexeevich, shuffling in his galoshes, twice came to the door and stopped, looking ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned to him, he bashfully and angrily wrapped his dressing gown around him and hastily retreated. It was when Pierre, in a coachman’s kaftan, acquired and steam-cleaned for him by Gerasim, was going with him to buy a pistol near the Sukhareva tower, that he met the Rostovs.
XIX
On the night of the first of September, Kutuzov’s order was given for the retreat of the Russian troops through Moscow to the Ryazan road.
The first troops set out at night. The troops moving by night did not hurry and moved slowly and measuredly; but at dawn the moving troops, approaching the Dorogomilovo bridge, saw ahead of them, on this side, endless masses of troops crowding, hurrying over the bridge and, on the other side, climbing up and clogging the streets and lanes, while more troops were pressing behind them. And they were seized by a groundless haste and anxiety. They all rushed ahead towards the bridge, onto the bridge, to the fords and into the boats. Kutuzov had ordered himself taken around by the back streets to the other side of Moscow.
By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, only the troops of the rear guard remained at large in the Dorogomilovo suburb. The army was already on the other side of Moscow and beyond Moscow.
At that same time, at ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, Napoleon was standing among his troops on Poklonnaya Hill and looking at the spectacle spread out before him. Beginning with the twenty-sixth of August and until the second of September, from the battle of Borodino to the enemy’s entry into Moscow, in all the days of that anxious, memorable week, there had been that extraordinary autumn weather, always astonishing for people, when the low sun gives more heat than in spring, when everything glistens in the rarefied, clear air so that the eyes hurt, when the chest feels stronger and fresher inhaling the fragrant autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in those dark, warm nights the sky, frightening and gladdening, ceaselessly pours down golden stars.
On the second of September, at ten o’clock in the morning, the weather was like that. The brilliance of the morning was magical. Moscow, from Poklonnaya Hill, spread out spaciously with its river, its gardens and churches, and seemed to be living its life, its cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.
At the sight of the strange city with the never-seen forms of its