‘It’s not soldiers only, but peasants, too, I have seen to-day! Peasants, too, they are hunting up,’ said the soldier standing by the cart, addressing himself to Pierre, with a melancholy smile. ‘They can’t pick and choose now. . . . They want to mass all the people together-—it’s a matter of Moscow, you see. There is only one thing to do now.’ In spite of the vagueness of the soldier’s words, Pierre fully grasped his meaning, and nodded his head approvingly.
The road was clear once more, and Pierre walked downhill, and drove on further.
Pierre drove on, looking on both sides of the road for familiar faces, and meeting none but unfamiliar, military faces, belonging to all sorts of regiments, and all staring with the same surprise at his white hat and green coat.
After driving four versts, for the first time he met an acquaintance, and greeted him joyfully. This was a doctor, one of the heads of the medical staff. He drove to meet Pierre in a covered gig, with a young doctor sitting beside him; and recognising Pierre, he called to the Cossack, who sat on the driver’s seat, and told him to stop.
‘Count, your excellency, how do you come here?’ asked the doctor.
‘Oh, I wanted to have a look . .
WAR AND PEACE 717
‘Oh well, there will be something to look at . . .’ Pierre got out of his :arriage, and stopped to have a talk with the doctor, explaining to him lis plan for taking part in the battle.
The doctor advised Bezuhov to go straight to his highness.
‘Why, you would be God knows where during the battle, out of sight,’ le said, with a glance at his young companion; ‘and his highness knows 70U anyway, and will give you a gracious reception. That’s what I should io, my friend,’ said the doctor.
The doctor seemed tireci and hurried.
‘So you think. ... But one thing more I wanted to ask you, where s the position exactly?’ said Pierre.
‘The position?’ said the doctor; ‘well, that’s not in my line. Drive on 0 Tatarinovo, there’s a great deal of digging going on there. There you'll ;ome out on a mound; from there you get a view,’ said the doctor.
‘A view from it? . . . If you would . . .’
But the doctor interrupted, and moved toward his gig.
‘I would have shown you the way, but by God, you see’ (the doctor nade a significant gesture), ‘I’m racing to the commander of the corps. iVe’re in such a fix, you see . . . you know, count, there’s to be a battle ;o-morrow; with a hundred thousand troops, we must reckon on twenty thousand wounded at least; and we haven’t the stretchers, nor beds, nor ittendants, nor doctors for six thousand. There are ten thousand carts; out we want other things; one must manage as one can.’
The strange idea that of those thousands of men, alive and well, young and old, who had been staring with such light-hearted amusement at his hat, twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death (perhaps the very men whom he had seen) made a great impression on Pierre.
‘They will die, perhaps, to-morrow; how can they think of anything but death?’ And suddenly, by some latent connection of ideas, he saw a vivid picture of the hillside of Mozhaisk, the carts of wounded men, the :himes, the slanting sunshine, and the singing of the cavalry regiment.
‘They were going into battle, and meeting wounded soldiers, and never for a minute paused to think what was in store for them, but went by ind winked at their wounded comrades. And of all those, twenty thousand are doomed to death, and they can wonder at my hat! Strange!’ thought Pierre, as he went on towards Tatarinovo.
Carriages, waggons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels were standing ibout a gentleman’s house on the left side of the road. The commander- n-chief was putting up there. But when Pierre arrived, he found his high- iess and almost all the staff were out. They had all gone to the church service. Pierre pushed on ahead to Gorky; and driving uphill into a little village street, Tierre saw for the first time the peasants of the militia n white shirts, with crosses on their caps. With loud talk and laughter, ;ager and perspiring, they were working on the right of the road at a huge ■nound overgrown with grass.
Some of them were digging out the earth, others were carrying the earth iway in wheelbarrows, while a third lot stood doing nothing.
There were two officers on the knoll giving them instructions. Seeing these peasants, who were unmistakably enjoying the novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre thought again of the wounded soldiers at Mozhaisk, and he understood what the soldier had tried to express by the words ‘they want to mass all the people together.’ The sight of these bearded peasants toiling on the field of battle with their queer, clumsy boots, with their perspiring necks, and here and there with shirts unbuttoned showing their sun-burnt collar-bones, impressed Pierre more strongly than anything he had yet seen and he^rd with the solemnity and gravity of the moment.
XXI
