‘Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will it all end?’ thought Rostov, looking at the shadowy figures that kept Hitting before his eyes. The pain in his arm became even more agonising. He was heavy with sleep, crimson circles danced before his eyes, and the impression of these voices and these faces and the sense of his loneliness all blended with the misery of the pain. It was they, these soldiers, wounded and unhurt alike, it was they crushing and weighing upon him, and twisting his veins and burning the llesh in his sprained arm and shoulder. To get rid of them he closed his eyes.
He dozed off for a minute, but in that brief interval he dreamed of innumerable things. He saw his mother and her large, white hand; he saw Sonya’s thin shoulders, Natasha’s eyes and her laugh, and Denisov with his voice and his whiskers, and Telyanin, and all the affair with Telyanin and Bogdanitch. All that affair was inextricably mixed up with this soldier with the harsh voice, and that affair and this soldier here were so agonisingly, so ruthlessly pulling, crushing, and twisting his arm always in the same direction. He was trying to get away from them, but they would not let go of his shoulder for a second. It would not ache, it would be all right if they wouldn’t drag at it; but there was no getting rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked upwards. The black pall of darkness hung only a few feet above the light of the fire. In the light fluttered
io 2 WAR AND PEACE
tiny flakes of falling snow. Tushin had not returned, the doctor had not come. He was alone, only a soldier was sitting now naked on the other side of the fire, warming his thin, yellow body.
‘Nobody cares for me!’ thought Rostov. ‘No one to help me, no one to feel sorry for me. And I too was once at home, and strong, and happy and loved,’ he sighed, and with the sigh unconsciously he moaned.
‘In pain, eh?’ asked the soldier, shaking his shirt out before the fire, and without waiting for an answer, he added huskily: ‘Ah, what a lot of fellows done for to-day—awful!’
Rostov did not hear the soldier. He gazed at the snowflakes whirling over the fire and thought of the Russian winter with his warm, brightly lighted home, his cosy fur cloak, his swift sledge, his good health, and all the love and tenderness of his family. ‘And what did I come here for!’ he wondered.
On the next day, the French did not renew the attack and the remnant of Bagration’s detachment joined Kutuzov’s army.
PART III
I
Prince Vassily used not to think over his plans. Still less did he think of doing harm to others for the sake of his own interest. He was simply a man of the world, who had been successful in the world, and had formed a habit of being so. Various plans and calculations were continually forming in his mind, arising from circumstances and the persons he met, but he never deliberately considered them, though they constituted the whole interest of his life. Of such plans and calculations he had not one or two, but dozens in train at once, some of them only beginning to occur to him, others attaining their aim, others again coming to nothing. He never said to himself, for instance: ‘That man is now in pow T er, I must secure his friendship and confidence, and through him obtain a grant from the Single-Assistance Fund’; nor, ‘Now Pierre is a wealthy man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and borrow the forty thousand I need.’ But the man in power met him, and at the instant his instinct told him that that man might be of use, and Prince Vassily made friends with him, and at the first opportunity by instinct, without previous consideration, flattered him, became intimate with him, and told him of what he wanted.
Pierre was ready at hand in Moscow, and Prince Vassily secured an appointment as gentleman of the bedchamber for him, a position at that time reckoned equal in status to that of a councillor of state, and insisted on the young man’s travelling with him to Petersburg, and staying at his house. Without apparent design, but yet with unhesitating conviction that it was the right thing, Prince Vassily did everything to ensure Pierre’s marrying his daughter. If Prince Vassily had definitely reflected upon his plans beforehand, he could not have been so natural in his behaviour and so straightforward and familiar in his relations with every one, of higher and of lower rank than himself. Something drew him infallibly towards men richer or more powerful than himself, and he was endowed with a rare instinct for hitting on precisely the moment when he should and could make use of such persons.
