War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [680]
The officer who had been sent met Denisov on the way with the news that Dolokhov himself would come at once and that for his part all was well.
Denisov suddenly cheered up and called Petya to him.
“Well, tell me about yourself,” he said.
VII
Petya, having left his family on their departure from Moscow, had joined his regiment, and soon after that was attached as an orderly to a general in command of a large detachment. Since the time of his promotion to officer, and especially since going on active duty, where he had taken part in the battle of Vyazma,3 Petya had constantly been in a state of happily excited joy that he was grown up, and in constantly rapturous haste not to miss any occasion for real heroism. He was very happy with what he had seen and experienced in the army, but at the same time it seemed to him all the time that he was not where what was most real and heroic was now happening. And he hurried to get where he was not.
When, on the twenty-first of October, his general expressed the wish to send someone to Denisov’s detachment, Petya begged so pitifully to be sent that the general could not refuse. But as he was sending him, the general, recalling Petya’s mad behavior at the battle of Vyazma, where, instead of taking to the road and going where he had been sent, he had galloped into the line under French fire and there twice shot off his pistol—as he was sending him, the general precisely forbade Petya to take part in any of Denisov’s actions whatever. It was this that had made Petya blush and become confused when Denisov asked if he could stay. Until he rode out to the edge of the forest, Petya thought that, in strict fulfillment of his duty, he ought to return at once. But when he saw the French, saw Tikhon, learned that there would certainly be an attack in the night, he, with a young man’s quickness in changing his views, decided to himself that his general, whom till then he had respected very much, was trash, a German, that Denisov was a hero, and the esaul was a hero, and Tikhon was a hero, and it was shameful to leave them at a difficult moment.
Night was already falling when Denisov, with Petya and the esaul, rode up to the guardhouse. In the semi-darkness they could see saddled horses, Cossacks, hussars, setting up little lean-tos in the clearing and making a glowing fire in the wooded ravine (so that the French would not see the smoke). In the front hall of the small cottage, a Cossack, his sleeves rolled up, was carving mutton. Inside the cottage itself, three officers from Denisov’s party were setting up a table made from a door. Petya took off his wet things, handed them over to be dried, and at once began to assist the officers in setting up the dinner table.
Ten minutes later, the table was ready, covered with a cloth. On the table stood vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, and roast mutton with salt.
Sitting with the officers at the table and tearing at a greasy hunk of fragrant mutton with his hands, which dripped with fat, Petya was in a rapturous, childlike state of tender love for all people, and consequently of certainty that other people had the same love for him.
“So what do you think, Vassily Fyodorovich,” he turned to Denisov, “is it all right if I stay with you for one little day?” And, not waiting for an answer, he answered himself: “I was told to find out, so I’ll find out…Only let me go to the very…to the main…I don’t need any rewards…But I’d like…” Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, tossing his raised head and swinging his arms.
“To the main…” Denisov repeated, smiling.
“Only, please, give me full command, so that I can be in command,” Petya went