But Pierre was not heeding the woman. For several seconds he had been ;azing intently at what was passing a few paces from him. Lie was looking t the Armenian family and two French soldiers, who had approached hem. One of these soldiers, a nimble, little man, was dressed in a blue oat, with a cord tied round for a belt. Fie had a nightcap on his head, nd his feet were bare. Another, whose appearance struck Pierre par- icularly, was a long, round-shouldered, fair-haired, thin man, with londerous movements and an idiotic expression of face. Fie was dressed 1 a frieze tunic, blue trousers and big, torn, high boots. The little bare- DOted Frenchman in the blue coat, on going up to the Armenians, said Something, and at once took hold of the old man’s legs, and the old man egan immediately in haste pulling off his boots. The other soldier in the i-inic stopped facing the beautiful Armenian girl, with his hands in his lockets, and stared at her without speaking or moving.
‘Take it, take the child,’ said Pierre, handing the child to the peasant oman, and speaking with peremptory haste. ‘You give her to them, you ike her,’ he almost shouted to the woman, setting the screaming child a the ground, and looking round again at the Frenchmen and the rmenian family. The old man was by now sitting barefoot. The little renchman had just taken the second boot from him, and was slapping le boots together. The old man was saying something with a sob, but 1 that Pierre only saw in a passing glimpse. His whole attention was
876 WARANDPEACE
absorbed by the Frenchman in the tunic, who had meanwhile, with a deliberate, swinging gait, moved up to the young woman, and taking his hands out of his pockets, caught hold of her neck.
The beautiful Armenian still sat in the same immobile pose, with her long lashes drooping, and seemed not to see and not to feel what the soldier was doing to her.
While Pierre ran the few steps that separated him from the Frenchman, the long soldier in the tunic had already torn the necklace from the Armenian beauty’s neck, and the young woman, clutching at her neck with both hands, screamed shrilly.
‘Let that woman alone! ’ Pierre roared in a voice hoarse with rage, and seizing the long, stooping soldier by the shoulders he shoved him away. The soldier fell down, got up, and ran away. His comrade, dropping the boots, pulled out his sword, and moved up to Pierre in a menacing attitude.
‘Voyons, pas de betises!’ he shouted.
Pierre was in that transport of frenzy in which he remembered nothing, and his strength was increased tenfold. He dashed at the barefoot Frenchman, and before he had time to draw his cutlass, he knocked him down, and was pommelling him with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a patrol of French Uhlans came riding round the corner. The Uhlans trotted up to Pierre, and the French soldiers surrounded him. Pierre had no recollection of what followed. He remembered that he beat somebody, and was beaten, and that in the end he found that his hands were tied, that a group of French soldiers were standing round him, ransacking his clothes.
‘Lieutenant, he has a dagger,’ were the first words Pierre grasped the meaning of.
‘Ah, a weapon,’ said the officer, and he turned to the barefoot soldier who had been taken with Pierre. ‘Very good, very good; you can tell al! your story at the court-martial,’ said the officer. And then he turned tc Pierre: ‘Do you know French?’
Pierre looked about him with bloodshot eyes, and made no reply Probably his face looked very terrible; for the officer said something in a whisper, and four more Uhlans left the rest, and stationed themselves both sides of Pierre.
‘Do you speak French?’ the officer, keeping his distance, repeated the question. ‘Call the interpreter.’ From the ranks a little man came forward, in a Russian civilian dress. Pierre, from his dress q.nd speech, at once recognised in him a French shopman from some Moscow shop.
‘He doesn’t look like a common man,’ said the interpreter, scanning Pierre.
‘Oh, oh, he looks very like an incendiary,’ said the officer. ‘Ask hin who he is,’ he added.
‘Who are you?’ asked the interpreter in his Frenchified Russian. ‘Yo: must answer the officer.’
‘I will not say who I am. I am your prisoner. Take me away. Pierre said suddenly in French.
‘Ah! ah! ’ commented the officer, knitting his brows; ‘well, march then! ’
A crowd had gathered around the Uhlans. Nearest of all to Pierre stood the pock-marked peasant woman with the child. When the patrol was moving, she stepped forward:
‘Why, where are they taking you, my good soul?’ she said. ‘The child! what am I to do with the child if it’s not theirs?’ she cried.
‘What does she want, this woman?’ asked the officer.
Pierre was like a drunken man. His excitement was increased at the sight of the little girl he had saved.
