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At the moment when Rostv and Ilyn were galloping along the road, Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alptych, her nurse, and the maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran away, and the women in the house began to wail.
“Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!” exclaimed deeply moved voices as Rostv passed through the anteroom.
Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting room, when Rostv was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostv as a romantic event. “A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and expression!” thought he as he looked at her and listened to her timid story.
When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her father’s funeral, her voice trembled. She turned away, and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostv’s eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of her face to be forgotten.
“I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here and am able to show my readiness to serve you,” said Rostv, rising. “Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort.” And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood, he moved toward the door.
Rostv’s deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.
Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.
“I am very, very grateful to you,” she said in French, “but I hope it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it.” She suddenly began to cry.
“Excuse me!” she said.
Rostv, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.
“Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend—my pink one is delicious; her name is Dunysha....”
But on glancing at Rostv’s face Ilyn stopped short. He saw that his hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought.
Rostv glanced angrily at Ilyn and without replying strode off with rapid steps to the village.
“I’ll show them; I’ll give it to them, the brigands!” said he to himself.
Alptych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up with him with difficulty.
“What decision have you been pleased to come to?” said he.
Rostv stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned on Alptych.
“Decision? What decision? Old dotard!...” cried he. “What have you been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can’t manage them? You’re a traitor yourself! I know you. I’ll flay you all alive!...” And as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alptych and went rapidly forward. Alptych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with Rostv at a gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be imprudent to “overresist” them without an armed force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?
“I’ll give them armed force... I’ll ‘overresist’ them!” uttered Rostv meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the need to vent it.
Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it the more Alptych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw Rostv’s rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.
After the hussars had come to the village and Rostv had gone to see the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained. Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and others attacked their ex-Elder.
“How many years have you been fattening on the commune?” Karp shouted at him. “It’s all one to you! You’ll dig up your pot of money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether our homes are ruined or not?”
“We’ve been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their homes or take away a single grain, and that’s all about it!” cried another.
“It was your son’s turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You begrudged your lump of a son,” a little old man suddenly began attacking Dron—“and so they took my Vnka to be shaved for a soldier! But we all have to die.”
“To be sure, we all have to die. I’m not against the commune,” said Dron.
“That’s it—not against it! You’ve filled your belly....”
The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostv, followed by Ilyn, Lavrshka, and Alptych, came up to the crowd, Karp, thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer together.
“Who is your Elder here? Hey?” shouted Rostv, coming up to the crowd with quick steps.
“The Elder? What do you want with him?...” asked Karp.
But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.
“Caps off, traitors!” shouted Rostv in a wrathful voice. “Where’s the Elder?” he cried furiously.
“The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakhrych, you!” meek and flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to come off their heads.
“We don’t riot, we’re following the orders,” declared Karp, and at that moment several voices began speaking together.
