War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [605]
Pierre tried to get to the wing, but the heat was so intense that he involuntarily swerved around the wing and ended up by the main house, which was burning only on one side of the roof and around which a crowd of Frenchmen swarmed. At first Pierre did not understand what these Frenchmen, who were dragging something out, were doing; but seeing a Frenchman in front of him who was beating a muzhik with the flat of his sword and trying to take a fox fur coat from him, Pierre vaguely realized that looting was going on there, but he had no time to stop at that thought.
The sound of cracking and the crash of falling walls and ceilings, the whistling and hissing of the flames, and the lively cries of the people, the sight of billowing clouds of smoke, now frowningly thick and black, now soaring up brightly, with flashes of sparks, and, here and there, of solid, sheaflike red or scaly golden flames creeping over the walls, the sensation of heat and smoke and quick movement, produced on Pierre the usual exhilarating effect of fires. This effect was especially strong on him because, at the sight of this fire, he suddenly felt freed of his burdensome thoughts. He felt young, cheerful, adroit, and resolute. He ran around the little wing from the direction of the house and was about to run to the part of it that was still standing, when just by his head he heard the cries of several voices and after that the crash and clang of something heavy falling next to him.
Pierre turned to look and saw Frenchmen in the windows of the house, throwing out the drawer of a chest filled with some sort of metal objects. Other French soldiers, standing on the ground, went up to the drawer.
“Eh bien, qu’est-ce qu’il veut celui-là?”*614 one of the Frenchman called out to Pierre.
“Un enfant dans cette maison. N’avez-vous pas vu un enfant?”†615 said Pierre.
“Tiens, qu’est-ce qu’il chante celui-là? Va te promener,”‡616 voices said, and one of the soldiers, probably fearing that Pierre would start taking from them the silver and bronze that were in the drawer, moved towards him menacingly.
“Un enfant?” a Frenchman shouted from above. “J’ai entendu piailler quelque chose au jardin. Peut-être c’est son moutard au bonhomme. Faut être humain, voyez-vous…”§617
“Où est-il? Où est-il?”#618 asked Pierre.
“Par ici! Par ici!” the Frenchman called from the window, pointing to the garden behind the house. “Attendez, je vais descendre.”**619
And, in fact, a moment later the Frenchman, a dark-eyed fellow with a spot on his cheek, in his shirtsleeves, jumped out of a ground-floor window and, slapping Pierre on the shoulder, ran to the garden with him.
“Dépêchez-vous, vous autres,” he cried to his comrades, “il commence à faire chaud.”††620
Having run behind the house onto a sand-strewn path, the Frenchman pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed him to the circle. Under a garden bench lay a three-year-old girl in a pink dress.
“Voilà votre moutard. Ah, une petite, tant mieux,” said the Frenchman. “Au revoir, mon gros. Faut être humain. Nous sommes tous mortels, voyez-vous.”*621 And the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his comrades.
Pierre, breathless with joy, ran to the girl and wanted to pick her up. But seeing a stranger, the sickly, scrofulous, unpleasant-looking little girl, who resembled her mother, screamed and tried to run away. Pierre picked her up anyhow and took her in his arms; she shrieked in a desperately angry voice and began tearing Pierre’s hands away with her own little hands and biting them with her slobbery mouth. Pierre was seized by a feeling of horror and squeamishness, such as he had experienced on touching some little animal. But he forced himself not to drop the child and ran with her back to the big house. But it was no longer possible to go back the same way; the wench Aniska was not there, and Pierre, with a feeling of pity and revulsion, pressing the suffering, sobbing, and wet little girl to him as tenderly as he could,