The French had found Moscow deserted but with all the forms of an organically normal town life still existent, with various branches of trades and crafts, of luxury, and political government and religion. These forms were lifeless but they still existed. There were markets, shops, stores, corn-exchanges, and bazaars—most of them stocked with goods. There were factories and trading establishments. There were palaces and wealthy houses filled with articles of luxury. There were hospitals, prisons, courts, churches, and cathedrals. The longer the French remained, the more these forms of town life perished, and at the end all was lost in one indistinguishable, lifeless scene of pillage.
The longer the pillaging of the French lasted, the more complete was the destruction of the wealth of Moscow and of the forces of the pillagers. The longer the pillaging lasted that was carried on by the Russians on their first return to the capital, and the more there were taking part in it, the more rapidly was the wealth of Moscow and the normal life of the town re-established.
Apart from those who came for plunder, people of all sorts, drawn thither, some by curiosity, some by the duties of office, some by self- interests—householders, priests, officials, high and low, traders, artisans, and peasants—flowed back to Moscow from all sides, as the blood flows to the heart.
Within a week the peasants who had come with empty carts to carry off goods were detained by the authorities, and compelled to carry dead bodies out of the town. Other peasants, who had heard of their companions’ discomfiture, drove into the town with wheat, and oats, and hay, knocking down each others’ prices to a figure lower than it had been in former days. Gangs of carpenters, hoping for high wages, were arriving
in Moscow every day; and on all sides there were new houses being buil or old half-burnt ones being repaired. Tradesmen carried on their busine: in booths. Cook-shops and taverns were opened in fire-blackened house The clergy held services in many churches that had escaped the fir Church goods that had been plundered were restored as offerings. Goven ment clerks set up their baize-covered tables and pigeon-holes of papei in little rooms. The higher authorities and the police organised a distr bution of the goods left by the French. The owners of houses in which great many of the goods plundered from other houses had been le complained of the injustice of all- goods being taken to the Polygon; Palace. Others maintained that the French had collected all the thing from different houses to one spot, and that it was therefore unfair t restore to the master of the house the things found in it. The police wei abused and were bribed; estimates for government buildings that ha been burnt were reckoned at ten times their value; and appeals for hel were made. Count Rastoptchin wrote his posters again.
XV
At the end of January Pierre arrived in Moscow and settled in the lodg of his mansion, as that had escaped the fire. He called on Count Rastopt chin and several acquaintances, and was intending in three days to se off to Petersburg. Every one was triumphant at victory; the ruined and reviving city was bubbling over with life. Every one was glad to se> Pierre; everybody was eager to see him, and to ask him about all hi had seen. Pierre had a particularly friendly feeling towards every ont he met. But unconsciously he was a little on his guard with people t< avoid fettering his freedom in any way. To all the questions put to hin —important or trivial—whether they asked him where he meant to live whether he were going to build, when he was starting for Petersburg, 01 whether he could take a parcel there for some one, he answered, ‘Yes very possibly,’ ‘I dare say I may,’ and so on.
He heard that the Rostovs were in Kostroma, and the thought ol Natasha rarely came to his mind, and when it did occur to him it was a5 a pleasant memory of time long past. He felt himself set free, not only from the cares of daily life, but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him, he had voluntarily brought upon himself.
The third day after his arrival in Moscow he learnt from the Drubet-; skoys that Princess Marya was in Moscow. The death, the sufferings, 1 and the last days of Prince Andrey had often engaged Pierre’s thoughts, and now recurred to him with fresh vividness. He heard at dinner that Princess Marya was in Moscow, and living in her own house in Vosdviz- henka, which had escaped the fire, and he went to call upon her the same evening.
On the way to Princess Marya’s Pierre’s mind was full of Prince An-
WAR AND PEACE 1047
.ey, of his friendship for him, of the different occasions when they had ; : et, and especially of their last interview at Borodino.
