Although by the 20th of August virtually everyone they knew had left Moscow in dribs and drabs, and although everybody was trying to persuade the countess to get away as soon as she could, she wouldn’t hear of leaving until the treasure of her life, her adored Petya, had come back. On the 28th of August he arrived. The sixteen-year-old officer was anything but delighted to be welcomed by his mother with such a morbid display of affection and soppiness. Though his mother concealed her intention of never letting him escape from under her wing again, Petya soon guessed what she was up to and instinctively recoiled from the idea that his mother might make him too soft and turn him into a silly woman (as he put it to himself), so he kept her at arm’s length and avoided her, devoting himself during his stay in Moscow exclusively to Natasha. His brotherly affection was so strong he was almost in love with her.
Even as late as the 28th the count, with his usual negligence, had made no preparations for leaving, and it was the 30th of the month before the wagons that were due to come in from the Moscow and Ryazan estates and pick up their property at the house finally arrived.
From the 28th to the 31st Moscow was seething with movement. Every day thousands of war casualties from Borodino were brought in through the Dorogomilov gate and taken all over Moscow, while thousands of carts piled high with residents and their belongings trundled out through other gates. Rostopchin’s posters made no difference; either independently of them, or maybe because of them, the town was alive with the weirdest and most contradictory rumours. Some said there was a ban on leaving the city; others claimed the opposite – the churches had been stripped of their icons, and everybody was going to be forced out of Moscow. Some said there had been another battle after Borodino, and the French had been routed; others claimed the opposite – the entire Russian army had been wiped out. Some said the Moscow militia was going to march out to the Three Hills, led by the clergy; others whispered that Father Augustin had been told he couldn’t leave, traitors had been caught, the peasants were up in arms and they were robbing anybody who left town, and so on and so forth. But this was all talk. In point of fact, even though the council at Fili still lay in the future, so no decision to abandon Moscow had yet been taken, absolutely everyone – those who were leaving and those who were staying – felt that, although no one could say so openly, Moscow was lost and it was up to everybody to get out as soon as they could and save their own property. There was a feeling of change in the air, as if they were sitting on a powder-keg, yet everything went on unchanged until the 1st of September. Like a criminal on his way to the scaffold, who knows he has only minutes to live but still looks round at everything and straightens the untidy cap on his head, Moscow continued to go through the motions of everyday life, fully aware that the hour of doom was at hand when the normal way of life that they had grown so used to would be blasted away.
During the three days leading up to the occupation of Moscow all the Rostovs went about their various bits of family business. The head of the family, Count Ilya Rostov, drove from one end of the town to the other in search of every last rumour, and when he was at home he went round giving out trivial and ill-considered instructions to those who were getting things ready for the departure.
The countess was in charge of the packing, finding fault with everybody and forever chasing after Petya because she resented him spending all his time with Natasha. Sonya was the only person who got down to the actual business of getting things packed. But Sonya had been particularly sad and silent of late. She had been there at the reading of Nikolay’s letter, when the mention of Princess Marya had set the countess off on an ecstatic train of thought based on the idea that the encounter between Nikolay and the princess showed the workings of Divine Providence.
‘I was never very happy,’ said the countess, ‘when Bolkonsky was engaged to Natasha, but I always longed for Nikolay to marry the princess, and I’ve a feeling it might just happen. Oh, how wonderful that would be!’
