________________________________________________
_ Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the
Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had
set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and
goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian
families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their
belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of
clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family
of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother
and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to
do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he
felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth,
animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to
save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little
hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some
little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight
smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
frightened, sickly little face.
He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left
them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various
faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family
consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,
cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar
type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the
perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,
black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,
beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright
lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown
out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the
old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless,
large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she
was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck
Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to
look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding
those he sought, he stopped and looked about him.
With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous
than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered
about him.
"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry
yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.
Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat
who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked
whether anyone knew where she had gone.
"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a
pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added
in his customary bass.
"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning.
That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"
"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house
serf.
"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.
"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these
wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.
"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.
"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting
and crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!"
But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds
been intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was
looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone
up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat
tied round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and
his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck
Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in
his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a
woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian
boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the
Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his
legs and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in
the frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and
with his hands in his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and
silent.
"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to
the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them,
give her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began
screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the
Armenian family.
The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.
The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to
the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from
side to side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands
from his pockets had seized her by the neck.
The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same
attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or
feel what the soldier was doing to her.
While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing
from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the
young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious
voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him
aside.
The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing
down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward
Pierre.
"Voyons, Pas de betises!"* he cried.
*"Look here, no nonsense!"
Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing
and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted
Frenchman and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked
him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval
were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted
patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans
came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them.
Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only
remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that
his hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers stood
around him and were searching him.
"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre
understood.
"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted
soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell
all about it at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do
you speak French?"
Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply.
His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something
in a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves
on both sides of Pierre.
"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a
distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."
A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks,
and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to
be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.
"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after
a searching look at Pierre.
"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer.
"And ask him who he is," he added.
"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must
answer the chief."
"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner- take me!"
Pierre suddenly replied in French.
"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!"
A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood
the pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol
started she moved forward.
"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the
little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not
theirs?" said the woman.
"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.
Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight
of the little girl he had saved.
"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter
whom I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And
without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along
with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.
The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various
streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,
and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general
opinion which had that day originated among the higher French
officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through
a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects:
a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house
serf, besides several looters. But of all these various suspected
characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.
When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the
Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed
apart under strict guard. _
Read next: Book Twelve: 1812: Chapter 1
Read previous: Book Eleven: 1812: Chapter 33
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