War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [683]
While Dolokhov was arguing with Denisov about what to do with the prisoners, Petya had again felt uneasy and hurried; but again he had not quite managed to understand what they were talking about. “If the big, famous ones think like that, it means it must be so, it means it’s good,” he thought. “And, above all, Denisov mustn’t think that I’ll obey him, that he can command me. I’ll definitely go to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, I can!”
To all Denisov’s persuasions not to go, Petya replied that he was also used to doing everything neatly and not any old way, and that he never thought about the danger to himself.
“Because—you yourself will agree—if we don’t know for certain how many there are, the lives of hundreds may depend on it, and here it’s just us, and I also want it very much, and I’ll definitely go, I will, you won’t hold me back,” he said, “that will only be worse…”
IX
Having put on French uniforms and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov rode to the clearing from which Denisov had looked at the camp, and, riding out of the forest in total darkness, descended into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks who accompanied them to wait there and rode at a sturdy trot down the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart thrilling with excitement, rode beside him.
“If we’re caught, I won’t surrender alive, I’ve got a pistol,” Petya whispered.
“Don’t speak Russian,” Dolokhov said in a quick whisper, and at the same moment they heard a call from the darkness: “Qui vive?”*717 and the cocking of a musket.
The blood rushed to Petya’s face, and he gripped his pistol.
“Lanciers du 6e,”†718 said Dolokhov, without slowing or increasing the pace of his horse. The black figure of the sentry stood on the bridge.
“Mot d’ordre?”‡719
Dolokhov reined in his horse and rode slowly.
“Dites donc, le colonel Gérard est ici?”§720 he said.
“Mot d’ordre!” the sentry said without replying and barred his way.
“Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le mot d’ordre…” cried Dolokhov, suddenly flaring up and riding his horse into the sentry. “Je vous demande si le colonel est ici?”#721
And, not waiting for a reply from the sentry, who stepped aside, Dolokhov rode up the hill at a walk.
Noticing the black shadow of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov stopped him and asked where the commander and the officers were. This man, with a sack on his back, a soldier, stopped, came up close to Dolokhov’s horse, touched it with his hand, and told him simply and amicably that the commander and the officers were further up the hill, to the right, in the courtyard of the farmhouse (as he called the manor house).
Riding up the road, from both sides of which came the sounds of French talk around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the courtyard of the manor house. Riding through the gates, he got off his horse and went up to a big, blazing campfire, around which several men sat talking loudly. In a pot at the edge of the fire something was cooking, and a soldier in a cap and blue uniform, on his knees, brightly lit up by the fire, was stirring it with a ramrod.
“Oh, c’est un dur à cuire,”*722 said one of the officers, sitting in the shadow on the opposite side of the fire.
“Il les fera marcher les lapins…”†723 another said, laughing. They both fell silent, peering into the darkness at the sound of Dolokhov’s and Petya’s footsteps as they approached the fire with their horses.
“Bonjour, messieurs!” Dolokhov said loudly and distinctly.
The officers stirred in the shadow of the fire, and one, a tall officer with a long neck, went up to Dolokhov.
“C’est vous, Clément?” he said. “D’où, diable…”‡724 but he did not finish, realizing his mistake, and, frowning slightly, greeted Dolokhov as a stranger, asking what he could do for him. Dolokhov told him that he and his comrade were trying to catch up with their regiment, and asked, addressing them all in general, whether the officers knew anything about the sixth regiment. No one knew anything, and Petya thought