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“Be so good as to step in. Makr Alexevich, the brother of my late master—may the kingdom of heaven be his—has remained here, but he is in a weak state as you know,” said the old servant.
Pierre knew that Makr Alexevich was Joseph Bazdev’s half-insane brother and a hard drinker.
“Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in...” said Pierre and entered the house.
A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing Pierre he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.
“He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your honor sees,” said Gersim. “Will you step into the study?” Pierre nodded. “As it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia Danlovna gave orders that if anyone should come from you they were to have the books.”
Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such trepidation in his benefactor’s lifetime. The room, dusty and untouched since the death of Joseph Bazdev was now even gloomier.
Gersim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe. Pierre went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the manuscripts were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most important, the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic Scotch Acts with Bazdev’s notes and explanations. He sat down at the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.
Gersim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw Pierre always sitting in the same attitude.
More than two hours passed and Gersim took the liberty of making a slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did not hear him.
“Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?”
“Oh yes!” said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. “Look here,” he added, taking Gersim by a button of his coat and looking down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, “I say, do you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?”
“We heard so,” replied the man.
“I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you.”
“Yes, your excellency,” replied Gersim. “Will you have something to eat?”
“No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a pistol,” said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.
“Yes, your excellency,” said Gersim after thinking for a moment.
All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study, and Gersim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him there.
Gersim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange things, accepted Pierre’s taking up his residence in the house without surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same evening—without even asking himself what they were wanted for—he procured a coachman’s coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him the pistol next day. Makr Alexevich came twice that evening shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the coachman’s coat which Gersim had procured for him and had disinfected by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol at the Skharev market that he met the Rostvs.
Kutzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazn road was issued at night on the first of September.
The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing the town at the Dorogomlov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutzov himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow.
By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear guard remained in the Dorogomlov suburb, where they had ample room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.
At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September, Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklnny Hill looking at the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodin to the entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating, memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and delight us continually by falling from the sky.
At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still held.
The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklnny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.
The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full force of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklnny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.
Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.
“Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables glises, Moscou la sainte. La voil donc enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il tait temps,” * said he, and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and summoned Lelorgne d’Ideville, the interpreter.
