Next day, the Tsar arrived in Moscow. Several of the Rostovs’ servants asked permission to go out and see the Tsar. That morning Petya took a lot of trouble with himself, combing his hair scrupulously and adjusting his collar like an adult. He screwed his eyes up in front of the mirror, gesticulated, shrugged, and then at last, without a word to anyone, pulled on his cap and left the house by the back steps to avoid being noticed. Petya had made up his mind to go down to where the Tsar was and have a straight talk with some gentleman-in-waiting (he thought the Tsar was always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting), making it clear that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth, wished to serve his country, and youth shouldn’t be seen as an obstacle to devotion, and he was ready for . . . Petya had composed many a splendid phrase while he was getting ready and now he was off to communicate them to a gentleman-in-waiting.
Petya felt certain his presentation to the Tsar would succeed if only because he was still a child (he could just see them all, amazed at his youth), and yet with his nicely adjusted collar arrangement, his neat hair and a slow, sedate way of walking he was hoping to look like a grown-up man. But the further he walked, the more fascinated he became with the growing crowds advancing on the Kremlin, and he soon forgot about maintaining the adult slowness and sedateness. As he closed in on the Kremlin he had to stop himself being jostled out of the way, so he stuck both elbows out with grim determination. But determined or not, when he got to Trinity Gate the crowd, seemingly oblivious to his patriotic purpose in going to the Kremlin, shoved him up so close against a wall that he had to give in and stop walking while carriages trundled in through the archway. Near Petya stood a peasant woman, a footman, two tradesmen and a retired veteran soldier. After waiting for a while wedged in the gateway, Petya decided not to wait for all the carriages to go through and he tried to shove through and get ahead of all the others by flailing away with his elbows. The peasant woman next to him was the first to feel the force of them, and she yelled, ‘Hey, who d’you think you’re shoving, young sir? Can’t you see we’re all stuck? You’ll never get through there.’
‘We can all get through like that!’ said the footman, also quick with his elbows, and he shoved Petya back into a stinking corner of the gateway.
Petya wiped his sweaty face with his hands, and straightened the damp collar arrangement he had taken so much trouble with at home to make it look like an adult’s.
By now Petya was feeling far from presentable, and he was afraid that if he showed himself to the gentlemen-in-waiting in this state they would never let him in to see the Tsar. But the crush was so bad there was no possibility of straightening himself out or moving somewhere else. One of the generals who came riding through was a friend of the Rostov family, but, although Petya would have dearly loved to ask him for help, he thought this wouldn’t be a manly thing to do. When all the carriages had gone in, the crowd rushed forward and Petya was swept along with it into the square, which was already full of people. Not only the square, but the slopes and even the rooftops were covered with people. The moment Petya set foot on the square he heard the ringing of bells and the happy murmur of the crowd that thronged the whole Kremlin.
The crush eased off for a while, but then suddenly all heads were bared and the crowd surged forward again. Petya was squashed so tight he couldn’t breathe, and then came the cheering: ‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’
Petya stood on tiptoe, shoving and squeezing, but he couldn’t see anything beyond the surrounding crowd.
Deep emotion and great rapture were written on every face. A shopkeeper’s wife standing near Petya was sobbing, and her face was streaming with tears.
‘Father! Angel! Lord and Master!’ she kept chanting, using her fingers to wipe away the tears.
‘Hurrah!’ rose from the crowd on every side.
For a minute the crowd stayed where it was, then there was another surge forward.
Petya was wild with excitement. With gritted teeth and a ferocious glare in his rolling eyes, he hurled himself forward, elbowing his way through and yelling ‘Hurrah!’ as if he was ready to die and kill everybody else, but faces no less ferocious than his, yelling just as loud, were hemming him in on both sides.
‘So this is it. This is the Tsar!’ thought Petya. ‘No, I could never give him the petition myself. It would be outrageous!’
