The captain went out to the entrance and gave some loud commands.
When he came back into the room, Pierre was sitting where he had been sitting before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He really was at that moment suffering. As soon as the captain had gone out, and Pierre had been left alone, he suddenly came to himself, and recognised the position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken, not that these lucky conquerors were making themselves at home there and patronising him, bitterly as Pierre felt it, that tortured him at that moment. He was tortured by the consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of wine he had drunk, the chat with this good-natured fellow, had dissipated that mood of concentrated gloom, which he had been living in for the last few days, and which was essential for carrying out his design. The pistol and the dagger and the peasant’s coat were ready, Napoleon was making his entry on the morrow. Pierre felt it as praiseworthy and as beneficial as ever to slay the miscreant; but he felt now that he would not do it. He struggled against the consciousness of his own weakness, but he vaguely felt that he could not overcome it, that his past gloomy train of ideas, of vengeance, murder, and self- sacrifice, had been blown away like dust at contact with the first human being.
The captain came into the room, limping a little, and whistling some tune.
The Frenchman’s chatter that had amused Pierre struck him now as revolting. And his whistling a tune, and his gait, and his gesture in twisting his moustaches, all seemed insulting to Pierre now.
‘I’ll go away at once, I won’t say another word to him,’ thought Pierre. He thought this, yet went on sitting in the same place. Some strange feeling of weakness riveted him to his place; he longed to get up and go, and could not.
The captain, on the contrary, seemed in exceedingly good spirits. He walked a couple of times up and down the room. His eyes sparkled and his moustaches slightly twitched as though he were smiling to himself at some amusing notion.
‘Charming fellow the colonel of these Wiirtembergers,’ he said all at once. ‘He’s a German, but a good fellow if ever there was one. But a German.’
He sat down facing Pierre.
‘By the way, you know German?’
Pierre looked at him in silence.
‘How do you say “ asile ” in German?’ j I
‘ Asile?’ repeated Pierre. 1 Asile in German is Unterkunjt.’
‘What do you say?’ the captain queried quickly and doubtfully.
‘Unterkunft,’ repeated Pierre.
‘Outerkoff,’ said the captain, and for several seconds he looked at Pierre with his laughing eyes. ‘The Germans are awful fools, aren’t they, M. Pierre?’ he concluded.
‘Well, another bottle of this Moscow claret, eh? Morel, warm us another bottle!’ the captain shouted gaily.
Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre in the candle-light, and was obviously struck by the troubled face of his companion. With genuine regret and sympathy in his face, Ram- balle approached Pierre, and bent over him.
‘Eh, we are sad!’ he said, touching Pierre on the hand. ‘Can I have hurt you? No, really, have you anything against me?’ he questioned. ‘Perhaps it is owing to the situation of affairs?’
Pierre made no reply, but looked cordially into the Frenchman’s eyes. This expression of sympathy was pleasant to him.
‘My word of honour, to say nothing of what I owe you, I have a liking for you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death. With my hand and my heart, I say so,’ he said, slapping himself on the chest.
‘Thank you,’ said Pierre. The captain gazed at Pierre as he had gazed at him when he learnt the German for ‘refuge,’ and his face suddenly brightened.
‘Ah, in that case, I drink to our friendship,’ he cried gaily, pouring out two glasses of wine.
Pierre took the glass and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his, pressed Pierre’s hand once more, and leaned his elbow on the table in a pose of pensive melancholy.
‘Yes, my dear friend, such are the freaks of fortune,’ he began. ‘Who would have said I should be a soldier and captain of dragoons in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him. And yet here I am at Moscow with him. I must tell you, my dear fellow,’ he continued in the mournful and measured voice of a man who intends to tell a long story, ‘our name is one of the most ancient in France.’
And with the easy and naive unreserve of a Frenchman, the captain told Pierre the history of his forefathers, his childhood, boyhood, and manhood, and all his relations, his fortunes, and domestic affairs. ‘Ma pauvre mere,’ took, of course, a prominent part in this recital.
‘But all that is only the setting of life; the real thing is love. Love! Eh, M. Pierre?’ he said, warming up. ‘Another glass.’
Pierre again emptied his glass, and filled himself a third.
