War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [604]
The woman almost threw herself at Pierre’s feet when she saw him.
“Dear hearts of mine, good Orthodox Christians, save us, save us, dear hearts!…Somebody help us,” she managed to say through her sobs. “My little girl!…My daughter!…My youngest daughter got left behind!…She’s burned up! O-o-oh! was it for this I nursed you…O-o-oh!”
“Enough, Marya Nikolaevna,” the husband said to his wife in a soft voice, obviously only so as to justify himself before an outsider. “My sister must have taken her, where else could she be!” he added.
“Block of wood! Villain!” the woman shouted spitefully, suddenly ceasing to weep. “You have no heart, you don’t pity your own child. Another man would have gotten her out of the flames. But this one’s a block of wood, not a man, not a father. You’re a gentleman,” the woman pattered on, sobbing and turning to Pierre. “There was a fire next door, and it leaped over to us. The maid shouted ‘Fire!’ We rushed to gather things up. We ran out in whatever we had on…This is all we had time to take…God’s blessing and our marriage bed, the rest is lost. I looked for the children, Katechka wasn’t there. Oh, Lord! O-o-oh!…” and she burst into sobs again. “My dear, wee child, she’s burned up! burned up!”
“But where, where did you leave her?” asked Pierre. From the expression of his suddenly animated face, the woman understood that this man might help her.
“Dear heart! Father!” she cried, seizing him by the legs. “Benefactor, ease my heart…Aniska, go, you vile thing, show him,” she cried to the maid, opening her mouth angrily and with that displaying her long teeth still more.
“Show me, show me, I…I…I’ll do it,” Pierre said hurriedly in a breathless voice.
The dirty wench came from behind the trunk, fixed up her braid, sighed, and walked down the path on her blunt, bare feet. Pierre was as if he had come to life after a heavy swoon. He raised his head higher, his eyes lit up with a gleam of life, and he followed the maid with quick steps, overtook her, and came out on Povarskaya. The whole street was covered with a cloud of black smoke. Here and there tongues of flame burst from this cloud. A large crowd of people thronged in front of the fire. A French general stood in the middle of the street, saying something to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the maid, wanted to reach the place where the general was standing, but French soldiers stopped him.
“On ne passe pas,”*613 a voice cried to him.
“This way, mister,” said the maid. “We’ll take the lane past the Nikulins’.”
Pierre turned around and walked on, skipping now and then to keep up with her. The maid crossed the street, turned left into the lane, went past three houses, and turned right through the gates.
“It’s just here,” said the maid, and, running across the courtyard, she opened a little gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed Pierre to a small wooden wing that was burning brightly and hotly. One side of it had collapsed, the other was burning, and bright flames burst from the window holes and from under the roof.
When Pierre went through the gate, a wave of heat hit him, and he involuntarily stopped.
“Which, which is your house?” he asked.
“O-o-oh!” the girl wailed, pointing to the wing. “That one, that was our place. You’re burned up, my little treasure, Katechka, my precious little