‘Well, send the third company again,’ he said hurriedly. ‘And who are you, not one of the doctors?’
‘No, I am nothing in particular,’ answered Pierre. And he went downhill again, passing the peasant militiamen.
‘Ah, the damned beasts! ’ said the officer, pinching his nose, and hurrying by them with Pierre.
‘Here they come! . . . They are bringing her, they are coming. . . . Here she is . . . they’ll be here in a minute,’ cried voices suddenly, and officers, soldiers, and peasants ran forward along the road.
A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. In front of it a regiment of infantry marched smartly along the dusty road, with their shakoes off and their muskets lowered. Behind the infantry came the sounds of church singing.
Soldiers and peasants came running down bareheaded to meet it, overtaking Pierre.
‘They are bringing the Ploly Mother! Our defender . . . the Holy Mother of Iversky! . . .’
‘The Holy Mother of Smolensk . . .’ another corrected.
The militiamen who had been in the village and those who had been working at the battery, flinging down their spades, ran to meet the procession. The battalion marching along the dusty road was followed by priests in church robes, a little old man in a hood with attendant deacons and choristers. Behind them came soldiers and officers bearing a huge holy picture, with tarnished face in a setting of silver. This was the holy ikon that had been brought away from Smolensk, and had accompanied the army ever since. Behind, before, and all around it, walked or ran crowds of soldiers with bared heads, bowing to the earth.
On the top of the hill the procession stopped; the men bearing the holy picture on a linen cloth were relieved by others; the deacons relighted their censers, and the service began. The burning rays of the sun beat vertically down on the crowds; a faint, fresh breeze played with the hair of their bare heads, and fluttered the ribbons with which the holy picture was decked; the singing sounded subdued under the open sky. An immense crowd—officers, soldiers, and militiamen—stood round, all with bare heads. In a space apart, behind the priests and deacons, stood the persons of higher rank. A bald general, with the order of St. George on his neck, stood directly behind the priest. He was unmistakably a German, for he stood, not crossing himself, patiently waiting for the end of the service, to which he thought it right to listen, probably as a means of arousing the patriotism of the Russian peasantry; another general stood in a martial pose and swung his arm before his chest, looking about him as he made the sign of the cross. Pierre, standing among the peasants, recognised in this group of higher rank several persons he knew. But he did not look at them; his whole attention was engrossed by the serious expression of the faces in the crowd, soldiers and peasants alike, all gazing with the same eagerness at the holy picture. As soon as the weary choristers (it was their twentieth service) began languidly singing their habit- '
lal chant, ‘O Mother of God, save Thy servants from calamity,’ and >riest and deacon chimed in, ‘For to Thee we all fly as our invincible kilwark and Protectress,’ there was a gleam on every face of that sense if the solemnity of the coming moment, which he had seen on the hill at dozhaisk and by glimpses in so many of the faces meeting him that norning. And heads were bowed lower, while locks of hair fluttered in he breeze, and there was the sound of sighing and beating the breast as he soldiers crossed themselves.
The crowd suddenly parted and pressed upon Pierre. Some one, prob- bly a very great person, judging by the promptitude with which they nade way for him, was approaching the holy picture.
It was Kutuzov, who had been making the round of the position. On lis way back to Tatarinovo, he joined the service. Pierre at once recog- lised him from his peculiar figure, which marked him out at once.
In a long military coat, with his enormously stout figure and bent back, vith his white head uncovered, and his blind white eye, conspicuous in lis puffy face, Kutuzov walked with his waddling, swaying gait into the ing and stood behind the priest. He crossed himself with an habitual gesture, bent down, with his hand touching the earth, and, sighing heavily, lowed his grey head. Kutuzov was followed by Bennigsen and his suite, n spite of the presence of the commander-in-chief, which drew the at- ention of all persons of higher rank, the militiamen and soldiers went in praying without looking at him.
