‘Well, do you see, in a couple of words I’ll let you into the whole secret 1 of duelling. If, when you go to a duel, you make your will and write long | letters to your parents, if you think that you may be killed, you’re a fool and certain to be done for. But go with the firm intention of killing your
man, as quickly and as surely as may be, then everything will be all right. As our bear-killer from Kostroma used to say to me: “A bear,” he’d say, “why, who’s not afraid of one? but come to see one and your fear’s all gone, all you hope is he won’t get away!” Well, that’s just how I feel. A demain, mon cher.’
Next day at eight o’clock in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitsky reached the Sokolniky copse, and found Dolohov, Denisov, and Rostov already there. Pierre had the air of a man absorbed in reflections in no way connected with the matter in hand. His face looked hollow and yellow. He had not slept all night. He looked about him absent-mindedly, and screwed up his eyes, as though in glaring sunshine. He was exclusively absorbed by two considerations: the guilt of his wife, of which after a sleepless night he had not a vestige of doubt, and the guiltlessness of Dolohov, who was in no way bound to guard the honour of a man, who , was nothing to him. ‘Maybe I should have done the same in his place,’ thought Pierre. ‘For certain, indeed, I should have done the same; then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or he will shoot me in the head, in the elbow, or the knee. To get away from here, to run, to bury myself somewhere,’ was the longing that came into his mind. But precisely at the moments when such ideas were in his mind, he would turn with a peculiarly calm and unconcerned face, which inspired respect in the seconds looking at him, and ask: ‘Will it be soon?’ or ‘Aren’t we ready?’
When everything was ready, the swords stuck in the snow to mark the barrier, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitsky went up to Pierre.
‘I should not be doing my duty, count,’ he said in a timid voice, ‘nor justifying the confidence and the honour you have done me in choosing me for your second, if at this grave moment, this very grave moment, I did not speak the whole truth to you. I consider that the quarrel has not sufficient grounds and is not worth shedding blood over. . . . You were not right, not quite in the right; you lost your temper. . .
‘Oh, yes, it was awfully stupid,’ said Pierre.
‘Then allow me to express your regret, and I am convinced that our opponents will agree to accept your apology,’ said Nesvitsky (who, like the others assisting in the affair, and every one at such affairs, was unable to believe that the quarrel would come to an actual duel). ‘You know, count, it is far nobler to acknowledge one’s mistake than to push things to the irrevocable. There was no great offence on either side. Permit me to convey . . .’
‘No, what are you talking about?’ said Pierre; ‘it doesn’t matter. . . . Ready then?’ he added. ‘Only tell me how and where I am to go, and what to shoot at?’ he said with a smile unnaturally gentle. He took up a pistol, and began inquiring how to let it off, as he had never had a pistol in his hand before, a fact he did not care to confess. ‘Oh, yes, of course, I know, I had only forgotten,’ he said.
‘No apologies, absolutely nothing,’ Dolohov was saying to Denisov,
200 WARANDPEACE
who for his part was also making an attempt at reconciliation, and he too went up to the appointed spot.
The place chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road, on which their sledges had been left, in a small clearing in the pine wood, covered with snow that had thawed in the warmer weather of the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces from each other at the further edge of the clearing. The seconds, in measuring the paces, left tracks in the deep, wet snow from the spot where they had been standing to the swords of Nesvitsky and Denisov, which had been thrust in the ground ten paces from one another to mark the barrier. The thaw and mist persisted; forty paces away nothing could be seen. In three minutes everything was ready, but still they delayed beginning. Every one was silent.
V
‘Well, let us begin,’ said Dolohov.
‘To be sure,’ said Pierre, still with the same smile.
A feeling of dread was in the air. It was obvious that the affair that had begun so lightly could not now be in any way turned back, that it was going forward of itself, independently of men’s will, and must run its course. Denisov was the first to come forward to the barrier and pronounce the words:
