Chapter 18 Chapter Eighteen

When Pierre returned home, the servant handed him the two leaflets for Rastoptchin that had been brought that day. The first leaflet said that Count Rastoptchin had banned people from leaving Moscow—untrue.On the contrary, the lady and the merchant's wife left Moscow, to Count Rastoptchin's delight. "There may be less fear, less rumour," said the leaflet, "but on my life, the murderer will never reach Moscow." These words made it clear to Pierre for the first time that the French must arrive. Moscow.Does the second leaflet say that our base camp is in Viazi, Count Wittgenstein defeated the French, and because many residents were willing to arm themselves, the arsenal had weapons for them: sabers, pistols, pikes.These weapons will be sold to them cheaply.The tone of the leaflet was not as witty as it had been in Chijilin's conversation.Facing these leaflets, Pierre pondered.Apparently a terrible storm-breeding cloud--a cloud he had called upon with all the power of his soul, and which frightened him involuntarily--was approaching.

"Should I join the army, go to the army, or wait?" He asked himself this question for the hundredth time.He picked up a deck of cards from the table and began to lay out the cards. "If the hexagram is guessed right," he shuffled the cards, held the cards in his hand, looked up, and said to himself: "If successful, the theory of living creativity is a scientific method for exploring the process of human development. Man, that means... what are you talking about?" Before he could decide what to say, the voice of the Grand Duchess came from outside the study door, and she asked if she could come in.

"That means I should join the army," he said to himself. "Come in, come in." He turned his face to the princess, added. (Only the eldest princess, the long-waisted, stern-faced princess, still lives at Pierre's house; the other two younger ones are married.) "Excuse me, Moncousine, but I have come to you," she said reproachfully and excitedly. "We'll have to figure something out after all! What's the matter with this? Everyone's gone from Moscow, the people are making trouble. What are we doing here?" -------- ①French: cousin.

"On the contrary, everything seems to be going well, macousine," said Pierre, jokingly, in the manner in which he was accustomed to address her, always feeling sorry for playing the role of her benefactor. -------- ①French: cousin. "Well, everything is going well... and it's going well! Varvara Ivanovna told me today how well our army is fighting. It's an honor indeed. But the people are completely against it, they Even my handmaidens have gone wild. If things go on like this, they will beat us soon. I dare not go out into the streets. What matters is that the French may call one day, and we have to wait What! I only ask you one thing, moncousin," said the princess, "order me to be sent to Petersburg: in any case, I cannot live under Bonaparte."

"Come, macousine, where did you get all this news? On the contrary..." "I will never be a subject of your Napoleon. People can do what they like... If you don't want to do it..." "I'll do it, I'll do it, and I'll tell them right away." It seemed that the princess, annoyed that she had no one to lose her temper with, sat down in a chair, muttering to herself. "However, the news you have heard is not reliable. The town is peaceful everywhere, and there is no danger. You see, I just read..." Pierre showed the leaflet to the princess. "The count wrote so, and he pledged his life to never allow the enemy to enter Moscow."

"Oh, your count," said the princess angrily, "he's a hypocrite, a scoundrel, and he's the one who got the people into trouble himself. Didn't he write in those ridiculous leaflets? Whoever it is, catch him!" His hair was sent to the prison (how stupid)! He also said that whoever caught it, the honor goes to him. That's how he is courteous. Varvara Ivanovna said, because she began to talk about In French, the common people almost beat her to death..." "That's what it is... You take everything too seriously," said Pierre, beginning to play his cards.

Although the cards were settled, Pierre still did not go to the army, he remained in the empty city of Moscow, every moment panic, hesitation, fear, and at the same time joyfully expecting something to happen. In the evening of the next day the princess left.Pierre's steward came and told him that it was impossible to finance a regiment without selling one of the estates.In short, the steward explained to Pierre that the idea of ​​a regiment would surely bankrupt him.Listening to the steward's words, Pierre couldn't help laughing. "Then you sell it," he said. "I can't help it, I can't back down now!"

The worse things got, and especially the worse his business became, the happier Pierre became, and the more evident was the imminence of the catastrophe he expected.There were hardly any acquaintances of Pierre in the town.Julie is gone, Princess Maria is gone.Among the closest acquaintances, only the Rostovs remained, but Pierre did not see them very often. On this day, Pierre went out to relax and went to the village of Vorozovo to see the balloon made by Leebich to kill the enemy.An experimental balloon was to be lifted into the sky the next day, and it was not yet ready, and Pierre heard that the balloon was made according to the king's order.To this end, the king wrote the following letter to Rastoptchin:

"AussitoAtqueLeppichserapret, composezluiunequipagepoursanacelled'hommessuArsetintelligentsetdepechezuncour-rieraugeneralKoutousoffpourl'enprevenir. Jel'aiinstruitdelachose. Recommandez, jevousprie, a Leppichd'etrebienattentifsurl'endroitouildescendralapremierefois, pournepassetromp-eretnepastomberdanslesmainsdel'ennemi. Ilestindispensiblequ'licombinesesmouvementsavecclegeneral—enchef. "① -------- ①French: As soon as Lebich is ready, organize a group of tactful and reliable people for the crew of the gondola, and send a messenger to Kutuzov to take care of him.I have notified him of this.

On his way home from the village of Vorozovo, passing the Marsh Square, Pierre stopped and got out of the car when he saw a crowd at the guillotine.Here is a French cook accused of being a spy being whipped.After the caning was over, the executioner untied a fat man with a red beard in blue trousers and a green waistcoat, moaning pitifully, from the execution board.Another criminal, pale and emaciated, stood nearby.Judging from the shape of their faces, both of them are French.Pierre pushed his way through the crowd with the look of the thin Frenchman, alarmed and distressed. Please tell Lebih to be very careful about the location of the first landing, so as not to fall into the hands of the enemy by mistake.Be sure to ask him to give due consideration to the close coordination of his activities with those of the Commander-in-Chief.

"What is it? Who is it? For what?" he asked.But the attention of the crowd (among them officials, petty bourgeois, merchants, peasants, women in loose coats and short fur coats) was entirely absorbed in the oracle, and no one answered.The fat man stood up and frowned, probably to show his strength. He shrugged and put on his waistcoat without looking around, but suddenly, his lips began to tremble, and he was angry with himself. , crying like an emotional adult.People were talking loudly, and it seemed to Pierre that they were doing it only to suppress their pity. "He's a certain duke's cook..." "How is it, sir? It seems that Russian soy sauce turns into vinegar in the mouth of the French ... it is so sour." A wrinkled clerk standing next to Pierre when the Frenchman started to cry Say.Then, he looked around, as if waiting for someone to compliment his joke.Some laughed, others still watched in amazement as the executioner undressed another criminal. Pierre grunted, frowned, and hastily turned back to the carriage, talking to himself constantly as he walked to get in, and several times trembling and shouting loudly on the way home. , so that the coachman asked him: "Do you have any orders?" "Where are you going?" Pierre called to the driver who was driving the carriage to Rubyanka. "You ordered to see the Commander-in-Chief." "Fool! Bastard!" cried Pierre, who seldom insulted his coachman like that. "I said I was going home; go, fool! I have to go today," he muttered to himself. After seeing the Frenchman under torture and the crowd around the dais, Pierre decided at last that he could not stay in Moscow any longer, that he was going to join the army today, and it seemed to him that he hadn't told the coachman so, It is the coachman himself who should know this. As soon as he got home, Pierre ordered his omniscient, omnipotent, coachman, Yevstafievich, who was famous all over Moscow, to send his saddle horses to Mozhaisk, where he would be there that night. Go there and join the army.This matter could not be arranged on the same day, and according to Evstafievich Pierre's trip had to be postponed until the next day, so as to have time to get the replacement horse on the road. On the 24th, after the cloudy rain, the sky turned fine.After lunch Pierre left Moscow.While changing horses that night at Perkhushkov, Pierre heard that a great battle had been fought that evening.It was said that the ground in Perkhushkov was shaking with the sound of the guns.Pierre asked who had won the fight.No one can answer. (This was the Battle of Shevardino on the 24th.) At dawn the next day Pierre arrived in Mozhaisk. Soldiers were stationed at all the houses in Mozhaisk, and Pierre's grooms and coachmen met him at the inn, which was empty of rooms and was full of officers. There are troops stationed and passing through Mozhaisk city and outside the city.Cossacks, infantry, cavalry, carts, shell boxes and cannons can be seen everywhere.Pierre hurried on, the farther he was from Moscow, the deeper he went into this sea of ​​soldiers, the more anxious he felt, and at the same time he felt a new and unexperienced joy.It was a feeling similar to what he had experienced at the Sloboda Palace when the king arrived, a feeling that something had to be done or something had to be sacrificed.He felt now with pleasure that everything that constituted human happiness--the comforts of life, wealth, even life itself--was a vain thing to throw away, compared to something... Compared to what?Pierre did not know and did not want to try to find out for whom and for what it seemed to him particularly good to sacrifice everything.He was not interested in what he was sacrificing for, only that the sacrifice itself was a new and joyful feeling to him.